Yes, it's been a while. But in my defense, I got home from B.C. about three hours before liquids were banned from airplanes, and have spent the last week trying to figure out how many times worse my 15-hour commute back across the Canadian west (Cranbrook to Calgary, two-hour layover, Calgary to Regina, four-hour layover, Regina to Toronto) would have been had I not been able to drink anything for that whole time.

But that was then and this is now, and I've finished three books since I started my way home last week. I read Nicole Galland's The Fool's Tale, a story abut a 12th-century Welsh king and his Norman wife. The story is complete fiction (no historical), but it was still a decent read. Then I picked up Edeet Ravel's Ten Thousand Lovers a book about a Canadian woman in love with an Israeli military interrogator during the '70s. It's a very thoughtful look at the politics of Israel and the struggle to hold fast to their land in first few decades of the country's existence. I read it from Cranbrook to Regina.

By the time I left Regina, I was on to Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan, a book about a 15th-century courtesan and her business-manager dwarf. It was quite good and I would have cried at the end had I not been on the train when I finished it. And finally, for the last two days I've been reading Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed a complete departure from the rest of the books I've read this month, as it a chicklit book, through and through. I had issues with the dialogue (Giffin's not quite sure how to end a scene with anything punchy to say), but overall I enjoyed the characters. I'll start Something Blue, the follow-up, tomorrow on the train.

I was in a meeting yesterday where someone mentioned that book publishers consider someone who reads five books a month an "avid reader." I am quite happy to be categorized in that way.