Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We managed to get our skeletal Christmas tree out of the house with a minimum of fuss.

2. I left the office this evening and it was still light enough out to bike home before dark.

3. We have had some good luck shopping Christmas sales in the last week, picking up inexpensive candy, stationery, lights, and extension cords.

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

This week’s check-in of books and knitting is without a photo because my phone is charging and I am too lazy to go unplug it and to pull out my knitting, which is currently sitting beneath an avalanche-ready pile of laundry on the couch.

So instead, I’ll just tell you. Last weekend I got a row knit on my shawl. That would seem unimpressive (and it is), but since I haven’t done anything besides use its presence as an implement of guilt since September, I’m deeming that success. There is a possibility that I could knit the final row and then bind it off this coming weekend, but let’s not get carried away with things.

On the reading front, I’m listening to Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia. I didn’t finish it on Overdrive, so I took it out on cd, which means I’m way less good about actually listening to it. But I’m enjoying this quest-read about a hospital development researcher (and her friends) who gets caught up in a scavenger hunt/quest game in the wake of a Boston billionaire’s death. I’m more than halfway through and would love to spend some time this weekend listening to it.

On paper, I’ve got two books in progress. Jennifer Chiaverini’s Christmas Bells tells the parallel stories of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during the Civil War and a contemporary Boston-area music teacher/choirmaster and the organist who is in love with her. It’s fine, but a bit slow-going since chapters alternate between eras and points of view. My other book, We Met in December, is a cute contemporary rom-com, but it, too, is going to shift perspectives. Three books on the go with this literary device is really too many, so maybe I’ll put one on hold and pick up something that can commit to telling a story from a single character’s perspective. I’ve picked up a bunch of the Cybils finalists from the library, so there’s probably at least one of those that doesn’t shift perspective by chapter.

What are you reading and/or crafting these days? (If you want to see what others are working through, head to As Kat Knits for her weekly roundup.)

We finally got to see Little Women, which is the movie I’ve most been looking forward to for the last few months. It was utterly delightful. I’m was perfectly happy with the tweaks that were taken with the source material, since overall they were consistent with the story.

But now I need some new movies to look forward to. Here are ten coming out between now and summer that seem promising:

1. Emma (Yes!)
2. Onward (Tom Holland and Chris Pratt play brothers in this animated feature0
3. Sometimes Always Never (A detective film about a love of words? Heck, yeah!)
4. My Spy (It seems ridiculous to combine a spy with a kid, but I like that kind of ridiculous.)
5. Mulan (The only live Disney adaptation I’ve been interested in to date has been Beauty and the Beast, but this one looks good. I’m hoping Ming Na has a cameo.
6. The Lovebirds (“Hilarious murder mystery” sounds promising.
7. Black Widow (I’ve been waiting for Natasha to get her own film for a decade.)
8. Dream Horse (A woman decides to breed a racehorse in a Welsh village.)
9. Artemis Fowl (I should go back and reread the first couple of these middle-grade novels.)
10. Wonder Woman 1984 (Obviously)
11. In the Heights (We saw the trailer for this tonight and it looks great!)

What movies (or dvds/streams for those of you who don’t go to the theater) are you looking forward to in the next six months?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is bookish discoveries of the past year. I’m choosing to interpret that new-to-me authors I particularly enjoyed:

1. Comic illustrator Debbie Tung
2. Author and illustrator Ngozi Ukazu
3. Fantasy and science fiction novelist Nnedi Okorafor
4. Author and illustrator Katie O’Neill
5. Jasmine Guillory, who writes contemporary romance starring African Americans
6. Linda Holmes, author and NPR host
7. Author and illustrator Nick Hayes
8. Writer Jessica Townsend
9. Author Sonali Dev
10. Writer Mary H.K. Choi

How about you? What were your bookish discoveries of 2019?

It was a surprisingly balmy weekend for January, and I was lucky enough to be able to spend a good deal of it outside. Which means my living room is still a hot mess, only one load of laundry got done, and the tree is still inside and covered in lights (although the ornaments are off).

I don’t regret any of it, and I’m glad that some of my tasks were mobile. I’ll be spending some of my evenings playing catch-up this week, but I think it will have been worth it.

How was your weekend?

Sitting outside in a tshirt, reading and knitting, as one does when climate change is a reality…