Last week was one of those weeks. You know the type of week - the one where everything is crazy. 

Work was busy. Not the listen to a book while I work with data on my computer type of busy. This is the busy that had me tied to email and my phone constantly getting stuff done. Then I look up and I was suppose to have left work ten minutes ago. 

It was also the type of week where my kids required extra attention. This is the hands on type of attention that only another parent of a special needs kid really gets. It was one of those kind of weeks. 

With all the curve balls life was throwing my way, I was done by Saturday. Except the curve balls were not done yet. When we got home from errands my daughter's cat was lying on the living room floor in obvious duress. I rushed him to the vet. He is still there, but the vet says he is doing much better. We should hopefully be able to pick him up today. 

As you can imagine, there was not much reading done last week. I finished Road Brother's (the story story collection that goes with the Broken Empire trilogy) and started Prince of Fools. I wanted to finish reading it before the Tis the Season Readathon started today. It did not happen. Since I already started it I cannot count it towards anything. Except it is good and I want to finish. I probably won't end up doing all that well on the Readathon unless I combine as many books into one category as possible. I may just do that. . . 

This weekend I got into a baking mode. I made English muffins and brownies. Making things from scratch is fairly easy. Although, it is usually only something that I do on the weekend. The weekdays are just to hectic between school, work, and activities. With all the food allergies in my family it also means making every meal. Although, most of our weekday meals are fairly easy. Breakfast for dinner is a staple in our house. 

I did not read a whole lot. I did finish Year One by Nora Roberts while watching my daughter at the park. Then I spent an hour taking a break from a weekend of chores, and finished up Wildcard by Marie Lu. I was nearly almost finished. 

I bing read a lot of audiobooks last week at work. It helped that the project I am working on is a lot of busy work. Putting on an audiobook helps me to be more productive. It also helped that I wanted to get through most of Goodread's Fantasy nominations. I finished all but one book that did not have a sequel. That book is Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I wish I had not saved it, since after just the first chapter I am hooked. However, it was not easy to get. I finally broke down and bought the hardcover book (cheaper than the Kindle edition). Thankfully I got most the others on audio from the library. I did have to read Year One on Kindle (also from the library). I am glad I did not buy that one - not Nora Roberts' best work. 

I am not creating a reading list for right now. I am going to wait until tomorrow, when the next round of Goodread's voting opens. Then I will pick a category or two to bing read. Until then I am restarting the Darkfever series. I own the first five books, but it has been at least five years since I have read them. I will also continue with Spinning Silver. 

I should mention that I did bing read the children's books that Goodreads had as the best of 2018. I found about half were really amazing, and the other half were extremely dumb. It was hard to pick which one to vote for. I have not written reviews for any of them yet. I hope to work on that this week. 

My massive work project is winding up. Then I get to attend a conference and then vacation. Hopefully I will have some time to work on my blog some more. Even with time off it is hard to know, since kids come first. 

The short O.W.L.s Extra Credit read-a-thon is over. You can find out more about it here. It changed my reading list and influenced everything that I read this week. 

Before I found out about the read-a-thon, but after it started, I read Iron and Magic - the first in a spin off series by Ilona Andrews. I also received the last book in the Kate Daniel's series, also by Ilona Andrews, from the library. I binged that for a book on the top of my TBR. Both were in Kindle, but I managed to read them between activities and short periods of down time. Ending the Kate Daniels series was not very sad with the new spin off series already started. I am looking forward to the fresh perspective. I am glad that they did not decide to hold on to the series any longer. Nothing is as horrible as the twenty-ninth book of a series that has the same plot rehashed over and over. 

I tried to read Ignite for the fire categories. Nope. In the first chapter I found three plot holes. She says she plans to go to Stanford, but wants to be a culinary chief. Then she has been practicing cooking at a boarding school - maybe if they had classes, I guess. But she went off to boarding school at 13 and is now a 16 year old Senior. Since this is set in America something is off here. Especially since she just turned 16 at the very end of her Junior year - she dated a guy for a month after turning 16 and then school ended. A big DNF for me. 

Thankfully, I had the OwlCrate version of Grace and Fury waiting to be read. The Owlcrate version has fire on the cover. It was, overall, a good book. I really want to read the next book though. 

​On audio I finished Crazy Rich Asians. This book sucks, my review explains why in much more eloquent terms. How has this gotten so big? It is the one book that I think the movie will actually be better. It took everything that I had to finish. Ugh! I picked this for book with a light cover - it worked close enough.

The last book I read was Space Opera, for a book that tickles you the right way. I sure chose right. It is written in Douglas Adams fashion, with a lot of the similar tropes. It is the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not the catch all follow up books. While the book was not unique, it is uncommon. It was a great humor science fiction book.