There have been too many real life distractions for me to be a good book blogger lately, but I'm hoping to be back on track in a day or two with at least a brief reaction to all the books I've read this month. The problem with being this far behind is I resist catch-up efforts and wind up even further behind. Get thee behind me, Inertia!

At the moment I'm reading Dominic Smith's The Mercury Vision of Louis Daguerre. I'd been waiting for the university library to finish processing it for a couple of weeks now, but when I was in the public library on Friday picking up my hold on Abide with Me, there it was in New Fiction looking all lonely. I'm only five chapters in, due to Black Swan Green , which kept me engrossed over the weekend, and the need to catch up with S. in 1984, but I should be able to spend a lot of time in 19th-century Paris this evening.

A word to the wise: if you tell your daughter she can have the speakers to your computer to take to her new apartment, please make sure that she doesn't wait until the last minute to get them. We were home from the three vehicle plus U-haul trailer moving-in extravaganza before we realized R. had somehow managed to take the router cable along with the speakers. Fortunately L. was able to perform computer voodoo after I went to bed Sunday night to restore phone service and internet connection to one of the computers.

And belated public congratulations to R., who ended the semester with a 4.0. Her essay on "The Lady with the Toy Dog" was outstanding, too.