The highlight of this weekend was hanging out with my friend Julia. She wanted to check out the artisan pop-up booths at the new Wharf development and I was content to do that.
I biked down to Hains Point (a peninsular park that juts out into the Potomac where the Anacostia River empties into it), where there were empty bikeshare docks (as opposed to the more popular Wharf stops) and hopped aboard the new six-passenger jitney boat they run back and forth across the harbor. Obviously, if you can take a boat to your destination on a sunny summer Saturday, you should avail yourself of that option. Sadly, the ride was over in two minutes, but still…
I had a very delicious slice of blueberry lemon curd pie and a cup of tea at the hardware store/bike shop/cafe while we chatted and then Julia and I did a couple loops of the Wharf shops and restaurants and the fish market before we needed to catch the metro so she could get to her evening plans. It was a pleasant way to pass the afternoon.
The weekend also included time at the garden, the donation of more than 50 books to the Friends-of sale at my local branch library, a re-watch of the original Mamma Mia, a nap, an ice cream cone (rocky road), reading, knitting, sleeping in, the farmers market, and watching the sunset at the park with Rudi.
We’re getting closer to being caught up on book reviews. In April I read four books:
#Notyourprincess: Voices of Native American Women, by Lisa Charleyboy
This collection of poetry, artwork, quotes, and short prose comes from women of some of the Native American tribes of Canada and the United States. It offers a broad perspective on what it means to live at the intersection of female and indigenous at this moment in time and includes pieces from students, tribal leaders, scholars, artists, and professionals, demonstrating that no single voice can speak for everyone’s lived experiences.
Pages: 109. Library copy.
Obsidio, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
I can’t tell you how sad I am that The Illuminae Files trilogy is done. This was the first series in a while that I’ve found so compelling, with its innovative use of text and graphics in its doorstopper-size volumes. Set in space in the future, the first book is told as a dossier assembled for a corporate executive whose company invaded a distant planet that was running an illegal mining operation and the steps they took to cover their tracks. The second and third books continue to share information through ephemera, but instead of a single file, it’s presented as evidence in a court case, sharing the back story of why the company is on trial. Obsidio builds on the two earlier books, bringing us back to the teen protagonists we’ve all come to love — teen computer genius Kady, flight commander Ezra, strategist Hanna, criminal Nik, and hacker Ella — and introducing us to new ones — nurse Asha and soldier Rhys. And AIDAN, the copy of the copy of the once murderous AI who has saved everyone time and time again, is back, too, but with new, troubling analysis of the situation on the space ship. How long will Kady be able to keep him focused on their survival? And will Beitech, the company that sparked this intergalactic escapade, ever be brought to justice?
You’ll come for the space adventure, but stay for the kissing.
Pages: 615. Library copy.
Strange the Dreamer, by Laini Taylor
Lazlo Strange is an unusual orphan turned (briefly) monk turned librarian turned (eventually) adventurer, joining an assemblage of people from across the land to reclaim a city (it used to have a name that was stolen from everyone’s memories and thenceforth became known as Weep). The town has been made to suffer since gods parked their monstrous home (a ginormous floating rock with a palace on top of it) overhead, and the residents are looking to move it by any means necessary. Unfortunately, they weren’t aware the palace was still occupied by a handful of teen demigods, one of whom in particular, who vividly remembers and is scarred by an event that happened in their childhood, is NOT excited by the prospect of being evicted. Will Lazlo be able to build a bridge between the two communities?
The first of duology, this book was a weird reading experience for me. I didn’t find it particularly compelling when I was in the process of reading it, but when I wasn’t reading it, I routinely found my thoughts straying to would happen next and how the characters were doing. I’m guessing this means I didn’t love Taylor’s writing style (I didn’t particularly like Daughter of Smoke & Bone back when I read it either), but that I did love her characterization. Despite that, I look forward to seeing how the story is resolved this fall.
Pages: 544. Library copy.
Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
Jojo, who turns 13 in the first chapter of this book, and his little sister live with their maternal grandparents and, sometimes, their mother, Leonie, who has a drug problem. Jojo is trying to learn how to be a black man, emulating his beloved grandfather, while his white father is in jail — the same jail (Mississippi’s State Penitentiary, Parchman) where his grandfather was wrongfully imprisoned when he himself was a teenager. When they learn his father is about to be released, Leonie packs the two kids and a friend into the car and drives to pick him up, but they also pick up a ghost that’s been lingering around the prison grounds and takes him back to her parents’ house, as well.
