Happy Monday… afternoon/evening, whoops! It’s been another long one, folks. I always mean to write this post first thing in the morning and it seems half the time I forget, and don’t think of it until late in the day… or Tuesday. This time, I have an excuse – I had an early morning meeting at our new house! So, for those who have noticed the vague references to a big/stressful family project and haven’t actually guessed (I always think I’m more mysterious than I actually am) – the big project is Adventures in Real Estate. We’re buying and renovating a house – last Thursday was the big closing day and it went off smoothly despite my many fears, and now we’re into the fun stuff. Today I was giving last minute instructions to the house painters and bathroom renovator as both started their work, and then I rushed home to jump into an all-day work meeting and only just came up for air. But this is a good development, we’re all very excited about it, and I’ll share (a few) more details on Wednesday.

So, as you can see, it was a slow reading week for good reason. Closing week is always stressful – I’ve been through it a few times – and I often lack the brain power for a book during those really anxious, busy weeks. And another reason: after finishing up Sinister Spring on Monday morning, I turned to The Three Musketeers, which is a doorstopper at 672 pages (my edition, anyway). As of press time, I’m about 425-ish pages in, so making good progress especially considering the hectic week, and I expect to be done with the book by the middle of this week or so. It’s good, swashbuckling, silly fun and I’m enjoying it – just finding it hard to carve out the time to sit down and get lost in d’Artagnan’s adventures with the Three Musketeers.

After this, I’m craving something shorter – a novella or some other quick read will be just what the doctor ordered. No specific book in mind, although my work book club is reading Crying in H Mart for our June meeting and I just got a notification that my library hold copy is on its way, so perhaps that? We’ll see.

Exciting stuff! Just seven years after selling our house in western New York and moving back to Virginia, we’re finally homeowners again! We couldn’t be happier with our new house – it’s in the neighborhood we wanted, on a nice quiet street, with great bones and lots of scope for us to personalize it and make it exactly what we want. We’ve already met a few of our soon-to-be new neighbors and they have all been so friendly and welcoming. Moving day can’t come soon enough!

What are you reading this week?

Hello, friends! Happy Monday – I suppose. How were your weekends? Did you have fun being celebrated (if you’re a mom) or celebrating the moms and mother figures in your life? I had a good one – a nice mix of reading time (which I used very productively) and time spent outdoors hiking and gardening.

Last week, Steve said to me: “You know you’re exhausted when you’re too tired in the evenings to even do the things you enjoy.” It’s definitely been a long and exhausting month. I’d like to say that this week should be quieter, but it won’t be. I’ve mentioned that we are working on a family project, and we have a major milestone coming up on Thursday – after which I’ll feel a lot more comfortable about it all. We’ll still be busy – there are a lot of moving pieces – but less stressed. I can’t wait. Steve and I have concert tickets for Friday night and it’s going to feel like such a celebration. (I’ll explain more next week, once we’ve cleared Thursday’s big hurdle.)

Anyway, despite being completely overwhelmed, I actually managed to get through five books last week! Most of the workweek, I spent over A Countryman’s Spring Notebook, which I adored. I took my time with it, because I wanted to really soak up Adrian Bell’s beautiful writing. Then I moved on to a string of quick reads – starting with Quidditch Through the Ages. Nugget is on a big Harry Potter kick right now (we’re still reading a chapter a night at bedtime, and are almost halfway through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and he brought this one home from the elementary school library. I took advantage of him going to bed earlier than I do and blazed through it in an evening. Very fun! (“Broomstick idiots at it again” – LOL.) Next, I picked up Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, which has been on my TBR for ages and which I borrowed from the library with the intent of finally getting to it so I can listen to two episodes of Shedunnit which contain spoilers. It was one of the best Christies I’ve read; I did not guess the killer, and it was a fitting finale for the Hercule Poirot series. Then another quick one – a re-read of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, because my team at work has decided to start a book club and this is the first selection. A classic. And finally, read over Sunday afternoon (and just finished up this morning), Sinister Spring, the latest release in Harper Collins’ special edition collections of seasonal short stories by Agatha Christie. As always, a romp – fun from the first page to the last. (Lots of jewel heists in this one!)

