Week Two of The Great Stepkid Adventure is sadly about to end.  Last night went out with a bang: chocolate chip cookies, basketball in the park, and a dining room table covered in pipe cleaners, scraps, and a few adorable masterpieces.  Next week, I’m going to miss the kiddos!  However, I will have a little more time to blog, and I’ll be speding the weekend on a volunteer trip in West Virginia to help high school students apply to college.

This week in between pooltime and fierce games of Uno, here’s what I found on the blogs:

I love the blog Jacket Copy on the L.A. Times.  Here’s a summary of an interesting profile of F. Scott’s Fitzergald’s secretary.  In another post this week, there’s a fun comparison of recent Jane Austen book covers.

Should Be Reading highlights a new website called Book Blips.  You can find all sorts of great book-related posts here!

This week, Hey Lady, Watcha Reading reviewed The English Patient, which totally took me back to the year the movie was released.

The Literate Housewife recommends a new chic lit novel, A Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy.  I think that I’ll add this one to my pile.

I also like Should Be Reading’s quickie review of Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.

If you haven’t seen Meg Clayton’s blog 1st Books, which is about writers’ experiences getting published, her post this week “The Secrect to Getting Published” is a great introduction!

Finally, I loved Janet Maslin’s review of “The Girls of Summer” on the New York Times’ Book Section.  I plan to make my way through many of her recommendations, starting with Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan. 

To the Carnivals!  I participated in three this week.  If you’re not familiar with them, carnivals are a great way to find new posts and meet new bloggers.  I was featured in:

The Just Write Blog Carnival

The Carnival of Family Life

The Book Review Blog Carnival

That’s it for today.  How about you?  Did you find any great books this week?  I’d love to hear about them!

Whew!  This week flew by.  My stepdaughters were here, so we indulged in lots of summertime fun: fishing, shopping, a moive, and a minor-league baseball game.  We even sat out at a cheesy sidewalk cafe and pretended we were in Europe.  I now need to rest up from all that fun!  In between, I did manage to keep up with my Google Reader.  Here are my finds from the week:

I had fun with the meme at Booking Through Thursday.  You had to think of 15 books that will always stick with you in just 15 minutes.  My challenge was stopping with just 15!

The blog, Book Addiction, kept racking up stars from me.  I plan to read Mercury in Retrograde and It Sucked and then I Cried (what a title!) by blogger Heather Armstrong.

Alyce from At Home With Books reviewed The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose.  He spent a semester at the evengelical Liberty University.  In my hometown, we have Evangel University, where several of my brother’s friends went.  If Roose’s experience is anything like what those guys went through, it should be fascinating!

The L.A. Times book editors have assembled sixty summer books.  It’s a great list!

Finally, the NYT book blogger mentioned Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky.  It’s an anthology of food writers bankrolled by the Federal Writers Project.  I can’t wait to dig in (sorry, couldn’t resist a corny line!).

One of the joys of blogging is getting to discover all sorts of interesting people via their blogs.  I’m now happily immersing myself in the world of book blogs.  Here are my favorite reads and reviews from the week.  Hope you find something you like!

Books of My Youth — A Tribute to the ’80s. I had great fun reviewing the list at You’ve Gotta Read This and seeing where our tastes converged back in the day.

New Books I Want to Read:

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. I saw a review of this on the Washington Post and by Danielle Torres at A Work in Progress.  I loved to hear that Danielle was so immersed she tuned out everything around her.  That’s my kind of book!

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.  This one is doing a tour of various book blogs.  I first saw it at The Literate Housewife. By the way, I love her review style, straightforward and witty!

Precious by Sandra Novack.  Another book tour on the blogs.  I love these!  I first read this one at Book Addiction.  Heather’s review made it seem like a perfect summer read.

Mating Rituals of the North American WASP by Lauren Lipton.  I love chick lit and just finished the very WASP-y Happens Every Day.  I think this will be a great follow-up.  I saw reviews this week at She Is Too Fond of Books and Linus’s Blanket.

On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family by Lisa See.  Alyce @ At Home With Books started a great feature this week where she’ll highlight old favorites.  This was her first choice and looks like a good one!

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman. I already am looking forward to reading Waldman’s Bad Mother.  Now I want to read her earlier novel thanks to Heather’s good review at Book Addiction.

The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice by T.K. V. Desikachar.  I usually just like to do yoga, not read about it.  However, I liked the review at A Garden Carried in the Pocket, so I think I’ll check it out.

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz.  I’m a sucker for anything set at a university.  Thanks to Dawn’s review at 5 Minutes for Books, I’m looking forward to reading this.

Whew!  Looks like I amassed quite a list this week.  I hope that I get to read a few of these!  How about you?  What new books did you spot this week?