I read five books in May, which was, I know, five months ago.

We’ve got one comic collection/graphic novel (YA/adult), one classic, one contemporary adult fiction, one YA contemporary, and one middle-grade historical fiction (it pains me greatly to classify a book set in the 1970s as such, but it is):

Paper Girls, Vol. 1, by Brian Vaughan, with illustrations by Cliff Chiang and Matthew Wilson
Set in the early morning of Nov. 1, 1988, the first five issues of the Paper Girls comic book examine what happens when four paper girls head out to deliver their morning Cleveland Plain-Dealer papers before dawn the day after Halloween. They have to deal with weirdos still out in costume, jerks who want to harass them, and, it turns out, time travelers and aliens (who are harder to tell from the other two categories on this one morning than they might otherwise be). As someone who was a papergirl at that time, these girls were edgier than I or any of the other kids I knew who had paper routes, but maybe that comes from not having to battle aliens at any point. Or maybe Connecticut towns were just less edgy than Ohio towns. Enjoyable nonetheless, but I probably would have liked it more without its veering into sci-fi. If you liked Heathers or The Goonies or Stand by Me, you may want to give this a shot.

Pages: 144. Personal copy (bought on Comic Book Day).

All Fall Down, by Ally Carter
Grace has moved to the European nation of Adria to live with her ambassador grandfather while her father does a tour in a war zone and her brother attends West Point. Where’s her mom, you ask? According to most people, she died in a tragic fire at the bookstore where she worked three years earlier. Grace, however, swears her mother was murdered, and that it was done by a scarred man she saw but that no one or thing else witnessed. This was such a traumatic event that Grace has spent time in mental hospitals recuperating and dealing with a fuzzy memory of that day’s events. She’s been sent to live with her mom’s father, where Grace used to spend summers as a kid and where she’ll reconnect with kids she used to know, like Alexei, the son of the Russian ambassador, and Megan, the prissy daughter of one of the embassy workers. She also gets to meet Noah and his popular twin sister Lila, the children of the Spanish and Israeli diplomats, and Rosie, who lives in the German embassy. When Grace discovers that the scarred man is on Adria, she must decide who to trust and how much, including herself.

Pages: 310. Audiobook via the library’s Overdrive copy.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
I don’t know exactly what to say about this Austen novel, the last of her completed works I hadn’t read. I didn’t like it, but I suppose it could grow on me if I were to read it again a decade from now. I’d seen a film version before reading the novel, so I knew the basic premise and players going in, which probably didn’t make me in any hurry to read it. The story, generally: Fanny Price is the eldest daughter of the poorest of three sisters. The busybody middle sister convinces the richest sister and her husband to take the child in and raise her, but they all want to be sure she realizes she’s not being raised to be at the same social status as her four cousins. Cousin Edmund Bertram is the kindest of the four (or, really of anyone) to her, so she falls in love with him. When the busybody aunt’s husband dies, leaving the estate’s vicarage open, it’s filled by a couple and, soon, her two siblings, the Crawfords. Edmund falls in love with Mary Crawford, and Henry woos the elder Bertram sister, despite her being engaged to a bland, but well-off fellow. For whatever reason, Fanny is the only person who can see everyone’s character clearly and she piously and repeatedly suggests (in her own head, if not actually aloud) that everyone ought to just behave better. The novel picks up when Lord Bertram returns from several years of doing business in Antigua, but it’s a slow slog for the first half. Austen is usually reliable in comedies of manners, and you get some of that here, but it’s hidden beneath a lot of religious claptrap that probably played better back when it was written and a lot of moaning and mooning on the part of the heroine, with whom, despite being put in trying circumstances, it’s remarkably hard to sympathize. You know it’s been a rough book when you get to the end and the character you like best is a secondary one who’s only appeared occasionally. I’d probably only recommend this to Austen completists unless you really like reading books with lead characters you’d like to shake.

Pages: 507. Personal copy.

Raymie Nightingale, by Kate DiCamillo
Raymie’s father has moved out and, in order to win him back, she’s decided she needs to win a local children’s beauty pageant. But first, in order to do that, she needs to learn how to twirl baton, so she signs up for classes with two other girls who’ll also be competing: furious Beverly, who wants to sabotage the entire event to get back at her mother, herself a former pageant winner, and fainting Louisiana, who lives with her eccentric grandmother in the woods and whose parents, she tells her competitors, were circus performers. Set in 1975 Florida, this book (long listed for the National Book Award) had charm and sadness and lovely turns of phrases, but, unlike many of DiCamillo’s previous works, still didn’t win me over in the end.

Pages: 272. Personal copy.

