Hey there, y’all.  How were your weekends?  Mine was pretty great.  You may have noticed that this post didn’t pop up in the morning like it usually does (or maybe you didn’t, and you don’t care – legit) and that’s because as of this morning, I was still on a getaway to the Blue Ridge Mountains!  Steve and I are both mountain people – we grew up in or near the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York – and we’d been wanting to check out Virginia’s mountain regions for awhile.  So on the spur of the moment (relatively) we planned out a quick getaway to Washington, Virginia – better known around the Beltway as Little Washington – a picture-perfect little town nestled just minutes from one of the northern entrances to Shenandoah National Park.  We had a wonderful, relaxing weekend filled with fresh air and mountain scenery, and it was awesome.  And now I’m back to the city and back to reality, but man, reality’s bite is not quite as sharp as usual when you’re just getting back from three days in the mountains.  I’ll have lots more to tell you about the trip soon, but for now – that’s what I did this weekend.

As for reading, I started out last week churning through books at a breakneck pace.  After finishing Stella by Starlight, which was wonderful, I burned through Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson.  I read Woodson’s memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, last year, and was wowed.  Feathers wasn’t quite as breathtaking, but it was still lovely.  Then I finally got around to Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s legendary essay, We Should All Be Feminists, which had been languishing on my TBR for an inexcusable amount of time considering it’s about 45 pages and took less than an hour to read.  (Everyone: go read it.)  After that I turned back to the library stack and picked up The Obelisk Gate, the second in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy.  (I read the first, The Fifth Season, earlier this year, and loved it.)  I’m liking The Obelisk Gate but some of the plot points are really upsetting.  (These are plot points carried over from the first book, so no surprises.  They were upsetting then, too.)  As a result, it’s taking me a little longer to motivate myself to read it.  And as a result, instead of taking The Obelisk Gate with me this weekend, I took another book – Terry Tempest Williams’ The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.  I’ve been hearing raves, and it seemed like a good choice for a weekend getaway to Shenandoah National Park.  I’m reading it slowly, too – not because I’m having a hard time motivating myself, but because I really want to sink in and appreciate the gorgeous writing.  Only two chapters in, I can already tell that The Hour of Land is going to end up on my list of “favorite nature books of all time” – and might even topple The Outermost House after years of Henry Beston’s classic living at the top of that list.  And with that – I’m off to dig back into The Obelisk Gate so’s I can finish it before it’s due back to the library.

What did you read last week, my friends?

Whoa – how is October already?  Time sure flies when you’re having fun.  We had a delightfully relaxing weekend.  On Saturday, we enjoyed a beautiful, serene hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains, followed by a long, leisurely candlelit dinner in a romantic bistro.  On Sunday, the weather was a bit gloomy, so I spent the day wrapped up in my coziest oversized sweater, curled in an Adirondack chair watching the rain come down off my front porch, with the world’s biggest chai latte and Pride and

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry, you guys.  I tried, but I couldn’t finish that paragraph with a straight face.  As weekends go, it was more of the same around here – errands, chores, kid-wrangling, birthday parties.  Not bad, not at all.  Saturday morning was spent not rambling the trails in Shenandoah, but instead on a hike of a different kind – through the wilds of IKEA.  We drove down to Woodbridge knowing that we would be leaving empty-handed but, hopefully, with some decisions made.  I wanted new bookshelves, and we really need a new dresser, since our wardrobe never made it upstairs when we moved in (and has since been repurposed into board game storage for at least the next three years).  We picked out the furniture we needed to decide on (and ordered online from home later) and Peanut broke it down with an impromptu dance party in the bedroom section.  So overall, it was good.  We mixed in some Saturday fun in the form of a long walk around our neighborhood, including to… the library!  I had books to return and holds to pick up, so I checked out my neighborhood branch for the first time – it’s beautiful.  I’m so glad that I’m back to living in a neighborhood where I can walk to the library (I missed that during my last two years in Buffalo).  On Sunday, we took another walk around the neighborhood and tortured ourselves by reading all the brunch menus we came across, bemoaning the fact that our kids are too wild for restaurants right now, and the irony of moving to one of the best neighborhoods for restaurants in the DC area when we can’t actually eat at any restaurants because of small insane people.  Sunday afternoon I took Peanut to another birthday party, and while it went much better than last weekend’s parties, we were both wiped out by Sunday night.  I’d meant to do some food prep, but ended up splayed out on the couch in a state of complete exhaustion.  Right now I don’t know what’s more tiring – the workweek or the weekends.

