dropping a satisfying backlog

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed the slightly non-standard title of the last post and wondered: what's going on there then? Well, it's a combination of things: firstly I've just been on holiday for a week and had a really good stint of book-reading, helped by all three kids now being at an age where they're keen to do the same (and by my keen coaching of all of them over the years to be voracious readers, one of my proudest achievements as a parent), secondly all the books I read on holiday were fairly short (in the 200-ish-pages range), and thirdly I finished Under The Banner Of Heaven a day or two before we left and didn't have time to blog it at the time. 

If you're wondering, yes, this is - thanks to the combination of factors described above - the first time that modified title has ever included the word "fifth". A quick scan suggests quite a few occurrences of "second", probably also mostly holiday reading but plausibly occasionally just laxness at getting round to writing a review. I think I've got as far as "third" three times, all associated with holidays significant enough that I can remember them without having to check: 

• our Austrian holiday in September 2008 (relevant title was Norwegian Wood, other two were The Promise Of Happiness and A Small Death In Lisbon)
• our Turkish holiday in October 2010 (relevant title was Falling Man, other two were The Girl Who Played With Fire and Chatterton)
• our honeymoon in Canada in July 2011, here we scaled the (until now) unique heights of "fourth" as well (relevant title was The Little Friend, other three were Hotel Du Lac, The Tortilla Curtain and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest)