Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. After stupidly sunburning my arm during our drive home Monday, I biked to work the next morning in short sleeves. Almost immediately, my arm began to tingle. At lunch, I went out with a shawl.

2. Quarts of shelling peas left at the end of the market, and the farmer who cuts me a deal as a regular customer.

3. I saw my first fireflies of the season this week.

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

Right there you see the first two “teeth” of my new Hitchhiker shawl. I started it a month or so ago and had difficulty keeping track of which row I was on, but a tip on Ravelry about where to put a stitch marker to keep track of the stitches helped immensely, and I can now see it becoming a project I can work on while around others.

Hamilton (better known on social media as #Hamiltome) is filled with essays about the source material, actors, staff, and history of this weekend’s presumptive Tony Winner. It’s also contains an annotated libretto by Lin-Manuel Miranda with notes about where he was when he wrote particular songs, the raps and musicals that inspired certain lines, and where his version differs from the actual story (such as that there were a ton of Schuyler brothers or that the band of brothers introduced in the tavern during “My Shot” don’t actually meet that early in the story). I’m through the first act and am looking forward to reading (and listening) along into the final act in weeks to come.

I picked up Adam Shaughnessy’s The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable Fib over the weekend and finished it tonight. It’s a middle-grade novel about Pru, a sixth-grade “detective” (whose last investigation into the Sasquatch sighted in the school parking lot gets her detention from the teacher whose new fur coat had just been publicly maligned), and her new classmate ABE, who find themselves in the middle of a Norse-god-themed mystery. Adam was a classmate and fellow English major at my alma mater and I bought the book because I was curious and wanted to be supportive. I can now say he’s written an enjoyable book, with a bunch of passages I particularly liked, such as his opening paragraph:

The envelopes arrived during the uncertain hours of Thursday morning — those dark, early hours between tomorrow and yesterday, between not-quite-yet and nevermore. It’s a time when the day is still young, still taking shape, and still open to possibility.

I liked those lines immediately when I began the book on Saturday, but having just finished it, I can see they pretty much summarize the theme of the novel. If you like kid lit fantasy, like the Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl series, or mystery, like Harriet the Spy or the Enola Holmes series, I’d recommend you pick the book up.

I look forward to reading the second one, which will be out in the fall.

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.

There beautiful things from this first week of June:

1. My local library hosts a lunchtime bookish Twitter chat every week, and, over time, you get to recognize the regulars. Anne and I shared a similar taste in novels and we got to chatting; then it turned out that Sarah knows both of us and thought we’d get along outside of books. So the three of us got together Wednesday for supper and had a lovely evening talking about books, politics, travel, and food. It’s nice to meet kindred spirits.

2. The brakes on my car have been tetchy for a while, but several long drives in the next few weeks planned, I figured it was time to take care of them. It was so exciting to discover how responsive they were this morning, even if it meant Rudi and I jostled in our seats a bit.

3. We convince some friends who were going to be in the area of campus, but not actually attend any reunion activities, to join us for the Saturday picnic.

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