Although I am not quite so close to finishing as many books as Stefanie, I have been contemplating how I am going to spend my extra free time this weekend. I decided it was time to use a few more vacation hours from work, and I am taking an additional day off on Tuesday and extending the holiday just a bit longer. Four lovely days to read or relax or do whatever comes to mind (maybe shampoo the carpet, but I hope to avoid that...at least this weekend). After finishing the Tasha Alexander mystery last weekend, I 
haven't really felt like blasting through any other books at the moment. Sometimes it is nice to just read a little slower.
That said, however, I did finish Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier today. At the moment I am struggling with ambivalent feelings about the book. Maybe not so much the writing but with the characters. I am glad to finish a little ahead of our end of the month discussion so I can have some time to think about the book. I also have photocopied a few essays that I would like to read before posting anything about the novel. I have wanted to read this for so long, and I am glad I finally have. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but it was still different than I thought it would be.
If I am very industrious, I could read ahead in Don Quixote this weekend. I hit the 200 page mark yesterday! I have just been reading my chapter a day, shaking my head occasionally at what DQ and Sancho Panza manage to get themselves into. I know this is all going to come together in book two (from what I have heard anyway), so until then I am just enjoying the antics. I have not been reading my DQ companion that has plot summaries and critical discussion. Perhaps I should pick that up this weekend, as I need to be thinking about it a bit deeper than I have been. I need to catch up on the new posts on the Tilting blog. It helps immensely just to hear others thoughts about the book! I wonder how far along everyone else is?
I might be able to finish reading Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. Odysseus has just left Penelope to try and get that troublemaker Helen back, who has run off with Paris. As faithful as Penelope is, and as swiftly as she manages all those suitors while Odysseus is away, I would hate to have her life. Dragged from Sparta, having to live in her husband's house where she is not allowed to do much of anything, well...that's not particularly tempting. I will have to read Homer sometime soon. This is one of my challenge books (number two). I think I am going to jump ahead and begin reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I'm not sure I will get my other two books read for the challenge (though I am still going to try), but I definitely want to read Shakespeare. I have already started reading the Marjorie Garber essay. I hadn't planned on reading this play next (I somehow thought I might manage to sneak in another play between the last one and this one...silly me), but in the end I think it is working out well this way. Garber says that A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in the same years as Romeo and Juliet (which you might remember was my first crack at Shakespeare). As a matter of fact is is sort of R&J turned inside out--tragedy turned into comedy. Apparently the plays have a lot in common. I plan on doing the same as I did with R&J. Watch-read-watch--It seemed to work out well for me last time. It would have been fun to coincide reading/watching this with the actual Midsummer holiday, but sometimes I am so slow reading that it may actually take me until then to get though all my reading and watching!
This should keep me busy, right? I may choose a book (if I finish one other book first) for the Summer Reading Challenge and start a few days early. And thank you to whoever left the comment about the book by Geraldine Brooks--where she goes looking for her former penpals--Foreign Correspondent. I have read a couple of her other books and I am sure I saw this one at some point. One of the things I shared in a meme about myself was that I used to have penpals when I was young, but I lost contact with them. I sometimes wonder what they are up to these days. Brooks actually tried to find out. My library had the book, so I had to check it out. It is only about 200 pages. It looks like a quick fun read, so I might try and squeeze that in, because my reading pile is just too short these days. Just kidding.
What will you be reading this weekend?