To quote the great Anne Shirley, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” Sorry – I’m sure that quote was all over your social media, as it always floods mine every October 1. But it’s so good.

Anyway, it was a slow but good week in reading. On audio, I finished up The Fortnight in September – a re-read, and while I loved it the first time around (in print) I think, if it’s possible, I loved it even more on audio. The narrator was just perfect for this book and a total delight to listen to from the first minute to the last. I really wanted to finish both The Fortnight in September and my print book, The Theft of the Iron Dogs, in September – since that’s the month in which they both take place. And I did finish both. I enjoyed The Theft of the Iron Dogs very much; the writing was as immersive and engaging as I expect from E.C.R. Lorac, and I didn’t guess whodunit (I fell victim to a very cleverly laid red herring). I’m still on a bit of a mystery jag, so I picked up The Thursday Murder Club, which I had checked out from the library, on Sunday. Not far into it yet, so I don’t have fully formed thoughts for you, but so far, so good. (I did read somewhere that the ending doesn’t entirely “play fair,” so I’m on the alert. But even knowing that, I’m intrigued to see what the hype is about Osman’s series.)

No specific plans for the next book – not right now, anyway. I have a couple of books I’d like to get to sometime in October – The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, a re-read of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, and possibly Frankenstein. But the month is young, and I also have a stack of Georgette Heyer novels out from the library. So we’ll see. It’s nice to have so many options.

Sunday morning dawned gloriously warm and without a cloud in the sky, so naturally we welcomed in October with a morning paddle on the Potomac. Steve and I had a good laugh about the shoulder season – I’m usually driving around a trunk full of sports gear, but for the last two weeks the gear in question has been a pile of kayak paddles and life jackets and… skis, poles, and ski boots. (We exchanged Nugget’s seasonal gear rental at Sun & Ski Sports, just under the wire.) It’s definitely fall in Virginia!

What are you reading this week?

Happy fall! It’s officially my other favorite season – tied with summer, of course – so I am leaning into it and doing all the fall things, starting with apple picking this morning, which is why this post is late. That and my general flakiness of late, which is down to unpacking burnout and being busy, busy, busy, as ever.

Anyway, this past week was jam-packed with work and life obligations, as usual. Less baseball, because we were rained out of games all weekend. But I filled the time with extra errand running and chores around the house (got the foyer cleared of boxes, finally, and organized the hall and linen closets) – not as fun as baseball, but had to happen. What didn’t happen was much reading, although I held my own especially during the weeknight evenings and commutes. And the result was two books finished over the last week – The Wheel Spins and Brat Ferrar, two classic suspense novels from the late golden age of crime (both shortly after WWII), both really well done page-turners. As scattered as my brain has been lately, those really gripping plots are just what the doctor ordered.

As for current reads, I have another page turner – The Theft of the Iron Dogs, the latest reprint from British Library Crime Classics, by E.C.R. Lorac, whom I love. (I did have to look up what an iron dog was. I was picturing a dog made out of iron. Wrong. My grandmother would be so disappointed.) I just started it last night, right before bed, so I’m only about 35 pages in but it’s great fun and I can already tell I’m going to really enjoy it. And on audio, the opposite of a page-turner: The Fortnight in September, R.C. Sherriff’s quiet, contemplative story of a middle-class family’s annual September holiday at the seashore. Nothing happens, and in that nothing, everything happens. It’s a gorgeous book, and I think I like it even better on audio than in print; Jilly Bond’s narration is absolutely pitch-perfect. I’ve been savoring it over my commutes and errands; I’ll finish it this week and I’m already sad to say goodbye to the characters.

Before the wind and rain came, we snuck in an outdoor movie night! (This is an annual fundraiser at the kids’ school.) Neither Steve nor Peanut wanted to attend, so Nugget and I had a date night to “The Super Mario Brothers Movie.” We ate pizza and popcorn, Nugget ran around and threw a football with his friends, and the screen collapsed not once but TWICE and everyone screamed. It was an epic night.

What are you reading this week?

Well – it’s Monday again. Whatever. Is my exhaustion and lack of motivation coming through the computer screen at you?

