Oh, my, goodness, you guys.  Is it really Monday already?  This was a really weird weekend.  Lots of fun family activities interspersed with crazy stress.  Work last week was about as stressful as it’s possible to get and I spent the weekend still reeling from it, all while dealing with an outbreak of “threenager” drama the likes of which I’ve never seen before.  I think Peanut may have set a world record for most time-outs served in a single weekend (and we’re getting to the point where Steve and I have both acknowledged to each other that the time-outs don’t seem to be at all effective, and we need a new plan for dealing with preschool shenanigans).  But between all of that craziness, we actually had a lot of fun.  On Saturday morning we were out the door and off to the farmers’ market.  I’ve been looking forward to checking out the farmers’ market in our new ‘hood (well, not so new anymore – we’ve been here since January) and it happened to be set up right in our favorite park – the one where the community pool, sandbox, and our favorite playground are located.  We strolled up and down the line of vendors, then let the kids play for awhile, hit the library (oh yeah, the library is right there too – it’s basically heaven) and then doubled back to grab some kale, chard and strawberries.  On Sunday, we took a family hike to Tifft Nature Preserve in the morning and then in the afternoon, while Peanut napped, Nugget and I had a date in East Aurora for the summer art festival, followed by the children’s museum.  Not a bad weekend agenda, especially when you consider we squeezed all that in around eleventy-seven time-outs.

With all the stress-fun-stress-fun, it was another not-great week for reading time.  I squeezed in pages here and there, wherever I could, but it’s hard to string thirty minutes together with a book these days, and even harder to focus when I do.  I am hoping that life will settle down soon, and that we’ll get back in a good groove soon, but at the moment we’re in survival mode in a big way, and that’s not really conducive to lots of reading (as you’ll see on Friday, when I share my June book reviews).  Still, I finally managed to finish The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, the third in Catherynne M. Valente’s transcendant Fairyland series.  I loved it, of course, but agreed with the majority of Goodreads reviewers that it wasn’t the strongest of the series.  (My favorite is still the second, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, because how can you not adore a book with characters like the Duke of Tea and the Viceroy of Coffee?)  Then I finally got back to the newest doorstopper Romanov bio, which I’d had to return unfinished to the library and which I have again after dutifully waiting my turn – again – on the holds list.  It’s wonderful and thorough and all the things that doorstopper non-fiction should be, but it’s a bit dense and I’m not getting through it quickly.  I’ve just finished up the chapter on Alexander I and Napoleon, though, and am about to start the third and final section – “The Decline” – so I expect the pace will pick up.

Plans for reading this week: if I finish The Romanovs, which I hope to do over the next few days, I think I’ll be turning to The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu, racing another library deadline.  I’m trying to get to Inbox Zero on my library stack and it’s quite the task.  As for blogging, I’ve got a 2016 resolutions update on Wednesday (spoiler alert: I’ve done nothing) and my June reading round-up on Friday.

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

Have a great one, everybody!  What are you reading this week?

Happy Monday after Father’s Day!  I hope that all of my friends had a great time yesterday (and all weekend) celebrating the dads in their lives.  We had a good weekend, packed with fun.  On Saturday, I ran another 5K, and Steve was an extremely good sport to be willing to kid-wrangle while I ran 3.1 miles on his weekend.  I made up for it on Sunday, with a good gift (that he actually got a few days early when he found it in my car – oops) and a hike at Sprague Brook Park.  Nugget fell asleep in the Ergo, which he actually did the last time we hiked Sprague Brook as well.  I guess he finds this particular park boring?  Ha.  Then we headed over to Steve’s dad’s house for a cookout with the family, which was a lovely way to celebrate both Steve and his dad.

I’m still finding it a bit challenging to get reading done these days.  Not because I’m uninterested or slumping (like last fall) but just because life is so busy right now.  Work is more insane than ever – I have a coworker on maternity leave, and I’ve taken over a substantial portion of her workload in addition to my regular work – and I’m still working on my big project, which I hope to be able to share with all of you in the next few weeks (fingers crossed).  The big project is nearing one stage of completion, at which point I will let you all in on the secret, but even once I get to that milestone I’ll still have things to work on for it.  In the meantime, I’m trying to fit in a few pages here and a few pages there, which is better than nothing but not exactly a speedy way to finish a book.

