After the silliness of the end of term my school library has been a wonderfully quiet oasis for two weeks, conversely the public libraries have been totally crazy entertaining the holidaying children.  Librarian Loons and Quines posted her Favourite Read Aloud Picture Books , though I noticed she missed my favourite – Tanka Tanka Skunk by Steve Webb. Library patrons Kids, Craft and Chaos take a trip to their local library to stock up on some new books.

For those who did manage to get away quite a few are posting their holiday snaps. I’ve enjoyed following Domestikated’s US trip – though I was very envious of her Mad Morning Tea. Not quite so far flung adventures were being had by Pining for the West who discovered that Stratford-on-Avon isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be, while A Son of A Rock has been admiring the architecture just along the road in Alcester.

For those of us who haven’t made it out of Scotland, be inspired by just how beautiful this country of ours can be by popping over to Scotland in the Gloaming’s blog and seeing a charming photo of the River Tay. Alternatively if you are looking for beauty in an urban landscape, Geener Leith is trying to save historic lamp posts in Leith. Or try and find something to be cheerful about like Percy Pigs (a form of jelly sweetie from M&S)  as advocated by Audrey Birt’s Breast Cancer Blog.

You’d have to be holidaying in a cave somewhere very, very remote not have seen the news about the SPL moving the goal posts on ailing Rangers. The Scottish Football Blog ponders if the SPL is playing fair or foul while Bella Caledonia has gone a step further and is having a call to arms against the SPL. No doubt we can look forward to yet more on this story in the coming weeks.

Luckily for someone as apathetic to football as me that it is not the only story making the news. The decision by Scottish courts to film the sentencing of Suzanne Pilley’s murderer, David Gilroy, and release the footage to the media is setting Caron’s Musing on edge. The latest Economist cover is getting people’s backs up with Better Nation offering up their thoughts while Leithal Yak suggests an alternative cover option.

Then is are the upcoming local elections are getting more prominent. As the campaign leaflets appear through my door, I begin my debate on how to vote this time and I’m not the only one starting to dwell on the issues. Lallands Peat Worrier ponders the possible future for the Liberal Democrats in Glasgow while From Speakers Corner made me giggle as they reflect on how the personalities in SNP may hinder or help their ability to win votes.

Speaking of elected officials, it appears that whenever the UK Government suggests as an idea it gets shot down in flames and this week’s burning policy is the planned capping to tax relief on charitable donations. Better Nation’s post looks at the reasons why people make financial donations and not all of them are related to government tax breaks.

If the government fancy supporting local charities, and fancy my vote, I’d recommend rewarding volunteers – ideally with a nice holiday. With that optimistic thought in mind I’ve given up my weekend to volunteering –  I’m off to walk up a hill with a group of 25 young people as part of their DofE training. Fingers crossed they can find North this time.

Hope you all have a lovely day as well.

As this is my first time editing the round-up I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Kateri (pronounced Cat- Terry) and I blog at Bear Bahoochie. In case you want to know more about my name Kids, Craft and Chaos has handily recently posted a bit about the name ‘Kateri’ so have a look there.

This week I’m thinking about holidays. Mostly because I’ve been on my holiday – hanging in Orkney with the in-laws. The big news up here was the Tall Ships visit last weekend, Life on a Small Island did a nice series of posts about them. Orkney is more famous for the archaeology and I’ve been following along with the dig at the Ness of Brodgar

Despite it being a holiday I couldn’t resist a bit of librarian fun and caught up with the librarian at Stromness Academy and compared our school library blogs (catch the JYHS Library blog, and compare for yourself). Speaking of libraries in Orkney I love reading the Orkney Library and Archives blog even when I’m not in the area. In fact their Facebook feed is one of the few I follow.

However, boats, libraries and archaeology isn’t all that Orkney has to offer. For those unfamiliar with these lovely isles someone has helpfully created this promotional video for Flota, that you can watch to find out all the highlights (this spoof reminds me rather a lot of Absolutely).

I’m not the only one enjoying a holiday this week my pet rats are also enjoying their vacation but perhaps more interesting to most is MSP Drew Smith is using his break to share his thoughts on the future both for his Scottish Labour party and the SNP.

He’s one of the lucky ones though, those poor MPs had to delay their holidays for this week’s emergency Culture, Media, and Sports Select Committee meeting as a result of the hydra-like phone hacking scandal. Edinburgh councillor Paul Edie came back from holiday to discover the mess and shares his thoughts on the committee, Nikki’s Blog calls upon those in charge to fix Britain using a handy cake analogy but my favourite post related to this was Bella Caledonia who compares the whole thing to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Holodeck.

Alas for one poor group of people the holidays are a distant memory – yes it’s the start of the new Football season and Better Nation contemplates issues facing them as well as the brevity of the off season.

Finally I have a selection of stories from the blogosphere that I’ll file neatly under holiday reading. We’ll kick off the selection with two more gritty of the articles – Lallands Peat Worrier discusses Lapdancing in Court (or more accurately how the recent Session Court ruling will affect lap dancing and similar clubs in Glasgow) and Wilf Wilson shares his love of RAF Leuchars and his concern over it’s future. Next comes the two magazine stories thanks to Rubarb Crumble who shares a day in her life which includes rollerblading and nomming Turkish Delight while Working Hypothesis faces down the agony of tooth removal. To finish off the happy bit at the end comes from Fife Diet which shares the trailer for a interesting sounding movie that shares 24hours in every country in the world.

And that’s it all over for another week. I think I may need another holiday…