A Man Called Ove, by Frederik Backman (translated by Henning Koch)
Ove is a cantankerous old man. He likes for there to be rules and for everyone to abide by them, and he has no qualms about telling you when you’ve violated them. He’s the guy out yelling at the neighbors for having slightly too long grass and for not cleaning up after their dog and for repairing bicycles in the common green space instead of a garage. First, a cat shows up, and we all know what cats think of rules. Then new neighbors move in next door, and they seem inclined to be amused by Ove, instead of put off by him. But Ove has a plan, and neither a prescient feline, nor a savvy neighbor is going to stop him from enacting it. This book, translated from the Swedish, is a gem, and you’ll find yourself crying and laughing from both joy and sadness as it progresses. I’ll give you no more than that, except to say I highly recommend reading it, particularly before the film (in Swedish, with subtitles) is released in the U.S. this month.

Pages: 337. Library copy.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, which I’m now writing late Friday night, from The Broke and the Bookish asked about ten books on my fall To-Be-Read list:

1. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (helpfully, I’m halfway through this already as my reading during Banned Books Week)
2. District Comics: An Unconventional History of Washington, DC, edited by Matt Dembicki (my election-themed reading for the library’s read along)
3. Mosquitoland by David Arnold (both my parents enjoyed it)
4. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Gemina (Space adventure sequel!)
5. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (my longest hold of the summer)
6. Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World by Katherine Zoepf
7. Magic in Manhattan by Sarah Mlynowski (this is my combined volume of Bras & Broomsticks and Frogs & French Kisses)
8. Unnatural Creatures: Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman (editor)
9. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them by J.K. Rowling
10. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

How about you? What are you hoping to read this fall to read this autumn?

Okay, we’re three months in to this year’s reading list. Sure, we’re still five months behind, but we’re moving forward. Today, we’re covering April. In April I completed three books, two middle grade novels and one classic novella:

To Catch a Cheat by Varian Johnson

In this sequel to The Great Greene Heist, middle-schoolers Jackson Greene and his crew are framed for vandalism to their school. Up until this moment, life for Jackson has been pretty good since he and Gaby started going out, and many of his thoughts have been focused on how to create the perfect moment for their first kiss. Jackson’s BFF (and Gaby’s brother) Charlie, with whom things have definitely been weird recently, has declared himself head honcho after Jackson declared himself done with the life of crime at the conclusion of book 1. But when a doctored video surfaces showing their crew vandalizing the school and when blackmailers demand Jackson and his friends steal an exam in order to buy their silence, Jackson may find it’s not so easy to walk away, particularly when you’re worried your friends might not be able to pull off the job without complications.

This is a fun series. If you like heist shows or movies, like Leverage or Ocean’s Eleven, or a fan of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series, I recommend you check it out.

256 pages. Personal copy.

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

The unnamed narrator, an author, falls in love with a coastal Maine town while on a trip and books herself a summer there, staying with the popular village herbalist. The town, populated by the sort of colorful characters one expects from watching Murder, She Wrote, Doc Martin, or Northern Exposure, is quiet. The villagers’ stories also are quiet, yet filled with the tough-it-out nature a New Englander would tell you is a regional characteristic. Published in 1896, this is a novella and won’t take you long to read (although it took me a while because I kept putting it down in favor of more action-filled reads). It will linger in your head for far longer. Give it a shot if you like more recent novels comprised of connected short stories or books where nature or odd characters play a stronger role than plot. (If you enjoy the sort of books Nan reviews at Letters from a Hill Farm, I think you’ll like this one.)

158 pages. Library copy.

The Key to Extraordinary by Natalie Lloyd

I loved Natalie Lloyd’s A Snicker of Magic, so when I saw her next book had been bought by the library, I quickly reserved it. Between the two books, I can say with some confidence both that Lloyd is a fan of quirky Tennessee mountain towns, dessert, and music and that I’m willing to give anything she writes a shot.

Emma is growing up with her older brother and Grandma Blue, the proprietor of the Boneyard Cafe, and adjacent to a cemetery where Emma leads tours. Emma is waiting impatiently for Destiny Dream to manifest itself: all the women of her family have talents or magics that are foretold in a dream that comes toward puberty, and they are tracked in a family journal, which Emma’s been poring over since her mother, a gifted singer, died a few years before. In centuries of women, only three women have ripped out their tales: two sisters in the mid-1800s and her grandmother.

Emma’s dream, though, is not clear-cut. It suggests she revisit the graveyard in order to find a treasure long lost, but she’s been hearing singing in the cemetery in the middle of the night, something her great-uncle suggests might be the ghost called The Conductor. Will Emma, her BFF Cody Belle, and the new, silent boy be able to figure out Emma’s destiny before her grandmother decides it’s time for a fresh start?

240 pages. Library copy.

Yesterday I finished Another Brooklyn, which meant I had choices when it came to picking out a new book to pack this morning. I had plans to attend a baseball game this evening and rain was a possibility, so I decided to plumb the depths of my personal collection, rather than endangering library books. Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, a gift from Kate during last winter’s Ninja Book Swap, caught my eye, and I started it while waiting for a delayed train this morning.