I was just chatting with a work teammate and we both agreed that for the first time in our respective lives, we’re burnt out but it’s not because of work. Work is definitely busy, but it’s general life stuff that has us grinding away right now. For my part, I really need some fun. I’ve been going hard on house projects and unpacking for months now without a break and I’m just… spent. Hence the mini reading slump I’ve been fighting off for most of the first half of September (not that you can tell from the gallery above).

So I spent the weekend doing basically nothing – not getting fresh air, as I’d hoped, but also not unpacking, as I should have done. Just sitting on the couch staring into space most of the time, and reading some. And yet somehow, miraculously, I finished five books last week – five. One, In Love with George Eliot, was an audiobook – and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t love it. The other four, I banged out over the second half of the week and the weekend. First, I finally finished The Hotel on Tuesday – for a book that was under 200 pages, it took me a long time to read. (Elizabeth Bowen, I will figure you out. Someday.) Then, needing something a little easier going, I picked up Letters to Michael: A Father Writes to His Son, 1945-1947, which I’d been saving for September as it seemed like such a good read for back-to-school season. It was, and I adored it and finished it the same day. Gentle, sweet, charming – just what the doctor ordered. Moving right along – I’ve been meaning to read My Turn to Make the Tea, Monica Dickens’ memoir of her time working as a junior reporter on a local newspaper just after World War II, and while it had its moments that reminded me it was published in 1951, I really enjoyed it – Dickens’ writing is sharp and funny; she definitely inherited the gift for humor from her great-grandfather Charles. I wrapped it up on Sunday morning, then read Slightly Foxed, issue 78 – the summer issue, and not a moment too soon as I’m expecting the fall issue any day now – the same day. Whew.

Still with me? If you can believe it – considering I was slumping hard over the past few weeks – that long list was just the books I finished last week. I’ve also got two on the go: The Fortnight in September, a re-read, which I’m listening to for the first time on audio. (The narrator is wonderful – I can already tell that I’m going to want to revisit this one via my earbuds every September.) And The Wheel Spins, which was last month’s BL Crime Classics publication and takes place in early September. I’ve just started it – only read the first chapter before bed last night – so no impressions to share as it’s too early pages to tell. But I’ve heard good things, so I’m excited to dig in. Assuming I have the energy after that blitz of reading – not to mention the work and life stuff that never seems to stop piling on.

Since all I did over the weekend was bum around the house, I don’t have a fun adventure picture to show you. Maybe next weekend? In the meantime, at least it’s hot fall beverage season. While I don’t like pumpkin spice, I never turn down a hot cider – and this is a cider chai latte from the cute local coffee shop on the ground floor of my office. Yes, PLEASE.

What are you reading this week?

Well, I sure flaked on you last week, huh? Sorry about that. We had a big meeting at work with a lot of visitors to the office and I was completely distracted all week long. It was wonderful to see all of the people who visited, and also exhausting. So blogging fell off the radar, as did – I’m sorry to say – reading much of anything.

In fact, I haven’t finished a book since last Sunday. I’ve been plodding my way through The Hotel (borrowed from the library) ever since, and it’s taking way longer than a 199 page novel would usually take for me to finish it. Part of that, I chalk up to the extra busy workweek last week, but I also seem to have some kind of block about Elizabeth Bowen. I’ve tried before and I just can’t seem to connect with her books. But I’m more than halfway through now, so I will finish this one. And then I’m going to curl up with something comforting and engaging.

On audio, I’ve been working my way through In Love with George Eliot for the last two weeks. Somehow I missed that little “A NOVEL” on the cover and thought it was another literary memoir like My Life in Middlemarch, which I adored. It’s not, it’s a biographical novel book-within-a-book situation and it is good, if not what I thought I was signing on for. (Yes, that lack of attention to cover detail is squarely on me.) But again, I’ve been slower than I otherwise would with it, mostly because of the big work meeting. Usually, when I’m working my way through an audiobook, I’ll listen on every commute and while washing dishes and folding laundry. This time, I’ve only been listening about half of my normal times; I drove several commutes home in much-needed silence after especially long and socially engaged workdays, and I’ve also been sprinkling in Spotify – mainly Fireside Collective and Kitchen Dwellers, two modern bluegrass bands I’m going to see in concert in October. So the audiobook is taking a bit to get through, but I expect I’ll finish it this week and I’ve already decided to download The Fortnight in September for my next book.

