Happy Monday… afternoon! Late post today because I was actually out of town over the weekend – enjoying a long-awaited trip to New York City with Steve and the kids. Nugget loves the music and the story of The Phantom of the Opera and when Steve and I learned that the Broadway production was closing after a legendary thirty-five year run (this is a tragedy!) we knew that we had to get him up to see it on Broadway while he had the chance. It’s also my favorite show, and I’ve seen it three times on Broadway before and a few more times with the touring cast. So we hurriedly booked tickets for the first weekend in April, getting in just under the wire – the final curtain goes down on April 16 – and planned to tell the kids about the show as one of their Christmas presents. Then, because we are nothing if not efficient, Steve suggested that we also squeeze in a second show – Hamilton, naturally. The kids were ecstatic to get the news on Christmas morning that the first weekend of their spring break would be a trip to New York City to see not one, but two Broadway shows. We had a fabulous time and I’ll tell you all about it on Wednesday.

In the meantime, considering the weekend of travel coupled with the usual busy workweek, I am really pleased with how much I managed to read. I finished up The Silmarillion on Thursday – continuing to power through the remaining titles on my Classics Club Challenge list – and turned with some relief to On Wings of Song: Poems About Birds. I ended up finishing it on Saturday, April 1, as we drove up to the city – a fitting first book to the start of National Poetry Month. For my weekend’s reading, naturally, I chose carefully and decided to bring with me The New York Stories of Edith Wharton from NYRB Classics. I actually got more reading done than I expected to do – the kids were wiped out and wanted nothing more than to get in their jammies and enjoy the novelty of a hotel room by 7pm both Saturday and Sunday – and I’m about a third of the way through the book as of press time. It doesn’t feel quite as apropos to be reading these Old New York-themed stories from my living room in Virginia as it did overlooking blocks of brownstones in Manhattan over the weekend, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the rest of the book just as much.

Once I wrap up my New York business, I have a few library books to attend to – three more for the Classics Club, so really moving right along. I’ll probably intersperse them with shorter and/or more seasonal reads just to keep the reading a little lighter for spring. But I think it’s going to be a good April in books.

My favorite show of all time! What a special treat to get to enjoy it one more time on Broadway – and especially with my little Phantom fan. Now to start my letter-writing campaign to advocate for a Broadway revival. Who’s with me?

What are you reading this week?