Monday Musings

Friday night at the beach.

My week: It was a pretty good week here. Wednesday I got to do preschool storytime at work again to cover for a co-worker who's been out, and it was so much fun! The theme was music and we read two fun stories and made maracas -- plus, a different co-worker's husband, who's a musician by profession, came in to play some instruments for the kids, and of course they loved that. And then on Friday a group of second-graders came to the library as part of a field trip and I got to help out with that too. I read them the new Duck and Goose Halloween book by Tad Hills and asked them what they plan to be for Halloween. The kids were so adorable!

Later Wednesday we had our family pictures with the puppy at the beach, which was... an adventure. Friday evening we took Alohi to the beach for some fun time, and Saturday we went to the Hawaii vs. Colorado State football game (CSU is my alama mater).

Reading: I finished and enjoyed the non-fiction book "American Eclipse," about a total solar eclipse in 1878 and the scientists who flocked to the Rocky Mountains to see it. I learned so much and now I've added seeing a total eclipse to my bucket list; unfortunately Hawaii missed out on the August one. Then I finished the Irish novel "Himself," which was quite a bit different than I expected (I thought it was a straight-up mystery but it also had some paranormal/magical realism elements) but I really liked it, too.

Now I've just started the thriller "The Marsh King's Daughter." I'm only a couple chapters in but I'm really intrigued by the writing and the story (it's narrated by a woman whose parents were a kidnapped woman and her captor -- and now her father has escaped from prison).

Watching: "This Is Us" started back! Such a good episode, too. We also watched an interesting movie called "Denial," a based-in-fact film about a libel trial involving a professor/author (Rachel Weisz) and a historian/Holocaust denier (the guy who plays Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter movies).

Listening to: "Going To Mars" by Judah & the Lion.

Eating: Homemade apple dumplings. Mmmm.

Blogging:
Monday Musings
10 Novels That Feature Smart Women
Book Review: The Scribe of Siena
Turning the Page on September 2017

Looking forward to: My mom and brother will be here for a visit in just over a week!

*I'm linking up with Kathryn of Book Date for It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Turning the Page on September 2017

*Back toward the beginning of September Jarrod and I took a short little weekend getaway to Kauai, our favorite Hawaiian island. We lounged on the beach, hiked to a waterfall and ate some amazing food. Sigh... take me back!

*It was a super-busy month at work for me. In a one-thing-after-another kind of situation, the library ended up being pretty short-staffed in September so I worked some extra hours to help out. And I also got to fill in for preschool storytime twice, which was so much fun!

*We had professional family photos taken at the beach with Alohi last week for our Christmas cards and, as expected, it was a bit of a disaster -- a certain someone is probably going to be completely covered with sand in every picture. But the photographer -- a friend of a friend -- is soooo talented and I'm sure she'll make them look amazing. I can't wait to see!

*Fall arrived! That doesn't mean much here in Hawaii, but I did drink several pumpkin spice lattes, bake pumpkin cookies, and get out all my fall decorations. Plus I was excited about the return of fall TV, especially This Is Us.

*In other TV/movie news, we finished the latest season of Homeland and the final season of Orphan Black and finally started watching the most recent trio of Sherlock episodes.

Books read: 5

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (for kids' book club) // 3 stars
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence // 5 stars
Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton // 3 stars
The Scribe of Siena by Melodie Winawer // 3 stars
American Eclipse by David Baron // 4 stars

Currently reading: Himself by Jess Kidd and One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Favorite book: Red Sister, the first in a new fantasy series! It was one of the best books I've read this year.

Biggest let-down: Good Morning, Midnight wasn't a bad book, but it was so far off from what I had been anticipating.

October release I'm most looking forward to: Either Dan Brown's new Robert Langdon book or From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty; I loved her first book, a memoir about working in the funeral industry, and this one is about death practices across the globe.

Book I'm most excited to read in October: The third illustrated Harry Potter is about to be released and I'd really love to read all three at once. I just had to have the other two right when they came out... but I've yet to actually read them!

Current library checkouts: Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne and Quiet Until the Thaw by Alexandra Fuller

Books added to to-read list: 10 (but I deleted a couple hundred!)

Most intriguing TBR addition: The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. I don't read much middle-grade fiction, but now that I'm doing the kids' book club at work I feel like I should. Plus a patron was absolutely raving about this book, and it sounds right up my alley!

From Goodreads: Nine-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute -- she sneaks out to join him. So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan -- and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. But in the end, will their bond be enough to hold them together through wartime? Or will Ada and her brother fall back into the cruel hands of their mother?

Favorite bookstagram: This photo has so many things in it that make me happy: my new watch, my new couch pillows, a pumpkin spice latte, a book and a picture of the Rocky Mountains. Find me on Instagram @knittinglindsay!

Favorite post: My Fall 2017 To-Read List. Even though I don't always follow them, I loooove putting together quarterly to-read posts!

Book reviews:
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (4 stars)
Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton (3 stars)
The Scribe of Siena by Melodie Winawer (3 stars)

Book Review: The Scribe of Siena

"The Scribe of Siena" by Melodie Winawer
First published in 2017
450 pages
My rating: 3 out of 5

The Short Of It:
A promising story of time travel to medieval Italy but way too long.

