This week’s Top Ten Tuesday at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share our favorite bookish settings:

1. The beach (It’s not enough on it’s own to make me bring a book home, but it’s always enough to make me read the blurb.)
2. Christmastime (Ditto. And, actually, it’s usually enough to make me take the book out from the library.)
3. London (In pretty much any era.)
4. D.C. (Unless they do a terrible job of it. I stopped reading a book once because of the way they described the fountain in Dupont Circle.)
5. Victorian England (The setting of many of my favorite cozy detective series.)
6. New England (Again, unless they do a terrible job of it. I gave up on a book recently because she used a real Connecticut town in the entirely wrong part of the state.)
7. Autumn (Everyone’s just happier in fall.)
8. The 1920s (It always seems such a glamorous time…)
9. Modern Paris (I’m less interested in it as historic setting, but I’d be delighted to follow cat burglars up the Eiffel Tower or into the Louvre.)
10. The 1980s (Many of my school years were in this decade, which means I have a nostalgic fondness novels (particularly y.a./kidlit) sprinkled with banana clips and Trapper Keepers.)

How about you? What places or times immediately make you give a book a second look?

Ha!

I’m not sure where people get the idea that the country is so much quieter than the city.

There are two owls — one down my folks’ driveway and one somewhere further down the hill — chatting about potential meal options.

Something or maybe some things (Deer? A bear? Smaller nighttime critters trying to stay out of someone’s supper plans? The dog in the house up above sometimes hears it too. ) keep traveling through the brush uphill, stepping on downed branches and sending loose debris tumbling down the bank.

And that doesn’t take into account the crickets and peepers.

So, nope, not quiet here at all…

Again, I need to hit publish before ai turn off my phone…

It’s been a relaxing day. It’s not what I’d hoped for (may we soon retire the concept of “out of an abundance of caution”), but it was quiet and allowed me to take a pre-supper nap, spend time with my folks, knit, and stuff myself with pizza.

Tomorrow we’re goong to hunt down cider doughnuts. I can’t wait.

Rudi said, what happened to that post you typed in bed last night? Apparently I onlt hit publish in my mind…

We kicked off a long weekend by driving up to Connecticut to celebrate my dad’s birthday, our first in-person family birthday in 20 months.

Tomorrow, I’m goong to sleep in, but I also told my mom that we might need to find some cider doughnuts.

Sunday, Rudi is going for a bike ride, so it will just be my folks and me.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi was finally able to fix my computer, which died a month ago. (It was a bad ribbon cable.) I’m so happy to have it back.

2. Rudi’s friend, Jay, has agreed to cat sit for us both while we’re away in Connecticut and while we’re in Utah.

3. I get to have drinks with my former colleague, who’s gotten her dream job and is moving across the country.

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

We’re into the final mosaic chart of the shawl. There’s still a final ribbing section before the bind-off row, so that could take a month, because apparently I hate two-color ribbing. But I’d like to think that I’m about a week away from wrapping this thing up, which will still give me weeks before it’s actually cool enough to want to wear woolen neckwear. (Bring on the highs in the 60s!)

It’s been a quiet week reading-wise. I read a chapter of Beth & Amy, which was actually the sample chapter they included at the end of Meg & Jo, but that’s okay. And I have listened to more of Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which has now gotten past the 2008 Iowa Caucus. I suspect Rudi won’t mind listening to some of that on our drive north this weekend, but I also have Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens for us to return to now that it’s been a few months since we watched the show. I’ll probably save finishing off Farah Heron’s Accidentally Engaged for my flight to Salt Lake next week, since that’s also come back to me on audio.