So, here we go again.  Monday.  I can’t lie to you guys – I’m not sure I’ve ever started a week this tired.  (Well, the newborn days, but laying them aside for a minute.)  Not only was this weekend Halloween, and Daylight Savings Time (fall back, yeah, yeah, listen – when you’re parents, any time change is cause for much cringing) but we had a very busy weekend of house projects.  We spent all of Saturday and all of Sunday hanging pictures, painting, cleaning and updating fixtures.  (And that’s on top of the usual grocery shopping, cleaning and meal prep work, and I had to do some work-work – like, for my job – on Sunday night.)  I feel like this has become a theme lately: not much reading, because SO! MUCH! home improvement, and I’m sure some of my friends are noticing that house projects have been taking up a lot of my attention lately.  I’m completely transparent and apparently awful at hiding things (some of you even guessed I was pregnant, which I thought I was disguising really well) so I don’t know, you may all know this already, but the story is: we are putting our house on the market, and the flurry of home projects has been for the purpose of updating a number of cosmetic things before we go live.  I’m not going to get into the why of all this – at least, not yet – so let’s just leave it at this: over the past few months, we have increasingly come to the realization that our current living situation does not fit with our goals or our family priorities.  So we’re taking steps to change that, and this is the first step.  As for where we’re moving, the answer is that I can’t give you an answer, because we don’t know.  Hopefully to an awesome school district, in the long term.  In the short term, we’re going to go back to renting for awhile, so we can regroup and figure things out.

So there you go – the reason why there’s been a lot of hammering and painting and not a lot of reading over the past few weeks.  As for what reading there has been: I finished Sorcerer to the Crown (and loved it!), and then read David Mitchell’s new, slim, creeeeeeeepy haunted house story, Slade House.  (I preordered it, because I knew if I waited for it at the library I wouldn’t have it in time for Halloween.)  Then I finally finished the graphic novel version of The Babysitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea, which has been sitting on my nightstand for, I think, more than a month.  It was cute but I’m not sure I’m going to get any more of them.  Now I’m reading a book to which I’ve been looking forward for months and months: the new Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.  (!!!!!)  It’s full of such gems as a sentence I tweeted: “Lafayette’s concerns about finally taking his first crack at combat basically boiled down to Danger! Yippee!”  As I am wont to do with Sarah Vowell books, I am annoying the bejeezes out of my husband by reading silly facts and hilarious sentences out loud while he tries to watch sports.

I’ve finally got my currently-reading list down to where I like it: just the one book.  So I’m all Sarah Vowell until I finish (hopefully today).  Next on deck will probably be the new Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies, which I hear is outstanding, and which I will be picking up from library holds today.  After that, I’ve got my eye on Carry On, the Simon Snow novel that Cath wrote her “fic” about in Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl – can’t wait!  Looks like a good reading week, provided I have time in between all the work and house projects and cleaning.  Life is crazy right now and not going to settle down for awhile.  Good thing I have good books to get me through.

On the blog this week: a Readers Imbibing Peril wrap-up on Wednesday, and October books on Friday.  A bookish week around these parts!  Check back, and as always…

What are you reading this week?

Monday again, and the start of fall.  Last week was pretty rough.  Nothing I can or want to get into, but yeah – it was stressful.  Lots of running around, lots of talk about grown-up things, not lots of reading.  I didn’t get in one lunchtime reading session last week – I was either running up to the daycare to feed Nugget, or I had lunch meetings, or I was working through lunch to stay on top of my workload.  I’m remembering how it was after going back to work when I had Peanut; this is about the time the novelty wears off and I start feeling beat down by it all.  It’s all kind of too much.

Anyway – reading last week.  Even though I missed out on lunchtime reading (and probably won’t be doing much lunch reading until I stop going to the daycare to feed Nugget – so that’s some months away) I still got in a bit of reading in the evenings.  I finished Secrets of the Baby Whisperer and was kind of underwhelmed.  The author made me feel like a terrible mother, and convinced me that I probably need to cool it on all the parenting books I’ve been reading lately.  More to the point, I mentioned one of the Baby Whisperer’s theories to Nugget’s pediatrician and he was pretty skeptical.  But it was a quick read.  The only other book I managed to finish this week was a comic: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 1.  It was snappy and funny and just what the doctor ordered.

