I finished five books during the first two months of the year:

Christmas with Anne and Other Stories by L.M. Montgomery

Anchored by chapters from two of the Christmases at Green Gables from the Anne series, this collection of holiday stories is everything you’d expect from L.M. Montgomery. There are orphans whose stories end happily. There are reunifications with long-lost family members and healed feuds with bosom friends and good deeds aplenty. There is lots of tugging on the heartstrings, some of which are tuned rather melodramatically. But in the end, we don’t want Christmas stories that end with meanness or want or death. And L.M. Montgomery will give you only Christmases that end with laughter and family and warmth.

If you have liked other compilations of Montgomery’s works, you’ll also enjoy this one. If you’re allergic to sentimentality, I’d give this a pass.

Audio. Library. 224 pages

The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo

Set in a town where one of the most famous Christmas romance movies was filmed, a high school senior and a college freshman are thrown together in a workplace enemies-to-friends holiday YA novel. She’s trying to earn some extra money for college. He’s staying with his aunt for the holidays and being guilted into helping out at her hotel gift shop. One day, they inadvertently pick up the wrong phone and discover each other’s guiltiest secret.

A sweet Filipino-American holiday romance. I’d recommend this one to anyone looking for something heartwarming to read over cocoa in between repeats of The Holiday and this year’s newest made-for-tv Christmas films.

Paper. Library. 272 pages

Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo

A young designer turned bartender turned fashion instructor meets a man she thinks is managing the holiday opening of the high-end department store on her block. He offers to showcase her designs and to let her students put on a show on their launch day … in exchange for her pretending to be his fiancee for a few weeks until his parents come to town. But first, it turns out that his family owns the store. And second his ne’er-do-well cousin and her skeevy ex seem to be teaming up to tear down their maybe-no-longer-so-fake relationship. And, finally, she has a secret she’s convinced will ruin things anyway.

This was … fine. Honestly, I’d forgotten that I’d read it. But if you’re looking for a holiday romance, there are worse.

Paper. Library. 336 pages

Faith: Taking Flight by Julie Murphy

Apparently (and I didn’t know this until I finished the book), Faith is a superhero who appears in a number of comic books put out between the early ’90s and today. Julie Murphy, who excels at telling stories of young working class women, imagines an origin story for this queer, plus-sized teenager who lives with her grandmother, hangs out with her two best friends, writes for the school newspaper (and anonymously runs a blog about her favorite tv show), and works at the town’s animal shelter. But unknown to her loved ones, she has also survived an experiment that has imbued her with the ability to fly, a talent which she’s trying to keep under wraps, at least until her grandmother wanders off, a classmate disappears, and one of her BFFs is charged with murder.

Murphy does a great job imagining how a newly awakened superhero might struggle with maintaining a secret identity and being a teenager. Since I haven’t read the comics featuring Faith Herbert/Zephyr, I can’t speak to how true this feels to the original character. But now that I’ve read this book, I would read the comic, so I hope that says something.

Paper. Library. 304 pages

Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon

This collection of interconnected romance stories follows six Black teens or teen couples as a blackout strikes New York City. There’s the story of two exes who show up to compete against each other for an internship in Harlem who have to walk all the way back to Brooklyn. Two classmates get stuck in the same subway car. Childhood friends are locked in the library (maybe sort of on purpose). And more.

I’m not a huge fan of short story collections, but this one was fun. You catch glimpses of the other characters as you make your way through the book toward the final scene where they all find themselves back in Brooklyn. While some of the stories were more self-contained than others, each of them solid enough on its own and well-integrated as a combined entity.

Recommended for any reader who likes teen love stories.

Paper. Library. 256 pages

More to come as I try to get caught up with my reading reports before midsummer.

Honestly, it’s been a hard week for all of us. But these are the weeks when we have to find the things that give us light. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My Saturday volleyball league is helmed by a really nice guy, John, who brought a case of water with him and made sure we paused in between sets to cool off in the shade and rehydrate on the hottest day of the year so far. Plus, he carried that water and a volleyball net plus a solar charging pad, battery, and other assorted odds and ends to the field on his scooter.

2. As I was walking to the farmers market yesterday, I passed a cyclist who looked to be about my mother’s age. His bike was outfitted with spoke beads and a music speaker, and he was sporting a velour duster and a blue mohawk bike helmet.

3. My brother and brother-not-in-law are visiting the northeast this week, and my brother texted me a photo of them and my parents together.

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

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard in in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet — never — in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of me.

      ~Emily Dickinson

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share quotes from books. While I love to quote books (ask Rudi how often I demand he stop doing something to listen while I read aloud), I don’t often record them someplace permanent. So instead of ten items, as would be normal on a Tuesday, I give you three: two quotes from my current reads and one from 2001, when I had a reading journal with a section for favorite passages:

“Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own.” – Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

“The willingness to take a beating: That’s how you know you’re dealing with a man of substance. A man like that doesn’t linger on the sidelines throwing gasoline on someone else’s fire; and he doesn’t go home unscathed. He presents himself front and center, undaunted, prepared to stand his ground until he can’t stand at all.” – Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“There were more books than the space seemed to allow. This is not unusual. Books, after all, have their own peculiar gravity, given the collective weight of words and thoughts and ideas. Just as the gravitational field around a black hole bends and wobbles the space around it, so, too, does the tremendous mass of ideas of a large collection of books create its own dense gravity. Space gets funny around books.” – Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans

How about you? Do you have favorite passages from books?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A friend who’d been out of work for a while started a new job this morning.

2. A friend who had a baby last month sent new photos of her daughter.

3. I spent the evening at the park reading amidst the irises.

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

I continue along The Lincoln Highway with Emmett and Billy and Duchess and Wooly, but theirs is not a journey that can be hurried. So I’ve dipped into a couple of other books, looking for a companion read. I’ve found it with Kelly Barnhill’s The Ogress and the Orphans. If you read her The Girl Who Drank the Moon, you’ll know that she is an amazing fairy tale storyteller, and the first chapters of this book do not disappoint. I only wish I had a small person to read it aloud to. I read the first chapter to the cat, but he didn’t seem impressed. I think it’s his loss.

My rainbow socks are finally off the needles, and the Tour de France knitalong begins in a little more than six weeks. Rather than start something new, I’m trying to see what other lingering projects I can wrap up. Next up are my Smock Madness socks, which date back, I believe, to 2018. As you can see, this is not asking for a huge time commitment, because all I have are a toe to finish (and I think a hole to patch on the foot).

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.