The enticing book pile on my desk

Happy Friday!  It's been a busy week here.  A couple of library workshops to teach, reference desk coverage, an e-journal package to evaluate, and a 80,000-word file of reviews to proofread.  I've also been working my way through some time-sensitive review assignments for Booklist (with one more left to go).  In the meanwhile, this is the pile of books that's been sitting on my desk next to my monitor for the past couple of months.  Every so often I add to it with new arrivals, like The King's Hounds, which got a warm welcome when I picked it up today in the library's mail room.  I also have books sitting on my scanner, on the floor, and on my Kindle.  I don't know when I'll get to all of them, hopefully soon, but I like having them around.

In order from top to bottom, the settings are:  medieval Denmark, 20th-c Russia and Estonia, 19th-c Alabama, 19th-c Shanghai and California, 18th-c England, Victorian England, medieval France, 19th-c Egypt, and 19th-c Germany.

In between all of this, I made an attempt to read another book from the TBR Pile Challenge, which I've been neglecting since June.  On Wednesday I picked up Diana Norman's Daughter of Lir, set in 12th-century Ireland, and unfortunately we just aren't getting on very well.  I've loved all of her previous books so am not sure if it's one of those "it's not you, it's me" things.  But although I appreciate the dashes of dry humor, the narrative seems overly scattered, and the concept of a medieval self-defense/self-help academy for traumatized women just isn't working for me, even knowing that it's fiction.  I may try again later.

What's on your TBR this weekend?