Month: January 2021

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2021 Goals & One Little Word

At the end of last year, I saw a meme on Facebook (or Instagram?) reading something to the effect of: “No one is to declare that 2021 is ‘their year.’ Walk in very quietly. DON’T. TOUCH. ANYTHING.” Sounds about right, doesn’t it? At the beginning of 2020, I was filled with hope. We had plans to move, and I was looking forward to saving both rent and school tuition. And I was chasing a professional goal. (The move happened, the professional goal did not pan out but is still on my life agenda.) I had high expectations for the year. Clearly, we know how that went.

Looking ahead to this year, I am hesitant to make any grand declarations or set big goals. That’s true for most of us, probably. While I am tiptoeing around hopes for a vaccine and hugs from family members and maybe even a summer vacation, I don’t want to say any of that too loudly. Still, I can’t face another year of hunkering down and just getting by. So I am setting some intentions for the year. Not huge ones. Achievable ones. Intentions that I can work on regardless of COVID (I think/hope). But intentions that, if I keep them in my sights, will help me to live a better and fuller and happier 2021 no matter the state of the world.

Well-being goals. One of the things I felt that I did well in 2020 was focusing on my own personal well-being. Mom is always going to take care of the family, but Mom needs to take care of Mom, too. I figured the healthier I was – physically, mentally, etc. – the better chance I would avoid getting sick with COVID. So I scrupulously followed hygiene recommendations, but I also rediscovered my love for running and for cooking fresh, healthy, vegetable-focused meals. Not only have I not gotten COVID (cross fingers, knock all the wood around) but I ended 2020 healthier than I started it. Now I want to build on that.

  • Finish another Whole30 (I’m partway through already!) and then continue cooking and eating mostly whole foods.
  • Keep up my routine of running at least three times per week, and mixing it up with different fun workouts on most other days.
  • Spend 1,000 hours outside – even my own backyard counts.
  • Spend as much time as possible on and around the water.

Family goals. To be perfectly honest, it has been hard these past few months. Juggling a full-time (and very demanding/stressful) job with virtual school and parenting two kids who are constantly knocking around the house – and with no consistent child-care help – has taken a lot out of me. If there’s an end in sight, it’s still months away – I’m just crossing all of my fingers and toes that the kids can return to school in September, but that doesn’t get me relief for another eight months and the whole idea of eight more months of this is disheartening. I don’t know how I’ll get through – taking one day at a time, I suppose – but man is the thought of it exhausting.

  • Revisit my financial goals and plans. Last year we made some big decisions – like moving, and transitioning to public school – to help us reach our goals more quickly. Now I want to check in with my investments and make sure they are still serving the family.
  • Practice patience every day.
  • Cultivate new, simple family traditions and rituals. (Saturday morning pancakes? Family game night?)

Personal goals. Sometimes it can be very easy to get swept up in being a mom and wife and employee, and I lose sight of who I want to be as a person and what I want to do in that limited time I have to just be me. Running helps, but I could do more.

  • Keep building my photography skills. It’s the creative practice that brings me the most joy and personal satisfaction.
  • Wear earrings every day – or at least almost every day. I got out of the habit when I stopped going to the office regularly in the early days of the pandemic, but I need to have earrings in more regularly. I’m tired of re-piercing my own ears every time I want to look nice.
  • Paddle regularly – kayak and SUP – both with my family and blissfully alone.

Word of the Year. I don’t think I settled on a word for 2020, which in retrospect is probably a good thing. If I had, it surely wouldn’t have gone to plan, because what did go to plan last year? But I did want to choose a word to follow this year. 2021 will be our first full year in the exurbs and in the community where we’d like to plant roots and stay at least until our kids graduate from high school. The hope, also, is – of course – for a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, and I hope that we will be able to get out exploring more. We moved here mostly for the schools, but also partly for the attractions of living in a small town with a rural feel – summer movies on the village green, holiday parades, neighbors you know at the local coffee shop – and we haven’t gotten to experience those joys yet because of the pandemic. I want to embrace everything our new community has to offer, and to venture further afield too.

When I think about what I want the end of 2021 to look like – dangerous thinking, I know – it looks like a more balanced existence than what I have now. Kids back in school; nights and weekends less consumed by work; less clutter in the house and in my mind and heart. As I mused on words that speak to that vision, balance came up a lot; so did be, peace, calm and rooted. Ultimately, though, I settled on breathe.

I would like 2021 to be the year I finally claim breathing space. The story of the last few years has been overwhelm, more and more of it. A to-do list that is constantly growing; piles of kid clutter; energy vampires stealing my peace; and never enough time or energy or rest. In 2021 I plan to chase fresh air – physically; emotionally; professionally; maybe even spiritually (we’ll see, not getting too ambitious here). I’m not entirely sure what that will look like, but at the end of the year I’d like to be breathing easier.

What are your goals for 2021?

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Themed Reads: Picture Books for the Snowy Season

I spend a lot of time curled up in my “reading nook” with my favorite classic novels, rediscovered memoirs, and mystery novels. But I also spend a lot of time with a kid – or two – on my lap, reading aloud. And while I’ve been reading more novels to the kids (especially Peanut) lately, we still do love our picture books. I especially can’t get enough of the combination of beautiful words and mesmerizing artwork. There are some really stunning offerings in the libraries and bookshops these days; here are a few of my favorites.

