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ShareSpring break means no school library hours for me this week. (Sadly, no actual spring break trip in sight, merely additional hours at my other part time job.) Naturally, many faculty and staff members were raiding the magazine rack and new fiction shelf on Friday before scattering for the week-long hiatus. I gave them the benefit of a head start (I have constant access, after all), and then snatched a number of magazines I had my eye on: the two most recent Newsweek issues (the second most recent because I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, and it has an environmental focus), the most recent Time (for its cover story on Senator Obama’s mother) and a ‘Special Issue’ National Geographic (the irresistible sanguine cover reminiscent of a Hannibal Lecter novel with its headline: ‘China: Inside the Dragon’). Since the two most recent Vogue issues were long gone, I settled for the March copy which I hadn’t properly looked at yet, with Drew Barrymore gracing the cover.
I don’t ordinarily muse about magazines on Re:Print but the truth is they represent a considerable amount of my weekly reading fare. I fondly remember reserving Friday afternoons as an undergraduate student for reading Newsweek cover to cover in a campus cafe. It was my end of the week treat, catching up on the news and issues I’d missed. These days I spend less time with more varied publications, which is probably a good thing. Naturally there are certain subscriptions I am more drawn to than others, but just the other day I found myself skimming a humorous ‘Last Word’ style editorial commentary in Outdoor Life, as it had just arrived and I was checking it in. Not one of my usual reads, but I do try to explore the materials on offer.
Back to books, however: I’ve delved at last into Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, and a fresh copy of Libba Bray’s The Sweet Far Thing in also my hands for breezing through over the holiday. Clocking in at over 800 pages, it follows the common pattern in a series of being heftier than the volumes that came before, but I think I can manage. I’ve been looking forward to catching up with the adventures of Miss Gemma Doyle. More on both these series, after the break. So to speak.
With spring recently arrived in New England and the current intermission from my usual book-filled surroundings, the opportunity to get through large chunks of Bray’s work of historical fiction and also enjoy the sun has presented itself, even if there is no tropical getaway in my near future.
And you? Is your vacation reading different from your usual fare? When the sun comes out do you get in more reading than usual while you work on your vitamin D levels?
