How do all of you out there in the blogging world find the time to do this every day? I'm sitting here looking at all my overdue books and wondering when I'll ever get to them. Among those that are calling to me right now are: "The Light in the Piazza and other Italian Tales" by Elizabeth Spencer - to feed my obsession with all things Italian - "Love in Black and White" by William S. Cohen and his wife Janet, Alice Hoffman's "Skylight Confessions," "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Adichie - to fulfill my relatively new interest in African history - and Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" - to feed my anger over the war in Iraq.

I'm also preparing two book discussions for next week on what I thought were two very disparate titles, "Madame Bovary" for one group and "Snowflower and the Secret Fan" for another. The strong theme of the powerlessness of women runs through both books, yet each of the title characters still manages to wield power in her own way. I'd better get back to it.....

FYI, I called my new blog "Read Around the World" because, when it comes to my reading tastes I'm all over the board. Though I tend toward literary fiction, I'm also a lover of murder mysteries and suspense as well as espionage. I'm currently trying to beef up my knowledge of non-fiction. Any and all suggestions will be welcomed - especially if the titles involve travel or politics.

Perhaps I should mention that the act of creating this weblog is the result of a challenge by my supervisor in my public library. I've spent the past 8 years using every spare minute of my work time on our library system's annual reading festival.
Now that I've passed that responsibility on to one of my younger colleagues, I've decided that my goal for this year is to become more tech savvy in a multitude of formats. Bear with me!

This morning I'm in a class sponsored by our local library consortium and am learning how to create a weblog. I do this with trepidation as I sometimes wonder "who would care what I think about the books I'm reading?" But I love to share titles with readers and I so enjoy hearing what others are reading and enjoying, so....here goes!