So much happened in this book! This is set the year after The Longest Winter and their life was, thankfully, so much fuller than it was during that cold, dark winter. Laura got her first job in town, Mary finally got to go to college, the cruel Nellie Olsen moved to the prairie, the new teacher had a real vendetta against the Ingalls girls, Almanzo began spending time with Laura, and Laura got her teacher’s certificate a year earlier than she expected. Whew! The book ended with Laura getting a teaching job in another town, which means she is going to move away from home soon and I don’t know if I’ll be able to take it. I’m on the waitlist for the last two books in the series and should be able to finish soon. I’m so excited to see how the series ends, because I’ve never read these last 3.

This is the third book in The Last Firehawk series that we’ve been reading aloud. Our three friends – Tag, Skyla, and Blaze – are searching for the third piece of the ember stone before the evil vulture Thorn finds it and destroys their enchanted forest. To get the third piece, they must help the bears and birds of the Whispering Oak come to a compromise over the last piece of precious honeycomb. This has been a really fun series to read aloud and I’m excited to borrow the next book from the library.

“I knew, from having watched my father hack down the incredible amount of work he accomplished day by day and year by year, how supportive a routine is, how the spirit moves around freely in it as it does in a plain New England church. Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time. The apparently measured time has immeasureable space within it, and in this it resembles music.“

“(If someone asked me what my idea of luxury is, I think my answer would be: flowers in the house all year round.)"

Plant Dreaming Deep is another May Sarton journal, this one set a little earlier than The Journal of a Solitude, which I read a couple of weeks ago. This details Sarton’s experience buying her home in New Hampshire and how she went about making it her own, especially the gardens. And of course, she talks a lot about how she set up her days to get the most out of them based on the season she was in. I found this journal to be less engaging than the Journal of a Solitude, yet it was still comforting to read.

“I have been running through the dark, trying to save all who have need of me. I have done good and I have done evil, but I am neither. I am only myself.”

This is the last in the Winternight Trilogy. Set in Medieval Russia during a time when some believe in the old gods and others are turning towards Christianity. Vasiya, our young hero, is a witch who can see the magical creatures that her ancestors once believed in. Those same creatures help her through this incredible novel as she fights to save her family and the way of life that she loves.

I really enjoyed this series. I gasped with delight at the magical word that Arden created. It’s full of talking horses, enchanted forests, cottages hidden in the woods, and demons walking among us. It was endlessly atmospheric and I loved being steeped in a giant Russian fairy tale. I was sad when it was over!

File this one under Books That I Wouldn’t Have Been Able to Finish in Print Yet Adored On Audio. This is a collection of nature essays that show how much we can learn about our fellow humans by studying the wildlife around us. Macdonald seems to have a particular interest in immigration and she beautifully wove in stories about the immigration patterns of many species, including homo sapiens. Some essays were tear jerkers and others had me laughing out loud. My favorite was the one about animal blinds and how some observers have been known to leave the blind after hearing a fellow observer misidentify animals (the one in which she scared the cows is a very close second place). It makes me hopeful to know that there are still so many naturalists out in the world!

This was the first time I’ve read this book and I think it might be my favorite one of the series (do I say that every time?). I had a big, goofy grin on my face nearly the whole time I listened to it. This book details the last few years of Laura’s schooling, the three seasons that she taught school in little towns nearby, and her courtship with Almanzo Wilder. Friends, I swooned every time Almanzo’s horses flew into town to take her home on weekends while she was away teaching or when he’d arrive at their homestead to take her on Sunday rides. The next book in the series is the last and I’m nervous – I always bawl at the ends of things (which is why I still haven’t watched the last season of Parks and Rec) and know that I’ll be overcome with something when it ends. I still have a couple of weeks until my library hold is up so I have time to prepare myself.

“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.”

“Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine—what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?”

I first learned about Ross Gay when I heard his On Being interview (“Tending Joy and Practicing Delight”) last September. I bought this book as soon as the ending credits of the show began. But it wasn’t until my friend Laila raved about it that I actually sat down and started to read.

Ross Gay gave himself a challenge: identify and write about one wonderful thing (nearly) every day for a year. This book is the result. It’s approachable and unabashedly joyful. He doesn’t ignore the painful moments in life – he mentions the 45th president of the US, the tragic loss of a young person in his life – yet he wraps those moments in delicate tissue paper and finds a place for them in a life that strains towards joy.

Gay is a poet and teacher as well as a professional gardener – he’s a founding board member of The Bloomington Community Orchard, a project focused on food justice and joy. This book is full of flowers, tomato plants, bees, and dirt. Isn’t it funny that so many poets are also avid gardeners? Or does the outdoors create poets? Which came first – the poet or the garden? (yes, yes, Eden, etc. etc.)

“It felt strange. I was about to read one murder mystery while sitting inside another.”

You might remember that I read Magpie Murders earlier this year and immediately got on the waiting list for this, the sequel. This book features the fearless editor, Susan Reyland. It opens in Greece, where she’s living with her fiance and running a hotel. She’s approached by an obviously wealthy couple who tell her that someone has suggested that she can help them find their missing daughter, Cecily. After further discussion, Susan learns that – yet again – the cantankerous (and quite dead) author Alan Conway is behind the connection. He based a detective novel on a murder involving the missing girl’s family years previously – a novel that would help Susan understand what happened to Cecily.

The books in this series are cleverly structured. Both are built so that we read a novel within a novel and we use the clues from one to solve the mystery in the other. They are a lot of fun and help unpack the complexities of mysteries while building the most intricate plots. I was completely captivated by both books! I hope Horowitz writes more of them.

“I couldn’t write. I grew tense. I was strangled by my own ego, by my petty desire for what I perceived to be the literary brass ring. I was missing the point, of course. The reward is in the doing.”

This is the third memoir that I’ve read by Dani Shapiro* and I’m delighted that she’s been able to write so many! This is yet another book about writing, with some of the same imagery that you’ve most likely encountered in all of the other writing books you’ve read. And still – there’s an essential Dani Shapiro quality that rings through – those feelings of confusion and self-doubt are confronted in ways that are new and inspiring. She writes a lot about her personal routine and how it can be generalized to meet your own needs. I love it when writers (or any creative person) share their routines! I can’t tell you how many books on writing I’ve read and I’m still so glad to have read this one.