Just a quick check-in, folks.  Time is in short supply around here, as we’re down to under a week to go until moving day!  I made a lot of progress on packing this weekend – and I owe a huge shoutout to my fabulous friend Zan, who spent her entire Saturday kid-wrangling, organizing, and packing with me.  Seriously, I don’t know how I would have made it through the weekend without her.  By this time next week, we’ll be in our townhouse and hopefully settling in a bit.  It’s a temporary move – the townhouse is a stopgap, and hopefully a short-term one, until we find something permanent that works for our family – and I’m trying to make the best of it.

What with everything that I’ve got going on, I didn’t get much reading done this weekend.  Last week I predicted a graphic novel-y week, and that’s exactly what this was.  I finished the first volume of Saga (I’m currently midway through the second), the fifth volume of Fables, and the complete Boxers & Saints.  Enjoyed them all, but I’m definitely deepest in the Fabletown world.  I’m trying to keep a lid on the library stack, and I’ve been whittling it down by never checking out more books than I’m returning on any given trip.  But I’ve got a pretty big stack of comics out right now, even as I’m religiously adhering to that rule.  So expect more comics – specifically, more Saga – this week.  As busy as I am, comics are holding my attention at the moment, and they’re short enough that I can rip through a few in a week – key to feeling like I’m still getting some reading done even in moving week.

Up on the blog this week: it might be moving week, but I have some really good content for you – recapping our November hike (it’s a GREAT one!) on Wednesday, and the first post in a new yearlong blog project on Friday.  I promise you don’t want to miss either post, so check back.

What are you reading today?

Happy Martin Luther King Day to my American friends!  I hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.  Mine has been… well… not very holiday-ish.  Nothing bad, but just mostly work and not much play.  Saturday morning was fun – the kids and I hit up a birthday party at Tifft Nature Preserve!  Peanut’s BFF was turning FOUR! and we celebrated in grand style with pizza, crafts and puddle-stomping in our glitter shoes.  (Well, that last one was just Peanut.)  Party animals!  I had a good time chatting with the birthday girl’s mom and – a first for me – met a blog reader!  (Hi, Jen!)  But other than Saturday morning birthday fun, my weekend was pretty much nothing but work, work, work.  I’m currently staggering under the weight of several crushing deadlines at work, which had me running around like a crazy person all last week, and the rest of January is looking like a doozy.  I have several BIG, STRESSFUL filings and a hearing between now and the end of the month, I’ve had some personal business pop up unexpectedly which is going to call me out of town for a day or so in early February and I’ve got to prepare for that, and oh, yeah – we’re moving at the end of the month.  (Looks like we may have found a place.  Cross fingers that it works out.)

So between working all weekend, packing for our move, and regular chores and stuff, I didn’t get much reading done – bummer.  But I still have a few books to report.  Last Monday I finished up my second collection of Marilynne Robinson’s essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books.  As I mentioned in last week’s post, I found this one a bit easier to follow, which I’m hoping means that I’m getting smarter!  From there I did pretty much a complete 180 and picked up the fourth volume of Fables.  The story is getting more and more intriguing and I’m really enjoying it.  (I think I know who the Adversary is.)  Then I turned to the first installment in Terry Pratchett’s long-running Discworld series: The Color of Magic.  I liked it, but not as much as I was expecting to.  I found the world-building a bit difficult to follow, and while I enjoyed the funny bits, it just didn’t ring my bells the way I’d hoped it would.  But it was short, so I pushed through to the end and finished it up on Sunday night after a hard afternoon of working and packing.

Up next, it’s looking like a big graphic novel-y week.  I’ve got the first volume of Saga and the complete Boxers & Saints out from the library, as well as March: Book One, and I’m excited to dig into those.  Once they go back, I’ll be left with just one more book checked out from the library – a historical fiction novel, We That Are Left.  It’ll be weird to not have a teetering library stack, especially right before most of my books are about to go into storage for at least a few months.  I guess I’ll be leaning on the library even more than usual.

