It’s Friday night and the weekend begins, yay. We just got back from spending a bit of time at BookPeople. I had so much fun checking out the fiction and magazine sections. I’ll tell you later about some of my finds as now I’m more than ready to curl up with some of my books, but before I do that I have a few things to share.

First, for those of you who enjoy a good mystery did you see that the Edgar‘s were just awarded? I haven’t read any of these. Does it count if some of the books are on my radar? ha.

Who all is participating in Persephone Reading Week hosted by Claire & Verity? I missed out the first time around but this time I’m there. I have three books to choose from so over the weekend I hope to decide on one. I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, as April draws to a close it’s goodbye to another National Poetry Month. In honor of that I picked up the latest issue of The American Poetry Review. And, as the issue has one of Lucille Clifton’s last interviews I thought I’d share one of her poems which I just love.

Homage to My Hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Isn’t that great? Have a wonderful weekend and more bookish talk soon.

Even though my new books are calling me I have some good stories going on right now that I wanted to tell you a bit about.

First, there’s The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. Georgia Walker is a single-mother and business owner who is juggling the demands of a successful business, raising a tween and now the re-appearance of an ex. Thanks to her employees and friends who gather at the shop on friday nights, she finds a sense of calm and comfort in day. I hope that when I finally decide to go take some knitting classes I can find a cute shop like this one.

I couldn’t wait to start Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks and see how she tries to reconnect with her pen pals from her childhood. I wasn’t expecting as much background into her family’s history but it’s been interesting and certainly makes me understand why as a youngster she wanted to explore the world. Read this:

“When I wrote to these pen pals, in the late 1960s and 1970s, my family inhabited a very small world. We had no car, had never set foot on an airplane and, despite my father’s American relatives, had never thought of making an international phone call.”

River of Darkness by Rennie Airth is a mystery set in rural England right after WWI. Having just lived through the horrors of war a small community is in shock when five people are murdered. I’m not very far into this but I really enjoy reading about how the police force was starting to use more scientific methods to solving crimes and how it wasn’t so easy to introduce such revolutionary methods. I can’t quite make up my mind about the Inspector but I think once I get to know him more I’ll find out there’s a reason he comes across a bit boorish.

Finally, I am also reading Tomorrow River by Lesley Kagen. 11-year-old Shenny is trying to hold things together for her family since her mother disappeared. Her twin sister has stopped speaking and her father becomes more volatile each day. For it having such a sad premise, there is actually quite a bit of humor in this story. Shenny is always quick with a funny quip but I get the feeling as the story progresses I’m just going to end up really upset with her parents.

So those are my current reads, and yes, of course I’m still glancing over at the pile of new books. I may throw in another to the mix so I’ll keep you posted.

More ARCs have arrived this week and while I’m very grateful to have these copies I’m wondering how will I find time to fit them all in. I guess that’s a good problem to have but I admit sometimes it makes me feel a bit overwhelmed because all the books sound so interesting and I want to start them all at once. Anyway, let’s talk about the books.

• The Leopard’s Wife by Paul Pickering. Set in the dark heart of the war-torn Congo and within the commensurately savage enclave of a British public school, the novel offers an at-once magical and searing portrait of the terrible beauty of post-colonial Africa. I don’t think I’ve read a novel set in the Congo before so I’m especially interested in this one because of that.
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. He’s a high school senior in Brooklyn, secretly fascinated with a series of children’s novels set in a magical land called Fillory. He assumes magic isn’t real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secret and very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. Ooh, I would love to go there! I also noticed that the book includes a map – I love it when books have maps.
• The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner. I really loved Gortner’s first book, The Last Queen, so when I was asked if I would like to be part of the book tour I had to say yes. I can’t wait to read this one. I don’t have all the details of the blog tour but I’ll keep you posted as more info comes out.
• Eleanor The Queen by Norah Lofts. At a time when a woman’s value was measured solely by her wealth and the number of sons she bore, Eleanor was the high-spirited, stubborn and intelligent heiress to the vast duchy of Aquitaine. I don’t think I’ve read any books about Eleanor so I’m looking forward to this novel and being trasnported to another time.

Have you heard of these? Which one would you start with first? Tomorrow I’ll tell you which books I am reading now. I’ve got some good ones on the nightstand.