Thanks for the birthday wishes last week. I had a great day — and week, in fact. I reported on my birthday present, a FitBit, for Readers’ Workouts on Tuesday. For British Isles Friday, I published our preliminary itinerary for a week in Birmingham. It’s starting to feel real now — I bought the airline tickets over the weekend!

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Read

Our book club had a great discussion about Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart. The history, the writing, and the structure of the book all promoted new thoughts that led to wide-ranging conversation about the history of the enslaved and of slave owners, the presence of modern slavery, and the banality of evil and where we might be falling into it today. This is the second book club selection in a row that has enough about the British Isles that I can review it for British Isles Friday, so watch for that.

After the density and heaviness of the discussion of Sugar in the Blood, I came home with a desire to read something much lighter. Fortunately, I requested Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee at the suggestion of April, The Steadfast Reader. This is a middle grade book, so I finished it quickly — a fun story that you’ll like if you love museums or The Snow Queen in any of its variations, including the movie Frozen.

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Reading

After finishing Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (finally!), I decided to read a nonfiction book on the same general theme — about Isaac Newton and the Royal Society and science in the 1600s: The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick. I expected more history than I’m getting so far, but it’s still an enlightening discussion on how much of a revelation that the new scientific discoveries were.

Since I finished Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy so quickly, I started a new bathtub book last night: London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets by Peter Ackroyd. Great topic!

My phone reading has slowed down for some reason. Oh, I know why. I’ve started listening to the world’s longest-running soap opera, The Archers. BBC Radio 4 runs a 15-minute program, 6 days a week, as it has since the 1950s. Of course, in modern times, that means it’s available as a podcast, so I’ve been listening to it as a bedtime story. That gives me fifteen minutes less a day to read Blameless by Gail Carriger, but I’m still making progress.

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Will Read

I need a mass market paperback to read since I’ll have some opportunities to goof off in a hot tub this week. I have Samurai Game by Christine Feehan, which will do, but I might see if I can stop by a bookstore this morning and pick up something set in England.

It’s Monday! What Are Your Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. Be sure to check out her post today to see her selections and the list of links to all the other participating bloggers.