The ball game didn’t end up happening (or, rather it happened yesterday, without us), and Sarah managed to catch me to let me know not to come just as I was passing the turn-off to the library. Taking this as a sign, I wandered in and picked up the second book in the Phryne Fisher series, Flying Too High. (Did you know in the books, there’s a Mrs. Butler, as well?) I spent the evening reading it.

The knitting is the mate to this spring’s Sock Madness Slip-Stripe Spiral, and I’m nearly to the heel. I don’t love the pattern or the yarn combination, which makes it slower going than it ought to be, but I expect it’ll be finished by month’s end, when I may want to wear wool socks once more.

Yarning Along with Ginny.

After work, volleyball, the garden, and the pool, I decided to head down to the new café near my house that opened a couple weeks ago, Emissary.

My chai was a little weak (I miss the homemade chai from Bakehouse, which closed their coffeehouse to focus on their bakery back in the spring. Emissary’s won’t replace it.), but the cannelé were tasty. Right now, Emissary is too expensive to become a go-to stop, but it’ll be a nice treat occasionally.

Yesterday, I started reading Another Brooklyn, a novel reminiscing about coming of age in the titular borough in the 1970s. Newly released by Jacqueline Woodson, author of the verse memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, it would be obvious even without knowing that that this was written by a poet, with lyrical, yet slightly distant, prose the defining characteristic of the novel thus far.

I’m listening to a couple of YA novels, as well: David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy, which sounds like it’s narrated by Michael Cera (who co-starred in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the novel of which was co-written by Levithan) and Tamara Ireland Stone’s Every Last Word, which I just started listening to tonight.

On the knitting front, I’m into the gusset decreases of this sock, but I’m debating ripping back some. Whenever I started the heel flap, I accidentally did a single row of slip-stitch heel set up on the instep needle before moving onto the heel stitches. I fixed it tonight, when I went back to knitting in the round, but the half row is tight and I’m concerned it will be noticeable when worn. I tried it on and didn’t pick up on it, but I’d hate to be wrong after the fact. Plus, the sole stitches might be looser than I want on this size of needle. I’ll make a final decision tomorrow after I’ve had some sleep and some time away from it.

Yarning along with Ginny.

This was both a productive Bout of Books and weekend for me, and I just wanted to share a little about each before moving on to this week. (Writing a separate blog post for each should have been on my weekend to-do list, but alas!)

My goals for Bout of Books 17 were to finish three books, take part in four BoB activities, and visit two fellow participants a day. I’m happy to say I finished three books (The Heist, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and Friday Barnes, Girl Detective), started a new audiobook (Boy Meets Boy), and put in some more mileage on a fourth book that I finished a couple hours after BoB finished. I took part in both Twitter chats, didn’t get around to any of the challenges, and blogged twice, which gets me across that finish line, just. I didn’t visit fellow participants every day, but did several days, so I’m counting that as a victory, too. All in all, another good Bout of Books! I’ll be back for the next one, which is in early January.

As for the weekend, on Saturday, I started the day with the Bout of Books Twitter chat. We were out of easy food, and I still had some blueberries in the fridge that were okay, so I made us pancakes for breakfast. I don’t particularly like pancakes without blueberries, but I’m fine with waffles, so I would have gone that route if we’d been without.

Rudi and I moseyed over to the 17th Street Festival, where we bought some baked goods from the senior citizens having a bake sale and a half-off gift certificate to a restaurant I’d been wanting to try. It was hot, though, so once we’d covered the three blocks, we decided to head to a local cafe and have cold drinks.

In the evening, we ordered a pizza and picked it up and took it up to Carter Barron Amphitheater, where they used to show free plays in the summer. The Shakespeare Theatre pointed out that it was not especially helpful to low-income residents in other sections of town to hold free productions out in the woods near the well-off neighborhoods, so have moved their free play to a more central, mass-transit friendly location. Unfortunately, no one else has stepped up to put on plays, free or otherwise, at the amphitheater since then. They do, however, show a couple movies during the final week of August every year, and on Saturday, it was The Lorax, which we hadn’t seen. Watching a movie about the spirit of the forest while surrounded by trees seemed appropriate. It was still early when we got home, so we concluded the night by saying farewell to Inspector Lewis.

On Sunday, we slept in, rising just in time to catch the moment of nature at the end of CBS Sunday Morning, before heading out to the farmers market. We ate a leisurely breakfast (edited to add: and I painted my toenails a sparkly purple), then we got in the car and headed out to the library, the grocery store, and the D.C. State Fair. We ran into a friend, enjoyed some music, ate some mediocre ice cream from a vendor, and sampled some quite good rhubarb pie, a finalist in its category. It was fun, but it was held in a paved lot, so it was doubly hot, and after an hour, we were cooked.

I dropped Rudi off at home and headed down to water the garden, pick basil for dinner, and float in the pool for an hour. We ate supper and watched Help!, and I knit on my sock. After Rudi went to bed, I finished the book I was reading and put the laundry on, concluding the weekend with clean clothes and a completed to-do list.

How was your weekend?