What Time Is It?
Currently reading:
Babel by R. F. Kuang
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver [ongoing]
Books finished this week: 1
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: the great B&N visit of NYE 2023
Why this book: The plot, the cover, taking a class with the author—the usual.
Thoughts: Hate to break out the “I wanted to like this more than I did,” but it’s the truth. The writing was gorgeous and poetic at the start, and I was willing to follow it where it took me as we unwound the main mystery and Sister Holiday’s backstory. But eventually, the slow pace and the repetition of information we already knew or theories of what Sister Holiday suspected went down really wore me down. This book has a fantastic protagonist, and I’m hoping that future books in the series will let her shine more, now that the backstory is out of the way.
Library updates:
It’s Sunday night at almost 9:30. I can’t remember the last time I wrote up a Sunday missive this late, and I thought about skipping it. It’s technically a holiday, so I have an excuse. But I did already draft the Google doc earlier this week, so I figured I could push through to share my thoughts on Scorched Grace (above) and a bit about my week.
I turned 32 on Wednesday. Every birthday past probably my tenth has felt like a wild number to have reached, milestones piling on top of milestones as life marches on. I can’t believe I’m in my 30s, though not in an annoying way. I don’t mind aging. It’s just strange to look back on my life and realize I graduated from college a full decade ago, when it feels like I was just running to class and studying abroad and renting my first apartment. Some moments have felt heavy and slow, but I look back on the summary now, and it feels like it passed in a blink. My birthday is over, but it feels like I was just stressing about making plans to celebrate this year.
I think I wrote about Bibliotheque and the botanical garden last week, as those were my gifts to myself over the weekend before my birthday. The day of was mostly like any other, though I made sure to build in special, quiet moments: working from the coffeeshop, getting my favorite roast beef sandwich, buying books from the local bookstore (more on that below). I took myself to see Merrily We Roll Along and thought a lot about friendship and dreams and growing up, yet somehow didn’t cry this time around——progress? Maturity?
And now I’m typing this up so late because I just got back from spending Easter (and a belated birthday) with my parents. We went to dinner last night and I got a small bowl of vanilla ice cream with a candle in it from our waitress at the end of the meal, which felt incredibly kind and special. But the running joke of the weekend started earlier that day, when my mom and I went to the mall——the mall, I know——so we could look at department store watch counters.
I had to replace the battery in my old watch three or four times last year alone, which I finally accepted meant she was likely reaching the end of her life. My mom has made it a point to buy me a nicer piece of jewelry on a few of the bigger milestone birthdays, and my old watch was my twenty-first birthday present. I like not having to rely on my phone to know at least one small piece of information, and I think part of me also likes the not-like-other-girls of knowing how to tell time the old-fashioned way.
Eleven years was a pretty good run for my old watch. I found a worthy successor at Macy’s, and my parents——especially my mom——spent the rest of the weekend asking me the time. In the few months since my old watch gave out and I decided not to send it out for yet another battery replacement, I lost some of my ability to tell time. But it’s coming back. Birthdays pass, time ticks on, and if you give me just an extra beat, sure, I’ll let you know what time it is.
Closing thoughts:
Give only what you can afford.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 74
Had to stop at Kew & Willow for a little birthday treat on Wednesday<3 (They were a present to myself, so they aren’t being counted as purchases!!)