I did get through Between the Acts and returned it without incurring any overdue fines – yippee!  Then I picked up A Tyranny of Petticoats, which was also out of renewals at the library.  I thought it would be one I’d either love or hate and fortunately – I loved it.  I flew through story after story and polished off the book in just a couple of days.  I particularly loved the story “The Red Raven Ball,” set in Washington, D.C. in 1862, but aside from that, I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite, because they were all terrific.  Next I turned back to The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, which I’d had to return unfinished to the library and only just was able to check out again.  (It was on the shelf the whole time, not on hold, but I’ve been feverishly trying to get through the non-renewables without racking up huge overdue fines).  I’ve been drawn right back into Fairyland, as expected, and am still loving the series so much.  Once I finish with this Fairyland installment, I’ve received word that The Romanovs 1613-1918, which I’d had to return unfinished before, is ready for me again – so it’ll be back to Imperial Russia with me!

On the blog this week, I have my recap of my latest 5K and our Father’s Day hike coming on Wednesday, and a very special Diverse KidLit pick on Friday.  Check back!

What are you reading this week?

Yawwwwwwwn.  I’m exhausted, guys.  I’m starting the week off exhausted.  We had a good weekend – one of those where we had nothing on the calendar and we actually got a fair amount of chores and errands done, but we managed to make time for some fun, too.  On Saturday, Nugget and I went to Target and the market while Daddy and Peanut paid bills and cleaned up at home, then we all headed out to Island Park, our favorite haunt near our new house – how can you go wrong with a playground and community pool, on an island, directly behind the library?  On Sunday we headed out for a family hike at Knox Farm, our favorite park in the area.  We used to live not ten minutes from Knox Farm, but we’ve moved away and don’t get there nearly as often as I’d like anymore.  It was nice to be back in our old stomping grounds.  So, yeah, we had a good one, but one of those busy weekends after a long and swamped week, and I’m really tired now.

Guess what else I did this weekend?  Finished a book!  I know, that shouldn’t be news, but Every Man for Himself, by Beryl Bainbridge, was actually the first book I finished in June.  (Funnily enough, I’d had it checked out from the library for two months and renewed it twice, and I finally got around to reading it after all that time, when Instagram happened to be celebrating Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, and yes that is in fact a thing.)  Up until Sunday, I’d been doing plenty of reading but library deadlines forced a couple of returns of unfinished books, and I hadn’t actually gotten to the last page of anything all month.  Good to change that.  On Sunday night I picked up Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf’s final novel, another one that I’ve had out from the library for awhile.  Here’s hoping I manage to finish it before the deadline.

If I make it through Between the Acts, I’m planning to keep whittling down my library stack.  I have two books on deck and, in what is either an amazing coincidence or the book gods having a little fun with me, both have the word “badass” in the title.  (One is A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers, and Other Badass Girls, and the other is The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu.  I’m psyched about both, but will probably turn to Petticoats first, since that’s another one that’s out of renewals at the library.)

Coming up on the blog this week, I’ve got my summer list on Wednesday and a recap of my trip to Lake George from two weeks ago on Friday.  Check back!

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

What are you reading this week?

Happy Monday before Memorial Day, friends!  The leaves have definitely arrived here in Buffalo – I’ve been waiting and waiting, but it’s officially summer.  Yes, I know it’s not officially officially summer until next Monday, but I’m calling it now.  It’s t-shirt and Toms weather, the birds and frogs are back in town, and the nights are light enough to read late into the evening.  We had a really lovely weekend.  Not a very productive one – I got next to none of my usual chores or errands done – but really lovely.  Saturday morning we had an event at the kids’ school – an annual thing that we look forward to all year.  Nugget attended last year but missed out on the fun (although I think he had an okay time snuggled up like a little bug in the Ergo) but this year he got into the action alongside his sister, and the cuteness was almost too much to handle.  On Sunday morning we went for a family hike to Reinstein Woods and since the weather was so nice and everyone was in such great moods, we decided to expand on the hike a little bit and check out some scenery we’d never experienced before.  It was a beautiful morning and we spotted a couple of woodpeckers in addition to the usual crew of ducks, geese and red-winged blackbirds.  This is the time of year that we’re on the trails almost every weekend, and I love it.