And now, because a stressful week clearly calls for a doorstopper – I kid, I kid – I’m turning my attention to The Three Musketeers. It’s going to take all week to power through that whopper, but it’s got to be done – July’s Classics Club deadline looms.

Lovely hike for Mother’s Day! We hit up Scott’s Run Nature Preserve and narrowly missed seeing one of my co-workers there hiking with her little guys. I hope all of the moms felt as celebrated as I did!

What are you reading this week?

Happy Monday… afternoon? Evening? Sorry for being late – again – with this weekly reading update. I blame Monday. It’s been the Monday-est of all Mondays around here, too. The screamiest, Monday-est of Mondays. I told one of my co-workers that I think we should just make Mondays illegal going forward. Sound like a plan?

Anyway – last week was a doozy. I had limited time and even less attention for reading, and the result was that I spent basically the entire week over Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, which is a nice quick read that I would ordinarily whip through in a couple of days. I definitely enjoyed it, but it took way longer than usual because of trying to read with a completely fried-to-a-crisp brain. I eventually did hit my stride and finished it up late on Sunday, and then – because I can’t be between reads – picked up A Countryman’s Spring Notebook, a pre-order to which I’ve been looking forward for months now. Read it a bit over coffee this morning and I’m about forty pages in and loving it every bit as much as I knew I would.

Next up, I think I’ll read Curtain – the final Poirot mystery, which I have out from the library – because I have a couple of episodes of Shedunnit that include spoilers, and I want to read the book first. And then, down to business on my final three reads for the Classics Club. Closing in on my deadline, with three doorstoppers left – encouragement welcome.

It was a big baseball weekend! Nugget played games for his regular AA Little League team on Thursday and Saturday, and on Friday night we got an email calling him up to play a game for one of the AAA teams on Sunday – subbing in for a player who had to miss the game. Not sure if he will play any more AAA games this spring, but he had a great time, scored two runs (including one on a steal of home) and rotated between second and third bases. We spent at least twelve hours at the ballpark between Thursday and Sunday, but what fun he is to watch on the diamond.

What are you reading this week?

Fam. How is it May already? Seriously, where is 2023 going? Next thing we all know, it will be summer – mind. blown.

I had a good – albeit busy – reading week last week! At the beginning of the week, I set a goal to read at least 100 pages of East of Eden every night (except for Wednesday and Thursday – both of which were busy with kid activities and appointments; on those days I thought 50 pages would be a good result). I was able to stick to my goal and read consistently all week, with the result that I finished the book on Friday as planned. (It was amazing; more to come on that soon – I’ll have a full review up for The Classics Club in the next couple of weeks.) I have three more books to read on my Classics Club list, but as all three are whoppers, I wanted a palate cleanser of some shorter – or at least faster to read – books before I dive into the next doorstopper. So over Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning I read Seed to Dust, which wasn’t exactly short (at 395 pages – although it was shorter than East of Eden) but was a fast read nonetheless, and very engaging. On Sunday afternoon and evening, I curled up with the latest issue of Slightly Foxed – always a pleasure – and finally opened up one of my library books, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors – I’m only one chapter in, but excited to dig into this one, which has been on my list for ages now.

Last but certainly not least, Nugget and I continue our march through the Harry Potter books, and on Friday night we wrapped up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We’re now two chapters into Goblet of Fire, and not slowing down. It’s such fun to share Harry’s world with the littles.

Reading plans for the week – it’s looking like another busy one, if not quite as busy as last week. I’ll be happy to get through my current read. And then – I’ll have to wait and see. I do have the sequel to Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (Recipe for Persuasion) checked out of the library, and another book on hold (Curtain, by Agatha Christie), which I plan to pick up today – so one of those might be in order, or I may dive into my next Classics Club read; I’m planning on The Three Musketeers this month.

