My life is pretty much work-read-sleep all the time right now, as I fight to keep our living room visible under my piles of Cybils nominees. The good thing is that nothing in the Burrow is going to go flying away should a strong breeze kick up in the apartment anytime soon.

However, we’re not going dark here. I might not be able to stay on top of vacation photo processing and sharing at the moment, but we can talk books. I mean, I’m going to talk books anyway, so you might as well get a bit of a say in it, right?

So, let’s run a couple polls. Today, I’m going to ask you which of the nominees currently littering my coffee table (and the ones I have to pick up at the library tomorrow) I should take with me to Louisiana when I head south on vacation later this week.*

But it’s no fun for you if you have to read summaries of all the books, so let’s forgo that. Instead, let’s break the books down and poll you based on each book’s Very Special Episode issue:

• cancer
• Nazis**
• hmmm… this one is hard to tell from the book jacket. let’s guess it’s dying family member
• murder
• royal scandal
• civil war (European)
• teen death (possibly caused by the protagonist)
• drug dealing and abusive parents
• poverty and disability
• orphans and homosexuality
• homosexuality and snipers
• hmmm… how’d this one get in the running. the worst we get from the jacket is “near tragedy.” ah, wait, now i remember: dyslexia.
• drug-addicted parent
• physical scarring
• hmmm… this one also seems kinda upbeat. let’s say it’s about broken families.
• amnesia
• cancer (again)

To give you some perspective, recent reads have included such Afterschool Special topics as child abduction, Alzheimer’s, homosexuality, and madness.

Tell me in the comments what you’d recommend. Choose well (for me)!

**Actually, don’t pick this one because it was due back to the library today and has holds on it, so I can’t renew it right now.