Stuff Happened, and then It Was Next Week...

Guys, I had the best intentions to keep up my amazing blogging roll from Armchair BEA and actually post reviews and stuff. Currently, they are still sitting in my drafts... I'd give you excuses but you know them all by now. All I can say is, this is likely to be the pattern of events for some time to come while we go through getting ready to have baby #2, his arrival, and adjusting to trying to keep two small people alive as well as ourselves on a day-to-day basis. I will be here, I will be blogging, but it will be sporadic and the content may not always be as specific as I'd like! 

Anyway, this week just gone I read some stuff. I finished Alice Hoffman's Second Nature (review pending) and then, because it kept raining and my bag isn't waterproof and I really didn't want to risk taking Peter Duck out in the rain because of the epic journey it's had to reach me in the first place, I picked up Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, which Laura bought me last birthday, and I am actually falling in love. I've turned up so many pages for memorable quotes that the book is now twice as thick as it was when I started and I'm only half way through. Obviously, though, there was some kind of serendipity at work here, because this went live in the last couple of days, and Travels with Charley is on the list. 

I'm pretty sure I noticed this happening last year but it kind of passed me by. This year, through the power of Twitter, I actually contributed my suggestion to the list (The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas for those who are interested) and have printed the list off and stuck it up because I think it's so great! The idea behind the project is that various people have contributed their suggestions of one book they think you should read, and you read 1,2, or 3 of them between June 1st and September 1st and then link up your reviews through the website. For each review you link up, you are entered into a prize draw, how cool is that? Who wouldn't want to join in? You can do so here. 

It also ties in nicely with my own Summer Reading List Challenge where I've basically challenged people to write a list of books they would recommend to other people to read over the summer, and then write a list for themselves using books they'd like to read, plus suggestions from other people's lists. If you'd like to join in with that, you can find the details here and my own recommended reading list is here. The Estella Project means I've added a few to my own summer reading list, which now reads thus:

- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

- Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

- Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

- Cross Stitch (published in the US as Outlander) by Diana Gabaldon

and then possibly

- Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

- 1Q84 Parts 1,2, and 3 by Haruki Murakami

- Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer

I'm actually making a little pile on my shelf so I can just go and pick my next read up from there, except the Diana Gabaldon, which is coming to the library. Probably what'll happen is I'll have the baby and all my plans will go out the window, but I can try, right?

Who else has summer reading plans?