Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals:

• The Last Night in London by Karen White - from Berkley Books for review
• Night Came with Many Stars - from David R. Godine for review

I already have an ARC of The Last Night in London, so I was surprised to get a finished copy. I'm really looking forward to it because the historical part takes place in a building in London that my friend's father lived in for many years and which I stayed in for 3 weeks. As to Night Came with Many Stars . . . anyone who has hung around this blog for any length of time at all will know how thrilled I am to get my hands on any book by Simon Van Booy! I usually read Simon's books 2 or 3 times before reviewing and since it's almost impossible keeping my mitts off of it, that will probably happen, again. It's a June release. Can. Not. Wait. But, there are a couple books ahead of it in line. Argh. 

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• Reader's Digest War Stories
• Mosquitoland by David Arnold
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I am just going to have to give in to the fact that this is not my year for reading. However, at least there were extenuating circumstances, this past couple of weeks. For one thing, I am trying to fit in reading, writing, painting, and exercise with the usual chores and finding it hard to squeeze everything in. For another, I had one very sleepless night before our second vaccination doses. The vaccination took up most of one day, an appointment took another, and I didn't read much for a couple days because I couldn't see straight from fatigue after my all-nighter. Oh, well. I had a good month in March, overall, so I'm very happy about that. 

As to the books — I loved Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Reader's Digest War Stories but had mixed feelings about Mosquitoland. I'll try to review them ASAP, of course. I'm a bit behind on reviewing, at the moment. 

Currently reading:

• Take Three Girls by Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell, and Fiona Wood (YA)
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume 1 (1909-1939), ed. by Litz and MacGowan

I plan to review Take Three Girls by tomorrow but it may be later in the day. If so, I'll leave it at the top of the blog for an extra day, since it's a review book. I finally picked up Milkman, after 6-8 weeks of slowly forgetting that it's got a bookmark in it. I'm enjoying it but I still find it a little exhausting so it will probably take me a long time to read it and I'll wedge in other books. I had no problem at all picking up where I left off, though; it's a very memorable read. And, it's National Poetry Month so I started reading The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume 1. It's a thick one! So far, some of his poetry seems a little poncy to me, some goes right over my head with a whoosh, and some I love. It'll be interesting to see if he grows on me. I know some of his more familiar poetry but have not read much of Williams. 

Posts since last Malarkey:

• Bindu's Bindis by Supriya Kelkar and Parvati Pillai (book review)
• Fiona Friday (cat photo)
• Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (book review)
• Retrograde by Peter Cawdron (book review)
• Fiona Friday on the Wrong Day (cat photo)

So . . . not a big two weeks for blogging, either. Hopefully, the reading pace and blogging will improve over the next week or two but I still have a lot on my plate. 

In other news:

Hope those who celebrate had a Happy Easter! Ours was nothing exciting because our local family didn't come over and our distant family is far, far away. We mostly spent the day cleaning but watched The Narnia Chronicles: Prince Caspian, each time we felt like taking a break or stopped to eat. Our living room looks so much better. It was getting all cluttery and messy and frustrating. So, while I wish we could occasionally see our grandkids on a holiday, at least we got plenty accomplished. 

We're now just over a week away from being considered "fully vaccinated" (1 week left of the 2-week interval after the second Covid vaccine dose) and really excited about feeling comfortable getting out, soon. We still plan to wear our masks because of the variants but hope enough people will take the vaccine for us to reach herd immunity within the coming months. I am so grateful for the quick development of the vaccine. 

We're still watching The Mallorca Files and I'm watching Chuck but honestly, we've just been too busy to watch TV, otherwise, and we manage about an episode per week of Mallorca. That's partly because we want to stretch out the fun, though. It's not often we find something to watch together. I also watched Atlantic Crossing and World on Fire on PBS, yesterday. I was surprised that they started World on Fire from the beginning but then I realized that's often the case when there's a big gap between seasons of a PBS show; they'll play the previous season and then move on to the next. I decided it was worth a repeat, so I did watch it again. Atlantic Crossing scared the peawaddin' out of me. I don't know how people survived WWII without dropping dead from fear alone. 

Happy reading!

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