My Stack of Books: September 2015

Linking up with Anne!

Here, in no particular order, are some of the books I have read in the last month.

Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
This was one of my top reads of the summer.  I am an absolute sucker for anything WWII-era, and set in London, no less. 

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Post-WWII, set in London.  I'm not sure how this book ended up in my library bag, and I think I'll get more out of this one on a re-read.  So many heavy themes in here--love, hate, faith, God, life, death.

Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
This was the second Stegner novel I read this month.  Anne raves about it so much--and it didn't disappoint.  It's about not much and everything all at the same time.

Secrets of a Charmed Life, Susan Meissner
At the end of this book, there is a reading group guide or something, and in that section, Meissner mentions Life After Life as an influence--so that's how I got to Life After Life.  Again, this book is right in my wheelhouse.  The descriptions of life in London during the war are so heartbreaking.

The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner
My "starter Stegner" because Crossing to Safety wasn't available at the library at the time.  After finishing the book I learned that this is the third novel to feature the main character.  I would recommend Crossing to Safety over this one.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
I've seen this one everywhere and finally got around to reading it.  Entertaining. I love stories where you get a chance to see an opposing character's point of view--Liane Moriarty is good at that, too.  This was entertaining.

David Lodge, Therapy
This was a re-read.  I first read this about 20 years ago, and Anne had mentioned David Lodge in a post recently, so I sought this one out.  Toward the end of the story, the characters go on a pilgrimage in Spain.  That stuck with me from 20 years ago, and it still sounds like something I'd like to see and maybe do...

Goals: Around the House

One of my perennial goals is to hang family pictures in our home.  When we first moved into this house ten years ago this week, I was stuck.  I wanted to badly to have this house feel like home, and yet we had just gone through the psychological trauma of de-personalizing our old home so that we could sell it.  I was afraid of nails!

I have improved over the years, and there are a couple of places in our home where I have put up a gallery wall.  Command adhesive strips have really helped--if I want to move the pictures, they don't leave any holes in the wall!

Last summer (as in 2014) we finished our basement.  We had some shelves built into one wall, and last year, I put in most of these pictures.

 

 It was a good start, but other than that, the walls were left blank.

 

And that's a lotta wall space!

 

On our California trip, I brought home cards to frame as souvenirs.  Once we got home, I chose some pictures and ordered enlargements from Snapfish.  I have used Snapfish since back when I used film in my camera--I have pictures from when my son was born on their cloud.  (That son just turned 12 over the weekend.)  And then I took advantage of all of the great coupons at Joann and Michael's last weekend.  And today I used every last command strip in the house for this--the start of our new basement gallery wall.

 

Here is how it looks next to the bookcase.  There is plenty of room to the left of the frames to add on as we go.  We have many years of past vacations I can add.  In fact, I ordered some prints from our 2014 vacation just today.

 

I am learning that "slow and steady" is the way to go when making a house into a home!

Trip Pictures (Mike, this one's for you!)

As I mentioned in my last post, we took an epic family trip last week.





Entering Yosemite from CA-140

Our first stop--Tunnel View

The kids seem to be enjoying the day.

View from Yosemite Valley

Can you hear me yelling at the kids?  Especially the one with the camera?  There were signs posted all over about how some fleas (that live on squirrels and other small rodents) have tested positive for plague.  For PLAGUE.

Pictures really don't do it justice--to come into a park and see all these massive granite mountains.

In years past this was probably a riverbed with dangerously rushing waters.  Not so this year.

I'm 98% sure this is Sentinel Dome.

Half Dome.  One of the coolest things I've seen.  Haze in the picture is actually smoke from a wildfire that is about 3 hours away.

At the top of Sentinel Dome.  Not easy to walk up a big rock at 8000' elevation. But we're smiling anyway.

 A couple of days later, we were heading north to Muir Woods.

Again, pictures don't do it justice.

Sausalito for lunch.

We spent hours (and hours) in the car:  Three hours from SFO to Yosemite.  At least a half hour from our hotel in Yosemite to anything in the park.  Three hours back to San Francisco.  Two and a half hours to Monterey. Another two and a half hours to Hearst Castle.  And then four hours back to SFO in time for the red-eye home. The silver lining to that is that Rob realized that he does NOT want to take a family trip where we drive cross-country.  I'm pretty pleased about that development.  I prefer family vacations where we're in one spot (like the beach) and we generally eat in and just relax.  I don't particularly enjoy trips where we have to unload and reload the suitcases and the car every couple of days.  It's hard enough to get everyone packed up the first time, and to have to worry about re-packing and making sure nothing gets left behind and keeping the dirty clothes separate from the clean clothes...well, it's almost too much.

So that was our summer trip.  Pretty grand.  I'm sure the kids will look back on that one as pretty awesome.