Part of finding a sense of normalcy as the pandemic winds down is to return to things we had to postpone. Rudi and I used to love going to the movies, and, in fact, went to two in the final days before the world shut down in March 2020.

Here are the movies I’m most looking forward to seeing in the cinema:

In the Heights (June)
Black Widow (July)
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (July)
Respect (August)
Dear Evan Hansen (September)
Come from Away (September)’
The Addams Family 2 (October)
Eternals (November)
West Side Story (December)
Spiderman: No Way Home (December)

How about you? Are you looking forwad to trips to the theater?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them. I couldn’t think of titles that sent me scrambling for read-alikes, but I could come up with a list of books that made me want to read everything its author had written/will write:

1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (I used to save money for trips to Waldenbooks at the Meriden Square, where I went through all the Anne books and into Montgomery’s other series/standalones.)
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (I might not love everything he writes, but I will read it.)
3. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (I recognize this book has some problems with the portrayal of Park, but I loved it.)
4. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (This is another book with some problems in terms of racial interactions, which Kingsolver tried to address in her later Pigs in Heaven. I haven’t reread it in a long time and can’t speak for how it holds up, but I adore it has made me a Kingsolver devotee.)
5. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (Pretty sure it’s time for a reread of this classic tale of home improvement and cultural miscues)
6. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber (I don’t know how to best categorize Thurber’s works except maybe to say it has a strong moral compass and a witty soul.)
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Another must-read author of my youth. I’ve even read her religious essays.)
8. When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin (Her descriptions are pure poetry.)
9. A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd (This book conveys such a love of words!)
10. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (I adored his way of telling stories through both words and pictures.)

Other books in this same category include Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Booked by Kwame Alexander, and The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon.

How about you?

I’m a little further along on my sock foot than I was last week. I’m also about a third of the way through Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz. And in audiobooks, I’m past the halfway point on The Bookshop of Second Chances and most of the way through No Time like the Future, Michael J. Fox’s latest memoir.

Check out As Kat Knits for the weekly knitting and reading roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader is a freebie, so I thought I’d share ten of the books I currently have checked out from the library that I’m particularly looking forward to reading:

1. Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price
2. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala
3. Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlaine
4. Trowbridge Road by Marcella Fleischman Pixley
5. Class Act by Jerry Craft
6. The Magic Fish by Le Nguyen Trung
7. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar
8. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Sutanto
9. The Resisters by Jen Gish
10. Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof

How about you? Do you have anything out from the library you’re particularly looking forward to?

I’m onto the foot of my first rainbow and clouds sock. Maybe I’ll finish it while I’m up visiting my folks.

I finished the print book I’d been reading and am now just picking which library books that are due soon after I get back to town I should take for vacation reading. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala is one possibility.

On Overdrive, I’m about halfway through Jackie Fraser’s The Bookshop of Second Chances. I’ve got a couple memoirs for Rudi and me to listen to on the drive — Michael J. Fox’s most recent one and the book Amber Ruffin wrote with her sister, Lacey Lamar.

Check out As Kat Knits for what others are reading and crafting.

With the winding down of all but one of my over-the-air tv shows (which wraps up in three weeks), I’m putting out my semi-annual appeal for recommended series to stream.

Shows we/I have enjoyed recently: The Equalizer, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, Rebel, Teenage Bounty Hunters, Mr. Iglesias, Julie and the Phantoms, Haven, Life Is Murder, Punky Brewster, Stacked, Good Omens, Magnum, Miss Scarlet and the Duke, The Republic of Doyle, Frankie Drake Mysteries, His Dark Materials, and All Creatures Great and Small.

I don’t want anything that veers from mystery/detective show into thriller, I won’t bother with reality tv or dramas that get too soapy, and I prefer comedies that are kind. If you have a recommendation, please leave it in the comments.

Ultimately, tv watching is escapism for me. I want characters I’ll like and happy endings. (And if your gut instinct is to recommend Schitt’s Creek, you aren’t the first, but give me a midway point to start the series. If I like the characters I’ll keep going (and even go back to when they were horrible), but I’m not going to sit through two seasons just to maybe get to a point where I don’t hate them all.)