Kate Messner writes some gorgeous prose, and the art by Christopher Silas Neal in her “over and under” series (which now includes Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt; Over and Under the Pond; and Over and Under the Rainforest) is absolutely breathtaking. I could fall into these books and just live in the natural rhythms of their world. Over and Under the Snow is absolutely lovely. Recently my cousin Jaime took her baby boy on a story walk through a local (to her) park; the story was Over and Under the Snow and, of course, she fell in love with it too.

Snow Birds, by Kirsten Hall, was one of Nugget’s Christmas gifts this year, but I think I might have been even more excited to read it than he was. It’s just beautiful – lovely, peaceful art and stunning kid-friendly poetry. Even if you’re not a bird nerd (as Nugget and I proudly are) it’s a lovely read. Destined to become a new family favorite for sure!

Can’t have a list of snowy season picture books without Jan Brett’s classic The Mitten, now can we? (Narrowly beating out that other classics, The Snowy Day, which is also beloved in our house.) If you don’t already know the story of a forest full of chilly critters who crawl into a hand-knitted mitten to warm up, get thee to your local bookstore and pick up a copy! I think both of my kids have read this in school, by now, and I have the pile of The Mitten-themed art projects to prove it. But we love it for home, too, especially piled up together under a warm blanket on a cold winter Sunday afternoon. Nothing better.

You certainly don’t have to have ankle-biters around the house to enjoy the peaceful art and inspiring words in these snow-themed picture books. What are your favorite picture books to celebrate chilly days?

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 25, 2021)

Brrrrrr. Is it as cold where you are as it is here? It got down to thirty degrees this weekend – chilly. (My mom tells me it is MUCH colder in upstate New York, which I’m sure it is, but we are wimpy Virginians around here.) Notwithstanding the cold, we got outside both days this weekend, so I’m calling that a success. On Saturday, we hiked at Great Falls Park and I got some pretty fantastic pictures of a great blue heron hunting – stay tuned because those deserve their own blog post, coming next week. In the afternoon – this is very exciting – I got out for a run! Not very far and not very fast, but I just needed to break the ice. On Sunday, we hiked at Riverbend Park, one of our local favorites. Saw a bunch of Eastern bluebirds (they’re everywhere!) and I fell in the mud, good times.

Rest of the weekend was – simple, simple. Snuggling on the couch with a book, sipping chamomile tea, breaking up fights, the usual. I could use another day, as usual, but two good days of rest and reading, that’s better than nothing.

Reading. Speaking of reading – it was a good, albeit slow, reading week. I’d expected to finish Word from Wormingford: A Parish Year last weekend; it ended up taking me until Tuesday, oh well. Still a good read! Next, as planned, I pivoted to Vice President (!!!) Kamala Harris’s memoir, The Truths We Hold, to celebrate Inauguration Day. What with all the festivities to watch and a few nights of lengthy texts and phone calls with friends and family members (no regrets) it took me until Saturday to finish, but I enjoyed every page. Finished the weekend off with Bewildering Cares, which has been on my TBR for far too long.

Watching. Lots of watching last week! Starting with the Inauguration and the related festivities. I loved every moment and can’t possibly pick a highlight. Amanda Gorman reading her gorgeous work aloud, three past Presidents sharing their good wishes for the new administration, President Biden’s healing speech, Lady Gaga in her Mockingjay cosplay, Bernie’s mittens, the spectacular fireworks – all great, of course. But I think if I had to pick a favorite moment, it was watching Vice President Harris take the oath of office. I dragged Peanut away from Dinosaur King to watch, and I think some of the weight of that historic moment made an impression on her. In other watching news, we finished Big Crazy Family Adventure and are now bereft. Any suggestions for our next family-friendly educational travel show?

Listening. I’ll bet you can guess what I’m going to say – podcasts, podcasts. I made my way through an entire two-part episode of The Mom Hour on “where to put all the STUFF” while running errands this week, and also got through a recent episode of The Marine Conservation Happy Hour while running on Saturday afternoon. Podcatcher’s still out of control, though.

Making. Lots of yummy stews. I started another Whole30 last week (can’t even remember what round this is) and have been wandering through the recipes on the Whole30 blog, stocking up on inspiration, and also just dreaming up lots of whole food-friendly recipes in my kitchen. On Saturday night I made a vegetable curry with Indian-spiced turkey meatballs nestled in it, and it was a huge hit.

Moving. Two hikes this weekend, plus that ice-breaking run – improvement, but not where I would like to be. (Sucking in all that cold air is just not really fun.) The funniest thing happened on my run, though! As I was huffing up the big hill on my street, a car slowed to a stop next to me and I heard the driver shout “Jaclyn!” Shocked, because I barely know anyone out here, I pulled out my earbuds and saw that the car’s driver was a client. We had just the week before last, chatting over Microsoft Teams, discovered that we live in the same neighborhood and started planning to meet up for walks. I haven’t bumped into anyone I know while out running since we moved here – that used to happen periodically when we lived in Alexandria; I just knew so many people there. Running into someone I actually know (fairly well!) made me feel like I am really part of the community out here now, it was a nice feeling.

Blogging. I have a Themed Reads post for you on Wednesday, and then on Friday I will finally wrap my New Year’s content – only on the last blogging day of January, dusts off shoulders – with my goals and word for 2021. Check in with me then!

