Books I Think I Want, and an Undercover Review

It has been walking-and-sitting-outside weather, but I've been inside, piled high with work, feeling sunk beneath innumerable pressures. I'm in the final leg of a major edit of the Centennial novel, finishing up a client project, trying desperately to get the house in order, looking for time to get myself in order, too, before the academic year begins at Penn.

And I am missing books. I am missing easy strolls through bookstore aisles and time spent hovering over recommended reading tables. I am missing time on my deck, a book in my lap.

I am ten pages into Graceling; I'll finish that when some of this work clears. After that, I am headed to the bookstore to find out whether books like A Gate at the Stairs (Lorrie Moore) and Crow Planet (Lyanda Lynn Haupt) and Parallel Play (Tim Page) and Zeitoun (Dave Eggers) and Border Songs (Jim Lynch) and I'm So Happy for You (Lucinda Rosenfeld) are for me. I'll likely come home with some of those; no doubt I'll find and revel in the unexpected, too.

In the meantime, a big hug to Bermudaonion, for her deeply kind review of Undercover today. Bermudaonion has a lot in common, it seems, with my protagonist, Elisa. Which means she has a lot in common with me.