Please Send Gumption

A frequent comment to my blog (especially from people here from the comment challenge who need to say SOMETHING even when I'm too dull to give you anything to talk about) is that I sure do read a lot of books at once. Which is true.

But that's partly because there are books I'm reading because I like reading them, and books I'm reading because I want to have read them. If I'm lucky, each book is both, but sometimes this is not the case. And I usually don't like to read too much of a book if I'm not enjoying it, so I try to make sure I've got some books dangling as carrots -- if I read a bit of that book that I want to have read, then I can read some of that book that I want to be reading.

And even in the the books I'm reveling in reading, I sometimes have reasons to try to go slow. For example, I like to read book club selections over a few days so I have time to have a few thoughts about them. I like to spread comfort books out over any time I need comforting in. All of which means that if I'm going to read 200 - 300 pages in a day, often I want to spread those out among the book that I'm not really enjoying (Shadow of the Wind), the book I want to cleverly notice foreshadowing and all the funny bits in (Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict), the book from a good author but with a really annoying premise (The Spanish Wedding), and the book where the author might kill off a bunch of people for an added emotional punch (Faith, Hope and Ivy June). And I'll force myself through a bit of the dull parts of The War With the Newts in between these options. So there's a week in which I'm reading four, maybe five books depending on which is on top.

I'm still on track with C.B.'s TBR Double Dog Dare. My library list is under my age and I have room to pull a few CDs to play in my car.

I'm also up to date with the Comment Challenge. Some days my comments are fairly lame, but I managed to get up a blog post or two for other people to comment on if they get desperate.

I'll go sign in at Book Journey's round-up of what people have read, are reading, and will read. I'm eligible again for Teach Mentor Texts since I read two kidlit books.

This week I read:

• Succubus Blues, Richelle Mead. NOOK. Fun book I got from Felicia Day's book club.
• Tears of the Sun, S.M. Stirling. Worst page:plot ratio I've seen.
• My Year With Eleanor, Noelle Hancock. NOOK. Fun memoir.
• Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. RML book that I felt through in a bit too much drama.
• The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, Trenton Stewart. For my family book club.
• The Borrowers Afield, Mary Norton. Hey, I finished this! 

What am I currently reading? Technically I have 23 books open, but really I'm only trying to read about three. Well, five if you count the NOOK books.  Most books are just for browsing, and then there's all the books left over from the summer that I'll get to REAL SOON NOW.

• Dearly, Departed, Lia Habel. NOOK. I think this was a Felicia Day pick that I fell behind on.
• The Spanish Marriage, Madeleine Robins. NOOK. Argh, it's a romance based on stupidly keeping secrets. OK, he just has a misunderstanding that he's too dumb to talk about, but anytime the heroine thinks "oh, I just realized I can't tell him this secret for some goofy reason" I know the book is not going to win me over. 
• Shadow On the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I'm really not enjoying this book, which seems to stop and congratulate itself on its own beauty every few paragraphs. Yes, it's beautiful writing, but the vanity is wearying.
• Fleas, Flies, and Friars, Nicholas Orme. I got another copy from the library, and I won't lose this one!
• Gone, Michael Grant. I've read his humor, now I'll try his drama. Highly recommended by my eighth grader.
• The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater. (audio). I wonder if the boys would notice if I snuck ahead without them...
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays,  Laurie Lecomer. The importance of early intervention.
• The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner. Dipper. I am also not an aesthetic relativist.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Dipper. Big chase scene.
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. Dipper. Is the sister nine or sixteen? I'm a bit unsure.
• War With the Newts, Karel Capek. Dipper. Still very slow.
• The Enemy, Charles Hudson. NOOK. I got it back.
• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. (NOOK) Another expiration failure.
• Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey. Paused.

What will I read next week? I now have a sense of this, since I'm regulating my page intake to about 100 pages a day (not counting book club books:

• Among Others, Jo Walton. I have to find this book so I can reread it for Foolscap next weekend.
• Under the Mesquite,  Guadalupe McCall. For Tuesday. From the Best of the Best lists.
• Twenty and Ten, Claire Bishop. For Thursday. I got a copy from Scholastic, but of course I've read it before.
• Every Day, David Levithan. For Friday. For the Cybils finalist list.

2013 Challenges:

1. TBR Double Dare: Eight books from my shelves. And I've turned in more library books than I check out.
2. Cybils: 4/74. I'll start one this week.
3. Where Am I Reading?: I've signed up, and read seven states already.
4. Science Book Challenge: Need to re-sign up.
5. Reading My Library: Another one down! (Faith, Hope and Ivy June, by Naylor.)
6. Best of the Best 2012: 36/25. We're currently enjoying Scorpio Races. I start Under the Mesquite soon.
7. Summer Reading Goal: The next one is working its way up the stack.