A Late August, Mid-Week Check In?

Can you believe that August is starting to wind down?! My least favorite month is almost over — and it hasn’t been too bad. This week has been especially lovely: lots of rain showers, cloudy days, cool nights. I’m still snipping lots of flowers and picking tomatoes everyday. I haven’t spotted a tomato hornworm in over a week and that feels like a major accomplishment. I’ve not knit a stitch in nearly two weeks but am certain that I’ll be bitten by that bug when the time is right.

And the reading this week has been out of this world. I’m sharing just one book with you today but hope to be back on Friday with a better summary of my reading week thanks to StoryGraph’s abilities to synthesize my reading time into such a handy graphic. But that will be later this week. For now, let’s chat about the one book that has tightened its grip on me and a desire that has my mind spinning with hope and possibilities.

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Held by Anne Michaels – this book, friends. This book! I don’t know how to begin to describe how much I loved it. It starts in 1917 France in the middle of a war and leads us all the way to the Gulf of Finland in 2025. It gives us an opportunity to see how we’re all connected, to ponder the creation of a soul, and to experience the wonderment of being made of light. Mary and I have been emailing back and forth, searching for all the connections, and I’ve been trying to articulate to her how this book made me feel. It’s impossible. It’s beautiful. I hope it makes the Booker shortlist because I want all of you to read it and then send me an email about it.

I am (very reluctantly) returning this to the library on Saturday but have pages and pages of notes written. Quotes copied, connections drawn, more thoughts left to scribble. I’m also considering drawing a family tree tonight after everyone goes to sleep. Maybe I should just buy my own copy? It’s worth owning and marking up.

[Also, I’m loving these dots for color-coding questions and beautiful passages in my reading journal. Aren’t they fun?!]

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Ruby Granger is one of my favorite YouTubers. Do you follow her? Last year she was getting her Masters at Oxford University and she has so many wonderful videos of her time there. Anyway, she graduated in the spring and is planning a year of independent learning and has made a few videos about it over the last couple of weeks. I am smitten with her idea. Mostly because I have a few writing projects that I’ve been aching to tackle and this series of hers has rekindled those flames.

When/where/how to start them? I don’t need to buy anything for them – I have a library card and a stack of empty notebooks waiting to be filled. I have a planner waiting to help me set up my goals and tick them off, however slowly they must be accomplished. I get stuck because I start worrying about the logistics of it all way before that’s even necessary and I convince myself that I’m just going to embarrass myself. And then I don’t claim the time needed to work on these projects because I convince myself that my time is better spent cleaning and cooking.

But over the next couple of weeks, I want to spend some time with my notebooks and sketch out a plan that feels right. I also want to find ways to share it here to help me stay accountable to what I hope to achieve.

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I’m going to do my best to post a reading update on Friday afternoon. And potentially some beginning strokes of a research and writing plan for this idea that I have. I hope you’re able to fill your evening with exactly what you need to unwind. See you on Friday!