My reading list for the past week looks like the product of multiple personality disorder. But all the voices in my head say I should share the list anyway. Overall, these books were too good to keep to myself!

True (…Sort of)
One of the top five books of my year, and I can’t think of four better. I read this at the insistence of my daughter, and she was right. It’s fantastic. The book deals with many tough issues, from discipline problems and self-esteem to abandonment and abuse, but it does it in an immensely gentle way, with a good does of a magical sort of humour. I’m definitely going in search of Katherine Hannigan’s other books.

Packing for Mars
This book combines two things I love: Mars, and Mary Roach. One of my top five favourite non-fiction writers, and I can’t think of four better. She’s just so darned funny, in a dry and quirky kind of way. The entire book reads as if you went out for beer and she decided to tell you every strange space story she’d ever heard. Monkeys, fruit leather stew inside space helmets, astronaut origami… you get the idea.

Middlemarch
Yes, I’ve been reading a tome. And yes, I’ve been reading it on my iPhone. It’s quite convenient, you see, to sneak the phone onto the bed and tuck it under a corner of the blanket and read happily while various family members snore around me. Sometimes, on a road trip, these are the only moments of silence I can find!

If there’s one thing I find satisfactory in looking over this list, it’s that I must thoroughly confuse any recommended-reads engine. At least I’m unpredictable!