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Does she also say things like “Did you do anything fun over the weekends?”

More likely, it goes back to the origins of our 7-day week. The ancient Romans had an 8-day week. Our 7-day week comes from the Jewish calendar, where supposedly the world was created on a Sunday, and the final day of the week is the Jewish Shabbat on Saturday. (Though, we didn't keep the Jewish calendar's notion that days start at sunset.)

I suspect that if you go back far enough, most of Europe considered the week to begin on Sunday, but I have no idea how far you'd have to go back.

> Books, bracketed by bookends

Ah, yes, hence why we refer to them as the bookend.

Perhaps there's some difference between bookshelves and weeks, such that the weekend both serves as bookends to the week proper, and is yet contiguous?