On Mondays, I join J. Kaye’s Book Blog in looking back at what I’ve read over the last week and forward at what I plan to read in the next one.

Looking back

I was on vacation last week, which interfered with my normal weekly reading!

In particular, I had very little book reading and particularly book listening time.  When on vacation, family seems to expect you to talk to them.  Even more than that, they expect you to listen to them!

I’d hoped to listen to an audiobook together in the car.  My daughter, who was enthusiastic at home, and helped to pick the list of possibilities, was utterly uninterested once in the car, and my husband didn’t care either way.  So that didn’t happen.

I started to listen to one audiobook near the end of the week (a Netlibrary download), and discovered the license was messed up.

I started another, but it started sounding familiar about 30 minutes in.  I listened for another 15 minutes, then checked.  Yep, I’d listened to it before.  I remembered the rest of it, or at least more or less how it went, but  I still have no recollection of those first 30 minutes!

Yesterday, I finally started listening to Sweet Talk by Susan Mallery.  I downloaded this last month as a free offer through Lion Yarn.  It is a nice, light romance.  I’m about 1/2 of the way through, and am enjoying it.

I also read two paper books.

I read The Black Dahlia by James Elroy for my Book Club M.   We are discussing it tonight, and  I hope to have my review up tomorrow.  I read this one a little bit at a time.  This wasn’t quite my style of book.  It was just… dark. I finished The Black Dahlia just in time for our drive home from vacation.

Once we decided we weren’t listening to an audiobook in the car, I picked up The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand, which I’m reading for a blog tour.  This was such a relief after The Black Dahlia!  I finished it on our drive, luckily my family was fairly self sufficient on this leg of the trip.  My review will go up on Friday.  You’ll be seeing it around a lot of blogs this week!

Looking Forward

Next up is One Scream Away by Kate Brady, which I’m also reading for a blog tour, on July 14.  This looks like a fun, exciting read, and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m also planning on getting started on my book for Book Club L, even though we aren’t meeting until the end of the month. We’re trying something different, and reading Welcome to Biotech Nation: My Unexpected Odyssey into the Land of Small Molecules, Lean Genes, and Big Ideas by Moira Gunn.   I’m looking forward to it, but think I may enjoy it more if I read it in small pieces, rather than all at once.

I’m not sure what kind of summer week my daughter and I will be having this week.  If it involves lots of reading, I have lots of other books to enjoy!