As for reading, it was a busy week.  Last week I mentioned that I had a tough week ahead and that I was planning to keep my reading light and fun to balance it out, and that’s exactly what I did.  I read the first five volumes of Ms. Marvel – the new Kamala Khan version by G. Willow Wilson – and loved every moment.  (When I said I was going to read the first six trades, I was mistaken – apparently volume 6 doesn’t come out until December, and I’m now waiting impatiently for it with the rest of the Kamala Korps.)  Then I picked up Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me?, which my mom gave me for Christmas last year.  It was, as expected, absolutely hilarious – and by far the best part was the alternate existence Mindy invents for herself as a hard-partying Latin teacher at a posh NYC prep school, complete with twenty pages of emails between alternate reality Mindy and her fictional colleagues (who don’t like her very much).  I finished with Mindy on Saturday – although I’m never finished with Mindy! – and finally picked up George, by Alex Gino, one of my new library holds, which I read in one sitting on Saturday evening.  It was a sweet story, not easy to read, but I think very important, and I’m so glad that it’s in the world.  Then I started Stella by Starlight, another library hold, and another one that I think is not going to be particularly easy to read, but that I’ll be glad to have read when all’s said and done.

After I wrap up with Stella – which will probably take a few days – I have two more library holds waiting for me: Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson, and The Obelisk Gate, the second book in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy.  So I’ll most likely grab one of those, although Barchester Towers is currently staring at me from my kitchen counter, and I am really sort of craving a classic right now (it’s the fall season, I’m always looking to dive into the greats around back to school time).  I also have a book of Hallowe’en poems that I’m planning to dip in and out of all month.

On the blog: we’re finally wrapping up summer.  I have my final tally on my summer list coming to you on Wednesday, and the last Virginia Beach recap on Friday.  Feels a bit ridiculous, since there are pumpkins on display at the grocery store, and you know what is back at Starbucks, but I can’t help myself!  After this week, it’ll be fall here just like it is everywhere else – I promise.

What are you reading this week?

Yawwwwwwn.  Is it Monday already?  I feel like this weekend never really got off the ground, although we did try to make something of it.  We had birthday parties to attend both days this weekend – Peanut is, apparently, leaving the “invite just a handful of kids” age and into the “invite the entire class” age when it comes to birthday parties, and we’ve got three in two weeks (two this weekend, one next weekend).  It’s fun, but it does tie up the weekend rather a lot.  As a result, we didn’t make it to IKEA (our “need” errand) or to the National Book Festival (our “want” idea for the weekend).  And Sunday was a train wreck because the party was during nap time and Peanut was generally a mess all day, as she always is when she has to go without her nap.  But we still squeezed in some fun – our first family walk on the Mount Vernon Trail since moving back – one of our old favorite haunts; Nugget and I hit the trail for a run a couple of weeks ago, but the rest of the family hadn’t been back.  And another old favorite, Lake Burke, for a nice family walk on Sunday before birthday party madness set in.  The weather was in the sixties and it felt really refreshing, but the sun was still shining – it was a great hike.

