Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share books we loved that were outside our comfort zone:

1. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez: I mostly don’t love multi-POV novels, so it was a huge surprise that this ended up being the best book I read in 2014.
2. Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman: This was the first graphic novel I ever read, back in college when Spiegelman was coming to speak. I don’t love WWII stories and I hadn’t read a book where pictures were equally important to the story in ages.
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Spoiler alert: I don’t love tragic novels. But this one was so well-crafted that I couldn’t help but be impressed when I read it in grad school.
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Sometimes I get swayed by all the positive reviews I see of a book, but when it isn’t for me, I quit reading. Again, WWII and multiple POVs, but in this case the short chapters and change in narrators gave me places to breathe and put the book down when things got too intense to keep reading.
5. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: More war. But the lyrical prose and the distance between the reader and the main characters combined with the magical realism of doors that transcend space made this a must-read story about refugees.
6. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: When I first reviewed this book, I stated quite plainly that while I could see its appeal, I didn’t like it because I don’t like books that end in a depressing way. But when it came time to round up the best books I read in 2010, I found that it had stuck with me in a visceral way that other books hadn’t.
7. The entire Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith: I like mysteries and detective novels, but only when they aren’t especially dark and tense. However, I also don’t like them when they’re stupid and obvious, and there’s a narrow path to walk between those two things. The more literary novels tend toward thrillers and the less uncomfortable ones tend to give the story away in the first chapter. When I’m trying to give people examples of where the line is I point them to the Cormoran Strike novels, which fall at the very extreme end of how dark a novel I can get through.
8. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness: I’m pretty sure I just bawled through this entire novel, which is not how I like to enjoy my reading.
9. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi: I do not like short stories, but these were so well-executed and mostly much less dreary than most collections.
10. The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak: While waiting unsuccessfully in line for the last panel of the day at Book Fest on Saturday, I struck up a conversation with a young woman holding a copy of this novel. I shared that I’d been put off by Death as a narrator so much that it took me forever to read it. (I took it out of the library back when it came out and then racked up library fines for six months before returning it and a large donation to the library and buying my own copy. This underlines why I appreciate D.C.’s altering their fine system because this is not the only book where this has occurred.)

How about you? Have you loved certain books in spite of their not being your usual reading fare?

… for a moondance.

-Van Morrison

A long weekend is definitely time to look at life through rose(ate spoonbill)-colored glasses. Feel free to (Goeldi’s) monkey around — you deserve to goof off during a three-day weekend!

Here’s some of what I hope this weekend includes:

• Attend BookFest. I’d like to see Rainbow Rowell, Barbara Kingsolver, Ngozi Ukazu, RBG, Julia Alvarez, Madeline Miller, Pablo Cartaya, Shannon Hale, Jon Klassen, Juana Medina, Renée Watson, and Mitali Perkins, among others, but between the crowds and the schedule overlap, I’d be happy to cross three of them off my list. After the first year when they moved the festival indoors from the Mall and I experienced a panic attack at the crowds (200,000 people attended last year’s festival), I came up with a game plan that seems to work for me — go a little later, bring food, find corners where breaks can be taken, and be attached to no particular author. Mostly I’ve gotten to see folks, but I don’t wait in lines (other than the five minutes before a new talk begins) and I am willing to miss out on hearing pretty much anyone (rooms have fire code restrictions about how many people can be inside). (I’m already pretty much resigned that I will not get into the RBG room.) But there is rarely a period of time where I have no one who interests me and usually you can squeeze in someplace — particularly in the outskirts around the children’s stages.
• Swim. The outdoor pools close on Monday — just in time for our next heatwave.
• Send out some writing samples. I’m keeping options open for the future and have decided to start investigating freelance work. (I have no illusion that that earns one a livable wage at the outset, but one must acquire a first client somehow…)
• Plant some fall seeds. Our growing season easily lasts into November, and I often harvest all the way until the end of the year, so now is a good time to put leafy greens back into the rotation and try planting some more root veggies and a fall bean crop.
• Shop at the farmers market. I need milk and raspberries and maybe plums or peaches for a tart.
• Watch baseball.
• Do laundry.
• Send some thank you notes.
• Knit on my shawl.
• Finish another book.

How about you? What’s on your weekend wish list?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi and I make the most of our mutual unemployment today, spending the afternoon at the zoo, checking out a new ice cream shop, and sitting on the patio at a bar I’m fond of.

2. After soliciting advice from many of my friends and outlining a detailed plan with one with expertise, I attempt something new and foreign and terrifying to me — and utterly fail. There are tears in public (although later, not in the moment of failure itself), but words of comfort and congratulations drift in from across the country for having been brave enough to try.

3. I made a new friend back in the spring and we have spent lots of time out together over the past few months. This weekend, she and her husband (and their dog, Molly) invited us over for supper and we spent hours chatting about their upcoming vacation, early computing languages (that was mostly Rudi and her husband), and how job hunting has changed since we were all young.

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

I had hoped to have my shawl done by the end of August and to block it over Labor Day weekend, but I just haven’t put the time in on it the last few weeks to make that happen. Part because life and part because the rows are so long now that it takes almost half an hour to get a pair of them done. That said, Saturday is the National Book Festival and in rooms where I can get a seat (the children’s stages allow for standing because they’re in a cavernous room that extends a couple city blocks), I will be knitting while I listen and tweet. (I go by myself, so that’s how I make it a little less lonely and anxiety-inducing.) So I suppose it’s a possibility that I could still finish, but I won’t count on it. I’ve told myself that wrapping it up next week would still be within the two-month mark which is pretty good for me.

On the reading front, my lack of ability to concentrate on anything means I continue dipping in and out of books. Wordslut (nonfiction on feminism and linguistics) and The Kiss Quotient (adult romance) are both overdue at the library, so I should finish them up first. I’m nearly done listening to The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (historical fiction), which is good because it expires over the weekend. The Dust Bowl Ballads and Shuri are both graphic novels and could be finished quickly if I put my mind to them. Tove Jansson’s memoir, The Summer Book, is topical and I’d like to start it soon. There There is important, but neither a format (connected short stories) nor a topic (mass shootings and racism) I enjoy, so I keep picking it up and then putting it back down (even skimming the ending didn’t really help). Girl Waits with Gun (historical fiction) is mine and I can read it in places where it might get wet. You see how things go…

If you want to see how some people actually progress with their goals, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.