Major milestone for Peanut this weekend – her first Encampment! For those who were not Girl Scouts, or don’t remember, Encampment is a jam-packed weekend of fun where multiple Girl Scout troops get together at camp for a few days. Peanut’s troop did not participate last year or the year before (pandemic! ugh!) and I was so excited for her to experience this event, which was one of the highlights of my year as a Girl Scout. She had a great time – tie-dyed a t-shirt, made s’mores over a campfire, and shared secrets with her three cabinmates. She’s growing up, you guys! Hold me!

What are you reading this week?

So it’s Tuesday – whoops! I usually post my weekly recap of what I’ve been reading first thing Monday morning, but this is just a really busy week and I was in the zone yesterday. I just sat down at my computer and started working straightaway and – to be perfectly honest – didn’t think about this post at all. I’m lucky I thought of it today, really. This whole week is unusually hectic, with multiple errands to run, a choral concert for Peanut, a baseball game for Nugget, packing Peanut for a field trip on Friday and a weekend away with her Girl Scout troop, and wrangling details of a big family project we’re in the thick of right now. (Not to be mysterious, but – I’ll be able to tell you about it next month, I hope.) And as with any unusually busy week, the week leading up to it is busy too as I try to organize everything in advance so as to beat back the inevitable overwhelm.

With all of that, I’m actually surprised I read as much as I did. On Monday last, I finished The Color Purple and was absolutely blown away by it. More to come in a Classics Club review, but – wow. Then continuing my pattern of alternating between a Classics Club read (I’m down to three-and-a-half left to go, as of press time!) and a lighter palate-cleanser, I picked up The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim. This was a re-read for me; I’ve actually read it a few times, and it gets better with every round. Perfect spring reading, too – especially because there is a fence on my way home that is draped with wisteria at this time of year, and I always think “wistaria and sunshine” as I drive past it on my commute.

I wrapped up The Enchanted April (really must watch the movie this month…) on Saturday and picked up East of Eden off my library stack. It’s a 601-page tome, so I’m expecting it to take me most of the week, but I’m trying to get in at least 100 pages of reading each day, and as a result I’m halfway through already. It’s definitely keeping me turning pages – and I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to this; it’s been on my TBR for ages. Not to tempt fate, but at this rate I think I should get through it before the weekend and things are looking good for finishing the Classics Club Challenge – only three books to go after East of Eden – by my deadline of July 27.

Last weekend was pretty relaxing – resting up for this busy week – but we did get out to the trails for some fresh air. The eagles at our local park have THREE chicks!

How was last week in reading for you?

Good morning! Happy new reading week, friends – hope it’s a good one ahead.

Last week was definitely a good reading week around here. I finished up Beloved on Monday evening – after years on my TBR, I’m so glad to have read it at last. Full review coming for The Classics Club – at least, a full plot recap and a few thoughts. There’s so much in Beloved that entire courses can be taught on it, so I can’t even hope to do it full justice in a few paragraphs – but I tried my best. Needing something a bit less intense after that read, I turned to The Swan: A Biography, the last of Stephen Moss’s bird biographies that I hadn’t yet read. (The last for now, I hope – I’ve enjoyed all four books in the series and I do hope he continues it.) Steve said: “You can’t write a biography of a species.” I disagreed, and so have the many other people who have bought and read and loved these books, I’m sure.

The end of the reading week, and the weekend, was devoted to The Color Purple – another one from my Classics Club list and another one that I’ve been meaning to read for way too long. It was an incredible read – I was completely blown away by it. Every character was fully drawn and real, and even those who seemed completely vile for most of the book had their redemption. I’m going to have to write a review for the Classics Club and I have no idea how to put into words how very, very wonderful this book was.

