Camels, What Are You Reading?, and ROW80

ou know how sometimes you think it's one day but it's really another? The best, of course, if you work regular hours, is thinking it's Thursday and then finding out it's Friday.

Yesterday I knew it was Wednesday, but I was so busy thinking of all the catching up I have to do on blog comments that I forgot to put up a new post!

So let's pretend it's Wednesday on the blog for a few minutes...

In honour of that, I'm taking a tip from author Linda Grimes, who also forgot to post yesterday, but got hers up before midnight. If you haven't visited her blog before (and why not?!), you should know that she shares a camel with us every hump day, and sometimes more often.

Yesterday she also shared a photo of crocuses, but we won't get into that here, mostly because Montreal is in the midst of another snowstorm and I've basically forgotten what the word spring even means.

I found a public domain image of a camel in Turkey! (I do have a photo somewhere of myself sitting on a camel in Turkey, but it's on a different computer.)

Look at his jaunty cap!

Also this week, Nathan Bransford asks, what are you reading?

I'm in the middle of two books:

Notwithstanding, by Louis de Bernières

Telegraph review here

I'm enjoying the stories and I agree with de Bernières that a lot of the charm has vanished from English villages, but the book overall doesn't have the striking impact of Birds Without Wings. In a way, James Herriott's books are even more emotionally satisfying, but maybe that's not a fair comparison, since he was writing from within a certain time, as it were, while de Bernières is evoking characters and tales based on childhood memories.

I thought I'd blogged about Birds Without Wings before, but I don't think I have. Searching for it led me to this post I'd written for the Turkish Muse blog, on My Favourite Thing About Turkey.

The Mapmaker's Daughter by Laurel Corona

I was originally interested in reading this book because it's set close to the time period of my own story, Out of the Water. Now I'm invested in the story for its own sake, following the adventures of this young girl in 15th Century Spain and Portugal, "who makes the decision to live openly in the faith and experiences both the brutalities and joys of Jewish life over the course of her long life."

Ah, my own stories, you ask? I know there are only a couple of weeks left in this round of ROW80, but I haven't gotten much done on my goals this week. Been keeping up with the monthly writers' exercise on the Forum, though! And hope to comment on all of your blogs before the weekend is out!

What are you reading this week?

Have you ever ridden a camel?