Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to consider books we’d like on our personal bookshelf.

Rudi would tell you that I own a lot of books. And I do. But I own way fewer books than I read. I couldn’t afford to be a reader if I had to buy every book I read. So these days I try not to buy too many books for my personal collection because I am neither made of money nor do I have unlimited (or even a reasonable amount of) space for them.

But if I did have a steady cash flow and a spare room with built-in bookshelves, here’s some of what I’d like to add to my personal library:

1. A complete unabridged copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (The last print addition was 20 volumes with three supplements. It’s the first thing I’m going to buy after I win the lottery (and procure a house in which to store it).)
2. The illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which will be published this fall
3. To be fair, I’d ideally like to own a copy of each of the sets of the Harry Potter series, but again that’s a wait until you win the lottery kind of acquisition.
4. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, which comes out today
5. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, which comes out next month (she is the rare automatic-buy author for me)
6. The Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas (I own the third book, but love this series enough I can envision rereading it over the years and it would be nice to have my own copies.)
7. I’m not sure if I finally procured a personal copy of The Polar Express or not (Christmas books are stored in the closet during the year), but if I haven’t, it’s one of my favorite picture books — and one I was originally introduced to in French.
8. Grace Lin’s beautifully illustrated middle-grade folklore books — Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Starry River of the Sky, and When the Sea Turned to Silver
9. Erin Morgenstern’s upcoming The Starless Sea
10. Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me (I don’t think I own a copy of this book, but there is a possibility that I picked it up because I liked it so much after reading a library copy.)

Whoops. I didn’t read this carefully enough and apparently I was only supposed to include books I’ve already read, which reduces my list significantly. Oh well, I’m just going to hit publish anyway.

Our weekend was a nice one, with gorgeous weather than encouraged spending time outside.

Friday morning, Rudi and I headed to a cafe we enjoy for elevenses after attending a talk. We cuddled under an awning as a light rain came down and cool air descended into the region.

Saturday, we headed over to the eastern side of the neighborhood for a street festival. Rudi bought a new mug after discovering a crack was developing in his favorite one and I bought the last two baggies of cookies some a senior citizen group was selling. We stopped in at the local Japanese food store, sat outside at the popsicle stand reading and knitting (Rudi did less of the latter, obviously), and came home to watch the latest episode of a new tv show we’re enjoying.

Today, I did a little shopping at the farmers market, picked up a pair of bagels hot and fresh from the local bagelry, and sat in the park. We spent the evening with friends, barbecuing on their balcony, before returning home.

It was a good weekend.

On Wednesday, we had a sun shower:

It was followed by a short regular shower, which was bookended by the evening of two rainbows.

But the weather gods did not stop there. They had dumped out their box of 64 Crayola crayons and were excited about using them all.

I had gone to the garden to water and then to the grocery store (hunting fruitlessly for puff pastry) and emerged onto Pennsylvania Avenue in Foggy Bottom to this sight to the east:

And this to the west:

It felt like I was living in a Maxfield Parrish painting. (It took me a little while to come up with the correct painter, since all I had was a memory of a poster Grey Kitten had when we were teenagers of a woman with a scarf standing on a cliff. Once I stopped trying to make it a book cover (I thought maybe John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire or Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone) and made it the painting it was, Google was way more helpful. Also, memory is weird.)

I mean, it really just kept getting better:

Even after the sun went down, the gods kept up with the coloring:

It was a beautiful night.

For several days, a tomato tart has been taking up space in my brain. Tomatoes are in season here, and while they are delicious in everything we’ve had them in — soups, sauces, Middle Eastern stews, salads — I was craving something particular.

Supper is not usually my arena. I’m the baker of desserts and occasionally breakfasts, but usually dinnertime fare falls to Rudi. But since this was my plan, and since a tomato tart is not especially dissimilar to a tarte tatin or a fruit pie, it seemed perfectly plausible that I could make this myself.

I found this Bon Appetit article, which led to this recipe.

On half of the tart, I used a tomato left over in the fridge from the bulk buy a few weeks ago. I figured since it was being cooked it was fine. On the other half went mostly cherry tomatoes from our garden.

I used the recipe as a jumping off place, but I made some changes:

• I pricked the pastry in more than a few places. The dough looked like it had been pierced by a horror film villain.
• I used already minced garlic we buy by the jar. We had cloves, but it seemed an easy substitution.
• I omitted the lemon altogether. The article’s author said she cuts back on them when she makes the dish. Commenters on the recipe didn’t like the lemons, probably because they cut them too thick. I didn’t want to wash the mandoline, use it, and then wash it again, so it seemed easiest to skip them.
• I did not leave space between my tomatoes, which also were definitely sliced skinnier than a quarter inch. I also overlapped some of them, particularly on the fridge tomato side, where I added some garden tomatoes in case it tasted terrible. In the end, I used one giant beefsteak-sized tomato and about two dozen cherries.
• I used a mix of basil, rosemary, and oregano from my garden. It was not a cup’s worth — probably closer to a scant handful combined. And I put it on top of the tomatoes, rather than beneath them.
• I skipped the final tablespoon of olive oil on top. Commenters felt the finished product was too soggy, so I thought pooling liquid on top seemed like a silly idea. Had I been using drier tomatoes, I might have considered using our olive oil mister as a finishing touch.
• I also skipped the crème fraîche, because I didn’t have any and it just sounded weird.
• Instead I diced half a bar of feta and sprinkled that on the finished tart after I sliced it. It was an inspired addition.

Rudi and I agreed that if we used larger tomatoes than cherries that the prep time would be sped up considerably, but that otherwise it was a completely delicious success!

Hooray for hankerings!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Wednesday evening brought more rain and two more rainbows. I didn’t have great angles, so this fragment of the second one, seen from near my garden, is my best shot.

2. We spend the late afternoon and early evening at the pool to combat the last day of the heat wave before the upcoming respite of cooler weather. Our outdoor pools close on Labor Day, so our time there grows more precious by the day.

3. Sarah, Anne, and I have been mulling a get-together for months and we finally booked a silver sliver of time not already claimed by work or vacation or other activities. We spend hours at the restaurant talking about life and travels and books and agree at the end that we should not let the period between gatherings grow so long next time.

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

It wasn’t until earlier this week, when Rudi and I were sitting on the patio of our local coffeehouse, that I realized my shawl matches our summer sunsets. I wanted to try to capture that, so I apologize for the wrongly focused image, but it does catch the glint of the sparkles in the purple yarn better than other shots I’ve taken.

This week’s reading has included portions of a mystery set in wintry 1920s Vermont; a contemporary mystery set in India; a detective novel set in New Jersey in 1914; a feminist guide to linguistics; a graphic novel about Black Panther‘s kick-ass hero, Shuri; and a feminist y.a. novel set in the early 18th century. So mysteries, history, and feminism, basically.

Check out what other folks are reading and working on at As Kat Knits’ Unraveled Wednesday roundup.