Coming up on the blog: Part I of my bookish 2015-in-review on Wednesday, and my goals and one word for 2016 on Friday.  Check back!

Have a great week, my friends!  What are you reading?

Please pardon the above wishful thinking.  I am writing this post as snow drives down outside the window – looks like we’re getting our first big lake effect storm of the year.  I suppose it was only a matter of time.  For some reason, I keep getting surprised by snow up here.  I think it’s the Virginian in me – back home, we were always getting these dire snow predictions (massive blizzard headed to the DC area! shield your children and your elderly!) and we’d all run out to the store and buy all the toilet paper we could find, and then nothing would happen.  But up here, when they predict snow they’re invariably right – yet I still find myself thinking “well, maybe it won’t materialize” – and then I’m wrong.  So you’ll all forgive me, I’m sure, for the Pamlico Sound pic.  I’m just trying to remember what it was like to be warm.

You’d think I would be warm, because I’ve been busy-busy-busy all weekend.  On Saturday we saw a potential rental house, hit Wegmans, and then I spent the afternoon juggling cleaning and baby care.  I was exhausted, because Nugget decided that 5:30 was a good time to get up for the day – and that’s after two night wakeups.  (Ten month sleep regression!  Yay!)  Sunday was a little less exhausting, because Nugget slept until 9:00 – what?! – and took a cuddly nap around noon.  I guess he was catching up on his rest.  I spent the day, again, juggling cleaning (trying to dig through the mountain of Christmas toys and take down the tree – it’s a process) and baby care.  We’re moving in less than three weeks, we still don’t know where to, and I haven’t packed a thing.  I can’t believe I’m not more stressed out about this, but for some reason I’m just not that worried.  It’ll all work out.

As for reading, I finished my first book of 2016 – The Hundred-Year House, by Rebecca Makkai – this week.  I’m not sure why it took me as long to read as it did.  I enjoyed it, although not quite as much as I’d expected to, and one plot line was annoyingly unfinished at the end.  But the format – sort of a reverse ghost story, where mysteries from the past were unraveled as the reader traveled deeper into the house’s history, leaving the “future” characters still in the dark – was intriguing, and the writing was good.  After The Hundred-Year House I turned to something a little more intellectual: another collection of Marilynne Robinson’s essays.  When I Was a Child I Read Books is outstanding!  I think I actually like it better than I liked The Givenness of Things, which I read last month; either the essays in here are a bit clearer, or I’m just getting accustomed to Robinson.  I actually hope it’s the latter, because if it is, then these books are making me smarter!  Hurray for getting smarter!  And – a bonus – When I Was a Child I Read Books will count as my first book towards the Book Riot 2016 Read Harder Challenge – more on that in a couple of weeks.  It’s due back to the library today, so hopefully I’ll be able to polish it off (I’m almost done) and get it in on time.

Next up, I’m not sure what I’ll read.  I have the first Discworld novel (I’ve been wanting to read some Terry Pratchett) checked out from the library, as well as We That Are Left, a new historical fiction release, and a stack of comics, and I have another book on the library holds shelf, too.  So likely one of those options – whatever looks good when I close the Robinson essays for the last time.

What are you reading this week?

Whoaaaaaa… it’s 2016?!  I mean, I know that it’s 2016, obviously, because I’ve been working on New Year’s posts for a couple of weeks now (you’ve already seen our year in review, and there are more posts coming – in fact, it’s probably going to take me most of January to get caught up on everything, if not into February).  But still, it seems like 2015 really went by in a flash – even more than they usually do – and now we’re staring down the barrel of the first work week of 2016.  I missed posting last week, because Christmas, but I actually hadn’t finished any new books over the course of the preceding week so I had nothing new to report anyway.

Rolling right along.  I wrapped up the last of my 2015 reading by finishing The Sword of Summer (the first in a new trilogy, focusing on the Norse gods, by Rick Riordan) and then reading the last few essays in Marilynne Robinson’s new collection, The Givenness of Things, in the same day.  Is it possible to have two more different books in the same sentence?  Riordan’s books are uproariously funny and fast-paced (although, as a matter of fact, they’re incredibly well-researched and deceptively smart) and Robinson’s essays on theology, history and philosophy are academic and cerebral.  Two very different reading experiences, indeed.