It might have been a productive week in some respects (plenty of fun was had, and I also got a major project off my desk at work, which felt great) but it wasn’t the heaviest reading week.  I finished Everyone Brave is Forgiven, which I liked but didn’t love.  There was a lot of language in it that made me uncomfortable, and some plot holes that just bugged me a little.  (But can you beat that cover?)  Then I turned to Heat & Light, Jennifer Haigh’s latest Bakerton book.  As established here on multiple occasions, I love Jennifer Haigh and I especially love her Bakerton books.  This one is just as well-written as the others, but it’s reading a little slowly for me.  I think that’s more a function of everything else that I have going on, and less a problem with the book, which is – as expected – wonderful.  Anyway, I’m enjoying it very much, and if it takes a little bit longer for me to get through, well, that’s okay; it’s just more time I get to spend in Bakerton.

On the blog this week: another hike to share with you on Wednesday, and May’s Diverse KidLit title on Friday.  Check back, and I do hope you enjoy both posts!

Steady on, my friends – next weekend is a holiday!  What are you reading this week?

Ooooooooops.  Sorry, guys.  I didn’t mean to disappear like that on you and certainly had no intentions of taking a week off from posting!  Last week was a crazy one, with a couple of late nights (including one day that went from 4:00 a.m. until midnight, and on three hours’ sleep the night before, too – ouch).  It wasn’t a bad week, just a particularly busy one, and we were really in need of a weekend when Saturday finally rolled around.  I spent most of Saturday cleaning, because we had a very unusual event that night – a night out!  My firm had a big function, involving dates, and we lined up one of Peanut’s teachers to babysit.  The night went incredibly well – Peanut was overjoyed to have her teacher in her house, and Nugget behaved really well for her too – but I couldn’t let her see the place in its usual messy state.  So there wasn’t much time to read on Saturday.  But I made up for it on Sunday – finished one book, made progress on another, and finally joined Audible.

So, on the subject of reading – despite a crazy week, as I said, I finished two books – The Summer Before the War, by Helen Simonson (author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand) in print, from the library, and Elizabeth and Her German Garden after weeks of picking at it on my iPhone.  I really, really enjoyed The Summer Before the War.  It was one of those atmospheric novels that just pulled me in and tugged me right along with beautiful, descriptive prose, and it’s been lingering ever since I closed the cover and returned it to the library.  I was expecting to enjoy it, but I wasn’t expecting to be quite as moved as I was.  Then I turned to Everyone Brave is Forgiven, the new historical novel from Chris Cleave – World War I to World War II! I’m predictable, am I not? – and I’m enjoying it, although not quite as much as I enjoyed The Summer Before the War.  And then somewhere in there, over the course of the week, I finally polished off Elizabeth and Her German Garden, which I liked, but not as much as The Enchanted April (von Arnim’s more famous work, which I loved).  At some point I’ll get back to Elizabeth (there are two sequels) but right now I need a break from her joyless marriage.  Once I finish with Everyone Brave, I’ve got something very exciting to follow – Heat and Light, the new… wait for it… BAKERTON novel by Jennifer Haigh!  I love Haigh’s writing and particularly her Bakerton books, so I’m thrilled to have gotten a copy from the library so close to the release date.

On the blog this week, I promise content!  No more vanishing act!  On Wednesday, I’ve got a recap of Mother’s Day weekend (better late than never, right?) and a 5K I ran that Saturday.  And on Friday – try to stay on your chairs – a book review!  I’m really wanting to get back to doing more book reviews, so I’m working on putting a few together over the coming weeks, starting with a recent favorite.  Check back!

What are you reading this week?

Happy Monday-after-Indie-Bookstore-Day, y’all!  Who else has a book-buying hangover?  Nugget and I made a pilgrimmage to Talking Leaves, our local indie, on Saturday to wish the booksellers there a Happy Independent Bookstore Day and spend a little time browsing.  I can neither confirm nor deny the rumors that we left with all six of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels (recommended for Downton Abbey fans who particularly enjoy the sparring between Violet and Isobel, and I can’t wait to dig in).  The rest of Saturday we spent on the hiking trail, obviously.  Sunday was dreary and rainy, and Nugget and I made another bookstore run to get out of the house – this time to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate.  And now it’s down to another week with not enough time to read.  Isn’t that always the way?

