Happy Memorial Day in advance to my US readers! Hope you are having a good long weekend.
This week (and weekend)...
I spent much of this week waiting for the weekend. Not that we (or rather I) had any major plans for the weekend. The husband's friend is visiting us right now and the two of them have plenty of plans lined up - they visited the Natural Bridge, Caverns, and Zoo yesterday and came home super tired and happy. I did nothing but read, but I promise I felt more tired than they did. Today they are planning to visit Shenandoah National Park and Luray Caverns, and tomorrow, take part in an archery session at Wintergreen resort, which I plan to do as well.
Three days back, I stretched my legs when I woke up in the morning and instantly cramped both my calves. I have no idea where that came from and I've been mostly penguin-limping since then. The cramps have reduced a LOT today so I hope they're on the way out. At this point (33 weeks), I am pretty close to being done with being pregnant - only close, I still love every minute of this journey, even if it means I cannot hike or walk too much or be anywhere that doesn't have a restroom. But this week has been tough - sleeping is hard, trying to sleep is hard, walking is hard, having energy to do anything at all is hard. More reason to love having a stay-at-home weekend for myself.
Reading...
On the plus side, I have been reading a lot. I spent a good chunk of yesterday reading (and finishing) and loving
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I usually enjoy multiple narrator novels, as long as the number of narrators is under five.
Goon Squad has 13 chapters and 15 narrators. That in itself is challenging under any circumstance and I wasn't sure I will enjoy it. But Egan makes it work so well that I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the format.
Then I went back to
Flowers for Algernon, of which I have just a quarter more left. I know the remainder of the book is going to be a tough read but I am bracing myself for it. On the other hand, I am a little bothered by the portrayal of women in this book - they just have no substance to their character, all they exist for is to propel the protagonist's story forward.
Last week, I also went and picked up Sheryl Sandberg's
Lean In from my library. When I checked my library catalog, I was surprised to see that they had a lot of copies available, but most of them were checked out and expected to be returned on the same day next month. Turns out, my library's book club is reading it this month. I would love to go join the discussions but I don't expect my next few weeks to be that free. I did start reading
Lean In, and so far enjoy the voice of the author.
This weekend is unexpectedly turning into a readathon weekend. This morning, I decided to just read for much of this weekend and not do any chores. After
Algernon, I am thinking of reading Annie Barrows'
The Truth According to Us. You may remember Annie Barrows as the co-author of
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Unlike the latter book,
The Truth According to Us is a chunkster but luckily, I have it in both ebook and print format so that should make for a quicker reading.
How is your weekend going? I hope you have plenty planned as well - reading and otherwise. Are any of you going to BEA this week?
Comments
I've been hearing from many women that they had cramps while pregnant. One of my friends just told me the same yesterday. Now I feel better about it. It was bumming me so much to complain about it.
I hope you have a great week, Athira!
My co worker had her baby this past weekend. Made me think of you.
My week is crazy but I am trying to read A Little Life and All The Light We Cannot See in the mornings before work. It's the only uninterrupted reading time I have.