This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is Books with Geographical Terms in the Title. Here are ten I’ve enjoyed:

1. Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (Gog and Magog!)
2. When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin
3.  Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
4. River Secrets by Shannon Hale
5. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
7. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
8. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
9. Where the Moon Meets the Mountain by Grace Lin
10. Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

I also want to acknowledge that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books also popped into mind for this list, but I haven’t read them in a long time. While they definitely did contribute to this New England-raised girl’s childhood understanding of the middle of the country, I recognize they featured a number of very negative images of interactions with the Native Americans who lived on and were displaced from the land the characters were “settling.” Before I’d include them on a list that implies an endorsement or hand them to a young reader, I’d want to re-read them to see whether that’s still the case.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The moon wasn’t full (Saturday is the Harvest Moon), but this evening’s moonrise was still spectacular.

2. As I was walking to the garden, I saw some folks had set up a net and were playing volleyball. “Would you like to play?” one of them asked. I assured them I would, but I had to go pick my tomatoes first before it got too dark. We played until the lights came on.

3. I decided we should award surprise superlatives to the volleyball team this time around, so a teammate and I wrote best-of’s for everyone, which I think went over really well. While we’d kept each other’s secret, I was cheerfully resigned to “team mom” for my organizing role. But instead, in a heartwarming, don’t-cry-on-the-field kind of moment, she dubbed me “Queen of the Misfits,” and I’ve never felt more seen or more touched.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books we loved so much when we borrowed them that we had to get our own copy. I wasn’t sure I’d get to ten, but it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected:

1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Maryanne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
3. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
4. The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak
5. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
7. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
8. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
9. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
10. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

How about you? Do you buy books that you’ve borrowed if you love them? Or are you an avowed non-re-reader?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The camera (and flashlight) on my phone started working again!

2. We landed in Baltimore at dawn and the sky was beautifully streaked with pink.

3. My BFF, Karen, and I got a chance to catch up.

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

We’re nearing the end of our trip to Salt Lake.

The celebration of life we held for Rudi’s mom on her 87th birthday was lovely. About 20 friends and colleagues were able to join us at a park pavilion for drinks, snacks, and reminiscences.

We scattered some of her ashes on Friday and we’ll do some tomorrow in areas where she used to forage mushrooms. It was clear that she approved of the first location, because we found two types without much effort.

While I’ve enjoyed swimming in the hotel pool and eating out, I’ll be glad to get home to Corey and volleyball, even if I will have to do some cleaning so a friend can come over this weekend.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The volleyball team has worked on leveling up together, meaning nearly all of us are better than we were at the start of the season. We chased down balls we would have let drop, we blocked shots, and we made smart hits to beat a really solid team this week, moving us up into third in our league to end the regular season and making for a very merry gathering afterwards.

2. We arrived in Salt Lake this morning and while Rudi was getting his hair cut, I checked out a new-to-me tea house. The single-estate Assam tea from Kenya I tried was wonderful.

3. We saw A Strange Loop, a musical about a gay Black playwright struggling with his inner critics and his familial expectations, in New York City last weekend and found it deserving of every award it has won. The acting was outstanding, the lyrics moving and cheeky by turn, and the mostly minimal staging effective. I will need to read the libretto at some point, because there are seven people on stage nearly all the time and some of them singing over each other, which means I definitely didn’t catch everything that was going on.

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