And now it’s onward.  I haven’t gotten much reading in since wrapping up the last two 2015 books several days ago.  I started Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred Year House and am enjoying it, but have been reading it slowly and choosing to spend more time in front of the TV than I usually do.  I gave Steve a Disney Infinity for Christmas and we’ve been playing our way through the Star Wars game that came with it – he’s an avid video gamer and I’m not, but every so often it’s fun to play together when he has a game that looks appealing.  (The last one was Super Mario Galaxy, many moons ago before children, so you can see how rare that is.)  I picked out the Disney Infinity because it looked like something that we might be able to enjoy together, and we are.  We’ve also been watching more television than usual – we’re a few weeks behind on Supergirl, thanks to November travels, and we’re trying to get caught up (I haven’t been able to stay spoiler-free, which bums me out) and we’ve also fallen down the rabbit hole that is The West Wing.  (I watched it back on first run but haven’t seen the entire series, and Steve had never seen it at all.  He’s really enjoying it, I’m having fun rediscovering my old favorite characters – Josh and Leo! – and we’re both loving all the shots of our home city, D.C.)  Last night started Downton Abbey, so I expect reading time to take even more of a hit until I find out who Lady Mary is going to marry.  (And please, Downton writers, some happiness for Edith?  I know the show is already wrapped and aired, but in case things end badly for her I’d like it if you could go back in time and fix that, please and thank you.)

Happy New Year!  What are you reading – and watching – this week?

December 21st – wow, we’re almost there.  I know I’m not the only one to feel that Christmas snuck up on me, because everyone else I’ve talked to recently has said the same thing.  I feel perpetually behind the eight ball this year.  I just got my Christmas cards out on Friday (so if you’re expecting one from me, you should be seeing it appear in your mailboxes soon) – a far cry from last year’s lifetime record of December 8th.  I’m still not done with my Christmas shopping, and I haven’t wrapped a thing.  And that’s with my decision to give myself a break and not drag out all of the decorations or force myself to bake cookies – even with taking it easy, so to speak, I’m still way behind.  I think that for me, it was a combination of a few factors: Thanksgiving being late (it was late, wasn’t it?) and being in Colorado until December 1st (usually we’d get our decorations up and Christmas photos taken, and cards ordered, on the weekend after Thanksgiving), being swamped at work, and having two kids to shop and wrap for instead of just one.  All that’s to say, I’m crazed.  And I really hope that things slow down over the course of this week, because I would like to, you know, savor and soak in sweet Nugget’s first Christmas.  If I can sit down long enough.

This past weekend was the rare weekend in which I did almost no reading.  Instead I did running (the Caroler 5K in East Aurora), Christmas shopping (checked off about half of my list, which is better than nothing), hosting (Zan and Paul came over for our annual Buffalo Bills elimination game viewing) and more elf-ing (making a special gift for one of the grandparents, who reads here and therefore shall remain nameless).  I read a little bit of The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson’s most recent book of essays, on the way to my 5K, but that’s actually all the reading I did.

Despite the lack of bookishness this weekend, it was a decently productive reading week overall.  I finished Sisters In Law, the new biography of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and their careers leading up to, and then on, the Supreme Court.  Definitely wouldn’t be a subject that interests everyone, but as a female lawyer it was my speed for sure.  It got me thinking about equality feminism as opposed to difference feminism, and where I feel the movement has fallen short (or maybe, just, still needs a bit of work).  Then I blew through the first volume of the new Black Widow in one sitting (didn’t entirely understand it, but that seems to be par for the course, because comics).  And then turned my attention to Robinson and have been making my way very slowly through her essays, reading a few a day (other than this weekend) for several days now.  They’re gorgeously written and absolutely brilliant, and they require time and attention and close reading, which are a bit beyond my capabilities most days lately.  But I’m loving the experience of digging in and thinking hard about the intersections of history, theology and current events.  (Not that I’m not intellectually challenged in my day job – but it’s nice to give serious thought to something other than law sometimes.  And it probably makes me a better lawyer, come to think of it.)

