What we are reading

I am emerging slowly from a serious reading lull. I finished The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a gorgeous historical novel by David Mitchell, in Santa Barbara. Now captivated by To The End of the Land, David Grossman. About a mother of a young soldier on army service during an uprising, written in the period following the loss of Grossman's own son, it is delicate--at least starts delicately!-- but is thrumming with emotion.. I need to take it slowly.

Anselm, predictably, is ploughing through Harry Potter. He dabbles in the Lemony Snicket books on the side, and the Box Car Children in reading periods at school. Before summer, he was dedicated to the Riordan books and then anything Tova brought to Greece, finishing with the series of The Name of This Book is Secret, Pseudonymous Bosch. Blaise read him Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and now they are involved in Michael Chabon's Summerland. Here are the kids temporarily marooned with only one book between them awaiting the start of a hike through Topolia Gorge.
Eliot dipped into the Narnia books for a while, and enjoyed listening to Where the Mountains Meet the Moon with Anselm on a break from Ender's Game, but for now is back into picture books, especially Bill Peet. We're also reading the dinosaur encyclopaedia at last--Anselm read it every day when he was two but Eliot has shied away from any nonfiction that does not involve horses. On that note, in general good news, she tells me that while she was once a horse person (let's say for the past year), she is no longer; now, she is a lion person.

Blaise is keeping track of his own reading elsewhere.