As for reading, it was a good week that’s passed, and a good weekend.  I finished Alias Grace – I read it slowly, even though I was dying to know what was going to happen, because I wanted to savor the gorgeous writing.  I think it’s my new favorite Atwood, bumping The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam off the top spot.  Then I grabbed something from my nightstand: Little Victories, by Jason Gay.  This was a Christmas gift from my mom, and it was a pretty entertaining read.  I was laughing out loud – literally – through many sections, and I forced Steve to stop what he was doing and listen to me read aloud the Zen Cubs’ rules for Little League, because it was gold.  Then I moved on to Sofia Khan is Not Obliged, at the recommendation of my friend A.M.B.  Once again, A proved that she can be trusted when it comes to book recommendations – Sofia Khan was a joy to read, light and warm and funny, and also thought-provoking.  (I kept thinking, “This is like the Pakistani version of Bridget Jones, only with way more substance,” and I still think that pretty well describes it.)  I bid goodbye to Sofia on Friday, which meant perfect timing to read Hamilton: The Revolution, also known as The Hamiltome, over the weekend.  (It’s WAY too big to take on the Metro!)  This was another gift from my mom, who picked it up at one of the Smithsonians because she thought I needed a little pick-me-up treat to remind me that my hard work as Mom, Esq. is appreciated.  (Nice, right?  She’s pretty great.)  I’ve been deep in the Hamiltome all weekend, hearing the soundtrack play in my head as I read the lyrics with Lin’s annotations, and Jeremy’s essays on how the musical came to be.  (The annotations are my favorite part; well, that and the picture of Lin on vacation in Mexico, reading Ron Chernow’s Hamilton – how it all began!)  The book is awesome, although it’s making me even itchier to actually see the show.  Hamilton comes to the Kennedy Center in 2018, but I’m not sure I can wait that long… I’m scheming a way to make Broadway happen.  (Insert “Room Where It Happens” joke here.)  YAY, HAMLET!

As for the coming week, my current plan is to catch up on all six currently-released trade volumes of Ms. Marvel.  I’ve flipped through the first volume, but that’s it, and I can already see what the fuss is about.  So I’m dying to read more.  And if I finish those, I’m thinking of picking up the most recent Mindy Kaling (another gift from my mom!).

On the blog this week: my diverse kidlit pick for September on Wednesday.  You guys, I am so excited for this one.  When I dreamed up this project back in January, Wednesday’s pick was the first book I added to the list, and I knew immediately that it had to be September’s choice.  It’s a book I absolutely love, which has stood the test of time, and which Peanut requests almost every night – a true family favorite.  And on Friday, back to the beach for another vacation recap; I’m having way too much fun with those.  It’s gonna be a good one here on the blog.  Check back!

What are you reading this week, my friends?

Happy Monday, and happy FOURTH birthday, Peanut!  I can’t believe my little nut is four years old (as of yesterday) – pinch me!  We had a great day.  Had to jettison our original plan to take her to the National Zoo, because the weather was a little gloomy (although in retrospect, we could have gone in the morning – the skies didn’t open up until afternoon) so we went to Plan B – the Udvar-Hazy Center.  We love going out to the Air and Space Museum near Dulles and checking out all the cool aircraft and spacecraft they have their – the Enola Gay, Concorde, the space shuttle Discovery, and so many more!  Peanut and Nugget both enjoyed the heck out of the morning, and so did we.  We’re settling back into life in northern Virginia and loving it, revisiting all of our favorite places and spaces.  One of these days we’ll get around to unpacking – for now, we’re just soaking it all in.

As for reading, I’m cruising merrily along through my summer reading list, thanks to a return to commuting on public transportation.  The Metro has been giving me about an hour a day (that’s thirty minutes each way, and not a bad commute at all!) of solid reading – and I can squeeze in even more after Nugget goes to bed, unless I unpack as I should be doing.  I wanted to read a few Angela Thirkells this summer, and I have – after I wrapped up Wild Strawberries on vacation, I moved on to August Folly (perfect August reading, right?) and liked it very much, other than the fact that reading it made me play the song “Stacy’s Mom” in my head on repeat, and if you’ve read August Folly, you know why.  Then I moved on to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was… fine, I guess.  I love Harry Potter, so any Potter is better than no Potter, but this felt… forced.  And unfamiliar.  I’ll probably blog about it after I’ve had a chance to organize my thoughts.  A somewhat disappointing return to the Potterverse had me craving more Thirkell, so I read Summer Half, which I think might be my favorite one yet.  After I blew through the story of Colin Keith’s short-lived career as a teacher, I decided to cross an item off my summer list and picked up Cider with Rosie.  I’m not far into it yet, but I’m enjoying it mightily.

Up next, after I finish Cider with Rosie… I’m not sure what I’m going to read.  More Thirkell, maybe, or perhaps I will work on one of the three other books I have currently on the go (The Witches, The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh, and The Light Years) or something else entirely.  After all this time spent in Thirkell’s Barsetshire, I’m craving a trip to Trollope’s version – so perhaps The Warden?  I’ll have to see what mood strikes me.

On the blog: on Wednesday, a tribute to my FOUR-year-old nut, and on Friday, a vacation post.  ‘Tis the season!

