Oh, the joy of Mondays

Today is going to be a Bad Day. So far, I've got four reports sitting on the data warehouse going absolutely nowhere, stuff that people are supposed to send me hasn't arrived and it's looking very much like I'm going to be here until late today because everything is getting so far behind already. I hate Mondays :-(

My weekend was busy and productive, although not noticably restful. I spent Saturday running around, getting shopping done, sorting out things on my car, baking and doing other highly useful things. Then I spent half the evening flat on my back because I'd overdone things so well. Sunday was lunch out with The Girls, always fun, and the plan had been that I'd then catch up on emails, do college work, make phone calls and do some writing. I got some of the email catch-up done, but then got dragged away to watch films with the family. My sister was home and I felt bad about spending the entire weekend unable to do more than say hi in passing so I sacrificed my doing useful stuff time to spend time with her. Managed an early-ish night, but I've woken up feeling thoroughly knackered so obviously didn't sleep as well as I should have.

Possibly because I haven't done the things that I planned to do yesterday and that was buzzing around my mind as I went to sleep.

Whether I get to make up that time this evening will depend on what time I leave the office today, but that's not looking good *sigh*

I did remember to sign up for femslash07 yesterday so hopefully I'll be finding some writing time next month.

And I have a rather impressive headache. I feel like I'm moaning. In fact, I know that I'm moaning. Maybe I should go and make myself tea and eat chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

So what are you reading?

After my little moan earlier, I've deiced that I need a slightly more cheerful topic to think about while my reports do nothing. I really don't talk about books often enough on this LJ, particularly in light of how much time I spend with them, so I thought that I'd pose a bookish question to my f-list and see what happens.

What book(s) are you reading at the moment and are you enjoying it/them? Why?

What was your most recently completed book and did you enjoy it?

To start the ball rolling, I currently have three books on the go:

Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers - JK Rowling: It's the French translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, so it's somewhere between being a re-read and a new book. I'm surprising myself with how much I'm able to pick up without my dictionary (knowing the story well helps) and I'm enjoying it a lot. The translator seems to have caught the spirit of JK Rowling's writing and, although I'm not an expert, I'd say that this is a good translation. Although I am a little puzzled about why the title got changed.

The Struggle for Mastery: Penguin History of Britain 1066-1284 - David Carpenter: I'm enjoying this one a lot. It's not a dry, dusty history tome although it's also not a book that glories in the gore and murder of the period. It's covering a good chunk of history and discusses Wales and Scotland in addition to England. A lot of the Welsh and Scottish history is in the context of the struggle to remain independent from England, but it also discusses the internal struggles for dominance within those countries. The focus of the book isn't really on the wars and battles. The author mentions them, but doesn't go into detailed discussion of the tactics and progress of every individual battle. He's focusing on the politics and economics of the period, the development of legal and governmental systems and some of the social history. For me, this makes it a much more interesting book than some of the other books on the period.

Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb: This book has kind of stalled for me. Robin Hobb is one of those authors that I feel I should like, but I can never quite get into her books. I picked this one up because it's completely seperate from her usual world, but that doesn't seem to have helped. If anything, I'm finding it tougher going than the other books I've tried and I'm wondering whether I really want to finish it.

My most recently finished book is The Traitor's Sword by Amanda Hemingway. It's the middle book in a trilogy that began with The Greenstone Grail and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. The books are technically Young Adult (that's where my local bookshop puts them, anyway), but it's one of those books that can be enjoyed equally by adults. The books are set in our universe with a teenaged boy called Nathan at the centre. He dreams himself into other worlds (we're not certain yet how...) and that's where some of the adventures start. It bleeds over into our world, though, and the books manage both aspects very well. Hemingway doesn't pretend that it's any kind of alternate to our universe - there are plenty of pop culture (and political) references. The characters are interesting and well developed, they're allowed to grow and the adults are given as much fleshing out as the young people. The first two books have a self-contained adventure and threads that are developed across them. Information is provided at the right pace so it's not a Robert Jordan level of frustration but we still don't know everything and the threads that have been left for the last book, The Poisoned Crown, mean that I'm not going to hold out long against buying it even though it's still in trade paperback.

So, that's my haul. What about you?