This weekend was mostly devoted to the current usual – Little League and house projects – but we did get down to our former stomping grounds to have lunch with friends on Saturday, followed by a walk down to the Potomac waterfront to see the latest art installation, which had something to do with historic shipping. I am always in the market for tea.

What are you reading this week?

Family, I cannot believe August is almost over. Where did the summer go? This is the time of year when I start to feel very conflicted, because I love summer and fall in equal measure. So I’m… sad that summer is ending, but at the same time… happy about the approach of fall. Hang on, let me overthink this. In the past few years I’ve tried to look at the changing seasons from a different angle – less “I can’t believe summer is ending” or “I can’t wait for fall” and more “I’m midway through my favorite half of the year, there’s so much more to come.” Some days it works better than others.

Anyway! That digression aside, it was a good week in reading. I’ve spent time with two audiobooks: Bookworm, which I finished early last week and absolutely adored, and The Book of Delights, which I’ll wrap up today. At bedtime, Nugget and I finished up Winnie-the-Pooh and are now casting about for our next read: I still have not unpacked my books – this week! – and Nugget has been wanting chapter books at bedtime, so we’re stuck with my kindle. We gave Just William a try last night, which I loved and found hilarious when I read it last year, but Nugget didn’t find as funny. Tonight he wants to see how the first chapter of Swallows and Amazons reads. So we’ll see.

Moving on to my own print books, I also finished The Greengage Summer early last week – so, so good. You can tell it’s good when you’re so reluctant to put it down that you read the final few chapters while absentmindedly stirring dinner on the stovetop and end up slopping tomato sauce everywhere. Unusually for this season of life, I have a library stack right now – so that was my next stop. I’d reserved The Maid because I wanted to make sure to get to it before the second book in the series comes out this fall. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t think the author entirely played fair with the ending, which disappointed me. Still a good read, but not destined to become a favorite – for that reason. Finally, another library book – an impulse grab off an endcap while browsing the stacks after picking up The Maid – I embarked on a literary tour with Novel Destinations. Usually a bookish travel book flies by for me, but I’ve been plodding through this one a bit and am only a third of the way through despite starting it at the end of last week. It’s fun though, so I’m chalking the slow reading pace up to being busy with unpacking and house projects over the weekend, and not able to sit and read as much as I ordinarily would. I’ll finish it up this week, and then no idea what comes next: I’ve got two more library books checked out, so maybe one of those, but I also want to get to Brat Ferrar soon.

One of the things keeping me busy this past weekend: a Sunday morning 10k. It was hot and muggy and it took me three miles to get into a groove, so not the best race. But I got it done.

What are you reading this week?

Well – it’s Monday morning, and not just any Monday, but the first day of school! Gulp. How did summer go so quickly? Nugget was more excited than I have seen him in a long time – possibly more excited than he was on Christmas Eve. Peanut was… quietly enduring. (A note: I think it’s just wrong that school starts before Labor Day. Just wrong. I can only conclude that the school district is burying my comments from the annual scheduling survey. Get your tinfoil hats out, people!)

Anyway – as you can see from the above, despite the busy week of getting ready to go back to school, plus the ongoing unpacking push (last week was “clothes week” and I am SO happy with my newly organized closet…) I still managed to push through a lot of pages. First of all, in the “finished” category – Nugget and I wrapped up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire after months of reading half a chapter to one chapter at bedtime every night. On audio, while commuting, running errands and unpacking, I whipped through At Bertram’s Hotel, which wasn’t my favorite of Miss Marple’s outings but was nonetheless time well spent. (As time with Miss Marple always is.) And finally, on paper, Bricks and Mortar, which is a story of an architect and his family in the first decades of the twentieth century – I liked it, but didn’t love it as much as I thought I would.

Whew! Still with me? Moving on to current reads, I have three on the go. Nugget and I started reading Winnie-the-Pooh at bedtime and are rolling right through it; we’ll finish it this week. Nugget was a bit skeptical (I think he may have through Pooh was babyish – at first) but he cackled through the chapter in which Pooh and Piglet think they’re tracking a Woozle through the snow but are actually just tracking themselves, and I think he’s a convert. On audio, I’m reading and loving Lucy Mangan’s memoir Bookworm. (I feel like we could be good friends. Anyone else?) And in print, I’m finally getting to The Greengage Summer, which has been on my TBR for years. So, so good!

