As I was driving back to my folks’ this evening, the radio station I was listening to was highlighting all the songs that were #1 on this weekend through the 1980s. Since these were the songs of my elementary and middle school days, I particularly enjoyed singing along. It is either an excellent memory booster to reach for lyrics of songs you haven’t heard in ages or a complete waste of valuable brain space. I’m going with option a.

Because I would like you to have excellent brains, too, I’m sharing the 10 songs that hit the top spot of the pop singles list the first week of each August during the 1980s. To make it a challenge for you, I’m arranging them alphabetically, and should you feel up to it, you can guess their order from 1980 to 1989.

“Every Breath You Take” by The Police

“Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor

“Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker, Jr.

“Glory of Love” by Peter Cetera

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2

“Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield

“Magic” by Olivia Newton-John

“Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx

“Roll with It” by Steve Winwood

“Shout” by Tears for Fears

I’ll be back tomorrow with the answers.

I’m hanging out in Connecticut this weekend, so this will not be my view for the next few days, although my parents do also get views of airplanes.

We feasted on pizza this evening and spent a pleasant pre-sunset hour on the back deck singing along with music. I’m getting together with Karen tomorrow and suspect Sunday may include helping my folks with some home improvement projects.

All in all, I’m looking forward to this escape from my norm, at least for a little while.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I bought a couple new dresses and got a haircut.

2. I tried blueberry and white chocolate ice cream. It was delicious!

3. There is a fig tree near the garden, so Rudi and I went and picked some of the ripe ones. Our fingers were very sticky when we were done.

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

I’ve got to catch a train in a few hours and would like a little sleep before then, so instead of knitting and the books I’m reading, I’m sharing this banner the Latvian Embassy is currently displaying. They’ve also added a Little Free Library to their property.

Kermit performs his hit sing-along with vocalist Jim James of My Morning Jacket and drummer Janet Weiss, formerly of Sleater-Kinney, at this year’s Newport Folk Festival.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl concerns cover redesigns, which mostly doesn’t interest me, unless it has to do with the Harry Potter series, in which case then I mostly just want to own them all, but will not because I do not possess Belle and the Beast’s library.

So instead today I thought I’d share ten of the books I’m reading off and on again because that’s how I roll right now:

1. There There by Tommy Orange: I don’t love short story collections or connected novels, but this book has been getting rave reviews, so I’m working on it.
2. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: I left the First Son and His Royal Highness in the midst of enjoying their relationship, but I know things are about to get hard for them, so I’ve resisted picking it back up again because I just want to skip to the happy ending.
3. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: This is the book I’m reading most right now and I’ll likely finish the last section tomorrow because I’m down to three or so chapters left. Then I just have to wait for them to write another book. This pair writes my favorite alternating POV stories and I cannot believe no one has made a movie/tv series of The Illuminae Files yet.
4. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: I got this audiobook out on cd, which means it’s currently living on my laptop. I have 16 hours of train rides coming in the next week, though, so there’s every possibility I could put a good dent in finishing it.
5. Naughty on Ice by Maia Chance: I put this aside for deadline reading and just need to get back to it. There’s probably less than two hours of reading left before it’s done.
6. The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich: My audiobook copy will likely expire tomorrow before I finish listening to it, although I’m going to go put another dent in what remains while I wash today’s dishes. I’ve got holds on it at all three libraries I belong to, though, so hope to get another copy before too long.
7. Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart: I only like to take books that belong to me to the pool and I recently picked this up at my local Little Free Library. I’m 50 pages in so far, which is probably about half of what I made it through when I started it four years ago.
8. Calamity at the Continental Club by Colleen J. Shogun: I made it two chapters into this locally set mystery this weekend, but I’m not sure I’ll make it another two. I’m giving it one more chapter before I make a final call about proceeding or not.
9. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan: This companion novel to The Bookshop on the Corner expired before I had a chance to finish listening to it and I want to know what happens before our characters get to their happy endings. (Unlike Red, White, and Royal Blue, they have not yet reached a stage where everyone seems happy, so I am motivated to return to them sooner.)
10. Early Riser by Jasper Fforde: This is another novel that just needs me to sit down with it for ninety minutes to finish it off. Seriously, I just need to get it done.

How about you? Are you a one-book-at-a-time kind of person? Or do you have masses of books going at once strewn about your home?