The Long Of It:
After her historian brother's death, New York City neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato travels to Italy to continue his controversial research into the Black Death and why it hit Siena so much harder than anywhere else. But Beatrice continues her journey much farther than she intended, right back to 1347 Siena on the eve of the plague that would wipe out half the world's population.

Romance, intrigue and introspection follow as Beatrice -- put to work as a scribe thanks to her helpful ability to read and write -- discovers that she feels more at home in the 14th century than in the 21st. She knows, though, that there's a very good chance in just a matter of months all her new friends will be dead. On top of that, and unbeknownst to her, Beatrice becomes swept up in a terrible conspiracy -- the very same one her brother had been researching in 2017.

If a book blurb says "time travel," I'm sold; maybe it's because, as a history and historical fiction lover, I find it fun to imagine myself in another time (though I wouldn't actually want to do it -- I'm just fine here in the good ol' 21st century). Some time travel books are definitely more well done others, though, and while "The Scribe of Siena" was ultimately a decent read, it could have been executed better.

For one thing, it was way too long! It was 450 pages but easily could've been 300, and I found myself skimming over entire paragraphs of extraneous detail. The first half seemed to drag on and on. And, despite the author's attempt to create a medieval atmosphere, I never really felt like I was there; contrast that with, say, "Outlander," where I was totally and completely wrapped up in 1700s Scotland right along with Claire. I also felt like there were a few too many historical inaccuracies that took me out of the story -- the way Beatrice talks would never fly in the 1300s.

All that said, it wasn't a bad book, and I still enjoyed my romp to the 1300s with Beatrice. There are better time travel books out there, though, if that's what you're craving. (One of my favorites is "The River of No Return" by Bee Ridgway!)

10 Novels That Feature Smart Women

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a freebie of sorts -- 10 characters who X. I had initially planned to list characters who like science, but that morphed into a list of smart female characters -- many of whom happen to be good at science. Math and science were not my favorite subjects in school (not surprisingly, given that I have a book blog and work at a library, I always gravitated toward English and history) but I'm in awe of people who are very good at those things, so that's mostly the kind of "smart" that's here on my list.

I threw this post together rather hastily and I'm sure I've left some brilliant fictional ladies off my list, but I can say I've read and enjoyed all of these books. Do you have any recommendations for me that feature smart women?

1. The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church: This beautiful book is about an ornithologist whose career aspirations are wrecked when she follows her husband to Los Alamos, New Mexico, for his work on the atom bomb.

2. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey: One of my favorite books last year, "To the Bright Edge" is an epistolary novel set in the late 1800s about a man on an Alaskan expedition and his wife, who stays behind in Washington state and has adventures of her own.

3. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King: Oxford student Mary Russell is at least as smart as her mentor, Sherlock Holmes.

4. A Discovery of Witches: Before she gets wrapped up in a world of witches, vampires and daemons, Diana is a brilliant academic.

5. My Last Continent by Midge Raymond: Scientist Deb spends several months each year in Antarctica studying penguins.

6. Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Nuevel: Protagonist Rose is a physicist at the top of her field in this first installment of a series about ancient aliens.

7. The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict: Was Albert Einstein's wife just as smart as he was? In her based-in-fact novel, Benedict asserts that Mileva was a genius mathematician in her own right.

8. A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn: Good ol' Veronica Speedwell is a naturalist as well as an amateur sleuth. (I kept my phone by me the whole time I was reading this so I could Google all the butterflies mentioned!)

9. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: Claire is a nurse, and later a doctor, and she manages to use her medical knowledge to her benefit many times over in 1700s Scotland.

10. Circling the Sun by Paula McLain: Beryl Markham, the protagonist of this based-in-fact novel, was a fascinating woman wholly ahead of her time -- and she was also the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Bonus: Non-Fiction

11. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren: Hope is a brilliant scientist who studies botany, among other things, and I thoroughly enjoyed her memoir!

12. American Eclipse: The Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World" by David Baron: I'm reading this book right now and one of the main characters is Maria Mitchell, the first professional female astronomer is the U.S. (and also a professor at Vassar).

Monday Musings

I looove my new white watch! And my new orange pillow. I don't normally gravitate toward orange, but I recently got some new couch pillows that are mostly beige with orange accents and I adore them! When I saw that little pumpkin-spice colored one at Pier 1 this week I just had to grab it!

My week: It was a pretty quiet week here. At work I was busy getting things around for my big Halloween bulletin board. I feel like I just got the AzkaBANNED Prison banned books board up; I can't believe it's almost time to take it down!

Reading: It took me a while, but I finished the time travel (to 1300s Italy) novel "The Scribe of Siena" by Melodie Winawer on Friday evening. It had taken me all week to read the first 200 pages, and man did they drag, but the second half picked up and I read/skimmed the last 250 pages in a few hours.

Now I'm reading "American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World" by David Baron, which is a readable and fairly short (just over 200 pages) non-fiction book about the total solar eclipse of 1878. I've learned a ton already, and though it's a little to dry to read non-stop, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I had it from the library in time to read it during all the eclipse fervor last month (even though we didn't get to see it here in Hawaii) but I just didn't get around to it.

