Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The fireflies have made their first appearances of the season!

2. It was a really good week at volunteering this week. We brought snacks to celebrate one of the other coaches’ 25th birthday, which both she and the kids loved; the kids had a fun time trying to score on me in the goal (with our bitsy nets, I am a pretty good goalie); and some of the kids who usually sit on the sideline actually played in the game at the end (and seemed to have fun).

3. My friend Chris got married last weekend and invited us to his and Julie’s wedding. And it was delightful. All of it. From the ceremony to the reception, from the venue to the food, and from the raucous joy of both their families to easy camaraderie of the volleyball folks in attendance (we even got a shoutout in their vows), I can’t point to a single thing I’d change. Except maybe that we were having too much fun conversing to do much dancing, and that doesn’t really seem like a negative at all.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share Books That Feel like Summer.

To me, summers include vacations, road trips, times at the beach or pool, camp, and high school jobs. Here are some books, five of which I recommend and five of which I hope to read, that include those items:

Read and Recommended:

1. Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
2. Summerland by Michael Chabon
3. Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell
4. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
5. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

On My Radar:

1. I Don’t Care If We Never Get Back by Ben Blatt
2. Beach Read by Emily Henry
3. The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen
4. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
5. Mrs. Nash’s Ashes by Sarah Adler

How about you? Are there books that just scream summer that you’re hoping to read or that you’ve finished and recommend?

Dozed off writing this last night… Apparently too much sun and sand for quick, coherent thoughts!

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We spent the afternoon at the beach, my first in more than a year. An onshore breeze mostly kept the haze away from the shore until evening, so we held court under deep blue skies and with temperatures in the upper 60s.

2. After going a couple more days without water than I would have liked (the water was mysteriously off at the garden and I hadn’t brought any from home), my young plants have perked back up, including my pink flowers, which had looked decidedly wilted.

3. I needed a haircut and tried a new stylist. She listened to what I wanted, offered her suggestions when I asked for her professional opinion, and provided tips for getting the most out of my new ‘do this summer. It works both down and back for sports, and now I just need to find a diffuser attachment for my (very dusty) hairdryer to see if I can recreate what she did for Chris’ wedding on Saturday.

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

I had a nice weekend and I hope you did, too. I didn’t get to everything I’d hoped to, but such is the way of life. I did manage to squeeze in quite a bit:

We picnicked at the Kennedy Center and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark under the stars.

I spent time at the garden, outside in a pool, and on the patio of a cafe.

I bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers market.

I played volleyball, both in the sun and in the (what was quite a bit more than expected) rain and got in some miles on the bike.

We cooked (veggie) hot dogs at home and made daiquiris and went out for ice cream with my friend Chris. And we shopped at our local Japanese market and treated ourselves to some buns and soup.

How was your weekend?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesdays at That Artsy Reader Girl follows up our must-read quirks by asking about the Things That Make Me Instantly NOT Want to Read a Book. Here are ten of my literary turn-offs:

1. A description of “thriller.” Almost always too dark and intense for me.
2. Overly flowery language. Particularly irksome in audiobooks, because apparently I’ve trained my eyes just to skip over lengthy lists of adjectives in print.
3. Repetitive phrasing. Again, an audiobook peeve. My parents love the Spenser books by Robert Parker, who never met a conversation where it was not necessary to include “he said,” and “she said,” after every line of dialogue, but it drives me to distraction. Did he need them to hit a word count for each book?
4. Solving the mystery in the first chapter. If I can figure it out in your first ten pages, there’s no point to my reading the other 250.
5. Books set during war. We know beloved characters aren’t making it to the end of the story, and that’s already real life. I don’t want that in my books.
6. Unlikeable main characters. Again, I have to interact with people I don’t like off the page. Why would I want to give them any of my reading time?
7. Ambiguous endings. If reviews talk about twists or offer up comparisons to “The Lady or the Tiger,” I’m out. I want a positive, conclusive end to my books. (Exceptions will be made for the middle book of a planned trilogy, since tradition dictates those will end in an unsatisfactory way.)
8. Publisher branding. When Rudi and I visited Paris, we walked into the bookshop around the corner from our hotel only to be greeted by an entire store filled with white spines, because they were all put out by the same publishing house. I felt too overwhelmed even to try to pick something out and immediately turned around and left. (I had more luck in a general bookshop later on).
9. Books featuring animals as main (or vital secondary) characters. Like war novels, 99% of these are not going to end happily.
10. Books by authors I’ve deemed insipid. I will never read another Nicholas Sparks or Mary Higgins Clark novel again.

How about you? What makes you immediately close a book?

I dozed off working on a cover letter last night and didn’t realize until I was in bed that I hadn’t posted here.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Grey Kitten and I talked for a spell in the wee hours one night after Rudi headed to bed. Sometimes a 3-hour time difference can be a good thing.

2. A friend’s mom has come through her brain surgery as well as can be hoped for.

3. My team’s game on Monday was against an opponent who struggled to put together plays. So we stayed afterwards to play a split squad scrimmage (plus a couple others) and had a blast before heading out to the bar.

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