Loving. You’re all going to totally eyeroll and say, welcome to April 2020, Jac, but – last week I had a Zoom chat with my friend Allegra. Believe it or not, I have not actually zoomed with anyone since the beginning of the pandemic, except for work calls which obviously don’t count. I’ve had several happy hours with girlfriends over FaceTime, but not Zoom – can you believe? Anyway, Allegra is a friend from childhood who I really cherish but don’t always stay in touch with as much as I’d like. Our moms are close friends, so we basically grew up together and whenever I visit my parents, I try to see her. We’ll have marathon catch-up chats in person but don’t really do a great job of staying in contact virtually. Recently she reached out with a professional question (we’re both attorneys) and the conversation took off in a bunch of different directions and turned into a lengthy ongoing text chain. She suggested getting together over Zoom, so I arranged a call and we chatted last week. Guys. It was so good to see her face. We spent an hour chatting and laughing about motherhood, books, jobs – all that life stuff – and decided to make this a regular monthly thing. It’s funny that it took a pandemic to get us to stay in touch regularly – COVID silver-lining, I guess.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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2020 in Books, Part III: Book Superlatives

Are you ready? Here comes what is – without a doubt – the silliest post of the year, in which I give high school yearbook-style awards to the books I read in 2020. It is completely pointless, utterly ridiculous, and I hope you enjoy.

Brainiest. I mean, come on. Clearly this year’s valedictorian is Barack Obama.

Best Looking. Robert Macfarlane’s and Jackie Morris’s collections of “spells” and artwork are stunning to look at. They’re the Elfine Starkadder of the 2020 booklist, you know what I mean.

Best Friends. Friendship to the max! I’m pretty sure that Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley have taken this category before, but I mean, obviously.

Class Clown. Surprised that Shirley Jackson is actually hilarious? Me too. Although, to quote that rando psychiatrist that Phoebe dates in season one of Friends, analyzing Chandler, “I wouldn’t want to be around when the laughter stops.”

Biggest Jock. I feel like Georgie would be really surprised by this, but We Swim to the Shark was the only book I read all year that even touched on any kind of sporty endeavor, so she takes it.

Teacher’s Pet. St. Philip’s School in London boasts illustrious alums such as Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abbey fame) and I feel like quite a few teacher’s pets. Can’t you just see them, neat as pins, lined up in their freshly laundered blazers, ready for Mass?

Biggest Nerd. What is a nerd, after all? If it’s someone who loves something, like a lot, Jane Austen fans fit the bill. As a Janeite myself, I am ready to lean into this.

Most Creative. Perhaps this is a sign that I am really grown up now, but a country mansion and acres of wilding gardens strikes me as the perfect palette, and Beverly Nichols is the ultimate artist.

Most Opinionated. Union Jackshirt Aspect! Report for battle! Eugenia Malmain, Mitford’s sheltered and unworldly send-up of her sister Unity, is clearly the most opinionated character in the 2020 booklist. It’s a shame that Eugenia is absolutely kookoo bananapants, and that her opinions – like Unity’s – were utterly reprehensible.

Most Likely to End Up in Hollywood. I’m on record as not loving this one, but the cinematic potential is undeniable.

Biggest Rebel. Again, I think Jack Boughton has taken this category before. But he’s the dictionary definition of a rebel – if a sad one.

Biggest Loner. Hello, my name is Helen Graham. Please leave this property and never speak to me again.

Cutest Couple. If the measure of devotion is following your beloved to war, then Hermione, Countess Ranfurly, who outwits the entire British war leadership in Africa and the Middle East in order to stay near her husband Dan, is the pinnacle. HERMIONE AND DAN FOREVER. Also, Whitaker is the best non-third-wheel-third-wheel there is.

Prom King. James Leigh-Smith, created as an A in the brand spanking new social order, would be all over this.

Prom Queen. I think Queen Lucia of Tilling, formerly of Riseholme, has taken this one before. Perhaps she was too busy playing a wee bit of darling Mozart on her ickle piano and forgot to show up for finals? Either way, she’s the queen.

Most Likely to Succeed. Give Jane Carter a storefront and a tiny bit of capital and she’ll take the world by storm. She’s definitely this year’s most likely to succeed. You’ll be seeing her at all the Fashion Weeks.

Ha! This was fun.

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2020 Goals: Recap and Lament

All right. Before I can turn my attention to 2021, I always feel compelled to look back on the previous year’s goals, take stock, and see how it all shook out. See where things went well; see where things went unexpectedly (which is pretty much everything in 2020, right?). What worked; what didn’t. All that jazz.

In looking back over my 2020 goals, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some goals were upended by the pandemic, of course. Others were not impacted at all. Here’s the final result:

  • Get back on the running trails, and rediscover my love for my old sport. Done! The way 2020 shook out, there was very little that I could do to chase adventure and achievement – other than running. But run I did. Between two virtual race series put on by Another Mother Runner, and a number of other virtual races hosted by local running stores in my area, I kept myself busy on the roads and the trails. I definitely feel more inspired and energized about running than I have in a long while, and I am mulling over some more goals (pandemic permitting, of course) for 2021.
  • Buy nothing new for three months.  This doesn’t include food, toiletries, other consumables, gifts or things for the kiddos – but as for myself, I’d like to be a more conscious member of the circular economy. Done! From January through March, I bought nothing for myself that wasn’t strictly necessary – so other than food and toiletries, nothing at all. It was a really interesting and rewarding experience, and one that I would like to repeat sooner than later. I’m not really a big shopper – other than for books, heh – but I think it’s so helpful to take a step back periodically, and be more mindful about consumption.
  • Go up in a hot air balloon. Done! This was one of the few adventure-type plans I made for 2020 that actually came to fruition. It was such a cool experience and I’d definitely like to do it again.
  • Hydrate, eat the rainbow, move, and generally stop putting everyone else’s well-being before my own. Done – I think. This one has been hard. When I wrote the goal I couldn’t possibly have imagined that by the end of the year I’d be juggling my regular full-time job with being tech and emotional support for a five-year-old doing his kindergarten year on the computer. My resolve to care for myself has definitely been tested this year; I think that’s been a common experience as 2020 has placed demands on working parents (and especially mothers) that we never saw coming, and that we still don’t fully have a handle on. But I have been great about hydrating (I’ve always been a big water person, so that’s not exactly a heavy lift) and I am very vegetable-forward in my eating habits, which helps. And I have made a superhuman effort to claim exercise time for myself no matter what else has been going on. I’m a work in progress, as always.
  • Continue to build my bread-baking skills, and experiment with new bread recipes. Done! Who knew that bread-baking would explode in popularity this year? I’ve mostly worked on perfecting my sourdough sandwich bread – but later in the year I did branch out to trying new recipes, like this pane bianco. I have had great luck with the recipes from King Arthur Baking, and thanks to The Great British Bake-Off I now know what a well-kneaded, well-risen dough should actually look like. All of which compounds success and makes me want to keep at it.
  • Do another twelve months’ hiking project on the blog. Can I call this one partially done? I did start off well, but then fell off the wagon when it came to writing and posting recaps. But we hiked consistently all year; it was one of the few weekend activities left to us during the pandemic.
  • Finally finish that purge of all the junk we have been moving from house to house for the last decade.  I’m over it. Calling this done! Over the summer, Steve hired a dumpster and we filled it to the brim and then some. Look at us go! I still have some items in storage and a few things I need to find homes for in the new house, but we have majorly minimized and it feels wonderful.
  • Related: give away, donate, or discard 2,020 items, and pick up 2,020 pieces of trash in my neighborhood. Half done. Thanks in large part to our moving-related purge, I managed to jettison 2,810 individual items. (And actually, the total was probably higher; Steve and I worked together on the purge project and I know he tossed things like boxes of DVDs or knick-knacks before I was able to get an accurate count – so I just estimated and I think I almost always low-balled.) I did not complete the trash pick-up; I was doing great and on track to exceed my goal, but then COVID hit and I decided I wasn’t comfortable picking up people’s discarded cups and cigarette butts – even with gloves on, which I always wear for trash-picking – and that I was going to lay off my trash-picking until after the pandemic.
  • Read what I want to read, and not feel pressured to keep up with buzzy new releases. Definitely done! I wrote here about making the decision to hold off (for now, not forever) on getting a library card in my new town. Instead, I’ve been enjoying cozy nights reading books from my own shelves. It turns out that I really like my own taste in books! 🙂
  • Finish a big family memory-keeping project I’ve been planning for years, in time for Christmas 2020. Well… I did actually finish a major memory-keeping project, just not the one I had in mind. I have been meaning to create a family cookbook using my grandmother’s recipes – but I’m way behind on that project. What I did do was finally finish creating Shutterfly yearbooks going back to Steve’s and my wedding in 2005. That was a huge and very time-consuming project, and it is so satisfying to see them all stacked neatly on my shelf, and to flip through them and reminisce.
  • Travel, have adventures, push boundaries, and get outside my comfort zone regularly.  (How’s that for specific?) Well. I was really hoping for more… obviously. My thinking behind this totally vague goal was: the kids are getting older, no one naps in my house anymore, and we can start to do more adventurous things – both in our local area and further afield. We did get up to some adventures. I went up in a hot air balloon, as you know. We got in some cool hikes in Shenandoah National Park. And we did a lot of kayaking, including (unintentionally) in some Class 1-2 rapids. That was definitely outside my comfort zone, although kayaking generally occupies pretty much the very center of my comfort zone. But the travel and the farther-flung adventures didn’t happen, obviously. I would like to say that I’m hoping for a better year in 2021, but if 2020 has taught me anything it’s to have zero expectations.

So, there we have it – actually not a bad tally considering how badly off the rails this year went. I’m struggling a bit to come up with goals for 2021; more to come on that, soon.

If you set goals for 2020, how’d they go?

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It’s MLK Day – and Inauguration Week! What Are You Reading? (January 18, 2021)

Morning, friends! It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S. (how are you honoring MLK’s legacy today?) and the start of the long-awaited Inauguration Week. I am staying home all week – no desire to repeat my experience of driving white-knuckled over the Key Bridge on January 6, and I couldn’t get to my office if I tried, since it’s in the “red zone” where all traffic other than official vehicles is banned, anyway. I plan to watch Joe Biden and Kamala Harris be sworn in from the comfort of my couch on Wednesday.