On the agenda for this week, I’ve got the rest of The Givenness of Things, and then I think I’m going to read some fiction – The Hundred Year House, by Rebecca Makkai, which looks great and which has been languishing on my TBR for long enough now.  And with Christmas looming on Friday, and all of the work and then fun that entails, I’m not going to commit to any more reading beyond that.

What are you reading this week, my friends?

The weeks keep rolling on by toward the end of the year and things continue to be crazy.  My work week settled down, thanks to a postponement on the big event that I had scheduled for the end of the week – whew!  Not that it means much of a reprieve – I’m still plugging away at a few projects that must be finished by the end of the year, and then there are all of the holiday tasks on the to-do list.  Christmas cards are stuffed and addressed and will go out in today’s mail, so that’s done – but that just means I have to really turn my attention to shopping now.  I’ve got all of Peanut’s gifts, but that’s about it – nothing for Steve, nothing for Nugget.  Must fix that soon.  (Thank goodness for Amazon Prime!)

Despite the craziness of this week, and everything still left on my to-do list, I did manage to get some reading done.  (This seems to be a theme, these days.  Week is crazy.  Kids, work, etc.  Still got some reading done, but never enough.)  I finished a comic, Batgirl, Vol. 1: The Batgirl of Burnside, and enjoyed it.  Abandoned another coming, ODY-C, Vol. 1: Off to Far Ithicaa, because it was just too weird for me.  (So disappointing: I was really excited about that one.  The Odyssey!  Gender-flipped!  In space!  But it was just too over-the-top.)  Then I devoted a few days to Michael Dirda’s collection of essays on books and the bookish life, Browsings.  I did finish it, but found it quite uneven.  Every so often there would be an essay – like Aurora, his moving call to action on gun control – that I really loved.  But most of them were dull, annoying or both.  It was a short collection, though, so I got through it.  And now I’m midway through Sisters In Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World, by Linda Hirshmann.  As a woman and a lawyer, I’ve benefitted and learned from both of their examples, and so I’m finding this engaging book completely fascinating.

On the reading agenda for this week: finish Sisters In Law, then tackle another library book.  I have a few that are due back on December 21st, and while I think I should be able to renew them, I’m still focusing on those.  I think I’ll pick up one of the two Marilynne Robinson essay collections I have out, or maybe the first volume of Black Widow.

Coming up on the blog: a nine month (!) update for Nugget on Wednesday, and a belated final update on the fall list on Friday.  Have a great week, my friends!

What are you reading today?

Well, my friends, ’tis the season of being completely frazzled and overwhelmed.  I really, really love Advent and Christmas and I always intend to take lots of time to soak it all in and really enjoy the season, and I end up running around like a crazy person.  It’s not just the holiday responsibilities – buying and wrapping gifts, addressing and mailing Christmas cards, not to mention the three office holiday parties I am attending – but somehow I always end up swamped at work, too.  You’d think that things would slow down in the office, with so many people on vacation, but it never seems to work that way.  (This happened in my last job too, so it’s not just my current place.)  I’d love to spend lots of time doing things like decorating gingerbread houses, taking my kids to Christmas farms, and dancing to the Laurie Berkner Christmas CD, and I’m still holding out hope for a little more time in the next couple of weeks.

Last week was a crazy one.  We were still in Colorado on Monday (oh, you guys, it’s so lovely there – expect lots of waxing poetic about the mountains when I get my vacation recaps together for you) and we flew back on Tuesday.  No reading happened while we were out of town, and FORGET ABOUT reading on the plane.  I spent the entire journey home working hard to keep Nugget happy so he didn’t disturb everyone on the plane.  (Nugget got lots of smiles and pats from the other passengers on our flights, and I got lots of compliments about what a well-behaved baby he was.  Mission accomplished.)  Then I was digging out from my time away, which didn’t leave much evening time for reading.  This week is going to be another doozy, as I’ve got multiple meetings, I’m giving a speech, and I am assisting a partner at a big event at the end of the week (and will be preparing for it all week).

