(It's not my fault I haven't posted in nearly a month. Blame Facebook and too much work. Well, mostly Facebook.)

So I'm heading out to sunny, balmy Scotland (a girl can dream) in five days for a two-week car trip to the Highlands and Western Isles, with a few days in Edinburgh, Stirling and Glasgow. This is the trip I've wanted to do my entire adult life, and I can't hardly wait to get started.

I headed to the local Costco this evening to pick up some yummy treats for a couple friends of friends I will bend an elbow (of Tom Collins) with while I'm there. I didn't find what I was looking for, but instead picked up four books, three of them trade paperback, for less than $50.

I just finished read Reay Tannahill's The Seventh Son, a historical look at Richard III, my favourite of all England's kings (she doesn't think he did it either!), and had nothing on tap for my trip, so the find came at a great time. I picked up Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, which has won all sorts of awards; The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory, which were $9.99 each for trade; and a Canadian chicklit called The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren.

And which one do I want to read first? Not the harrowing Second World War epic that the National Post calls "a masterpiece on the page." Not the two prequels to The Virgin's Lover, which I finished only one week ago.

Nope. It's the chicklit.

I blame the weather. As soon as I no longer need a jacket on my morning walk to work, I lose all ability to read complex novels.