Sunday Slowdown, May 24: Thinking of A Free-Range-Reading Summer

Sunday Slowdown The 3 Rs Blog

I posted this on Facebook on May 11:

County auditor arrives this morning for a fiscal review. Back-and-forth with the CPAs to wrap up the 2014 financial audit ASAP. Month-end internal financial reports due in a few days. This is my very own Hell Week. Please send good thoughts!

It’s been more like Hell Fortnight. (I even worked last Sunday, which is why I wasn’t here–a “slowdown” just wasn’t a good idea,) But this is a three-day weekend, and I will have just two (still very busy) days in the office after that. Vacation starts on Thursday. I’m kicking it off with a mini-spa day, and the next morning, Paul and I leave for a week in Seattle!

We’re nailing down our sightseeing and activity plans this weekend. So far, our list has the Space Needle, the EMP Museum, and a drive out to Mount Rainier. And now that we are genuine grown-up Americans with passports (as of just two weeks ago), we’d like to make a little side trip over the Canadian border. If you know the area between Seattle and Vancouver and have suggestions for things to see and do, please share them in the comments!

This trip does involve long flights and car rides, but other than on the plane, I’m not sure how much time it’ll leave for reading. Of course, that doesn’t matter, because I must bring books regardless…and since it’s vacation, I really don’t want any of them to be “required reading” galleys. For a few minutes, I considered reading only e-books. I’m bringing my iPad mini anyway, and I have three different e-reader apps on it with a virtual TBR stack in every one of them, so I certainly won’t run short of options. Also, being able to tweak the font size and display settings sometimes makes reading on the iPad more comfortable than a print book…

A summer reading stack The 3 Rs Blog

…but sometimes I just get tired of screens—and after this month at work, I’m in one of those phases. Besides, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d miss the physical presence of books in my travel bag and the experience of turning a few pages as I ease into sleep, so I went to my bookshelves. I ended up with a stack far too unwieldy to pack, which didn’t surprise me at all, and was the main reason I’d been thinking about traveling with only e-books in the first place.

I’m looking at a mix of adult fiction, essay collections, and some semi-classic young-adult novels from my Lizzie Skurnick Books subscription…and the truth is, I’d like to read all of it this summer. My vacation will only last for a week, but I now think what I really want is a summer of mostly recreational, free-range reading.

I intend to get some reviews written this weekend, but I will probably hold off posting them till after I get back from my trip. BEA is this week—both the live and Armchair versions–and I suspect that many of you will have other things to do anyway. I’m thinking of just putting up some photo posts and link roundups to keep this space busy over the next couple of weeks…and then we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll decide I’d like a summer of recreational, free-range blogging too.

Winchester in the back seat #dog #car
And while we’re away, Winchester will get to spend a week hanging out with his friends as Send Rover On Over!
What are you up to this weekend? Are you reading anything good?

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