So, how were your weekends? Coming off of two weeks of nonstop work and nonstop stress, I was ready to turn my brain off for a while. I finally finished my gauntlet of depositions, filings, discovery and sundry other stressful matters at 9:30 on Friday evening, flopped down on the couch and declared myself burnt out. Two weeks into the year! I think that’s a new record. Steve and I declared Saturday “chores day.” With me being completely unavailable for two weeks, Steve was in survival mode trying to juggle work and the kids’ virtual school by himself. (It’s unmanageable with two parents. With one – yikes.) The result was that he heroically made it to the end of the gauntlet with neither kid expelled from school and the house still standing, a major achievement – but the place was trashed. We spent the day with sleeves rolled up, tackling everything that got back-burnered while I was working 65 hour weeks. Steve did another massive clean-out of the playroom, some light plumbing, a bunch of laundry, a kitchen deep clean, etc. I went from room to room in the common spaces, clearing out debris from a two week long kid tornado. We had help from one kid and active resistance from the other (names withheld to protect the guilty and the brown-nosing). By the end of the day the house was looking fantastic, and it was so satisfying. Sunday, we reserved for hiking and we drove down to Huntley Meadows, one of our favorite parks for spotting wetland birds. Unfortunately, when we got there we found it overrun with people – parking lot completely full and cars spilling into the access road – so we quickly pivoted to Plan B: Mount Vernon. We hadn’t been in months, and it turned out to be just what we all wanted. We walked the grounds, so familiar to us, checked out the animals, gazed at the river, and Peanut chattered on about Felicity Merriman from the American Girl collection. Rest of the day – simple. I ran a couple of errands, Peanut watched Felicity, an American Girl Adventure; Nugget watched Dinosaur King; Steve watched football; I read and cleaned up the woodpile. So yes, a simple weekend, but just what I was craving.

Reading. Amazingly, despite all the work last week, it was a good reading week! I finished up The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters and really enjoyed it. (Hard to believe that this 850+ page volume only represented about 5% of their correspondence!) But man alive, were they catty towards one another – I’m glad I have a brother. My sole criterion for my next read was: it had to be short. The Provincial Lady in London (American title; the original UK title was The Provincial Lady Goes Further – which does make sense, as the PL spends time in Brittany and Devonshire as well and is only in London for half the book, approx.) was a hoot. I didn’t love it quite as much as the first in the series, but I still loved it A. LOT. Finally, ended the week with Word from Wormingford – slow, seasonal, and comforting, just what I wanted. I’m a little less than halfway through as of press time, so I’ll finish tonight or tomorrow and then turn to my Inauguration reading – The Truths We Hold, by our soon-to-be Vice President, Kamala Harris.

Watching. We are still loving Big Crazy Family Adventure. The Kirkby family has just crossed the border into India on the final leg of their trip, and it has been such fun – and so fascinating – to follow along with them. We all love this show, which is really saying something; usually there is at least one family member who is just tolerating it. I’m not sure how many episodes we have left but I think we’re getting near the end; I am going to miss it when we’re done.

Listening. Bunch of podcasts, as usual. Highlights were a few episodes of Shedunnit (of course!) and The Mom Hour on storage solutions for all the STUFF that comes into our houses at the holidays. The Lego struggle is real.

Making. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of work product (hopefully some of it was good/competent). More happily, a clean house and a tidy woodpile, and a few rows on a seed stitch cowl I’m knitting, while watching hockey. (Will someone please alert the Sabres to the fact that it’s regular season hockey now, not an exhibition game? The Caps got the memo. Sheesh.)

Moving. Oooooooof. Not. moving. Multiple entire days spent on Zoom are not conducive to movement. The epic day of cleaning on Saturday was kind of a workout, though. And Sunday’s walk, and dragging tree limbs all over the yard – same. Running shoes WILL be back this week, though.

Blogging. More New Year’s content! Recap (and lament) of 2020 goals on Wednesday, and Part III of my annual reading retrospective on Friday. The ever-silly Book Superlatives! Check in with me then.

Loving. Look what I got! A Bonsai tree! One of my errands yesterday was a stop by the garden center, for a decent-looking tray to catch drips from my lemon tree, which I have moved inside for the winter. (It’s already perking up, which is good news – it was looking quite peaky out in the sunroom.) It happened that my local nursery had just gotten in a new stash of Bonsai – well, I couldn’t resist. I remember when I was a kid, my mom took in a Bonsai temporarily while her BFF was on a lengthy family vacation in Europe, and I was fascinated by the perfect little miniature tree. In my recollection, my mom’s friend’s Bonsai was like a very demanding little pet, but when I read the instructions on this one, it seemed surprisingly low maintenance. Here’s hoping I don’t kill it. Peanut has named it “Bonnie” so we’re clearly already getting attached.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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2020 in Books, Part II: Top Ten

Yipes! This is always one of the hardest posts of the year for me to write. Even in 2020, I read so many wonderful books – how am I supposed to choose a top ten? (And don’t tell me I don’t have to choose. What am I supposed to do, just not write a top ten post for the year? Unthinkable.)

If you’d asked me back in May if I thought I’d be struggling to come up with ten favorite books of the year, I’d have found that very plausible – but not for the same reason. All spring, I struggled with a reading slump, brought on by pandemic anxiety and the shifting foundations of the world we’ve all suddenly found ourselves living in. I had figured I’d turn to books for comfort, as is my usual practice, but I couldn’t bring myself to focus; it was odd. I didn’t watch television, either. Mostly, I just stared into space. But happily, the reading slump seems to have worked its way out and now I find myself sitting here, in December, pandemic anxiety still a-raging, but at least I’m struggling to name ten favorite books because of an embarrassment of riches.