What have you been reading lately, my friends?

Today starts a very big week around these parts.  Tomorrow is my last day at my current job, and I’ve got quite a few things to finish up over these last two days in the office – and then I’m looking forward to having some time on the margins, as my friend Katie recently mused about.  Of course, we’ll be busy closing things out here, then making the long trek home to Virginia, but I know that all the work we’re doing now will be so worth it once we’re on the other side.

This weekend was an extreme of highs and lows.  On Saturday, we threw an early fourth birthday party for Peanut.  Her birthday isn’t actually for another month, but we decided to squeeze in a party before we moved so that she could celebrate with her friends around her.  Being that it was the week before the move, plenty of folks questioned my sanity, but I intentionally didn’t go all out with the party.  We had a picnic near our favorite playground in our old stomping grounds of Elmwood Village – I didn’t even book anything; just threw down picnic blankets and hoped for the best.  It worked out great – the weather was perfect, we had a good mix of school friends, family friends and grandparents, and everyone had a wonderful time.  It was a darn near perfect day.  And then late Saturday night, I strained my back putting Nugget in his crib and spent most of Sunday in agony before my painkillers finally kicked in.  Moving week is not a good week for a back injury, so I’m hoping and praying that I will be able to stay on top of it.

Between party-throwing on Saturday and being in a painkiller fog on Sunday, I didn’t get much reading done over the weekend, but I did somehow manage to finish three books and start another over the course of the past week.  Earlier in the week I finished Belgravia, which was classic Julian Fellowes – predictable, but fun.  I also reread The Murder at the Vicarage, my favorite Agatha Christie mystery, on audio this time via the Audible app.  It was a lot of fun approaching my long-beloved Agatha via a different format, and I had to fight the urge to sit in my car in the parking garage and listen instead of going into the office – ha!  On Friday night I finished up Murder is Bad Manners, my last library book, and with that I’m pleased to report that I’m down to Inbox Zero – no books checked out, no books on hold – at the library, just in time to reactivate my Fairfax County library card!  And since I have no library books out, I’ve dipped into a small stack of my own books that I’m reserving for the next few weeks of moving, vacation, and settling in before my shelves are set up in the new place – starting with Wild Strawberries, the second book in Angela Thirkell’s Chronicles of Barsetshire.  I’m only about thirty pages in so far, but I’m enjoying it (and how gorgeous is that cover?).

On the blog this week, my July pick for my Diverse KidLit series coming up on Wednesday, and a farewell to Buffalo on Friday – check back!

What are you reading this week, my friends?

Hello, hello, hello.  That sneaky Monday is back again.  I feel like I say this every week, but – we were so busy this weekend (and all last week, really).  I worked late twice last week, getting home after 10:00 p.m. one evening and working on the couch until 8:30 another, and was going nonstop all day, every day.  This weekend we really needed to get a lot done around the house, and we knew it was one of those weekends where we were going to have to divide up tasks if we had any hope of getting it all done – because of mischief like you see in the picture above (Nugget is not supposed to climb behind the nightstand), which makes it hard to get much done when the kids are around.  As it happened, I lucked out with kid duty both days, which meant I got to go out and have fun (although make no mistake, wrangling two kids is work) while Steve worked  around the house.  On Saturday I took both kids out for a long walk in East Aurora, where we stocked up on tea at Elm Street Bakery and spent a gift card I had to the local yarn store (on some gorgeous orange and green Madelinetosh – now I just need to find time to make something).  On Sunday we were even more adventurous – leaving Daddy at home to do more work while we headed to the zoo.  (Make no mistake, I am not insane enough to take two kids to the zoo by myself.  The morning was possible only because Aunt Grace joined us – and we all four had a ball.)

I say this every week too, but somewhere in the midst of all this running around at work and at home and with kids, I squeezed a surprising amount of reading in.  First I picked up my second Barbara Pym.  Although I was unexpectedly lukewarm on the first Pym I read – Excellent Women – I fell hard for Jane and Prudence.  (And now I want to revisit Excellent Women, because I remember having a headache the whole time I read it and I wonder if that might have negatively impacted my enjoyment of the book.)  Then I picked up Homegoing, the acclaimed debut by Ghanian-American author Yaa Gyasi, and tore through it – it was one of those searing, wrenching, absolutely un-put-down-able books and I wandered around with my nose in it for two days.  After Homegoing, as you can imagine if you know the subject matter, I needed something lighter – a palate cleanser, if you will – so I picked up the recent hardcover release of Belgravia, a dishy, soapy historical epic by the creator of Downton Abbey.  I’m only a couple of chapters in but it’s making for the perfect palate cleanser after a very intense read.