That said, I did get some reading done.  Last week I was all about whatever was going to get me quick progress on my library stack – and that meant comics.  I read the third volume of Fables and the first volume of Gotham Academy, and enjoyed both, although I didn’t always feel as if I totally understood what was going on in Gotham Academy.  Then I turned my attention to Carry On, which had been languishing on my “currently reading” list – I brought it on vacation and squeezed in a few pages whenever I had the chance, but that turned out to not be all that often.  (I just wanted to hang out and talk to my sister-in-law, bicker fondly with my brother, and gawk at the view out of their big windows.)  But I finally finished Carry On over the weekend (thank you, lap nap!) and I enjoyed it, for the most part.  I did complain that it was as if I was tuning into the Harry Potter books with the seventh and final installment – there was clearly a lot of backstory that these characters had, and the reader wasn’t privy to it, which made it harder to get invested in their current story.  Still, it was cute, and since I liked Fangirl I enjoyed Carry On too.

Now I’ve moved on to Browsings, Michael Dirda’s collection of essays about books and reading for the Washington Post Book World (I love books! And books about books! And Washington!) and I’m enjoying it so far, although I’ve only read a couple of the essays.  I’m not sure how much reading time I will have this week (see above: meetings on meetings on meetings) but I’m holding out hope that I’ll at least be able to knock this one book out.

On the blog this week: four fun (and cheap!) ways to add some festive flair to your home on Wednesday, and an overdue recap of our October hiking project outing on Friday.  Stay tuned!

What are you reading this week, my friends?

Look!  It’s BB-8!  Check it out, you guys!  So, we’ve been having too much fun around here.  Last week included my husband’s birthday, and the kids and I gifted him a BB-8.  Peanut is craaaaaaaazy for it.  She keeps chasing it and shouting “BE MY FRIEND, BB-8!” and BB-8 is all “Unidentified human life form detected!  Unidentified human life form detected!”  We’re basically dying from laughter.  Which is good, because I’m so overwhelmed at work and at home that laughter is in pretty short supply otherwise.

Anyway, that’s my way of saying that I hope you’ll forgive me, but I barely have any books to tell you about this week.  It was a week of starting and stopping.  I started The Witches: Salem 1692, and then returned it to the library when I realized I would not have time to finish it and there was no way I would be able to renew it.  (I ordered a copy, because I decided I wanted it for my own.)  Then I started Sloane Crosley’s debut novel, The Clasp, and tossed it aside after 80 pages when the characters were annoying me too much to continue.  (I love Sloane Crosley’s essays, but this fiction was not doing it for me.)  Then I started My Brilliant Friend, the Elena Ferrante novel that started the Neapolitan series, and didn’t like that either.  (Everyone is constantly getting wailed on or hit in the head with rocks.  Why?)  On looking back at my Goodreads, it appears that the only book I finished this past week was Fables, Volume 2: Animal Farm.  (Now that, I liked.)

Current read: I’m finally working on Carry On, the new Rainbow Rowell novel about Simon Snow (the subject of Cath’s “fic” in Fangirl).  It’s fun and cute and I’m doing my best to squeeze it in whenever I can.  But with work and Thanksgiving prep, I don’t have much time left over for reading – and that’s okay.  I’m not slumping, just having a little more trouble fitting book time in.  I’m squeezing a few pages in here and there, whenever I can, and that will have to do until life settles down (maybe after the holidays).  At the moment I care more about getting done what I need to do, and spending time with my family.

What are you reading this Thanksgiving week?

