Urban Watchman and Bridget, Jephte and Laura on the Brain for the Summer!

In a week I’ll be leaving on a 3 week holiday with DH and the kids. We’re going to the Czech Republique (among other places to Prague) for 10 days and after that will travel to Silesia in South-West Poland. We love visiting cities, towns, castles, museums, we’ll probably throw in a bit of hiking as well, maybe an amusement park for the kids if there is anything around and the kids will also want to relax at the pool or lake. I’m good with that! It means that after I dip my toes into water, I let the kids enjoy the water on their own and grab the chance to catch up on my reading. This year, more than any other year I think, I have a collection of books with me that I REALLY want to read. But: where do I start???? See for yourself:

I think I really will have to start with Go Set a Watchman as I have been so eager to read that the moment publication was announced (I made sure I got my copy straight away yesterday on the date of publication)! Opinions on Watchman seem quite divided and in addition there is also the controversy of whether Harper Lee is being taken advantage of in her old age or not with the publication of this book. All this makes me a bit hesitant to start reading it. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books evah, after all, and I don’t want anything to spoil that! But now that the book is out there, I really need to read it for myself and judge for myself… Which probably means I will have to take Mockingbird with me as well for reference….

After that it’ll have to be either Urban Grimshaw or Brain on Fire, which I may never have come across hadn’t it been for Richard Armitage, but which both sound like they’ll be really good reads. I am still planning on putting Edith Wharton’s Summer on my e-reader as well, although for some reason that book doesn’t attract me as much as the other Armitage-related two. I’ve already passed over reading that for some years now but as Richard will be playing a part in the adaptation, I have just enough curiosity to try reading it. It’s at the bottom of my list, though. Notice that I am not going to read anything Red Dragon related. I’ll watch the Red Dragon on Hannibal but I am not in the least attracted to reading it, just not my genre.

So, after the “Richard Armitage books” I want to move on to the others, though not sure in what order yet. Can Bridget Jones really be any good without Mark Darcy? The first book (and film) were better than the second, how will this third book fare? And then there’s Laura Ingalls Wilder who I grew up with and finally, after all these years, I got the idea that I’d like to know more about her apart from her Little House books. Jephte’s Daughter is a book my mother had lying about and when I leafed through it (I often look through her book shelves), she told me to take it with me on holiday. I’m so dutiful. 😉

There is a problem, however: once I get into a book that really interests me, I go into binge-reading mode and am no good to the family… not such a great thing on a family holiday… and I only have 3 weeks to read all these books!  I guess now may be a good time to learn how to juggle like Tom Hiddleston (yeah, I really like Tom Hiddleston)….