A day of reading ahead... (with update)

This is the last weekend of Spring Break and I was determined to spend one full day reading over break. That leaves today or tomorrow. Since tomorrow is church and a party, Sunday won't work, leaving only today. So I begin. Here are a few reading goals for the day:

1. Finish A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley. I've been listening to the audiobook and am now on the last disc. Done. I listened to the last disc as I drove around doing errands.

2. Read the entire book Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kubler. It is short, just over 200 pages. I read over 100 pages on Saturday and finished it this morning.

3. Read 50 pages of Mansfield Park, my weekly page allotment for the read-along. Done. Poor Fanny, Henry Crawford won't leave her alone.

4. Get started with A Shadow in the Wind, make a beginning dent, enough to really launch me into its plot. I listened to three audiodiscs out of 16, which is approximately page 100.

5. Read a few poems in 100 Poems to Lift Your Spirits edited by Leslie Pockell. I started the day with a poem from it, "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is a fairly long poem but here is a favorite verse:

Teach us sprite or bird,
   What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
   Praise of love or wine
That poured forth a flood of rapture so divine.

I read a few more poems. Unfortunately, I am in the portion of the book full of the Romantics' poems, not my favorites. Here is one I did like, though:

"Dawn Revisited" by Rita Dove

Imagine you wake up  
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares 
and the oak still stands, spreading 
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens. 
How good to rise in sunlight, 
in the prodigal smell of biscuits--- 
eggs and sausage on the grill. 
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open 
to a blank page. Come on, 
shake a leg! You'll never know 
who's down there, frying those eggs, 
if you don't get up and see.

6. Drop by the library to pick up the book club kit for this month. Peek at the book, Secret Son. Got it and I read the first page of the book which is set in Morocco. I'm looking forward to reading more of it soon.

7. I also read a small gift book called The Jane Austen Companion to Life which is full of illustrations by C.E Brock.

I'm off to read but will check back in later. It was a good day of reading.