Here are six things worth sharing this week:
1. Reading: Have you read Rob Harrell’s book, Wink? It’s SO GOOD! Harrell is the author of the Life of Zarf series, which I have not read. But I picked up his book, Wink, because someone mentioned it to me as a great humorous read. It was so much more than that! It’s a novel based on Harrell’s experience with a rare eye cancer, and it will have you laughing and crying at all the right places. Highly recommended!
2. Reading: I recently finished We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds, a young adult novel about racial violence and the generational results of it. I loved this book so much. And so did many people, apparently, since the book was a 2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent Winner as well as a Kirkus Best Books, a School and Library Journal Best Book, A B&N Best Book, and a Parents Magazine Best Book of 2022. If you haven’t read it, put it on your list!
3. Watching: Husband and I are watching the third season of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, a series about an American coach who moves to England to coach soccer (or what they call football). I’ve loved every season of this show. Ted Lasso is wise and witty and optimistic. It’s so funny and heartfelt and cheesy in some places and really funny that you’ll find yourself looking forward to your Friday night dates with the smart TV. I mean…hypothetically speaking. WATCH IT!
4. Reading: I adore some good nonfiction, and I just finished a book that definitely qualifies: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss: a Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. It sounds like a heavy read, but Kimmerer is a fantastic writer. She writes her nonfiction so it reads like memoir or fiction, even. I first discovered Kimmerer when I read her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants (which I also highly recommend), and I was hooked. Gathering Moss is a science book that will have you riveted, ready to learn more, and looking for the mosses in your environment, hoping they’ll tell you a story, too.
5. Reading: On some early-morning (very dark) runs, I read the audiobook of Lora Senf’s The Clackity, a middle grade horror novel. (I don’t know why I do this to myself; I was jumping at every little sound during the reading.) It’s so good. Frightening but full of heart. This is Senf’s first book, but she has another coming October 17: The Nighthouse Keeper. It’s definitely on my list (although I don’t think I’ll be reading it during dark runs!)!
6. Reading: I’ve loved Traci Chee since I read her young adult book, We Are Not Free, which published in 2020 and was a Printz Honor book. Well, I recently finished her latest YA book, A Thousand Steps Into the Night, which is completely different from the historical We Are Not Free but is no less engaging, entertaining, and enchanting. This one’s a fantasy that reads like a fairy tale. I read it while running around Hourglass Lake at Disney World with my kids—which could have increased the magic of the words. But no. Chee is a master. Highly recommend this book—which was long-listed for the National Book Award!