This past weekend was the first weekend in awhile that we haven’t had a big home improvement task on our agenda.  We’ve done all the major projects that we wanted to do before putting our house on the market, and now we’re just keeping it in pristine condition in case of last minute showings – but the painting, sanding, staging, and major cleaning has slowed down for a bit.  That doesn’t mean that I got to read much this weekend, of course – because if I don’t have house work to do, it seems, work-work flares up.  I had to put in some time on the ol’ job this weekend, and although I didn’t finish everything I wanted to do, I did get at least one major task done.  That probably didn’t cut into my reading too much, actually – I worked on it on Saturday afternoon while Steve took Nugget to the grocery store and Peanut resisted her afternoon nap.  I really should have worked on Sunday, too, but Steve wasn’t feeling super great and I ended up on Nugget patrol all afternoon.  Fine with me – I love hanging out with Nugget – but I’m going to be a bit up against it this week.  I have a lot to do.

As far as reading is concerned, it was a slow-ish week.  I finished Fates and Furies, the new Lauren Groff novel, which was just as outstanding as the book tastemakers I follow promised it would be.  And then I picked up Maggie Thrash’s graphic memoir, Honor Girl, and read it in less than a day – it was really compelling and brought me right back to my own camp days.  (Although my camp – being a Girl Scout camp in the Adirondacks – was a lot more open-minded and much friendlier than Camp Bellwether.)  Then I started Sloane Crosley’s debut novel, The Clasp, but abandoned it after about 80 pages.  I really love her essays, but the book just wasn’t doing it for me.  I’ll return it to the library and who knows?  Maybe one day I’ll pick it up again and enjoy it better on a second attempt.  (Look at me abandoning books!)  Now I’m about 100 or so pages into The Witches: Salem 1692, and WOW is it ever good.  I don’t know what it is about the nonfiction that’s been published in 2015, but I feel like publishers are just killing it.  Seriously, in what year do we get new Erik Larson, new Sarah Vowell, and new Stacy Schiff?  It’s an embarrassment of riches, is what it is.

Up on the blog this week: a Nugget update on Wednesday (I’m thinking of making these posts private, or transferring them to a password-protected blog just for family and friends, but still writing them in the meantime so I figured I’d share) and our final summer vacation post on Friday.  It seemed silly to be recapping fall hiking before I’d finished telling you about our summer travels, so I’m going to do that.  I have some really cool posts coming up over the next couple of months, and I’m so excited to share with you guys.

What are you reading this week?

Just a quick check in this morning, friends.  It’s been a busy week – I was swamped at work and preparing to host family and friends for Nugget’s baptism this past weekend.  The baptism was yesterday and we had a wonderful day, and we still have Aunt Rebecca until tomorrow so you’ll pardon me for the quick post today – I’ve got to get back to having fun!

Because of the busy week at work and at home, I didn’t get too much reading done.  I finished Lafayette in the Somewhat United States (the new Sarah Vowell) which was hilarious and interesting.  I love her work.  And then I moved on to Lauren Groff’s new novel, Fates and Furies.  I’ve been hearing buzz about it since well before its publication day and it seems to be right on point.  What I hear is that the “Fates” section is really good in its own right, but then when you get to “Furies,” it all breaks open and becomes AMAZING.  I’m through the “Fates” section and just a few pages into “Furies” and it really is a wonderful book – I can’t wait to see all the mysteries unfold.  I’m reading a bit slower than I have been recently, just because we’ve been so busy in the evenings for the past several days.  So I’ll probably have to take a day or two of overdue fines – but I’ll get the book done, because it’s much too good to let go of and wait for it to come back to me.

After I finish Fates and Furies, I have another seven day book checked out from the library – The Clasp, Sloane Crosley’s first novel.  I loved her first book of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake (although I didn’t read her second book, and I should, because I’m sure I’d really enjoy that too).  After that I’m eyeing Carry On, the new Rainbow Rowell.  (And looking forward to the publishing industry slowing down so I can stop getting bombarded with all these great new releases!)

As for the blog this week, October books on Wednesday – sorry I flaked on y’all on Friday; Aunt Rebecca and the kids and I were just having too much fun.  And then a long-overdue recap of our September hike (also with Aunt Rebecca!) on Friday.  See you around the internet!  Oh, and –

What are you reading this week?