"The Optimist's Daughter" was interesting. I like the writing style. In terms of what she had to say, I'm not sure I picked up everything but the description of grief and the interpersonal stuff was very well done. The dialogue gives you a good sense of who the characters are, there were times I was really loathing certain people, other times feeling sorry for them.

I am unfortunately unemployed right now, so that helps give me time to read. I sit down and read for 20-30 minutes at a time, making sure I'm actually focused on what I'm reading and I usually stop when my mind starts wandering. I actually read the books on the go at the same time, so I go with whichever book is flowing at the moment. Maybe that's a bit strange but it works. I'm not sure what the total reading time was, but it never felt like a chore or that I was reading for a huge portion of the day.

EDIT: I also took some light notes while reading "Scale" because I was considering writing about it, but nothing lengthy, just page numbers for certain concepts