Last week I was hesitant to declare the arrival of summer but that’s no longer the case. Summer is here! We’ve had a sunny and very warm week and (luckily) no humidity. Saturday night we had some thunder and lightning, but I don’t think the rain actually made it to us? No matter – the ambience is what matters. Next week looks like it’s going to be about the same so I’m very thankful for the air conditioners Matthew put in last week!
We were busy with appointments and little projects around the house, so I didn’t get as much reading time as I would have liked. And that’s okay! It’s only going to get harder to find reading time as school begins to fade away and I will have no semblance of a routine to lean on. Today I’m sharing a bit of a bird update and the books I’ve finished over the last week: short and sweet!
Home
Do you remember that a house finch built a nest in the honeysuckle outside of my bedroom window? The opening picture is of the mama on her eggs. They hatched on Wednesday or Thursday last week! We’ve seen this finch bustling to and fro with bugs for her babies. Once again, I’ll try to get an action picture without disturbing her efforts. The baby birds themselves are not photogenic, as I’m sure you know. They are all fuzzy necks and gaping mouths, so I’ll spare you.
And birding is truly the most exciting thing that’s been happening around here. Last week was full of appointments, cleaning, cooking, and little projects around the house. Busy and important, all of it, but not so interesting.
Reading
Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
(Amazon | Bookshop)
“just like the war won’t ever end, like the carnage won’t ever end, it’s a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can’t ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later, will drag each and every person to their grave”
I don’t typically enjoy books set on a battlefield but this one is different. Set in France in the midst of WWI, Bagger and a gang of misfits are ordered to find the soldier who has been left shrieking on the battlefield and is freaking out the rest of the soldiers. What they find is a literal angel who reflects each of their yearnings: to one soldier, it looks like the daughter he misses back home; to another, it becomes an opportunity to become wildly rich; to a third, his mother.
This book drips gore but Kraus’s writing ensures safe passage for the reader. His efforts are so clever and bouncy — it allows the reader to have a glimpse of the horrors of the battlefield without sinking into the pits of it. It serves as an accessible reminder about how terrible war is in all of its forms and the civilian’s responsibilities to our soldiers.
(Also, I listened on audio so I had no idea it was written in a single sentence. I wonder if that would have felt differently on the page? And it makes the quote I chose more poignant.)
Said the Dead by Doireann Ni Ghríofa
(Preorder from: Amazon | Bookshop)
(UK version is available now with free shipping to the US: Blackwell’s)
“Any being may appear to thrive, she says, given all she appears to need — food, warmth, amusements — but at night, despite the bed made cosy by knitted blankets, her cage is still locked.”
I’ve been looking forward to Said the Dead all year and was thrilled when it appeared on my porch last week. This is a book of fiction based on the accounts of real women and the author. Ghríofa, an Irish poet, spent years reading the archives of a mental asylum, becoming obsessed with the casebooks describing the lives and struggles of the women within. As time went on, it became difficult to know who was writing this book; what time period the author belonged in; and where we, the reader, fit into the picture. It’s an immersive and beautiful story.
I loved spending time in the archives with this writer and was struck by the amount of research she must have done. Not only did she study the casebooks written while they were patients, but she did an extraordinary amount of digging through census reports, archived newspapers, birth/marriage/death records — all to paint as complete a picture of these woman as possible.
The biggest challenge for me with this book: it is written so beautifully and in such a dream-like state that I had issues staying awake. Not because it was boring, but because it is written like a dream and it lulled my brain into rest!
Currently reading:
📖 Land by Maggie O’Farrell: y’all. This one is interesting. Not only because it’s set right around the same time as Said the Dead, so I feel like I’ve spent a week in 19th century Ireland (which is amazing) but because it feels like a fairy tale. I’m only about 40 pages in so there’s a lot to figure out but it is mystical and magical and raw — I am looking forward to finding time to dig into it more!
🎧 The Poppy War by RF Kuang – this is my second effort with The Poppy War. I bought the whole series on audio when it was on sale a few years ago; and because I’m waiting on my next Audible credit and a few Libby holds, I decided to try reading it again. There are things I really like about it: there’s almost a dark academia vibe, a little bit of The Karate Kid, and Kuang thinks a lot about colonization and its effects on people. But it is a very early work from her and it shows in spots. And it is very, very long. And still — I’m enjoying it enough to continue so far, so I think I’ll keep going.
🐌 I don’t really have a slow & steady going! I started the second Proust but struggled to find my footing and nothing else is really reaching out to me right now. So I’ve been using this time for audiobooks and cleaning, which is probably what I should have been doing all along, to be honest!
Last week I wrote about my fourth week of The Oxford Project and the first book I remember that showed me how clever and creative writers could be. It was so fun to have that memory triggered in the midst of last week’s reading and to jot a few lines about how that reading experience has affected my whole life. These posts are free, so please join me over on Substack for this little project!
And that’s it, friends. I hope you find time to for the things that fill your bucket this week. Take good care.
The Cozy Burrow 
Loved hearing about what you’re reading…and Said the Dead sounds like one I definitely need to read. Just a thought for your slow and steady…how about Look Homeward Angel. I’d surely love to hear your thoughts about that. 🙂
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I’m not sure I could stand to read a book that was a single sentence with my eyes! I understand that it’s a stylistic choice, but I still remember how hard it was to read those punctuation-less sections of The Bee Sting a few years ago. My library still hasn’t gotten Land on Libby, so I decided to just buy the book (I know I’d have a long wait at the library, and it’s Maggie O’Farrell, so likely I’d want to own it anyway!). I also needed to get Molly a copy of her summer reading book (she’s reading The Vanishing Half!), so I ordered both from my local bookstore and they’re ready to be picked up.
Have fun watching those finch babies! Baby birds are pretty ugly when they’re new, but they very quickly get cute.
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