Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to consider books that we just know we’re going to absolutely love. For the purposes of simplicity, I’m not going to consider books that are parts of series.

Books I predict will be 5-star reads:

1. Nic Stone’s Shuri (my favorite Black Panther princess-scientist)
2. The Telephone Box Library by Rachael Lucas (someone wrote a book about Little Free Libraries, essentially)
3. The 24-Hour Café by Libby Page (I would like to live in the title of this book)
4. Abbi Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (there might be more to life than reading?!)
5. Sherry Thomas’ The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan (I loved the movie; I love the author)
6. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer (I am a grammar snob)
7. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (caper!)
8. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (I mean, isn’t everything she writes brilliant?)
9. Rebecca Stead’s The List of Things That Will Not Change (ditto)
10. Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed (they wrote a romance about political canvassing)

How about you? Are there books you are confident were written with you in mind as a reader?

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Today was February 2nd, the sort of still but maybe no longer annual Bloggers’ (Silent) Poetry Reading in honor of St. Brigid, patron saint of poetry.

I missed last year, in part because the tradition has mostly gone by the wayside. But I liked it when we all shared poetry on our blogs, so I’m resuming it, at least for 2020.

This one is for the English majors and poetry geeks amongst us:

A Tale of Two Metres
     ~Tom Disch

I heard a little couplet cry:
‘Will God or Someone tell me why
We couplets are condemned to squeeze
Our wisdom into shapes like these?
To speak with gravity and treat
Of higher truths one needs more feet:
Four will not do! Four are too few.
Five feet for me or I am through!’

Not only I but Poesy had heard:
She raised her sceptre, uttered not a word,
But struck the couplet dead. And what do you think?
Its ashes stirred — and formed, in living ink,
A couplet calm as Zeno and as stoic —
The couplet known to fame as The Heroic.

In previous years, I’ve shared poems by Sharon Olds, Emily Dickinson, Kyle Dargan, Barbara Crooker, William Stafford, Mary Oliver (twice), Wislawa Szymborska, Stuart Dischell, Jean Esteve, John Frederick Nims, Grace Paley, Heather McHugh, and Barbara Hamby, all of which are worth another read.

I made it home from California just after noon, but my plan not to lose my entire day to travel failed. I spent both legs of my red-eye feeling super sick, and so pretty much spent the rest of the day dozing on the couch.

Tomorrow, however, is a new day, and I’ve managed to eat and drink something that did not make me feel worse, so I’m hopeful we’re past the worst of it.

I am not much of a Super Bowl person, so I think I will skip my friend’s kind offer to have me join her and her husband at a bar to watch the game (she’s from Germany and wants to soak up the atmosphere). Instead, I think I’ll finish reading my book, bind off my shawl (!!), wander down to the Kennedy Center to catch the last night of their outdoor illuminated Winter Lanterns display, and get things sorted for the week ahead.

Rudi is off on ski coaching duties all week, so I’m on my own. This means I need to actually do a little better about planning ahead, since there will be no one else to check bike availability as I’m brushing my teeth. (If only Corey could work the phone app…)

Rudi was kind enough to pick up a bag of day-old bagels yesterday, so I have breakfasts sorted for a couple days. I’ll need to think about lunches and suppers, though. Maybe I’ll make a lasagna or a quiche, since those make for good leftovers. (I’ve got volleyball games both Monday and Tuesday nights, so maybe I’d better make one of those tomorrow…) Mary Berry’s cookbook is due back to the library, so if I want to try any of her cookie/cake recipes, I’d better jump on that, as well. Then that will give me snacks, too.

I need to change the sheets tomorrow, and since Rudi is away, I think I’ll just put on the flannel set. They’re too warm when he’s home, but I think they’ll be cozy while he’s away. Plus, it takes the pressure off of having to get that laundry done during the weekend, when everyone is fighting for time with the washing machine. (Actually, we’re a very civil building, and while we sometimes have a queue, everyone is usually very prompt about clearing the washer and dryer.)

While Rudi’s away, I’d like to get a little sorting done in the living room and kitchen.
I still need to put away some Christmas things piled on my living room table — cards and cookie tins and cds — and there are similar piles elsewhere that could be dealt with. Since I spent both sets of plane flights asleep, I still have my Inspector Ganache novel to listen to — incentive to spend time working on manual, brain-free tasks.

Finally, since the key to getting myself out the door in a reasonable fashion is to get up a little earlier, putting myself to bed at an earlier hour is also probably necessary. So hopefully my posts will be a little closer to midnight than two for the rest of the week!

I did some work. I attended an event. I saw a friend. I knit a little. I read a bit. I bought fresh citrus at a farmers market. And I enjoyed some California sunshine.

And I ate an ice cream sandwich made of peanut butter cookies and ube ice cream.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My work event went really well today, and everyone involved was nice and helpful.

2. Where I’m staying turns out to have felt further from San Francisco than I’d expected, so I opted not to head back into the city for their restaurant week. Instead, I explored the Walnut Creek restaurant scene and enjoyed Peruvian and Burmese food, as well as a local ice cream shop.

3. The commute to where my event was being held today was just shy of a mile’s walk along a canal pathway. I passed joggers and walkers with baby carriages and toddlers, backyards with citrus trees, and a snowy egret perched on a fence, which a dog walker said was its usual spot.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

D.C. at the literal crack of dawn.