We’re coming up on a three-day weekend and I am ready for it. Here are three beautiful things from the past seven days:

1. A girl in a cloche gets a piggyback ride from a man in a loosely looped scarf.

2. A belated Christmas note elicits a chatty card from an elderly former neighbor.

3. A mom about my age helps her small daughter with mittens. From across the street a large, fuzzy Irish Wolfhound (or a similar dog) stands on his hind legs, drapes his front ones over the front gate, and watches with a smile on his face. I imagine if I hadn’t happened by, he would have asked the woman how her week had been.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

I know I haven’t finished telling you about the books I read in 2009, but I’ve started joining reading challenges for 2010. Some are very specific, while others are more free-form. The Winter Words Reading Challenge falls into the latter category.

The idea behind it:

1. Decide on the number of books (between 3 and 9) you’d like to read during the winter season.
2. See what winter word corresponds to your choice on the challenge post.
3. Assign books to match your selected word:

The word you pick above is an acronym & the books that you read during this challenge will have to coordinate with the letters in the acronym. You can use either of the following ways to select your books: (1) A word in the title of your books must start with a letter from your chosen word. or… (2) The author’s first or last name has to begin with 1 of the letters in your acronym. “

I have faith that I’ll get nine books read before the start of spring on March 19, so my word is “snowflake.” Here’s what I think I’ll read to correspond:

S — Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco Stork
N — The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker
O — Astrid & Veronika, Linda Olsson
W — When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead*
F — Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde
L — The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
A — Austenland, Shannon Hale
K — The Help, Kathryn Stockett
E — The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Since the challenge doesn’t forbid it, I do reserve the right to substitute for books that I can’t get from the library or that fail to keep my interest.

*Given that the challenge began on Dec. 21, I’m counting this novel I read last week toward my nine novels.