Space Station Mir

I finished two books this week...but in two different months! I finished The Bookshop of Yesterdays before Oct. 1, and spent the rest of the week reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, which definitely has me on the Fredrik Backman train, even though I just found out he's only a few years older than me, which is intimidating considering the number of books he's had published. Then again, I should have suspected with all the Harry Potter and X-Men references in these books.  Finished Reading  The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman Watching I finally finished watching all of "The West Wing," for the first time. So astonishingly naive in 2020 hindsight, but I hope we move toward that (still flawed) picture of who we wished we were! I'm currently watching "The  Good Place," season 4.  I'm so glad "Sister, Sister" is on Netflix now. Such a comforting...

Since I don't commute anymore, my life has been largely sans audiobooks for the past seven months. Really, before that, since I switched jobs to be much closer to home. I got into audiobooks when I had a long, at least 45-minute commute, each way (sometimes one, or on a couple memorable occasions, two hours, if I was unlucky). I'd never been much into them before, but I loved them for driving. Sometimes, I'd even stay in the car for a few minutes after I got home. But I don't read audiobooks much at home. I've tried a few over the past several months, usually because that's all I could get from the library digitally when there were long waits for ebooks, before my library started offering contactless pickup. Even now, I prefer borrowing ebooks when I can. But with all the audiobooks I tried, because I needed to get the read in before a book club meeting, I would keep following asleep. And missing things. And having a hell of a time finding out where I was suppos...

This week, I finally finished a couple of books I'd been reading for a while, and finally watched something other than The West Wing!  Finished Reading A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler (short story)-glad she finally made the bestseller list but seriously can't believe she hadn't already/while she was still alive.  Real Simple magazine-I'm loving this new subscription. it's the oerfect antidote to the world right now, focusing on what we can control. Hadassah magazine--reflections on getting ready for Rosh Hashanah and lots of book recs! Watched Love, Guaranteed Netflix movie--This one was cute though unrealistic (suing a dating site). <3 Damon Wayans Jr.  Seasons 5 and half season 6 of The West Wing Other Things Socially distanced walks with friends are fun, and I'm taking advantage while the weather is nice. I had a great walk with a friend yester...

 Reading This Week (and Last) Last week, I finished The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus. My husband bought me it for my birthday since it was on my summer TBR and I'm glad he did! Audre, a girl from Trinidad, is sent to live with her father in Michigan after her mother catches her en flagrante with another girl from their church. Mabel, from Minneapolis, where Audre lands, becomes her lifeline in her new American world. The story is told from the viewpoint of both girls. Audre speaks in Trinidadian English Creole and Mabel in Black English. Honestly, it's the first book I've ever read written entirely in these dialects, and I love it. As a "standard American English" speaker (realizing that the standard part of that is a myth; it's just another dialect), it was easy to understand for the most part, but I did have fun looking up some words I either didn't know or that were used in an unfamiliar way. It was altogether a captivating, t...

I've decided to try making my weekly wrap-up into a Sunday Salon so I can link up with others doing Sunday Salon posts.  We'll see how this goes! Reading This Week I finished Middlemarch!  I've  been reading this one almost since we started staying home in mid-March. I loved it. I'd never read Eliot before, but wow! She's such a talented, insightful writer, she just gets human nature and relationships and she's so well-read--the metaphors, the similes, the allusions...the book is a masterclass. And I love, love, love the ending. She wraps it up for the characters to give a sense of closure but it's also satisfyingly realistic. No perfect HEAs here. I'm sure I'll be talking about this more! I just started reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell for one of my book clubs. If you haven't heard of it, it's about the science behind how we make snap judgments and how we can use that to our advantage. Not a book I would have picked, but interestin...

What I'm Reading Still reading Middlemarch by George Eliot, three quarters of the way through and still loving her metaphors and turns of phrase.  Reread You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero--it's very woo-woo, and I don't agree with everything, but it's definitely an inspirational, feel-good read.  Reread Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich--still rereading my poetry collection--I love some of these and don't get others, but I noticed it was blurbed by some of my favorites like Margaret Atwood and Marge Piercy, very fierce '70s feminism.  What I Watched This Week 1. Queer Eye for the feels! I'm doling out the fifth season to make it last as long as possible. I just love the happiness and "emotional intelligence," as my friend put it. And Karamo's shirts. 2. When this whole pandemic began, I started binging Charmed, which I had never watched before, and now I'm on the last (ninth) season. I watch this when I'm in the moo...

Since I've enjoyed doing monthly wrap-ups for a couple of years now , and I have more free time this summer, I'm going to try out weekly wrap-ups. The format may change or I may stop if they get too repetitive. Let me know what you think! What I'm Reading This Week I'm still reading Middlemarch by George Eliot. I'm a little more than halfway through. It's been a while since I read a nineteenth century novel, so it's a bit slow-going, but I'm loving it! It's got the omniscient, occasionally snarky narrator that I love from classic nineteenth century novels. While most of her characters are landed gentry like in Jane Austen novels, she's also got some characters in more precarious or lower class financial situations (ugh, trade!). There's also some discussion of agricultural labor reform that reminds me of Elizabeth Gaskell's focus on industrial labor reform, though at least so far, it's not as central. What I love the most abo...