End-of-Summer Link Roundup!
what I'm watching, reading, listening to and (sometimes) making
It’s still summer here - at least thats what the temperatures are showing. But in other ways we’ve moved into autumn. School has started, fall sports schedules are in my inbox, I’m thinking a little about fall break (and the balance of downtime and childcare), and as mentioned recently1 I’m starting graduate school in a few weeks.
With that, I’m bracing myself for less control over my book list, and also less reading for pleasure than I’m used to. So before fall really gets moving (for me anyway) I wanted to give you my top reads (and listens) from the last few months.
Watching, Reading, Listening, Making:
My top fiction book for the summer was Sandwich, by Catherine Newman — which I definitely already mentioned, but it’s worth mentioning again!
Some other fiction I enjoyed this summer — The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (so hard to beat her historical fiction, I’m reading The Women now), Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (I’ve wanted to read this for a while and finally went the audio book route), and another Louise Penny — A Great Reckoning.
I signed up to be on the “low-key launch team” for Kendra Adachi’s new book The Plan and finished the book in a couple days. I can’t wait for it to come out this October so I can hold the hard copy and highlight every other line. I love reading time management books, but this is one of the best. Its simplicity and honesty are so very Kendra! She mentions in the book that 93% of time management books are written by men — so even though she never thought she’d write a book like this, when she realized that she knew she had to!
With kids at home (and less time alone in my car this summer), I slowed down listening to celebrity memoirs, but I did enjoy John Stamos’: If You Would Have Told me and Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman’s: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told - neither book went to the top of my list, but I enjoyed them both. Let’s just say neither was Dave Grohl’s: The Storyteller!
One of my favorite things to do as a family is read aloud in the evening. It’s not something that can happen in every season, but I absolutely love it when it does! This summer we read Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and we’re (slowly) working on a Roald Dahl favorite now.
I haven’t been watching anything this summer that you haven’t already heard of, but I loved My Lady Jane, and I’ve been watching America’s Sweethearts in half-episode chunks while I eat lunch (hard to watch, hard to look away?). I’m anxiously awaiting the next seasons of Only Murders in the Building and Shrinking! What are you looking forward to watching this fall?
The kids and I enjoyed this Animal Sticker Kaleidoscope Poster working on it almost like a puzzle over a few days (and into a week?). This is a fun all-ages activity!
I’ve been enjoying the Pray As You Go podcast — it’s a 10-15 minute podcast that plays a song, reads the lectionary passage and then offers a few questions of contemplation. I don’t listen everyday, but it’s nice when I can’t seem to quiet my own thoughts on a walk or in the car.
Now your turn — what have you been enjoying this summer?
I'm pulling up bones that I buried years ago