It was another intense one, though, so another palate cleanser is on deck. Since it’s April, I think a re-read of The Enchanted April is in order, so I’ll be picking that one up tonight and reading it with a view of the flowering trees in my yard. Not quite wisteria in a crumbling Italian castle, but we make do with what we’ve got.

Speaking of spring, we’ve got eagle chicks again! A couple of months ago, we hiked at our local park and saw the eagles furiously renovating their nest, so we hoped we would see chicks again this spring. (They didn’t nest last year, but had two healthy chicks a couple of years ago.) We took a hike on Sunday and – there they were!

Welcome spring! What are you reading this week?

First up, some housekeeping: if you’re navigating to my page in your browser (as opposed to in Feedly or reading as a subscription) you may have noticed that the URL has changed. Instead of messybaker.wordpress.com, you can now find me at messy-baker.com. (I think you should be automatically re-routed if you enter the old URL, but this is the first time I’ve changed my internet address in more than ten years of blogging – so bear with me, because I don’t know what I don’t know!) The reason for the change is just that I was sick of seeing ads at the end of my most recent blog post – it may not have been as big of a deal if the ads were at all relevant to my content, but they weren’t, or at least the ones I was seeing weren’t, and some of them were quite off-putting (tape for your athlete’s foot, anyone?). In researching how to make the ads go away, or at least be somewhat related to my content, I found that for $4/month I could upgrade to an ad-free experience for everyone who reads in their browser, and that was totally worth it to me. So the new URL is because I have upgraded to a paid plan and you should no longer see ads on the site. Happy Monday to one and all!

Bit of a slow reading week, but a good one – I’m wondering if the slower reading speed was due to the fact that I spent most of the week over The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, which I started on the way to New York City last weekend and didn’t finish until this Friday. I’ve noticed that I seem to read short stories at a slower pace, often setting the book down between stories to absorb and think about them instead of whipping through page after page. Maybe the answer to my general difficulty with short stories is in not trying to read a volume like a novel – a story a day, read with a longer-form book also on the go, might be a better approach. I have a volume of Agatha Christie short stories on the table to pick up soon, and I’m thinking I’ll try this out: a short story with my coffee every morning, and reading something else in the evenings. Am rather interested to see how the experience will be different.

Anyway, I was reading something else alongside the Wharton stories – still working my way through Horizon, on audible. It took the entire rest of the week, but I finally wrapped it up over the weekend (turning, with relief, back to my podcatcher). In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the best place to begin with Barry Lopez. It was massively long and jumped around in both time and geography – really interesting and well-written but I expect not a great introduction to his work. I probably should have started with Arctic Dreams, his most famous work, but I chose Horizon because it has a section on Antarctica. The rest of the weekend’s book time was devoted to Beloved, another one from my Classics Club list and another one that has been on my TBR for ages. I’m almost done and will finish it up today – it’s been an intense read, so I’m planning something a little lighter as a recovery book before I pick up The Color Purple, which is also on my library stack right now.

The Virginia bluebells are at peak right now! We enjoyed a beautiful ramble through the woods on Easter Sunday, checking out the blooms. If you’re local, you probably have a few more days to see them – do try to get there while you can!

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?

Here it is again – Monday. They just keep coming around, don’t they? Vacation feels very far in the rearview mirror and I am totally slammed again, but on the plus side, I think my post-travel reading mojo is back. As you can see, I had a productive reading week (well, weekend, really). Over the workweek I squeezed in pages of Great Expectations wherever I could, and finally wrapped it up on Friday. Although I always profess to be “not a Dickens person,” I might have to revise that – because I really enjoyed Great Expectations, and I also really enjoyed the last Dickens novel I read (The Pickwick Papers). You’d think after all my years as a reader, I’d have learned not to assume I don’t like an author based on what I did (or didn’t) get out of that author’s books I read as a teenager.

