I know, you’re probably thinking – wasn’t there supposed to be a recap of the winter list first? Well – normally, yes. But I have nothing to recap, because I didn’t do one. single. thing. from that list. Oops! Blame work, you guys. It’s been so insane that I have had legit no time to do anything at all. So I’m blowing right past it, and getting right to listing out my hopes for spring. At this point, who knows if any of it will happen. But at least it’s fun to daydream and plan.
- Catch up on the 52 hike challenge – I’m several weeks behind.
- Decide on a destination for summer travel and start planning.
- Visit Mount Vernon and see the baby animals (that was so much fun last year).
- Take Peanut and her doll Willa to tea at the American Girl store.
- Hike the Bluebell Loop Trail again.
- Read Beverly Nichols’ Merry Hall trilogy.
- Pick tulips at Holland in Haymarket again.
- Start the process to get approved as a Girl Scout troop leader.
- Bake a strawberry-rhubarb pie with a lattice crust (with fruit from the farmers’ market, if possible).
- Write letters to my grandmother, and get up to New York to visit her at least once.
Here’s hoping that I get around to doing at least some of these.
What’s your favorite spring tradition?
Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward – Esch lives with her brothers on a hardscrabble patch of land called the Pit. Life is tough. Esch’s mother died in childbirth and her father is usually drunk and mostly absent. Salvage the Bones tells the story of approximately two weeks leading up to, and encompassing, Hurricane Katrina. Esch is fourteen and newly pregnant, her father has snapped out of a fog and is obsessively preparing for the hurricane – which doesn’t really concern any of the kids – Esch’s brother Skeet is worrying over his pitbull’s new puppies and her other brothers are trying to carve out a place for themselves. Salvage the Bones was a gritty book – grittier than I usually read. There was a dogfighting scene which I knew was coming and was able to avoid, but the rest of the book was nearly as brutal. It was well-written but hard to read.
Thrush Green (Thrush Green #1), by Miss Read – There’s nothing like Miss Read to counteract the effects of a particularly tough book. Thrush Green is the first in a series of the same name, and introduces the reader to the village of Thrush Green and its inhabitants, and those of a larger market town, Lulling, nearby. All the events of the book take place on a single day – May 1, when Curdle’s Fair visits and sets up on the village green. Through the day, we meet many of the characters who will recur throughout the Thrush Green series – sweet, sad Ruth, gentle Dr. Lovell, mischievous Paul, bustling Dimity, blustering Ella, kind Dr. and Mrs. Bailey… and we see the town through the eyes of Mrs. Curdle, the fair’s proprietress, and her grandson and heir apparent, Ben, who is in love with a Thrush Green girl. Not to prattle on, but it was such a delight. A re-read for me, I loved reacquainting myself with Thrush Green and its environs – like an English spring day, it’s pure refreshment.
I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban, by Malala Yousafzai – This one had been on my list for a very long time, and I finally got around to checking it out from the library. It was a powerful story, indeed. I was already acquainted with Malala’s story, in general, as most are – she is now, after all, a global celebrity. But I really wanted to read her story in her own words. So, I thought that I Am Malala was wonderful, but with one reservation. The book was co-written, naturally, and I felt that the word choices sometimes strayed too far into the territory of making the voice sound like a young girl’s. I found myself wondering how much was authentically Malala, and how much was the co-writer imposing what she thought should be Malala’s style. That said, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world, and especially once Malala starts her activism, the narrative takes off and becomes absolutely riveting. It’s an important read and well worth picking up.
Portrait of Elmbury (Brensham Trilogy #1), by John Moore – I’ve collected the first two volumes of the Brensham Trilogy from Slightly Foxed (the third is due to be released this summer) and have been so excited to dig in. In this first volume, Moore captures the heart and spirit of an English market town from the late Edwardian period through to World War II. Occasionally gritty, occasionally sentimental, most often real, Moore presents “Elmbury” (the thin disguise he gives his actual hometown of Tewkesbury) warts and all. He starts the book by rhapsodically describing the high street outside the window of “Tudor House” (the splendid home where he grew up) then pivots directly into a down-and-dirty portrayal of the domestic squabbles of the residents of the hardscrabble alley across the street. But even while being unabashedly real and portraying country town life in all its darknesses and difficulties, you can sense a real affection behind Moore’s portrayal of the town and its inhabitants. I loved it. (Word of caution: as with so many books of the period, there are a few sentences that are extremely jarring and offensive to the modern reader. At some point, I am contemplating a post about babies and bathwater. For now, reader be forewarned. This one, I think, is worth the comparatively little problem language.)
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie – In my quest to read through Adichie’s backlist, Half of a Yellow Sun was next up. This is Adichie’s book about the Biafran War, a subject which seems to be close to her heart (I did some research into Adichie and she hails from the section of Nigeria which was once Biafra). The narrative follows three main characters – Ugwu, a houseboy; Olanna, the wealthy lover of Ugwu’s master; and Richard, an expat who becomes friends with Olanna and her lover, Odenigbo. Olanna and her twin sister, Kainene – Richard’s lover – are the daughters of a rich and important chief, and all of the characters (Ugwu, perhaps, excepted) begin the novel in great domestic comfort and end it barely surviving (or maybe not surviving – it’s not entirely clear, in one case) the horrors and privations of the Biafran War. This is a period in history, and a region, that I am sorry to say I know very little about, and I was shocked and heartbroken at Adichie’s portrayal of the suffering that attended Biafra’s three-year secession from Nigeria. Adichie, as always, writes extremely powerfully and beautifully, and while there are some hard passages, Half of a Yellow Sun was an astonishing read.
Reading. Very, very, very little to report this week. It’s been more than a week and I am still reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. That should really tell you something about how little time I’ve had to myself this week – because I’m a fast reader, and Adichie is an outstanding writer, so there is no reason that it should take me more than a week to read one of her books except for the fact that I barely have a second to breathe, let alone read. There’ve been several days when the only reading I’ve done was on my morning commute, because I’m so burnt out by the evening commute that I end up zoning out to my earbuds the whole ride home, and the evening is spent hunched over the laptop again. But I’m fairly close to finishing up with it, and I’ve got a lovely library stack calling my name for when I finish. I’m torn between This Will Be My Undoing and What Ever Happened to Interracial Love?, both of which I’ve heard great things about. It’ll be a game-time decision and it doesn’t seem like I can go wrong.
covered in flour 