Things were warmer in D.C. this week, which, I’m not going to lie, makes it easier to find things beautiful. Here are three such moments:

1. It has been the chilliest winter in years, which means that I utterly misled people about playing outdoor volleyball through the colder months. But last Sunday tickled 50 degrees and I summoned folks to the Mall for the first time since mid-November. (The beach venue at the Paris Olympics has nothing on where I get to play…)

2. Rudi mentioned on my birthday that his social media was showing the year’s first snowdrops. The place where I’ve seen them most often in the past has kept their gates locked in recent years, so I had to wait an extra week until someplace more well trafficked popped.

3. It was so warm earlier on Wednesday that I headed up to the park to read and write some correspondence before meeting my friend Chris for a drink and a catch up. By the Spanish Steps, the daffodil heads were visible. Later than most years, but coming. And soon. (As an aside, cherry blossom peak bloom has been predicted for a month from today through the end of March. Squee!)

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately? Oh! And before I forget, there is a Great Planetary Alignment this evening right after sunset (in D.C. Peak time varies based on your location. Check the link). Head someplace with a clear view to the west just after sunset to see all the planets of our solar system arrayed on the same plane. (A few will require access to binoculars or a telescope to view, but the rest should be visible with the naked eye.)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl focuses on books set in another time. Here are some of my favorites, all of which are set in the 20th century:

1. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (fiction, WWII)
2. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (fiction, 1985 (I keep trying to say this is set in the 1950s, because this was most certainly not my experience of the mid-’80s))
3. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (novel in verse, 1920s Dust Bowl)
4. Maus: A Survivor’s History by Art Spiegelman (graphic nonfiction, WWII)
5. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (fiction, 1940s)
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (fiction, early 20th century)
7. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (graphic novel, 1931)
8. Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Best Year in Baseball by Cait Murphy (nonfiction, 1908)
9. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (fiction, 1941)
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (fiction, 1940s and ’50s)

How about you? What are some of your favorite reads set in other times?

Three beautiful, birthdayish things from my past week:

1. I spent five hours at the pool hall with friends last Friday. We ate pizza and cupcakes and had many, many games of pool, with loud cheering and high fives for successful shots and close failures.

2. Texts, calls, gifts, and cards poured in through the weekend, from a container of muffins left on the stairs to our apartment to several boxes that the cats were delighted to claim as their own. (I kept the contents.)

3. On the morning of my birthday, Rudi and I went out for a doughnut breakfast and then headed to the zoo to meet the new pandas, who made their public debut late last month. It was a bluebird day, if a bit chilly, so the outdoor animals were largely recharging in the sun. It’s been a couple years since I’ve been to the zoo, which I always enjoy, particularly when it’s less crowded.

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

One of the things I promised myself I’d do last year was to share the books I liked best in 2023, none of which I reviewed here. Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites me to get my act together and do a down-and-dirty update of this draft and finally hit publish:

1. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
   Two generations of Dominican-American women with magical gifts (ranging from the ability to tell if someone is lying to possessing an “alpha vagina”) find their lives upended when Flor, whose gift is knowing when someone will die, announces she’s throwing herself a living wake. Organized as personal narratives/interviews told to Flor’s daughter, an anthropologist, the chapters mostly alternate through all four senior sisters and the two daughters/cousins. Each one looks back at how her life — both in New York and in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic — has been shaped by her gift and her family and how these matrilineal powers cause them to walk through the (male-dominated) world. If you like family sagas or immigrant stories and magical realism, I highly recommend Acevedo’s first novel for adults.
    

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Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. D.C. got about six inches of snow on Tuesday, most of which has already melted, which is the best kind of storm around here. The kids got a day off, everything got to look pretty, and then it all warmed up and went away.

2. I needed three of us to show up for volleyball in the storm on Tuesday night in order not to forfeit, and I got four. On my walk to the game, I got to see college kids sledding and playing football in the snow, and two field mice raced in front of me, trying to get the first footprints along the virgin sidewalk canvas. And Jess gave me a ride back to the metro, which meant I didn’t have to catch the last train home. (We did not win, but I can’t have everything.)

3. Rudi and I picked up pizza and cannoli as a pre-birthday celebration tonight and then curled up with the cats to watch sitcoms, including three old Valentine’s Day episodes. It was a gentle way to usher out the end of my 50th birthday year, particularly since Rudi will be out of town for my actual birthday. (Never fear; friends and I are heading out for the night.)

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

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to come up with our own love-related topic for this week. I thought I’d share the top ten romantic books I have either out from or on hold at the library:

1. Love in Winter Wonderland by Abiola Bello
2. A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy & Sienna Simone
3. The Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth
4. Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hogle
5. A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure by Angela Bell
6. The Second You’re Single by Cara Tanamachi
7. Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
8. The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
9. Empire of the Shadows by Jacquelyn Benson
10. Back After This by Linda Holmes

The first two are Christmas-themed romances that are still lingering into 2025, which is more an indictment of my scattered reading habits thus far this year than of the books themselves.

After I’ve crossed those two off my in-progress list, has anyone read anything from the list they’d recommend I start with?