Despite not having nearly enough time, I did manage to churn through a good number of pages this week.  First I turned to Spark Joy, the newest volume by former Shinto temple maiden and destroyer of dreams Marie Kondo.  Like many readers who eyerolled their ways through The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I did actually find Spark Joy to be a little more useful.  KonMari still strays into nutjob territory now and again, but at least she answered the question I had while reading her first book – my bottle of Advil doesn’t exactly give me joy, but you don’t really want me to throw it away, do you KonMari?  Anyway, after a healthy dose of tough talk coupled with some “thank your socks for serving you” nonsense, I turned to A Darker Shade of Magic, the first in a new series by V.E. Schwab.  It was a fast read – even with the need to world-build – and enjoyable.  I’m on the wait list for the second volume and can’t wait for that email letting me know it’s on the holds shelf for me.  Now I’m about 75 pages into The Regional Office is Under Attack! and starting to get into the story.  It’s a lot of fun (although I did skip a chapter early on after getting extremely upset about a squirrel) but I do wonder if I might have done better to hold off until some of the hype wore off, because as it is it’s so ubiquitous that I feel like I’m due for a letdown no matter how great it is.  Isn’t that just the worst?

On the blog this week, my reading round-up for April coming up on Wednesday (twelve books!) and a hiking recap on Friday.  Check back!

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

What are you reading this week?

The classics are wonderful, and they’ve stood the test of time and become classics for a reason.  Any home poetry library would be incomplete without them!  But one thing I’ve discovered as I have explored more deeply in the world of children’s verses is that there is a great deal of extremely high quality modern poetry for kids – poems by living, working writers who have managed to capture the joy and magic of childhood, the wonders of nature, and the fun of exploring the world.

Forest Has a Song, by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, is a recent find from Monkey See Monkey Do, our local children’s bookstore.  (In fact, it was one of the books I picked up at the end of Nugget’s storytelling birthday party.)  The poems in this lovely book are all related to nature.  They’re quite contemporary – many do not rhyme, which flies in the face of lots of the children’s poetry out there – and they’re gorgeous.

The poems have a sense of rhythm without rhyme, and the simple watercolor illustrations beautifully convey the natural world that the poems evoke.

Jumping Off Library Shelves, by Lee Bennett Hopkins, is a book of poems all dedicated to one topic (and a topic that happens to be very dear to my heart, at that) – the LIBRARY.  Again, many of the poems do not rhyme, and it makes for a wonderful first look at some different poetic structures.  But there are some more “traditional” rhyming verses to be found, too, including one that is just perfect for National Poetry Month —

My mom flipped through this book on a recent visit.  She was enchanted and said she was going to recommend it to the school librarian at the elementary school at which she teaches – he’s a new father and she felt sure he would want to share these library-themed poems with his son and his students.  I agreed, since I think any library lover would find a great deal to enjoy in Jumping Off Library Shelves.

The only one of our modern choices not found at Monkey See Monkey Do, When Green Becomes Tomatoes, by Julie Fogliano, found its way to us after I spotted a review in the Shelf Awareness for Readers newsletter.  (That newsletter has brought me many great bookish finds and friends, but the best ones have been my pen pal Katie and social media friend Kerry.)

The seasonal poems are such fun to work through as the weeks march along, and I absolutely love the bold modern illustrations.  Rather than titled, the poems are dated for random days throughout the year; it would make such a fun project, for a family that is more organized than we are, to make a yearlong project out of reading each poem on its designated day.  As for us, we’ve just been flipping through and reading whatever catches our fancy, but with a special emphasis on the current season.

Have you recently discovered any new favorite poetry for kids and kids-at-heart?

We’re winding down National Poetry Month, but I still have a few poetical gems to share with my friends – and because of the season of my current state of life, they all revolve around kiddos.  As I mentioned when I shared my Diverse KidLit pick for the month, Sail Away: Poems by Langston Hughes, I have been trying to introduce my kids to more poetry recently.  As a picky poetry reader myself, I have been delighted to find that there are many options beyond Mother Goose.  Of course, there are classic children’s poems, but there are so many fantastic modern poets producing wonderful introductions to poetry for the youngest readers.  But today, we’re just going to talk classics – and I think I have a fairly comprehensive list to share with you (but if I’m leaving any out, do share!).

No discussion of children’s poetry can begin without a nod to Mother Goose.  She’s widely considered to be the gold standard, after all.  Of course, as Peanut pointed out, Mother Goose is a little… terrifying.  I was shocked to discover how many of the poems my mom had, let’s say, edited when she read them to me.  But my favorite, Girls and Boys, is a delight:

Girls and boys, come out to play
The moon doth shine as bright as day
Leave your supper and leave your sleep
And come with your playfellows into the street
Come with a whoop or come with a call
Come with goodwill or not at all
Up the ladder and down the wall
A halfpenny roll will serve us all
You find milk and I’ll find flour
And we’ll have a pudding in half an hour

If you fancy something with a similar feel to Mother Goose, but more rabbits, you might want to delve into Beatrix Potter’s nursery rhymes.  Set in the same world as her famous tales of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddleduck, and all of their friends, the nursery rhymes are a little gentler than the longer stories – better for younger children who might be a little frightened by tales of badgers kidnapping baby bunnies and sadistic farmers trying to trap young animals.

