It's Monday 4/12! What Are You Reading?

We just returned last night from a 10-day spring break trip.  We drove, with our pop-up camper, down to Louisiana and back.  We camped along the way and spent some time in Cajun country and New Orleans.  It was a wonderful trip but re-entry is so difficult!  I've decided to momentarily ignore the 400 e-mails, the unpacked suitcases, and the mountains of laundry (I estimate at least 11 loads!!) and instead take a break and tell you about all the great books we read while we were gone:

• Craig, 12, finished his latest Hardy Boys' book, The Bombay Boomerang, and started The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, book 1 of a wonderful series that both Jamie and I loved (check out my review of the series).
• Jamie, 15, loves to read on our road trips.  He started with Sphere, a classic scientific thriller by Michael Crichton.  He recently enjoyed the movie version of another Crichton book, Timeline, so my husband and I suggested he try some of the author's other books.  He loved it!
• Jamie also read the third book in the Book of Ember series, The Prophet of Yonwood.  He'd read books 1 and 2 last summer and loved book 3 just as much.
• And Jamie started book 4 in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Battle of the Labyrinth, one of his Easter gifts.  He loves this series.
• I love to read road trip books while we're on a road trip, so I read Roastbeef's Promise by David Jerome, a funny book about a young man who fulfills his father's last wish by sprinkling his ashes in all 48 contiguous states.  I'm up to the part where he visits Louisiana, which I'm enjoying very much.  I'll post a review on Book By Book when I finish.
• At bedtime, I've been reading The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo to the boys.  Even though they're older, they still enjoy a bedtime book, but we don't always have time at home anymore with homework, soccer, etc.  We're all really enjoying this wonderfully written novel.
• We love to listen to audio books on our road trips, and this one was no exception.  We listened to an awesome new teen fantasy novel (the start of a series), Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, about a strange world that is divided between Outside and a unique prison known as Incarceron.  I'll post a review of this excellent new novel later this week.
• We started listening to Book 3 of the Erec Rex series by Kaza Kingsley, The Search for Truth.  This is one of the boys' favorite audio series, about a young boy who discovers he is part of a magical world and must complete a series of quests to become king, and we're all enjoying this latest installment.

Finally, though I read it during the holiday season, I kept my copy of Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen by my side for much of this trip, referring to Sara's favorite New Orleans restaurants and reading passages out loud to my family.  If you have any interest in New Orleans (or in good food!), you'll enjoy this wonderful memoir.  And if you want to know more about life in rural Louisiana, as well as in New Orleans, check out one of my favorite books of 2009, The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells.  My mom just finished the audio that I lent her and kept calling me to talk about it (and cry over it)!

And now, I guess it's time to re-enter the real world of groceries, laundry, e-mail, work, and to-do lists.  Vacation can't last forever...can it??

What are you and your family reading this week?

(What are you reading Monday is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books).