It’s been a lovely week around here. Spring-like temperatures, a few rainy mornings, a little thunderstorm last night. Thunder and lightning are great when accompanied by nothing more than a little rain. It’s the hail and tornadoes you have to watch out for. Fortunately, there was none of that.

After work on Friday, I went to the lake. The clouds were amazing, so I spent about an hour photographing them as the light changed. There were also ducks– about a dozen ducklings and their duck mom swimming around. They were terribly cute, but I didn’t have the right lens to photograph them. C’est la vie.

At least the sunset was amazing.

What I Finished Reading Last Week:

• Parrish and Poetry: A Gift of Words and Art by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler
• Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) by Julie Kagawa (ARC provided by NetGalley)

Parrish and Poetry is a collection of poems by a variety of poets like Keats, Longfellow, and Emily Dickinson. Each poem is matched with work of art by the twentieth-century lithographer, Maxfield Parrish. It’s a lovely little book I found at my favorite used bookstore. I enjoyed most of the poems, but there were a few I found to be a bit dull. I guess eighteenth-century poetry isn’t quite my thing.

Sould of the Sword is the second book in the Shadow of the Fox trilogy by Julie Kagawa. I loved the first book, Shadow of the Fox, and was thrilled to be approved for the ARC of this one. I was charmed yet again by Yumeko and her sweetness in the face of darkness. It’s so nice to read a YA book where the female heroine is a strong woman without being a snide sword-wielder. There are many ways to be strong, after all.

What I’m Currently Reading:

• Caliban’s War (The Expanse #2) by James S.A. Corey
• A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #2) by Deborah Harkness, audiobook narrated by Jennifer Ikeda
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Caliban’s War. Still. *sighs* It’s not that I’m not enjoying it, but the plot hasn’t engaged me as much as Leviathan’s Wake did. Part of it might be the introduction of a new viewpoint character, Prax, who I just haven’t taken to. I much prefer Detective Miller to Prax, but Miller isn’t in this one so much.

A Discovery of Witches is still fun to listen to. It’s pretty light on plot, but I kind of expected that. But getting lost in Sept Tours along with Diana has been a lot of fun. Matthew hasn’t completely irritated me with his over-protective behavior. Yet. I think that’s part of what annoys me about most vampire romances (I mean, aside from the romance): the obsessively over-protective male vampire. It’s supposed to be romantic, I guess? But a man who tried to forbid me from doing something would very quickly not be romantically involved with me. At least the rest of the story has been fun.

I’m not very far into Wuthering Heights, but there are already so many things I’ve come across that I don’t remember from my first ‘reading’ of it back in college.

What I Plan to Start Reading This Week:

• The Blade of the Courtesans by Keiichiro Ryu, translated from the Japanese by James M. Vardaman
• Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely

We’re already halfway through June, and I feel like I’m falling behind in my 2019 Reading Plan. These two are both unread from my shelves and works in translation. My goal is to read two of each every month, and these titles count for both.

What I’ve Been Watching:

I finished watching Star Trek: Voyager. It was fine. Unlike Voyager‘s older Trek siblings, the original series, Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine, there were no episodes that stand out in the grand scheme of Star Trek history. Nothing like ‘City on the Edge of Forever’, ‘Best of Both Worlds, Pts. I and II’, or ‘The Visitor’.

Now I’m onto Lucifer, which is also streaming on Netflix. I had watched the first episode or two back when it first premiered and I didn’t care for it then but I decided to give it a shot now and I love it. Tom Ellis’s portrayal of Lucifer is fantastic and I can’t get over how he walks around telling everyone that he is, in fact, the Devil himself and no one believes him. Because why would you? I think I adore the entire cast, and who cares that it’s ridiculous that Lucifer would team up with a detective from the Los Angeles police department?