Monday Musings

My week: Monday through Thursday was a bit rough -- it was just one of those weeks -- but who cares when I had a three-day weekend?! Friday we ate lunch out, ran some errands and took Alohi to the vet (always an adventure). Saturday it rained all day long, and while I had a million things on my to-do list I ended up being supremely and completely lazy.

Reading: It was a great reading week for me! I'm blazing my way through the list of 2017 releases I want to read by the end of the year, and so far they've all been really good books. I finished and thoroughly enjoyed "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine." I liked it so much I convinced a patron at the library to check it out this week!

Then I read "The Blinds," a sort of speculative fiction story about a tiny community in the middle-of-nowhere Texas full of heinous criminals whose memories of their misdeeds have been wiped clean. For eight years the Blinds has been a peaceful little settlement, but all of a sudden things start falling apart in quick succession.

After that I read my first book for Non-Fiction November, Lauren Graham's quick and funny and "Gilmore Girls"-filled memoir, "Talking As Fast As I Can." It was pretty much book fluff, but there were definitely a few good takeaways.

Then I positively blew through "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I started it Saturday morning and, as mentioned, it rained all day long, so I spent hours immersed in the glamorous (and not-so-glamorous) world of '50s (and '60s and '70s and '80s) Hollywood. I fell in love with the characters and I just could not put this book down!

Yesterday I read the first few pages of "The Heart's Invisible Furies" by John Boyne, an epic novel set over several decades in Ireland. Several of my real-life and online friends have given it 5 stars and I'm hopeful I'll love it too -- and that it sucks me right in. It's almost 600 pages and I don't want to lug it on an airplane with me just to finish the last bit, so my goal is to get it read before we leave for our Thanksgiving trip on Saturday!

I'm also reading my second Non-Fiction November book, "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. It's short and sweet (though still a little over my head sometimes), and I'm reading a chapter a day.

Watching: "Stranger Things" season 2, "Broadchurch" season 3, "Poldark," "This Is Us."

We also watched the first episode of "American Gods," and it was soooo weird. But I'm intrigued! I was planning to read the book before watching, but our DVR is in desperate need of some space and I was chatting with a patron at work who was telling me about the show and convinced me to go ahead and start it.

Movie-wise, we watched "The Dead Poet's Society," a 1989 movie starring Robin Williams as a delightful and unconventional teacher at a stuffy New England prep school. It's one I've been meaning to watch for-ev-er, and I finally got to it as part of our DVR clean-out!

Knitting: It feels so good to have knitting needles in my hands again! I'm chugging along with my Newt Scamander scarf for my friend Jessie. I've made more progress in the last week (after ripping out and starting over) than I did in almost a year! It's definitely been an off-year knitting-wise for me, but every hobby needs a break now and then.

Listening to: "Faking It" by Calvin Harris, etc.

Blogging:
Monday Musings
The Book Releases I'm Most Looking Forward to Oct. to Dec. 2017
Non-Fiction November Week 3: Be the Expert, Ask the Expert, Become the Expert

Looking forward to: Our last-minute trip to Colorado for Thanksgiving! I haven't spent a holiday with my parents since 2008, and I'm soooooooo ready to get off this island for a week!