Currently reading: The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton, for our #FallingForEdith readalong.  I’m about half way through, and…  Poor Ralph Marvell!  I’m rooting for him to kick Undine to the curb and take up with Clare.  Look for my final thoughts on it next Wednesday…  And reminder, if you have finished the book and want your thoughts included in a roundup post, drop me a comment on the master post with a link to your review.  The roundup post is going live first thing in the morning on October 2, so I’ll need all links and writeups by the evening of October 1, or they won’t make it into the roundup.  (If you don’t have a blog and you’d like me to add your comments to the roundup, send me an email.)

And speaking of current reads, this is noteworthy (for me, anyway): inspired by my friend Katie’s wise words in this post, I actually abandoned a book this week.  I’d started Bright Lines after seeing all the buzz about it on the web, but it just wasn’t speaking to me, so I put it down after about 60 pages, and it’s headed back to the library.  It might be a case of right book, wrong time – I think I’d like it better if I picked it up with my head in a different place – but for now it’s not meant to be.  Look at me abandoning a book!  Growth, that’s what that is.

On deck for this week, in addition to (hopefully) the rest of The Custom of the Country, is the new Salman Rushdie novel, and maybe another comic or two.  We’ll see.  And on the blog, more summer adventures on Wednesday and Friday – check back,

Hope you all have a good week, my friends.  What are you reading?

Happy new week, y’all!  Sorry this post is a bit late this morning – I just got home from Peanut’s three year well-child checkup and now I’m checking in here quickly before I get ready to head to WORK(!)… Gulp.  I’m not officially back from maternity leave, but I’m going in for a couple of hours this afternoon to help on a discrete project for which I have a lot of institutional knowledge.  I’m glad that I’ll be able to help out, and it should be a good test run for tearing myself away from Nugget, which I’m already dreading.

This was a surprisingly productive… and just surprising… reading week for me.  The surprisingly productive part: despite all the hoopla that goes with hosting out of town family and throwing a three-year-old birthday pool party, both of which I did this week, I also managed to finish two books: Breakfast with Buddha and Love and Freindship (Jane Austen’s juvenilia, which I read for Austen in August – thoughts on that to come on Friday).  Breakfast with Buddha was good, but I’m not sure it was quite compelling enough for me to seek out the subsequent novels the author has written featuring the same characters.  We’ll see – I have a long TBR list and it’s getting longer by the day.  Love and Freindship was a lot of fun, so stay tuned for a post about my Austen in August reading.  Now I’ve turned my attention to another Austen in August reading project – Jane Austen’s England, by Roy and Lesley Adkins.  I’d been wanting to read this history book for awhile, and (without knowing that I was interested in the book – total serendipity, or they just know me really well) my in-laws gifted me a copy.  Thanks, family!  So I’m into that now.  I finished the first chapter – on marriage, in which I learned some neat and surprising facts – and am now into the chapter on pregnancy and childbirth in Jane Austen’s time and HOLY CATS.  I’m glad I live in 2015.  And that I’m done having babies.  My plan is to try to be done with Jane Austen’s England in time to tell you all about it in my Austen in August post, and then I’ll be moving on to The Martian (which I will not have to wrestle away from Steve, as he’s finished – and loved – it).

