Book-Juggling and Reading Fast I Can

 I find myself juggling a few books at the moment, one e-book, one audiobook, and one physical ARC. In recent months, I'd gotten back into the habit of one-at-a-timing my books, and I kind of slipped back into the multiple-book habit, I think, because the different formats allow me to get in more pages than would be possible by reading from a single format. So here's what is in-progress right now:

This is the only one of the three that was included in my reading plan for August, and I'm finding Larry Watson's prose style to be just about perfect for me. Edie Pritchard (in the first 25% of the book) is married to a twin whose brother consistently flirts with Edie. At this point, Edie is still holding the jerky brother off, but this seems destined to end badly. All of this is set in Montana, an environment that Watson knows very well and paints vividly for his readers. I'm loving this one. (This is the physical ARC - and I'm happy about that because it is going somewhere on my shelves as soon as I finish it.

Disappearing Earth, on the other hand, is a little disappointing at its half-way mark. Despite its cover and book blurb, this is not all that much about the disappearance of two little girls in a remote area of Russia. The girls are kidnapped right at the beginning of the book and have barely been mentioned since. Instead, the author seems to be focusing only on various residents, mostly young girls, who live in the little town they disappeared from. I'm hoping there's a plan here somewhere to turn this back into a mystery. (This is the audiobook I'm reading.)

Unofficial Britain is NOTHING like I expected it would be. I was looking for a travel book of sorts, one that would show me the bits and pieces of Britain I love best, all those little towns and villages that few tourists ever bother with. Instead, I'm getting a look at sections of the U.K. that are "unofficial" because of their abandoned housing estates, electric pylons, haunted roundabouts, and the like. I'm not quite halfway through the book (an e-book) but the common theme seems to be that the past is never really the past, that some really strange - or common - places are "haunted" by spirits from the past. Let's just say, this is neither a thriller nor a travel book. I'm not sure yet what to think about it. 

I also used my library's "curbside" pick-up service this morning for the first time. It was all very simple, really. I called the number included in the email notification that my book was there, set a time for pick-up, and drove to the library where I walked up to a table at the front door to grab my clearly-marked book from the unmanned table set-up there. Other than checking the book out over the phone, I had zero contact with a library employee...even Curbside Larry. 

The book that came home with me in this test run of the system was All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This is book one-of-six in the Murderbot Diaries system that Jenclair seemed to like so much one day on her blog, A Garden Carried in the Pocket.

I've only read the first paragraph of the book so far, but even if I knew nothing at all about the novel, that paragraph is so clever that I would definitely keep reading. For more on the series, click the link to Jenclair's blog, up above.