Monday Malarkey - What the heck is that white stuff? and all the usual malarkey

This past week was spent almost entirely either in bed (okay, one day of trying to sleep off a cold) or at our old house, where we were scrambling to get the house ready to go on the market. Yesterday we were painting and scrubbing in shorts with sweat trickling down our backs in 80° weather. Wow, was I surprised to wake up to snow on the deck, this morning!  Hopefully things will get back to normal, now.  We're taking off a week from old-house-fixit to let our sore muscles recover and then we'll go in and finish the last touches but the house is finally on the market.  Woot!

This week's arrivals . . . OK, somebody moved my stacks but I think I've gathered everything:

• The Riverman by Aaron Starmer from FSG via Shelf Awareness
• Haunted by Joy Preble via Paperback Swap
• Delicious by Ruth Reichl from Random House for TLC Tour
• Countdown City by Ben H. Winters from Quirk Books for review 
• The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff from The Penguin Press via Shelf Awareness (just walked in, while I was in the midst of typing my plans for next week)

From Sterling Children's "Poetry for Young People" series:

• African American Poetry edited by Arnold Rampersad and Marcellus Blount, Illustrated by Karen Barbour
• Robert Frost edited by Gary D. Schmidt, illustrated by Henri Sorensen

Last week's posts:

• A few minis - The Rosie Project by Graham Simsion, The Returned by Jason Mott, Redshirts by John Scalzi
• In which my F2F book group goes to see Labor Day, the movie
• This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash - a very casual review and photos of Wiley's reading at Square Books (should have called it a "freakishly casual" review as it was way casual, even by my standards)
• Wrong Day, Again.  Who's surprised? Fiona Friday Goes Caturday with Folded Izzy

Books finished:

• Redshirts by John Scalzi (already reviewed)
• The Big Needle by Ken Follett 
• Shadows in the Sun by Gayathri Ramprasad
• A History of the World with Google Earth by Penny Worms, illustr. by William Ings

Update:  

I knew I mostly read children's books, this past week and couldn't figure out why I only had one on the list of books finished, then I realized it's because I read 3 of them in one day and spread them out over the previous week on my calendar for the sake of fitting everything into the available boxes. So . . . 

The rest of the books I finished:

• How Does the Ear Hear? and other Questions about the senses by Melissa Stewart
• How Does a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly? and other questions about butterflies by Melissa Stewart
• What Was America's Deadliest War? and other questions about the Civil War by Martin W. Sandler
• 
  

This week's plans:

I think I can plan, now, but don't quote me on that.  I've got a tour of Shadows in the Sun by Gayathri Ramprasad scheduled for tomorrow.  Since February was one of those months during which I had difficulty concentrating, most of the month was dedicated to the reading of children's books and after I review Shadows in the Sun I plan to begin focusing on (and continue with, as long as I can keep going) catching up on reviews of all those children's books, with only a stop for the usual Monday Malarkey, if necessary, next week.  Should be fun.  I love children's books!

Currently reading:

Well, hmm.  I started Savage Harvest by Carl Hoffman, last week, and I'm enjoying it but I didn't get very far on either that or Priscilla by Nicholas Shakespeare, again.  That's partly because I was miserable with a cold and decided to go for light reading (Redshirts and children's books), partly because I was so busy scrubbing and painting and fixing-upping, last week.  And, then I needed to read Shadows in the Sun, but that was fascinating and went very quickly.  I just started reading The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena. Hoping this will be a normal week, meaning a week that I manage to finish 3 or 4 books meant for adults. Wish me luck.

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