Enough said. Let’s try. And for something new, a ranking.

10. Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo. Read in the earliest days of the pandemic, and I didn’t think I was going to like it (I’d read that the writing style was experimental, which largely dooms a book for me). I loved it. It was raw, and real, and like poetry.

9. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson. One I’d been meaning to get to for years, I finally found time to meet Miss Pettigrew and join her on her adventures, and what I was missing! Miss Pettigrew was indominable, her friends sparkling, and the whole thing was a joy.

8. We Swim to the Shark, by Georgie Codd. Sometimes you read a book that is just what you need in the moment, and that that was We Swim to the Shark for me. I loved every moment, but especially the evocative descriptions of diving.

7. Wigs on the Green, by Nancy Mitford. Nancy always delivers, right? This book was funny and a little uncomfortable – classic Mitford. The author held it back from publication herself, because it poked fun a little too sharply at some of her family members. I’m glad it’s in the world now.

6. The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen, by Elizabeth von Arnim. 2020 was a year of reading Elizabeth von Arnim for me, and The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen very closely beat out Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther for space on this list. Elizabeth goes on a “solo” vacation (of course, as a German baroness, her “solo” vacation includes a maid, a driver, and unfortunately, a tagalong cousin) and it’s equal parts beautiful nature writing and hilarious scrapes.

5. Life Among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson. I’ve only know of Shirley Jackson as the writer of such terrifying horrors as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, so I figured she was not for me. Not so! This was laugh-out-loud funny. I read it before the pandemic, and scared people on the Metro by cackling the entire time.

4. The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple. Every Whipple I’ve read has been wonderful, but The Priory is my favorite. My heart goes with sweet Christine as she fights for her marriage and her home.

3. Going Solo, by Roald Dahl. Like most of us, I’ve got extreme cabin fever at this point. Roald Dahl helps alleviate that. From the moment he gets on the boat and encounters the eccentricities of the “typical” British expat, he’s funny and engaging. Slightly Foxed published both his memoirs; I had no desire to read Boy, but snapped up Going Solo and it was balm for the wanderlusting spirit this year.

2. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. In any other year, Jane would have to occupy the top spot (even if it feels like cheating to give that honor to a re-read). Persuasion is arguably her best novel, and it had been too long since I visited with Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. Perhaps it’s a testament to 2020 that, while the last time I read it I found it a bit of a downer, this time, every page was a delight.

  1. To War with Whitaker, by Hermione, Countess Ranfurly. Some years bring you a new treasure, and whatever else 2020 was, it delivered on that front. I read To War with Whitaker back in April and have been enthusiastically recommending it ever since. It is funny, moving, fascinating, and a total joy. I love it and will re-read it a thousand times.

What were your favorite books of 2020?

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Christmas Book Haul 2020

As y’all know, I’m not big on gift-bragging type of blog posts, but I can’t resist sharing my Christmas book haul each year. My family members always deliver; I am fortunate. They came through this year, and since I still haven’t gotten a library card in my new town (not so new anymore; how have we been living here for six months already, just about?) I anticipate that I’ll be getting to the books in this stack sooner than I have been accustomed to do. In fact, I’ve already blitzed through one of them!

Here are the details.

From Steve:

  • At Large and At Small and Rereadings, both by Anne Fadiman. I read Fadiman’s collection of essays about the reading life, Ex Libris, last spring and loved it. Can’t wait to get to these – and how nice they’ll look in my growing “books about books” section!
  • Crossed Skis, by Carol Carnac. A new addition to my British Library Crime Classics shelf! Evil lurks at a ski resort. I can’t wait.
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure, both by Thomas Hardy. I’ve had my eye on these two Penguin Clothbound Classics for ages now. They’re so pretty.
  • Sanditon, by Jane Austen. How did I not know that Penguin Clothbound Classics published an edition of Austen’s final, unfinished work (bundled together as it often is with The Watsons and Lady Susan)? I already own Sanditon, but I am so excited to have completed my Clothbound Classics collection of Jane’s works. The only problem: fitting them on my Austen shelf. I’ll figure it out, though.
  • The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards. Edwards is the voice in golden age crime these days. In addition to being a crime writer in his own right and President of the current iteration of the Detection Club, Edwards is the series consultant to the British Library Crime Classics. I am so excited to read his history of the genre.
  • Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie, by Anne Martinetti and Guillame Lebeau. I’ve been eyeing this graphic novel-style biography of Agatha Christie forever, it seems. Christie’s life was even more fascinating than her novels – I can’t wait to read this.
  • The Moment of Tenderness, by Madeleine L’Engle. I’m not a short-story aficionado in general, but a trove of newly discovered stories from the span of L’Engle’s career is certainly a treasure, and I look forward to digging in.

From others:

  • Death on the Nile and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, both by Agatha Christie, from my parents. I dearly love to curl up with a golden age mystery, especially on a frigid winter’s night, and of all the queens of crime, my heart belongs to Christie. My mom fed my addiction this year and I’ve already finished Death on the Nile. (Once again, I figured out the whodunit, but not the how.)
  • The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, from my parents. I think I’m going to save this one for Inauguration Week.
  • Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds, by Bernd Brunner, from my brother and sister-in-law. After the many, many lengthy phone conversations and text exchanges that I’ve had with both Dan and Danielle, comparing feeder notes and birding expeditions, I should have guessed that I’d unwrap a bird-themed book on Christmas morning. I flipped through this a little and it looks so good!