Looking back at this list – I don’t know how I have made it through so many books this past week, but I love it! Reader power!

I can’t believe it’s the first day of school already – hold me. Summer vacation went by way too fast.

Welp, it’s Monday, I’ve been back from vacation for over a week, and routines are happening again. Our road trip through New England actually brought more reading time than vacations usually do – all that car passenger time; I’m fortunate to be able to read in a moving vehicle – and I’m glad to report I was able to keep up the momentum over the week at home, notwithstanding it being rather a stressful one. As we rolled back into Virginia last Sunday, I started The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild, which proved to be a quick and delightful read. I blazed through, finished it on Tuesday, and turned to a book that has been on my TBR for ages: the Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock. This tense and atmospheric story of an unexplained disappearance of several girls and a teacher from a posh girls’ school actually takes place in February, which is the height of the hot Australian summer. So I was torn: should I read this in the heat of my own summer, or save it for Valentine’s Day reading? In the end I opted for the summer reading experience and it was definitely the right call to read when the mercury is through the roof – the heat is such an important part of the story, I think reading it in winter would have felt odd.

So much for my finished books: on to current reads. (One is missing here: Nugget and I read reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at bedtime and we’re almost done – down to the penultimate chapter. So that’s a current read but it takes so long I don’t include it in these posts until we finish it, which will probably be this week.) After Picnic at Hanging Rock I was originally thinking I’d move on to The Greengage Summer, but I think that might be another tense read, so I decided to put it off and read Helen Ashton’s quiet domestic novel of a family and their various houses, Bricks and Mortar. I’m working on some DIY renovations around my unpacking schedule, so a house novel felt like it might be fun for this week. And speaking of those DIY renovations, yesterday was dedicated to priming and painting the kitchen cabinet doors, and that’s a task that always goes more quickly with an audiobook. I started At Bertram’s Hotel on Audible and listened to about a third of it while working on my paint project (before switching to Taylor Swift to get my energy up). Between commutes and errands, I expect I’ll finish it this week – it’s not very long.

This turned out to be rather a bigger project than I thought it would, but I’m almost done! Nineteen cabinet doors, all given a coat of primer and two coats of paint on each side yesterday – oof, and you can bet I’m sore today. I’m reinstalling them in the kitchen, updating the handles, and then they’ll get one little touch-up in a few spots and I’ll be DONE applying lipstick to this pig.

What are you reading this week? And any home renovation projects underway?

Five years. Fifty classics. I’ve-lost-count-of-how-many pages.

I can’t resist a reading project; I know this. Give me a challenge to attack or boxes to check and I am all over it. (My kids, by contrast, aren’t even interested in the library’s summer reading program – which comes with prizes. Prizes. Who are these children?) This was my second – or maybe third – round of the Classics Club Challenge, which sets the audacious goal of reading and reviewing fifty classic books in five years. In a previous round, I set the even more audacious goal of reading 100. I figured, I read over 100 books in a year; 100 classics over five years – less than 20% of my reading – should be no sweat. Joke’s on me; I discovered that while far more than 20% of my reading is devoted to classics, I tend to read classics other than what is on my challenge list. Apparently the quickest way to guarantee that I won’t read a book: put it on a list. Who knew.

I’m going to try to remember that. Because I did read some really wonderful books over this round of challenge reading, and it would have been a shame to miss out. There were re-reads, like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall… new favorite series, like the Chronicles of Barsetshire or the Mapp & Lucia novels… hilarious books like Three Men on the Bummel… lesser-known treasures like The Priory…

Still, I did note that especially once I got to the end, I was getting weary of the project and weary of the books I’d gleefully listed out five years before. I didn’t want to read these; I still wanted to read classics, but different classics. I’d made the cardinal error of making reading feel like school. (And I liked school.) It was almost reading slump territory.

