Reading Round-Up: Post Easter Edition

I always have good intentions about posting on my reading for each quarter, but then the months fly by. So I'll arbitrarily pick Easter as my cut-off date for this batch of reading reflections.

It's been a slow start to my reading year in some ways. I'm plowing ahead, bit by bit, in Susan Wise Bauer's A History of the Ancient World (yes, faithful readers of this blog are allowed to chuckle over how long it's taking me to wend my way through this book). I've made it up to the 600s BC which gives you some indication of how far I've got to go. It's truly a good read, but it's become my bedside book, the one I pick up and dive back into when I need a break from other things or for when I'm in between books. I'm hoping by the time I finish it, she'll have volume 2 ready for me to read in just the same way!

I'm also still reading Travis Prinzi's Harry Potter & Imagination, and David Adam's Aidan, Bede and Cuthbert.

My current re-reading -- and re-reading is a beloved and necessary feature of my reading life -- is the Harry Potter series. More on that in another post.

I hadn't realized how steeped in mysteries my reading has been this year. That's almost all due to the fact that I've been re-reading Dorothy Sayers' Wimsey-Vane novels, with a brief detour into the work of contemporary author Jill Paton Walsh (who finished Sayers' last unfinished novel). Here's my complete list of mystery novels read since January:

The Wyndham Case (Jill Paton Walsh)
Gaudy Night (Dorothy Sayers)
Busman's Honeymoon (Dorothy Sayers)
Debts of Dishonor (Jill Paton Walsh)
A Rare Benedictine (short stories by Ellis Peters)
Cream Puff Murder (Joanne Fluke)
Thrones, Dominations (Dorothy Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh)

I've also read parts of the first Sayers biography Such a Strange Lady by Janet Hitchman. It didn't manage to retain my interest the whole way. I fared better with the excellent Conundrums for the Long Week-End: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey by Robert Kuhn McGregor with Ethan Lewis. It managed to be not only a biography of Sayers but also a fine literary analysis of the Wimsey novels and a cultural analysis of England between the wars, as illumined by the development of Wimsey's character. Good reading.

Also read in this quarter:

FICTION

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
The Magic Half by Annie Barrows

NON-FICTION

The Snowflake Man by Duncan C. Blanchard
Keeping House by Margaret Kim Peterson

Links, where provided, are to my reviews on Epinions.

I don't usually post about our family read-alouds but am thinking I may start. You can usually see a list with our current book and the past several we've read on the sidebar on the bottom left.