I also received Pocket RBG Wisdom and The RBG Workout, which my dad insisted on giving me – unpictured here because they were packed in a different bag after our visit to my parents’ house for New Year’s. Both look like a lot of fun and I will be flipping through each very soon.

And that does for me! I’m a lucky bookworm indeed. At this rate, it will probably be another year before I find the time to register for a new library card. I’ve got no shortage of reading material right here, thanks to my generous family.

Did you unwrap any books on Christmas morning?

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (January 11, 2021)

Well. Another week. I’ll be honest, after last week I’m mostly just happy to still live in a democracy. (I know, it’s actually a republic. Don’t @ me.) If you’re a DC friend, I hope that you and yours are all safe and well. Last week was… not a good week. Remember how I mentioned I was staring down a gauntlet of two very challenging, long and stressful workweeks? Although I’ve mostly been working remotely since the beginning of the pandemic, I have certain tasks that are so difficult to do at home that it is really not practicable to attempt them outside of the office – and that was all of last week. So I was in my office in downtown DC, about six blocks from the White House, when everything went to hell and a mob of insurrectionists stormed into the Capitol. I ended up suspending the deposition I was taking, rushing to my car, and getting the H*E*L*L out of the city as quickly as I could. My regular route home goes past the Lincoln Memorial, but I had a feeling I didn’t want to drive in that direction, so I rerouted myself through Georgetown and breathed a big sigh of relief when I crossed the Key Bridge and got back to Virginia. When I moved here in 2003, I sort of assumed that at some point I’d find myself uncomfortably close to some frightening situation – that’s the price you pay to live in the DC area, and I love it here – that day was Wednesday. Needless to say, I’m working from home until well after the Inauguration, which isn’t great – I have more work that is hard to do from home this week, and I’m not very happy about losing access to my office. I know that in the grand scheme of things there are others with much bigger problems, but it makes me angry that I have to keep rearranging my life to accommodate a bunch of sociopaths who have completely disassociated themselves from reality. Some of us are just trying to live our lives here.

Any way, all that’s to say: I’m exhausted. Despite being completely freaked out by Wednesday’s events, I had to push them out of mind and focus on work for the rest of the week, and I will have to do the same thing this week (and without access to my office). I was so drained by Friday night that I spent all of Saturday just bumming around the house and vegging, which is very unlike me – especially on a beautiful day. Sunday was a little better. The weather was still gorgeous, and we went on a family hike in the morning, then in the afternoon I spent almost three hours in the garden: weeding, collecting branches that have blown down in some of our recent storms, and burning yard waste in my fire pit. It was a pretty simple weekend and I could use another couple of days – but two was better than none. Five days to go until a three-day weekend.

Reading. Didn’t I say that an 850-page nonfiction book was an odd choice for two weeks of work craziness? I suppose it is. Obviously, I’m still working my way through The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. I’m up to the 1970s now and utterly fascinated – and enjoying myself immensely, despite Unity and Diana’s reprehensible politics. Debo is still my favorite; I just wish she would write more about Chatsworth. I expect I’ll finish up early this week and then I’ll have to decide what’s next; at the moment I have nothing in particular on deck, but plenty of good material to choose from on my shelves.

Watching. I’d been suggesting we buy the first season of Big Crazy Family Adventure on Prime Video – it was less than $5.00 – and we finally did, and it’s great! A Travel Channel docuseries following a family (two parents, a seven-year-old and a three-year-old) that spends six months traveling from their hometown in British Columbia to a remote monastery in India, without getting on a plane once, it’s such a good show. So far we have watched the Kirkby family all the way to Beijing – three-year-old Taj is the family favorite. I love how the family throws themselves into new experiences, and it’s good for Peanut and Nugget to see two kids even younger than they are (respectively) taking on new experiences.

Listening. Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. The usuals. Some Mom Hour, some Shedunnit. Nothing out of the ordinary, but all enjoyable.

Making. Other than a roast dinner last night and a pile of work product, nothing. I’m still in survival mode for another week.

Moving. Again, other than the hike and gardening yesterday, nothing – see above re: survival mode. I just need to get through this week and then I can get a bit of balance back. It will not come as a surprise to anyone to know that I do not thrive when all of my margins are taken away from me. I need more of a balance, or things go really awry.

Blogging. Another bookish week – that’s good, at least. Belatedly, I’m sharing my Christmas book haul with you on Wednesday (it’s good!) and then Part II of my 2020 reading retrospective on Friday. Check in with me then!

Loving. I thought about dispensing with this category this week, since there’s precious little to love right now. My house is trashed, my country is falling apart, and I’m staring down another hellish workweek. But I always write something here, so: ice water. I drink several glasses every day, and it’s one of the best things ever. What can I say, I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. But in the middle of everything else falling apart, it does feel nice to do something good for me.

Asking. What are you reading this week?