Anyway, once I wrapped up Great Expectations, I wanted to give myself a break before diving into the next doorstopper, so I picked up a couple of Slightly Foxed recent issues. I’ve fallen behind on the issues and had three – last fall and winter’s, plus the recent spring issue – on my stack. So those made for a couple of very pleasant hours on Saturday (and got me back to “on track” in my Goodreads 2023 reading challenge). For my next chunkster, I was planning to pick up The Three Musketeers, but it turned out that Saturday was “Tolkein Reading Day” (who knew?), and I also had The Silmarillion to get to off my Classics Club list – so I started it late on Saturday evening; that still counts, I hope. To be perfectly honest, I’m not loving it. I’ve read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but only once each, and Tolkein’s world just isn’t part of my regular lexicon – like it would be for someone who read and loved the books as a child (my brother, for instance). I can tell there is a lot of important stuff I’m missing because I haven’t internalized Tolkein’s stories. The Silmarillion feels like the Bible of Tolkein’s world and… well, I haven’t even read the Bible of my own world. (I probably should.) At least it’s going by surprisingly quickly – I’m almost halfway through after just a couple of hours of reading on Sunday (two of which took place OUTSIDE, on my back patio, reminding me that I really need cushions for my outdoor dining chairs).

Finally, I’m still working my way through Horizon on audio. I’m down to six-and-a-half hours left in the audiobook after this morning’s commute (which sounds like a lot, but the entire audiobook is almost 24 hours long, so you can see that’s actually good progress). If I keep up the listening pace I think I’ll finish this week – and then it will be time for an audiobook break, because podcast episodes have been stacking up as I have slowly listened through this time.

So it was a relaxing weekend with plenty of reading time – as you can see from the above. Saturday was a dreary day – perfect weather for reading on the couch – but Sunday was glorious and I did also get outside for a bit. We met up with some friends for a short hike at Burke Lake Park and spotted one paddleboarder out on the water already. Summer is coming!

What are you reading this week?

Good Monday morning to you all – how were your weekends? Any crazy St. Patrick’s Day antics?

Last week was a slow reading week around these parts – slower than I’d hoped for, to be honest. I’m still making my way through Great Expectations in print and Horizon on audio – no changes to report, except that I’m about halfway through both. Audiobook time has been limited by (1) only commuting one day last week, which is the usual for now; and (2) being slammed with work projects and not getting out for as many neighborhood walks as I usually do. I’ve been listening a bit here and there while doing things like washing dishes and making beds, but I’m also not so enthralled by the book that I am turning it on at every opportunity. It’s good, but I think I’m just burnt out on polar travel literature right now – but being halfway through, I feel like I need to press on and see it all the way to the end.

As for print reading, that’s been hampered by time constraints, too. Between a couple of evenings of working late, and other evenings of needing to get things done around the house – or just being too zoned-out to focus on a book – I’ve been picking up Pip’s adventures at 9:30pm, which is too late for me to start reading and get through a meaningful amount of pages in an evening. I did curl up with Great Expectations for a few hours on Saturday morning, but barely touched in on Sunday. The bottom line being: I’m about halfway through, or a little more. Hoping to finish it up this week, which really shouldn’t be a chore because I am really enjoying it. It’s all about time and energy in the evenings, and I’m hoping to have more of both this week. I am thinking, though, of reading something slim and quick before going on to the next Classics Club doorstopper. A palate cleanser might be just the thing.

No pictures from the weekend! The only time I took my camera out was to snap pictures of Peanut and her fellow Girl Scouts enjoying Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: The Ballet this weekend, and as you can I’m sure appreciate, I won’t be sharing those since they all include kids that aren’t mine (and Peanut’s face, too – about a year ago, I stopped posting pictures of my own kids’ faces on here, as may or may not be obvious). Anyway, the girls had a fabulous time at the ballet, and that was kind of the only notable thing I did over the weekend. The rest of it was the usual – a run on Saturday, a long walk with Nugget on Sunday, plenty of book time on Saturday as detailed above, etc. A weekend of the usual and not-at-all-notable actually felt kind of good after traveling to the end of the world and back in the last month.