Apply Dpply, a little
brown mouse
Goes to the cupboard in
some-body’s house.

In somebody’s cupboard
There’s everything nice,
Cake, cheese, jam, biscuits,
All charming for mice!

Apply Dapply has little
sharp eyes
And Apply Dapply is so fond
of pies!

A more recent discovery in our house – Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.  I’d heard of it from time to time and occasionally made half-hearted efforts to seek out a version I liked, but Stevenson wasn’t really on my radar.  But a few weeks ago, while Nugget and I were exploring the children’s section at our local Barnes & Noble, we came upon this lovely edition and snapped it up.  The poems are full of adventure and sweetness and we’ve been enjoying dipping into them here and there.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture storybooks?

(I mean, does that not sound like a perfect Saturday?)

Then there’s a more modern classic, but I can’t leave out one of my childhood favorites – Shel Silverstein.  Is there any reader who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, who didn’t have a copy of either A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends, or both?  I had Where the Sidewalk Ends and I spent hours pouring over it.  I loved Peanut Butter Sandwich… but not as much as I loved…

Ricky was “L” but he’s home with the flu.
Lizzie, our “O,” had some homework to do.
Mitchell, “E,” prob’ly got lost on the way.
So I’m all of love that could make it today.

Sweet, right?

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite – A.A. Milne.  (I’m currently dipping into The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh and craving a trip to Ashdown Forest.)  I suppose it seems funny that I love both ee cummings and A.A. Milne, because cummings famously couldn’t stand Milne or his nursery poems – ha! I contain multitudes.  But Pooh has been dear to my heart since before memory, and I will always adore that sweet bear and his lovely friends.  (And yes, I did consider naming Nugget “Christopher Robin,” thank you for asking.)

The Friend

Annnnnnnd… exhale.  My months-long hell of constant work and sickness seems to have abated – for the moment, at least.  I still have a to-do list a mile long – both work and personal – but this week I have a free enough schedule that I might actually be able to get it all done, which should make for a refreshing change of pace.  (And I may even be able to sneak away for a break.  Along those lines, Zan, fancy a lunch?)

So in a weekend in which it seemed like everyone and their mom was readathon-ing, I was just reading whenever I could, but not as part of any kind of event.  I was terribly jealous, obviously, because the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon is such an awesome time with lots of bookish internet folk; I participated once and had a blast.  But with two tiny kids (who allowed me less than 4 hours’ sleep the night before the readathon) and still being quite underwater at work (I put in a few hours in the office on Sunday) the readathon just didn’t seem in the cards for me… again.  I’m hoping that in October, I’ll be able to participate – Nugget will be a little more independent by then.  But I still read.  On Saturday I finished up Greenbanks, by Dorothy Whipple – my first Whipple, and certainly not my last.  I loved every moment of it – even when certain characters didn’t get the endings I’d hoped for them.  I’ll write more when I do my reading wrap-up, but Greenbanks was an absolute joy.  After I reluctantly left Louisa, Rachel, Kate and Letty, and all their families, behind, I turned my attention to Maisie Dobbs and her newest adventure in Journey to Munich.  I’m almost done with it – Maisie is always a quick read – and I’ve been feverishly turning pages, heart in my throat.  This might be Maisie’s most dangerous adventure yet – in fact, I’m sure it is.  Maisie is pulled into a dangerous game by the British Secret Service, sent deep into the heart of Nazi Germany on an ultra-sensitive mission for the Crown.  And while Maisie vows that if and when she comes out of her mission alive, she’s done with espionage – I hope that she’s proven wrong.  I like spy Maisie.

Up next on the blog, another bookish week for you!  In continuing celebration of National Poetry Month, I’ll be sharing more favorite collections of poems for kids – classics on Wednesday, and newer collections on Friday.  I hope you enjoy the posts; I’ve had a good time putting them together for you and choosing poems to feature.  So do check in!

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

What are you reading this week?