I spent the entire night tonight lying on the couch, eating tortilla chips, playing phone games, and listening to an audiobook.

It’s that last bit that saves it, right? I mean, sure, it would absolutely have been better if I’d been knitting or cleaning or doing laundry while the book was playing, but at least listening to an audiobook while doing nothing else productive makes it not a complete waste of a perfectly good evening.

And it wasn’t. I wrapped up that audiobook in less than 24 hours, which has to have been a record for me. But in a year where reading has been slower than ever before, tearing through a book — any book — is such a relief.

It means somewhere under all this exhaustion and stress and depression and frustration, my core me is still there, waiting just to be sucked into a story at the expense of everything else.

And if it’s through my phone, rather than on paper, that’s cool, too, because reading is reading. And the page turning will come back, too.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Reasons I Love Reading.” It reminded me of my grandmother who once (during an 11-day power outage) shared with me that she felt sorry for people who don’t read. “What do they do with all their time?” What indeed?

1. Language excites me. A well-turned phrase needs to be shared with whoever is nearby (whether they’re interested or not. Sorry, Rudi.) New words are like candy. And I love how manipulating the way words are put together conveys so much.
2. Waiting with a book is an opportunity to get a few pages in, rather than an opportunity for tedium or irritation.
3. I love being transported to a different time and place.
4. I am not wealthy enough or endowed with enough vacation time to go to all the places I want to visit … except with my library card.
5. A shared love of a story is a shortcut. My college roommate said she knew the first night we’d be friends because I put a copy of Anne of Green Gables on my desk. And seeing people reading the Harry Potter books in the first days after release helped me know there were lots of people who shared something important with me.
6. I can juggle different worlds. At a tense point in the fantasy story? Dive into that romance novel until you’re feeling ready to go on. Someone once remarked they didn’t understand how I could read multiple books at once. “Don’t you get them mixed up?” I replied that I was perfectly capable of not confusing the details of multiple friends and this wasn’t especially different.
7. Books can fill in for friends (for a little while) when you’re feeling lonely and out of your element. When we moved to D.C., we brought a carload of stuff with us at a time. I had a box of books I insisted had to come with me first off.
8. Your books tell me about you. The first thing I do on going to someone’s home for the first time is to look at their bookshelves.
9. It’s the best way to learn things! I mean, sure YouTube is absolutely faster if I want to learn how to knit an i-cord. But if I want to learn the history of knitting or why microaggressions are so virulent? I’m turning to a book.
10. Sometimes, a magical book will make you feel seen in a way that nothing else does.

Why do you love to read?

Oh, and while I have you bookish people here: Are there spoilers to Six of Crows if I start reading it before I finish watching season one of Shadow and Bone on Netflix? I started listening to it last year and quickly realized it would be a book I’d enjoy more in print.

All that remains of my long weekend to-do list is to drink strawberry daiquiris, bake a pie, and go swimming, since the barbecue was canceled.

I’m thinking I will also sleep in, start a new print book, and knit some more (I’m about to start the second of eight mosaic sections), as well.

That feels like a manageable Monday, don’t you think?

I hope you’re having a great weekend so far and are enjoying just hanging around.

Have a great Fourth of July!

It’s a long weekend, and I’m thinking this is what I might do with it, at least partially:

• Spend lots of time outside. Eighties and sunny in D.C. in July is a gift.
• Work in the garden. Lots of rain=lots of weeds. Plus, it may be time to pull out the peas and most of the spring greens.
• Knit on my shawl.
• Visit the library. I’m thinking while I’m there, I should print out the pattern for my shawl so I can stop being tethered to a device while working on it.
• Drink strawberry daiquiris.
• Bake a cherry pie (Billy boy, Billy boy).
• Go down to the Lincoln Memorial to watch the fireworks. Last year, some blowhard was making a speech down there and we boycotted the event altogether.
• Swim. Monday looks ideal for spending the better part of it lounging in the water.
• Chat with friends. It’s our monthly video chat with the friends who’ve all moved away.
• Go to a birthday party. (Maybe. It’s for one of Rudi’s friends, and that means strangers and small talk. I might just send him without me — a true return to pre-pandemic socializing.)
• Watch sports. This is always a great weekend for that, with Tour de France bike riding, Wimbledon tennis, and baseball.
• Catch up on sleep.

What’s on your to-do list for the weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I can tell it has poured by the rivers of water running between the escalators at the foot of my metro stop’s exit, but the storm was nearly entirely contained to the amount of time it took to ride back across town.

2. The attendants working the beer stand by where Sarah and I are watching the baseball game (our seats were in the full sun) hand us each a free pretzel as they’re shutting down after the seventh inning stretch.

3. D.C. has long hosted a number of outdoor film series, but they’ve been a little slow coming back from the pandemic. The Building Museum has taken over hosting the one dedicated to movies containing martial arts movies, so we head over to watch Solo. That’s when we find out that the team that hosts it also invites a local dj collective rescoring the film with hip hop songs. It’s a fun interpretation, even if I need the songs to be as obvious as “The Theme from Shaft” playing when Lando Calrissian first appears on the screen.

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