So, that’s the surprisingly productive – lots of reading and finishing stuff, despite having a full social calendar this week.  And for the surprising part?  Well, you’ll never guess where I went this week.  No, really, you’ll never guess, so I’m just going to tell you.  I went to… wait for it… THE COMICS SHOP.  Yeah, so remember how I said that comics just didn’t really hold any appeal for me?  Well, I kept hearing about Lumberjanes and the premise did sound pretty cool.  (Kids at a summer camp for hardcore lady-types solving anagrams and wailing on monsters sound good to you too?)  Well, after about the umpteenth time that I heard how great Lumberjanes was, I finally decided that the only way to really know if I’d like it was to go look at it.  So one afternoon last week I loaded Nugget in the car and we drove over to Queen City Books to take a peek.  There’s a whole post coming about this – in January, because I sat down and planned out my posts and I have the rest of the year pretty much covered, crazy, right? – but long story short, I left with a copy of Lumberjanes.  And I read it, and I loved it.  The other material I’d hoped to get from the comics shop was what’s pictured above – bound volumes of several Jane Austen novels in comic form.  (This is something that Marvel did about five years ago, give or take.  I didn’t know exactly how comics shops worked, so I thought there was a chance Queen City Books may have them.  They didn’t, and they encouraged me to buy them online, so I got them from Amazon.)  I just thought that the idea of turning Jane Austen’s work into comic books was so different and neat and weird that I had to see what it was about – and it turns out, it’s really, really fun.  I’ve read the comic version of Pride and Prejudice, and it was just so different from what I usually read.  (More to come on the Austen comics, again, on Friday.)  I don’t know that I’m going to become a hardcore comics reader, but I’m definitely open to reading in different formats, so I’ve been looking at some other graphic novels, and I think I’m going to dig into the comic version of Northanger Abbey next – it does seem really well suited to being a comic book – at least while I wait for the next trade paperback issue of Lumberjanes to come out in October.  Anyway, expect a post on this in a few months, and hopefully I’ll have more cool stuff to report then.

Wow, so much for a quick check-in, huh?  So, how about you – what are you reading this week?

Monday again.  They just keep coming around, don’t they?  I had a super active weekend – on Saturday I ran the Finn McCool 4-Mile Odyssey, an obstacle race in Buffalo.  I fell in Cazenovia Creek, went down three slip ‘n slides, and rolled around in a mud pit, and it was awesome.  And then on Sunday, Steve and I joined our friends Zan and Paul for a hike to the Eternal Flame, which I’ve heard is Buffalo’s quintessential must-do hike.  It was a crazy fun weekend, although I am now running on fumes because I do not have the sleep reserves to support all this activity.  But it didn’t leave much time for reading.

In fact, reading pace was slow all week due to the continued sleep woes we are currently experiencing in our house.  I’m not going to spend an entire paragraph complaining about how little I am sleeping, because you all know already.  So I don’t need to explain why I am such a slow reader lately.  What I did manage: I finished up Minimalist Parenting, which I told you last Monday was a lot of common sense, but a nice vote of confidence.  I still feel that way.  I don’t know that it added anything to the discussion, but it did make me feel better about Steve’s and my ongoing attempts to right-size our life and responsibilities.  Then I picked up Book Scavenger, a light and fun middle grade adventure.  Again, nothing earth-shattering, but about all my brain could handle.

Finally, even though I still don’t have much mental capacity, I turned back to Love and Freindship – Jane Austen’s juvenilia, which I am reading for Austen in August.  Teenaged Jane can’t spell, half her characters are “dead drunk” a good portion of the time, and every single person in every single story is a despicable, disgusting excuse for a human being.  I love it.  I have been quite literally wiping away tears of laughter from the awesome ridiculousness of it all.

Reading plan for the week is to finish up Love and Freindship and then, most likely pick up Breakfast with Buddha from my library stack.  I also have The Martian checked out, but in order to read that one I am going to have to pry it away from Steve.  So I think I’ll let him finish it rather than starting any fights about it.  Unless he decides to be poky, in which all bets are off.

How was your weekend?  What are you reading this week?

Busted – that was the week before last, not this past week.  If only.  This week was kind of a doozy.  I mentioned a few posts back that Peanut has been experiencing a sleep regression.  To keep it real, I have to admit it’s kind of kicking our butts.  I’m hoping that we will turn a corner soon (last time we had to sleep train Peanut – a few months ago – it was a relatively quick, albeit painful, process – crossing my fingers that this time will be just as quick, since so far it’s actually more painful).  As a result I’ve been lucky to squeak out four hours of sleep in a night, and those are never continuous.  I’ve had several nights of less than three.  I’ve always been someone who needs a lot of sleep, and while I know that the early parenting years often mean a lot of lost sleep, and that it’s temporary, man does it hurt right now.  I’ve been having a bit of a pity party about a lot of things, and the lack of sleep is really feeding into that.