After Belgravia I’ve only got two library books left before I’m down to Inbox Zero at the library – the finish line is in sight!  One is a fun boarding school murder mystery and the other is Barkskins, the new (700 page!) tome by Annie Proulx.  I think I’m going to read the murder mystery.

Coming up on the blog this week – my top ten books of the year so far (only a few weeks late!) on Wednesday, and then I’m finally letting the cat out of the bag on that big secret family project I keep mysteriously mentioning on Friday.  And no, it’s not a baby.  Check back, and have a great week!

What are you reading this week, friends?

Sigh.  These Mondays keep rolling around, guys.  We had a packed weekend with a lot of fun – a Touch A Truck event for the kids (well, mostly for Nugget – let’s be honest, he was the one who really had fun) and errands on Saturday, an hour in the office for me, followed by Taste of Buffalo and a walk in East Aurora on Sunday – whew, I’m exhausted just typing all of that.  We have some big stuff coming up in the next few weeks, and we are trying to squeeze in as much fun as we can now.  I’m staring down the barrel of another packed workweek and already looking forward to next weekend, when I will finally have some relief.  (I think.  I keep saying that, and it has not panned out yet.  But we have a vacation coming up and I’m just clinging to that to get me through the next few weeks of craziness.)

I’ve spent a lot of time reading over the past week – more than I thought I would be able to do, given how crazy my summer schedule has been.  Not all of it has been pleasant reading – I’ve been alternating my library books with a lot of news coverage these days, and I’m not liking the news.  At all.  I don’t think any of us even recognize our country these days.  But, like I do when life gets awful (either close to home or out in the world) I have taken refuge in books, and I ended up polishing off three this week.  First I finished The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson – I liked it, but it wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny the way I have come to expect from Bryson.  The same evening, I finished up High Rising, the first in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series.  Aside from some very dated language – which I’ll explain more in my reading round-up post at the end of the month – I enjoyed it.  And then, finally, I blazed through The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, which I’d had checked out from the library for about two months.

Up next on the reading deck, I’m just digging into Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, which I’m harboring high hopes for.  I didn’t love the only other Pym I read, and I don’t know if Mars was in retrograde or something, because the descriptions of her books seem to be right up my street.  Anyway, I’ll report back.  After that – I just got word that Julian Fellowes Belgravia is waiting for me on the library holds shelf, so clearly that will be happening.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Date.  Thanks for the inspiration!

What are you reading this week, friends?

Happy birthday, ‘Merica!  Another year older, and let’s hope we’re getting wiser (all evidence to the contrary).  We have had a packed weekend, as usual – we try to squeeze as much family fun into our weekends as we can, especially in the summer.  More to come on Wednesday, complete with lots of pictures, but we managed to squeeze in trips to the playground and farmers’ market, berry picking with friends, and a family retirement party – along with all-night partying with the little guy, who is teething.  I’m wiped out.  Not sure what we’re doing today… it depends on how much energy we have.

So, as for reading, the big news this week is – I got a Kindle!  I’ve been wanting one for awhile, and specifically the Paperwhite, because it’s backlit and I can read it in the dark while officiating bedtime shenanigans.  Now I can download all of the books I’ve been wanting to read which are ebook-only, including a bunch of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series.  I’m starting with High Rising, because it’s the first in the series, although I actually have it in paperback.  And so begins my Summer of Thirkell!  In print book news, I finally finished The Romanovs 1613-1918, after weeks and weeks of plugging away at it.  It’s been a little here and a little there, and tough to get through because it’s quite dense and I don’t have much reading time these days.  Now I’m midway through Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue, which is fascinating and smart but not the funny, quippy Bryson I’m used to.  Still liking it, though.

On the blog this week, a full recap of the fourth of July weekend on Wednesday, and some musings on making summer memories on Friday.  Check back!

What are you reading on America’s birthday?