I also started "Himself" by Jess Kidd, an Irish mystery-ish novel (with a tinge of magical realism -- the protagonist can see dead people) I've been looking forward to for ages -- my library finally got it in! I'm not too far in and it's not quite what I expected, but I'm definitely liking it. If you need a good October-ish book (because October starts in just a few days, if you can believe it!), I'm thinking this is a good choice!

Watching: Jarrod was back to working ridiculous hours this week, so we didn't have much time for movies and TV (plus football is on all weekend in our house this time of year thanks to my football-obsessed husband). We did watch a few more episodes of "Orphan Black" -- it's getting pretty hokey and, while I do love the show, I think it's probably a good thing this is the final season.

Baking: Pumpkin cookies with maple cream cheese frosting. Mmmmm.

Cleaning out: My Goodreads to-read and maybe-to-read lists. When the combined total of those lists hit 900(!!!!!!) I knew it was (well past) time. I culled about 200 books -- most of which I had no recollection of whatsoever --  but I could definitely chop more. Sometimes I think about deleting the lists entirely and starting from scratch. How do you handle your to-read list?

Lusting after: The new Harry Potter collection from Pottery Barn Teen! I totally want that glow-in-the-dark Marauder's Map pillow (and pretty much everything else)!

Putting out: Fall decorations! It was quite an endeavor because the under-stairs closet where all the holiday decor is stored became kind of a catch-all this year for puppy-proofing and everything else, so there was a lot of stuff to sort through before I made it to the fall boxes. It allllmost wasn't worth it, but now that I'm surrounded by pumpkins I'm glad I did it. And now the closet is organized!

Blogging:
Monday Musings
My Fall 2017 To-Read List
10 Things I'm Looking Forward To This Fall
Book Review: Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Looking forward to: We're taking professional family pictures with Alohi on the beach this week for our Christmas cards, and while I'm honestly sort of dreading the photo shoot (Alohi is sure to be a total maniac) I'm excited to see the results!

Also, fall TV starts back this week! I'm especially looking forward to "This Is Us" and "Poldark," and I'm going to give the "Will and Grace" revival a try. What shows are you excited about? Are you going to watch any new ones?

*I'm linking up with Kathryn of Book Date for It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Book Review: Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

"Good Morning, Midnight" by Lily Brooks-Dalton
First published in 2016
253 pages
My rating: 3 out of 5

The Short Of It:
Such a promising premise, but not the story I expected.

The Long Of It:
Sully is an astronaut returning from a trip to Jupiter when her ship permanently loses communication with Earth; Augie is an elderly astronomer in the Arctic who decides to stay and finish out his days with his telescopes when the rest of the base is evacuated. Both know something horrible has happened, but they have no idea what disaster has befallen their planet and no clear way of finding out.

The library sticker on my copy of "Good Morning, Midnight" proclaims it to be science fiction and I was pumped for a fast-paced post-apocalyptic thriller, but it should be billed as literary fiction -- it's really a quiet novel about human connection. The possible end of humankind had both characters -- neither particularly likable -- doing a lot of soul-searching and cataloging their many, many regrets -- and me doing a bit of yawning.

There was an interesting twist at the end, but by then the book had mostly lost my interest. About a third of the way through I had the sinking feeling that the actual nature of the apocalypse wouldn't be revealed -- the what and how and why wasn't necessary to the character-driven story -- but I still had hope. Nope, Brooks-Dalton never expounds of the topic.

The book was well-done for what it was, and I really liked the author's idea -- two lost souls coming to terms with the fact that something awful has likely wiped out everyone and everything they've ever known -- as well as reading about life on a spaceship, but it was a totally different novel than I had in mind. I wanted something like "Station Eleven" or even "The Fireman," but I got a rather depressing and cerebral story instead.

10 Things I'm Looking Forward to This Fall

1. A family visit! My mom and brother are coming to Hawaii in October.

2. Dressing up at work for Halloween. I haven't decided if I want to wear my Hermione costume again or come up with something new.

3. TV shows coming back! I'm especially looking forward to "This Is Us" and "Poldark." "Stranger Things," too.

4. Pumpkins! Those jolly orange squashes make me so happy.

5. Going to the University of Hawaii vs. Colorado State (my alma mater) football game.

6. Baking apple dumplings from my grandma's delicious recipe. Plus pumpkin desserts galore!

7. Trick-or-treaters! We had TONS of kids last year. I love seeing their costumes.

8. Seeing the results of our family photo shoot (with crazy puppy) on the beach. I'm not exactly looking forward to doing the shoot next week, but I'm so anxious to see how the pictures turn out!

9. Starbucks pumpkin scones. I don't usually splurge on pastries with my coffee, but those scones are so good. I tried to make a copycat recipe a couple years ago, but they didn't come out the same.

10. Finally getting to see "Wonder Woman" and "Guardians of the Galaxy 2." We wanted to see them in the theater but it just didn't happen (if you can believe it, we haven't been to the movie theater since "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), but we'll be able to watch them on DVD soon!

What are you looking forward to this fall?