After a slow start, I ended up finishing seven books during March, several of which I enjoyed quite a bit:

A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure by Angela Bell

Not going to lie: If I’d known this was going to be Christian lit (albeit one that believes in women’s rights and science), I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. If you can put up with some mostly mild proselytizing with your steampunk, it’s worth reading this international scavenger hunt that Clara’s beloved inventor grandfather sets up for his uptight granddaughter, his footloose protege, and (in her role as chaperone) his animal-loving daughter (they’re traveling with a zoo by the end of the book). After realizing his granddaughter has become stuck in the role of caregiver (even when such a role is unneeded), he sets off anonymously in the gigantic owl flying machine he built with instructions that she and her traveling companions must follow in order to catch up with him before the newspapers do.

Paper from the library. (more…)

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The UConn women won the NCAA Division 1 basketball championship by a considerable margin. I was really glad to see Paige get her big win and for UConn to take home its 12th title.

2. Chris, Neal, and I went out for supper at a well-respected Filipino restaurant in Mount Pleasant. The food was delicious, and it was great to spend some time off the court with the two of them.

3. Baseball season has begun, and we got to our first Nationals game of the season on the chilliest day in weeks. (Rudi and I love going to spring and fall baseball games.) The Nats won decisively, holding the World Series champs to just a handful of runs and Ohtani to a single hit (he did then steal two bases, but we didn’t challenge him, given the score and the temperatures, which were in the looooow 40s).

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi is home and put back together in one piece.

2. I went out to the park to read Monday afternoon, and while my phone assured me that we weren’t due for rain for several hours, Mother Nature had other ideas. By the time I realized I was going to get very wet on my way back home, I decided to stick around to see if a rainbow would appear. And lo! Not one, but two! (I finished the latest Linda Holmes novel, in which the protagonist also gets caught in a D.C. afternoon rainstorm, from the steps outside the Phillips Collection.)

3. There’s a house in the neighborhood, where the owners take a great deal of care with their front garden. The daffs and early bulbs are past, but the tulips are out now in force.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world as March transitions to April?

April in National Poetry Month, so for today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, I’m going to do a poetic twist on That Artsy Reader Girl’s choice of “top ten books you’d be a fool not to read” and shout out novels in verse and books of poetry:

1. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds: Reynolds does a flawless job in this novel in verse (written for young adults, but which everyone should read) of composing the narrative between our protagonist, a teen in an elevator out to avenge his brother’s death, and all the people he’s known who’ve been shot.
2. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse: A work of historical fiction, this novel in verse focuses on a teen who was injured in the fire that killed her mother, who is grieving at the same time as the Oklahoma prairie on which she lives is dying from Dust Bowl storms.
3. Me: Moth by Amber McBride: A teen whose family was killed in a car crash and the abused boy next door embark upon a desperate roadtrip and, as with most literary roadtrips, find out more about themselves and each other than they expected to.
4. Booked by Kwame Brown: As with Long Way Down, this is one of those books I point to where the form allows you to things you might not be able to in prose. In this case, it’s a boy who loves soccer and coming to love books and whose narration mimics the tempo of a soccer match.
5. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: In this memoir in verse, Woodson looks back on a childhood spent in New York City and South Carolina in the 1960s and ’70s and aspiring to be a writer.
6. If God Invented Baseball: Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller: A local poet and journalist of renown, Miller infuses these poems with his love of the game.
7. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter: An homage to the Emily Dickinson poem, but with a twist, since it is not hope that perches in this family’s souls, but grief. And quite literally moves into their London flat, when a six-foot-tall crow shows up at the door to greet a poetry scholar and his two young sons in the quiet after everyone has left following the funeral of his wife/their mother.
8. Honest Engine by Kyle Dargan: Another D.C. poet, whose collection of poems runs the gamut from the State of the Union to sleep deprivation to a dozen or so poems about loved ones gone from this earth, with a surprising amount of science fiction fandom thrown in for good measure.
9. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan: On the first day of 5th grade, a teacher informs her students they’re going to write a poem every day in class. The novel shares a selection from each of the 18 students over the course of a tumultuous year of change and activism. Magnificently, Shovan succeeds in giving each kid enough of a distinct voice that you get so you can recognize a poem’s author without checking first.
10. The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop: I would be remiss if I didn’t include the collected works by Bishop, one of my very favorite poets. Bishop loves to play with words and with traditional poetic forms. You probably read “One Art” long ago back in school. It’s worth revisiting now that you’re older, as are many of her other poems.

How about you? Do you have favorite poetry collections or novels in verse you’d recommend?

Apologies for disappearing. I was packing Wednesday for a trip to a funeral when I heard from Rudi that he’d broken his arm on a ski vacation and needed outpatient surgery. Honestly, while I knew what I wanted to write (and packed my laptop so I could do so), I just lacked the mental energy to get it done until I returned home tonight.

But the cats and I are reunited! Rudi is recovering and generally is in decent spirits! And I got to see my folks and my bff and some extended family!

So, to get us back on track, here are three beautiful things from before this past Friday:

1. While I was away for peak bloom, I still got myself down to the Potomac and to the Tidal Basin for just-prior-to-peak cherry blossoms. Lovely, as always. (It’s one of the things here that always lives up to the hype, even if I don’t always choose to brave the tourists down by the water.

2. Last Saturday, I had set up my volleyball net down on the Mall and about 10 of us were playing when we watched a mounted park police officer pass by. We noted it as unusual, but resumed play for a bit, but then I realized the officer had brought his golden-maned horse right up alongside the court. Honestly, I was expecting him to chase us away because we lacked a permit (technically you need one for any activity attracting 10 people or more), but he just said, “I think this is the first time my horse has seen a volleyball.” Clearly, everyone rushed over to pet the horse and then we had to wait a bit for the crowd that had gathered on & adjacent to the court to shift. Then, the officer asked us to gently hit a ball over the net so he could see if his horse reacted. “A helicopter could land 50 feet from here, and he wouldn’t blink. But if there’s a fire, he’s bolting. So it’s good to see how he responds.” The horse was fine with the ball, but failed to return it over the net.

3. A creatives networking group Rudi and I belong to usually holds its meetings early on Friday mornings, so I haven’t attended many recently. But they generally hold their anniversary celebrations in the evenings, and this year Rudi and I were both in town. We metro’ed over to the newish Latin American food hall, La Cosecha, ate some tasty Salvadoran papusas, and got to see an art show for free. It made for a very nice date night.

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

I read four books in February, three audiobooks and one in print:

A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss

Eccentric curios shop dealer Augustus North of Rowan Thorp has died and left his three daughters an unusual bequest: They inherit his estate only if they complete two tasks as a unit. The three estranged women are unhappy about the plan, but each of them needs the money selling the property will bring. (more…)