It was another slow reading week, really through until the weekend. A couple of nights working late (meetings on Pacific time – it happens!) coupled with continued doomscrolling just took it out of me, and I had a hard time settling in to read, putting my phone down, and focusing. The result being that it took me almost an entire week to read The Book Lover’s Bucket List, which is S-L-O-W for me. (Only 215 pages, and pictures – including some full-pagers – on just about every page; that should have been a recipe for flying through, but I kept getting sucked into my Washington Post app.) I do need to be a little more intentional about the way I consume the news. During 2017-21, I got pretty good at stopping the doomscrolling spiral and protecting my own peace. I need to revisit those strategies; over the weekend I did do a decent job of putting my phone in another room and just reading. So things are looking up, maybe?

Anyway, the weekend did go better on the reading front. After I finished up The Book Lover’s Bucket List I finally caught up on A Poem for Every Spring Day; just like with A Poem for Every Winter Day I’d let myself get woefully behind. So I read the selections from mid-April through to the end of May in basically one big gulp. It’s not the ideal way to read poetry, I know, but there were a couple that I really loved in there (and I marked them with book darts) so I got something out of it. On Saturday night, after wrapping up my poetry binge, I picked up Mariana, by Monica Dickens, which I’ve had on my TBR for years. I’m about a third of the way through at press time and loving it.

Peanut had a service project with her Girl Scout troop – picking up trash at one of our favorite local parks, so I stuck around and treated myself to a lovely solo hike. I’ve been waiting for this level of independence for years and it feels SO good.

What are you reading this week?