Sunday Salon: Back to School Shopping

I used to love going school supply shopping when I was young. I don't love it so much anymore, not because brand spanking new office supplies don't still thrill me somehow (they do) but because with two of my three in high school, the class supply lists are handed to them the first day of school and I have to fight the rest of the hordes for the last remaining supplies that first evening after school. I don't shop on Black Friday but I imagine it's similar; if there's only one package of college ruled notebook paper in the metro area, there's body checking to be the one to get it in your cart. Blech! Not my kind of school supply shopping. So this year I am not playing that game. I bought a lot of the "old standbys" already and the kids will just pull from that pile and what I don't have they can wait to acquire.

But I didn't want to totally forgo the back to school shopping experience. It's an integral part of starting each year, right? So I took my daughter to the bookstore instead. I justified it because there are actual book books on their lists (nevermind that I already own all three of the books they'll be using this year that I know about so far: The Kite Runner, Night, and A Short History of Nearly Everything). Now, if you know me at all, you know I had very little self-restraint while at the bookstore. This is no surprise at all. My daughter, on the other hand, who is usually only slightly restrained, stayed at my elbow as I picked out books that needed to come live with me. I tried to get her to go to the teen section and look for herself and she actually said, "I still have books at home I haven't read yet." I'm pretty sure she's not my kid!!! So, not willing to let this terrible statement stand unchallenged, I dragged her over to the teen fiction and started handing her books to read about. She ended up with a stack worthy of me. And the one book she wasn't 100% certain of, I added to my own pile to help her out. ;-)

For the nosy among you (and if this wasn't my blog, I'd be among the nosy), I ended up bringing home: More Baths Less Talking by Nick Hornby, Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill, Penelope by Rebecca Harrington, Better With You Here by Gwendolyn Zepeda, and Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl (this one is the one we'll share). R. ended up bringing home Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, The Time Traveling Fashionista on the Titanic by Bianca Turetsky, Pizza Love and Other Stuff That Made Me Famous by Kathryn Williams, and Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle. And yes, I plan to snag a couple of these fun looking books and read them too. I don't think she'll be interested in mine, but you never know. And if there's more school shopping to be done that actually requires elbows to be thrown, I'll have to make another calming visit to my happy place to recover. Maybe they'll even need more actual books. Or not. But a mom can dream.

This week in my reading adventures I relived my swimming years and added an Olympic dream to them, I went along as a woman learned to forgive herself for her mother's death and unthaw her emotions, and I wallowed in the latest collected set of Believer columns about books and reading by Hornby. Where did your reading take you this past week?