Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is favorite tropes in our reading material.

Mine include:

1. Found families (if you’re surprised to find this at the top, you haven’t been paying attention)
2. Heists
3. Cozies (People who are not professional law officers solve crimes that stump aforementioned pros!)
4. Bequests that let you change your life
5. Nerdy girl/guy saves the day (Hermione forever)
6. Bad guy isn’t really a bad guy
7. Booklovers love books
8. Sisters are doin’ it for themselves (be they literal sisters or BFFs, they’ve got each other’s back)
9. Definitely not love at first sight (or even like, really)
10. Crossovers (I feel like this is getting more common as ways for authors to write sequels without writing sequels. Or when they have enough series where a character from one can show up in another.)

What are some of your favorite tropes/themes to discover in books?

Monday marks the start of the weeklong reading event called Bout of Books. I’m signing up once again.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 am Monday, August 19th, and runs through Sunday, August 25th, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, Twitter chats, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 26 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My goals for the event are simple:

1. Read at least 5 of the 7 days.
2. Take part in at least three of the non-reading events, such as Twitter chats, challenges, or commenting on someone else’s progress.
3. Blog here at least once more about my progress.

I was on the wrong side of Nationals Park to truly capture the beauty of tonight’s sunset, so this was the best I could do.

The summer season is waning, which means both that the infernal weather will soon abate and that all the fun outdoor things will soon wrap up. As such, my weekend plans include:

• Floating in the pool.
• Watching a baseball game.
• Buying lots of summer produce at the farmers market.
• Taking a trip to the library.
• Reading and knitting outdoors.
• Attending an international food festival.
• Spending time at the garden.
• Doing laundry. (Some of the weekend has to be spent inside!)
• Cleaning the bathroom.
• Refilling the tea canisters.

What are you hoping to get to this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There’s nothing like returning to a garden that’s at peak production. My haul on Wednesday included peppers, at least five varieties of tomatoes, and basil.

2. One of the things I really wanted to do while in Connecticut was to get to a sporting goods store to see if I could find a pair of volleyball sneakers. I could tell the difference for my knees just jumping around Dick’s shoe department, so I am excited for next month when I resume playing indoors and can use them. Since I’ll be playing twice a week again, it will be good to minimize the beating my knees take.

3. A shower immediately after coming in from an hour playing volleyball outside in the August heat.

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

I admit that there’s been a lot going on around here behind the scenes recently, which hasn’t left me as focused as I’d like for knitting and reading. Half of my train travel this week was spent sleeping or drowsing and much of the other half mentally puttering, although I did pick up my knitting at each station we stopped at, offering passengers boarding the train the option of picking a seat next to me and my needles or next to someone else with less pointy occupations. (It worked to my advantage.)

I’m into the second set of mosaic knitting of the pattern, which puts me in the final third of the shawl. I love the color combination and the copper sparkle in the purple yarn (which never shows up in the photos I take) and the pattern itself. Were it not for my choosing to include a yarn that has both been munched on by moths and nicked by my ball winder’s gear (meaning I need to spit splice yarn back together with surprising frequency), I do believe I’d be done already. I recommend it to anyone who might want to work on a mosaic shawl, and I can see myself making a second one in the future (but with unnicked yarn next time).

I also thought I’d finish A Covert Affair, the second book in the Librarian and the Spy series), but I didn’t do that either. The first part of the book was set locally, but the characters are now off to India, so I’m hoping the change of scenery will interest me more. I started Hope Rides Again on the train (it seemed appropriate), but the opening chapters annoyed me. As I said to my book group today, probably what most annoys me is that real life Joe Biden continues to participate in the presidential bid, so I have very little sympathy for the fictional counterpart also engaged in that activity (as well as amateur sleuthing. But I’m also questioning some authorial choices, including having the fictional Joe reading a fictional version of the real first book in the series. It feels a little too on the nose and a little too self-congratulatory and a lot lazy, which is disappointing. I’m going to give it 50 pages, but there is a possibility it will go back to the library.

The audiobook du jour is Mackenzi Lee’s A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, which expired the last time I had it out before I had a chance to get very far into it. Our heroine is about to set forth for the Continent and a future in medicine and although I believe this means we will have to say farewell to Percy and Monty, I’m excited for Felicity’s prospects of getting to practice medicine again.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what other people are reading and crafting.