The book starts off violently — they’re slaughtering a farm animal for food — and violence is never far away from the story, which seems to be a theme across Ward’s books. Whether it’s the tempestuous relationship between Leonie and Jojo’s father, the uncontrolled rage of a drug dealer’s son, the senseless death of Leonie’s brother back when they were young, the all-too-familiar reaction of a white police officer to a black family, his paternal grandfather’s racist reaction to their visit, or the untold ending to his maternal grandfather’s prison tenure, violence surrounds Jojo and his family. It is as inescapable as and intertwined with the ghosts that haunt them.
I wanted to like the book, which won the National Book Award last year and that seemed to draw some inspiration from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, more than I did. I hadn’t been thrilled with it all along, but the final pages felt rushed and like Ward took the let down of an easy way out that should have been better developed throughout a complex, layered novel.
Pages: 285. Library copy.
Total Pages: 1553
Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on into the stacks 2018: april.
My solo Friday evening plan — to watch Black Panther out in a local park — was rained out, so I pivoted, ordered a ridiculous amount of Thai takeout (including a very tasty dessert), and watched an episode of Miss Fisher instead.
Tomorrow will be busy. I need to gather and then run book donations to the library, then stop at the garden, where an emergency vine-pulling work day has been called. I’ll also harvest some tomatoes and some beans while I’m there. My friend Julia and I are finally getting together in the afternoon, after our plans were cancelled due the rain two weeks ago. Depending on how ambitious I feel, I may make my way over to Solid State Books on H St., N.E., after we part ways, since they’ve moved into their permanent spot since I stopped in back in the spring. But I did just buy books last weekend, so maybe I should wait some. We’ll see. There’s also some festival taking place at Malcolm X Park tomorrow afternoon and evening that I could swing by, as well. Or maybe I’ll just come home and knit. Or go watch Mamma Mia, although Rudi would be disappointed to miss that…
Sunday I’m hoping for more low-key: Sleep in. Farmers market. And since the heat is due back, possibly reading by the pool. Maybe reading in the pool. Maybe just a long nap at home. There’s a theater event over in Arlington that involves procuring discounted tickets for their upcoming season, but it’s all the way across the river, so the odds of my feeling motivated by then are pretty slim. Rudi should be home by suppertime, so that will be nice.
Other things I should do:
Wash laundry.
Bake.
Paint my nails.
Pay bills.
Trade in my summer reading voucher for baseball tickets.
Buy cat litter.
Send some cards.
Figure out why my fountain pen isn’t working.
Find my coffee table.
Dance around the living room.
How about you? What’s on your to-do list for the weekend?
If it’s Thursday, it’s time to reflect back on three beautiful things from the past week:
1. Late Monday evening’s downpour was followed by a brief clearing, just long enough to cause an enormous rainbow to fill the eastern sky. I have never seen a rainbow that big — so large, in fact, that I had to use the panorama setting on my phone to capture both ends of it (and that was without the outer double rainbow). It was so impressive, I made Rudi pull the car over so we could capture it.
3. San Francisco’s fog is world-renowned (also, it’s named Karl), so I wasn’t shocked to see the Golden Gate Bridge socked in on Friday. It was a little more surprising to watch disembodied wisps of it float through the trees in a park where I was walking the next afternoon, but it was also kind of cool.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
As you can see here, my Tour de France shawl is not done, even though the bike race is. Alas. It is now the length of the hypotenuse of this table, which is on the local coffee shop patio, where I went after volleyball this evening, because it was too nice to come inside.
I will not be knitting on this exclusively anymore, since my Augusts are supposed to be dedicated to finishing up socks that have been lingering on my needles. I have two pairs in particular that I’d like to see finished — my Azalea socks (which I think are a single toe away from being done) and my Posey socks. I think both are doable, plus possibly another pair or two. We’ll see.
My reading du jour is Andrew Shaffer’s Hope Never Dies, the Obama-Biden mystery that recently came out. Since the two of them were spotted at one of my favorite D.C. bakeries earlier this week, it seemed only fitting to start reading it immediately upon getting home from the library. It is an enjoyable potboiler, but no great work of literature. (I’m not clear on whether Shaffer himself has never met a metaphor he doesn’t want to use or whether he thinks that’s the case for Joe Biden, who narrates the story.) But unless something changes in the final hundred pages, I’d totally read a series based on these two.
I’m also still reading Audacity Jones to the Rescue, which is now taking place in D.C. in 1910 and making good use of local landmarks of the time, and The Wild Book. The Pink Carnation lingered about halfway done on my reading pile for a year, but I made some more progress when I took it with me to San Francisco.
I also made progress in American Street, which expired (again) from Overdrive before I could finish it. It looked like I was only a few chapters away from the end, but it doesn’t narratively feel close to being done, so who knows? Murder Games expires in three days, so I guess I’d better return to that one before the same thing happens there.
If you’d like to see what other people are reading or knitting, head over to As Kat Knits for the link-up.