Since sleep was minimal this week, reading was minimal too.  I’ve tried stapling my eyelids open so I can get some pages done, but my speed is much slower when I’m severely sleep deprived.  (Imagine that!)  I did manage to finish Crossing to Safety last week – my first Wallace Stegner; what took me so long? – and I loved it.  It was a quiet, ponderous, slow-moving novel, more focused on characters than events, and yet surprisingly dramatic.  It was wonderful, and now I want to read all of Stegner’s other works.  I’m hoping to pick up Angle of Repose next, and soon.

Crossing to Safety was the only book I managed to finish last week, although I’m close to checking off Minimalist Parenting – just about 60 pages left.  It’s all pretty common sense, but a nice vote of confidence in doing things your way, which we could all use.  I started Love and Freindship for Austen In August, but haven’t made much progress, as I am lacking the brain power required (thanks, toddler bedtime battles!).  Hoping for a better week of sleep next week, and more Love and Freindship as a result.  And in the spirit of taking it easy on myself while this sleep deprivation lasts, I think my next book will be a young adult offering – Book Scavenger – from my library stack.  (Which is finally looking pretty well under control, hurray!)

On the blog this week: a Nugget update on Wednesday and a fun relationship post on Friday.  Check back!

Hope you’re all getting more sleep than I am, my friends!  What are you reading?

Just ducking in for a quick hello.  We’ve had a great weekend hanging out with some old friends, and I’m still coming down from the high.  More to come on this, but we’ve packed in plenty of summer fun that I can’t wait to share.

I’ve gotten a surprising amount of reading done for such a busy weekend.  I’m close to finishing up Doomsday Book, the first in the Oxford Time Travel series.  (Time travel books are one of my weaknesses, and this was a fun addition to my list.)  On Saturday I started reading Brown Girl Dreaming – soooooooo beautiful – and when that’s done I’ll be on to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, about which I’ve been curious for awhile.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty of thoughts about it, so look for those to come in a future post.  If I have time this week, I’m also hoping to dig into Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety – fingers crossed – and Book Scavengers, which looks like a blast.

Coming up on the blog this week I have recaps from two of our summer adventures.  We’ve been having so much fun this month and I can’t wait to share more about what we’ve been up to!

Hope y’all had a good weekend – what are you reading?

Yawwwwwwwwwn.  I’m stumbling out of the holiday weekend haze and am kind of in disbelief that a new week is upon us – anyone else with a bit of a holiday hangover?  We had a good one; it was the perfect mix of on-the-go family fun and relaxation (thanks to Nugget’s need for daily lap naps, about which I am not complaining at all).  More about our activities on Wednesday, but for now, do you see the ridiculousness stacked up there on my foyer table?

The library stack has taken on a life of its own.  I mean, really.  I swear that when I was walking by it the other night I heard it say “FEED ME, SEYMOUR.”  Never mind that my name isn’t Seymour.  I’m officially scared of it.  Although it is, thankfully, a couple of books shorter now than it was when I snapped this picture.  On Thursday afternoon I finished up Orchard House, which I liked but didn’t love.  (The garden descriptions were luscious, and I enjoyed reading about life in Seattle, but I found the author a bit petulant at times.  From the Goodreads reviews, it seems I’m the only one who felt that way.  But who picks a fight with a 73-year-old woman over how to properly hang toilet paper?  Come on!  In 73 years, she hasn’t earned the right to hang the toilet paper however she darn well pleases?  SMH.)  Then on Friday and Saturday, I read The Book of Speculation, which again, I liked but didn’t love.  I’ve moved on to The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, which I can tell is going to be fascinating but slow going.  I’m trying to figure out whether it should be a priority or whether I’ll be able to renew it.  If I think I can renew it I may move on to American Ghost, which I believe has a waiting list.

How was your weekend?  Did you celebrate the Fourth of July?  Get any good reading done?