As far as home improvement projects go, this weekend has been a bust: it poured with rain on Saturday, and, more importantly, Jim has been knocked down by a really nasty sinus infection.  He’s hardly stirred from bed, hardly eaten anything besides jello and ginger ale; painting and residing the house were definitely NOT on the schedule this weekend.

Luckily, I had plenty to keep me busy in between mixing batches of jello.  I owed five reviews on eight books on the 8th, though I begged for, and received, an extension on the grounds of working overtime at my day (real?) job in preparation for summer reading.  So I settled down yesterday and today and polished off two of the three longest books, both young adult biographies of famous historical women.  All quality judgements on these books will be saved for the reviews I write, but I will say that I really enjoyed both of these books.  Not because of quality – but because they are both nonfiction books about periods in history, and two famous women, about which I knew relatively little.  I’ve come away from these books feeling better educated and better informed.

This is in sharp contrast to my feelings after reading several young adult fiction books for reviews over the last few months.  Bad fiction is bad fiction, but bad young adult fiction, with its tendency to didacticism, can be excruciating.  After finishing each of those inferior young adult novels, I felt more than a bit angry that I had wasted my limited and therefore precious reading time on books that stink.  Grrrrrr, I thought. 

But today I feel a bit smarter, after having read about and done supplementary research about C——–  and M————-.  Worthwhile time spent, and this might just keep me doing reviews in the future, if given the opportunity.