I am glad I did this project. I read some really spectacular books, and the review requirement forced me to think about them critically and carefully. I discovered some new-to-me favorites, and I’ll certainly be going back and re-reading many of the books on my Classics Club list. But I think I need a good long break before I do this particular challenge again – if at all. I’d rather just read what I feel like reading, without the pressure of checking something off a list. And the funny thing about that is: what I feel like reading is generally classics, so I’ll still be working my way through plenty of those.

Still, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have some goal or project or another in mind. And I do, rather.

A few years ago, I was heavily addicted to library books. I was walking to the Barrett Branch library in Old Town Alexandria at least twice a week, and maybe more, and bringing home stacks. And as I read my way through library book after library book, I sometimes glanced at my own shelves and sighed; I never seemed to have time to read the books that I’d deemed worthy of a permanent space on my shelves. How could this be? Then the pandemic hit, and my library visits screeched to a halt – and I was forced to read from my own shelves. This was just the spark I needed. Even after the library cautiously reopened for curbside pickup, I only returned sporadically; it was too much fun to read my own books, like I’d been wanting to do for years.

Of course, over the three years since my enforced return to my own bookshelves, I’ve added more books (and another shelf). Because of course I have. So I am not sure I’ve actually made much progress towards reading everything I actually own – classic.

So that’s my new goal, or really, my ongoing goal: to read my own books. It’s a loose goal, or a non-goal. There’s no timeframe and no rules: I just want to keep reading my own books and maybe someday get down to Inbox Zero on the bookshelf situation. Maybe I’ll do this methodically or maybe I won’t – I haven’t decided how I’ll keep track, if at all, and I know I won’t read according to any order or system. I’m just going to pick up books from my shelves that look good in the moment and try not to buy too many more for awhile. We’ll see how that goes.

Have you ever done a reading challenge? Did you find it valuable or did it kind of ruin the books for you?

I once read the phrase “August is the Sunday of summer” – I can’t remember who said (wrote?) it or when or where, but it always stuck with me. This year it feels particularly true; last week we were on vacation – pictures and stories coming soon – and this is the first Monday back, settling into the last two weeks of camp before back to school (WOW, did that ever speed by) and reminding myself what my routines are after three weeks of nearly nonstop traveling. If anything, this month feels like Sunday afternoon before the rush of September.

Anyway. So, yes, I was on vacation last week! For those keeping score at home, that’s trip number three in three weeks – first I spent a week on the west coast for a work retreat, then a week working remotely in the Adirondacks (and hiking around the workdays), and then finally a week of vacation, which was road-tripping around New England with Steve and the kids. All of that hasn’t left a ton of time for reading, but I did have a couple of long car rides and some pool time last week, so I got my page-turning in then. It was a very good week of reading, indeed – as far as quality and enjoyment went. First up, I finished up Excavacations, by Kate Myers, which was a fun, feminist romp of a debut novel. I absolutely loved it, and it was perfect vacation reading (although even better would’ve been to read it on vacation in Greece; not that I’m complaining about Maine!). Then I turned my attention to Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah, which I have somehow missed out on up to now; it has been on my to-read list for ages, but I just never got around to it. That’s all changed now – I snagged the paperback off my mom’s coffee table and took it with me on vacation, finishing up in the car on the way home. I’ll have more to say in my monthly reading round-up, but it absolutely wowed me. And then finally, I picked up my current read, The Growing Summer, by Noel Streatfeild, about four children who are shipped off to spend the month of August with an eccentric great-aunt in Ireland. It’s a fun and fast read and I’m already 80 pages in, despite just starting it yesterday afternoon.

The week ahead: more of the same, as far as reading is concerned, anyway. Once I finish The Growing Summer, I’ve got a few more summery reads on my stack for August. I’ve been wanting to read Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer for years now, so I think that will be next – I specifically pulled it off my shelf before moving, just in case I didn’t have time to unpack books before all of my summer travel (as indeed I did not). Reading around work and camp schedules and workouts and unpacking – I am determined to have a functional, working kitchen by Friday, so that’s my evenings for this week – will be a challenge, but I’m sure I’ll find time to squeeze in the pages.

We had such a wonderful week on vacation in New England last week! Road-tripping around Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont was a perfect family trip for us this year.

What are you reading this week?