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2020 in Books, Part I: By the Numbers

2020 was an odd and terrible year in so many respects; we all know this already. With respect to reading, I thought early on that it was going to be a bust. Between a busy start to the year (preparing for a federal jury trial that ended up indefinitely postponed) and then the upending of everything that we all thought we knew, starting in March, it was weird and stressful and I spent a lot of the year staring at the wall or doomscrolling through my phone – not reading. Yet somehow in there I still managed to pile up the pages. There were weeks when I barely touched a book and weeks when I ripped through six books. And really no telling what the short-term reading future held – let alone the long-term. Here’s how it all shook out – get ready for a monster post:

Totals. According to Goodreads, I read 124 books in 2020, for a total of 31,363 pages. Actually pretty consistent with recent years. I always set a reading goal of 104 books – a pace of two per week – and in the past couple of years I’ve been exceeding that goal by about twenty books. So: right on the money.

Again according to Goodreads, the shortest book I read was Wonders and Absurdities 2019, Philip Rhys Evans’ commonplace selections for last year (I loaded it to Goodreads, so you’ll have to take my word for it that’s the title), which clocked in at a slim 24 pages. The longest book I read was The Pickwick Papers (which I reviewed for The Classics Club), a doorstopper at a whopping 944 pages.

Let’s break it down. I love this nerdy navel-gazing tradition of looking back over a year’s worth of reading. Here we go.

Pretty standard breakdown between fiction, non-fiction and poetry. A lot of bookish friends have reported reading more non-fiction than usual in 2020 – to the extent we’ve all been reading at all – but that doesn’t seem to hold true for me. This breakdown – majority fiction, but a healthy dose of non-fiction and a handful of poetry titles – is pretty much run-of-the-mill for me in any year.

Fiction genres this year contained some of the expected and some of the unexpected. Expected: I favored classics, which I always do, even more heavily than usual. Makes sense that in a year containing so much uncertainty, I was drawn to old favorites and new discoveries that have nonetheless stood the test of time. (Contributing to this was the fact that I moved mid-year and still have not gotten a library card in my new system – partly avoiding public places unless necessary, and partly because I’ve been enjoying reading from my own shelves, which are almost all classics.) Mysteries played a big role in my 2020 reading as well, which also makes sense in a stressful year; that neat resolution at the end of a cozy mystery sure is enticing. Unexpected: 20 sci-fi and fantasy titles! Whoa – that’s highly unusual for me. But I can explain that one too: it’s almost all Lumberjanes. Remember that binge over the summer? I knew that would skew my totals at the end of the year, and it did.

As for non-fiction genres, I think this was pretty predictable. Memoirs and books about books make up the lion’s share of my non-fiction reads this year, which is about standard for me. One parenting book: also standard, I tend to avoid those. There was less social science (which includes history) than usual, which also makes sense, in a year that was stressful enough as it is. The other thing that surprises me on this graph is: only four books about gardens and nature. I love nature writing as it is, and I moved to the exurbs this year, and it was a year for comfort reading – all of which should have meant a higher total. Wonder how 2021 will shake out in that respect.

Nothing too unusual in the format of the books I read. As always, it was almost all physical books. There was that comics binge over the summer, accounting for the larger total there, and the usual smattering of journals, ebooks, and a couple of audiobooks.

Here’s one that’s flipped on its head! Source of books was very unusual this year. I’m a self-proclaimed library junkie, and usually my yearly totals are overwhelmingly sourced from the library – this even though I have a carefully curated collection of books on my own shelves that I am really keen on reading. But this year, other than a handful that were borrowed from friends and sourced from the library, I read almost entirely from my own shelves. The reason for this was largely the pandemic. When everything shut down in mid-March, I had a short stack from the Alexandria library. I read my way through that, returned them, and that was pretty much it. I didn’t utilize the curbside pickup option – just felt like one more thing to figure out and I didn’t have the wherewithal. Then in June we moved houses – just one county over, but that meant a new library system, and again, figuring out the logistics of going and getting a library card in my new county, during a pandemic, just felt like too much. Plus by that point I was really enjoying my own shelves; it turns out I really like my own taste in books. Who knew?

Here’s one I’ve never tracked before – first-time reads versus re-reads. Given my past predilections for using the library, I think I probably read more first-time reads in past years, but I can’t confirm that since I don’t have the data. It will be interesting to track this in future years and see how it changes (or doesn’t).

Getting a little more into the weeds, when it came to authors’ sex or gender, I was weighted in favor of women as usual. There was a respectable minority of men and a handful of “various” – journals and short-story collections with both male and female contributors. Finally, five of the Lumberjanes trade paperbacks I read over the summer had an author who uses all gender pronouns; I have noted this as non-binary on my pie chart, although the author has noted that they are not using a particular gender label at this time. Hopefully I’ll read more gender non-binary authors in 2021.

One last graph. Setting was pretty standard for me this year – majority Great Britain (of those, two books set in Scotland and the rest in England) and USA. A handful of books set in continental Europe, one each in Asia and Canada – none entirely in Africa, I must do better in 2021, although one of the “various” category was set in a few locations between Africa, the Middle East, and continental Europe – and a bunch in either fictional worlds or in multiple settings (none of which were really dominant). I’m giving myself a pass on diversity of settings in 2020. It was a stressful year; I just wanted to close my eyes and think of England, apparently.

Whew! This one is always a behemoth, but fun to write. It was a terrible year in many respects, but actually rather a good one for reading – at least for me. Next year, I predict more of the same, on the book front at least. More reading from my own shelves (I’ll probably hold off on that library card until COVID numbers in my area go down substantially and I feel more comfortable going out to public places). More comfort reading – more classics, more mysteries, more nature, more re-reads. More England, certainly.

How was your 2020 in books?