Happy weekend my friends!

In books this past week, I finished The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, about a childless couple in 1920 Alaska, who create a snow child that seemingly comes to life. It’s a lovely, moving book about grief and loss, but also joy and love; and about the forces of nature and how we try to tame it. I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy magical realism, which this novel flirts with.

I’ve started reading The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, because my 12 year old daughter is reading it in school and I wanted to read it along with her so we can talk about it. Now that she’s older she’s reading more interesting books in school, and I relish the idea of discussing them with her. I read The Outsiders way back when I was a teen (35 years ago!) and remember liking it, though not exactly what it was about. I have to admit, it reads differently now that I’m a mom–such violence! smoking! chasing “broads”!–is this what I want my daughter to be reading?? Then again, I read it at her age or thereabouts, and it didn’t scar me or anything, lol. Kids can handle more than we give them credit for. And it’s about so much more than rowdy boys in the 60’s. The only problem is that now that I’m reading it, I want to keep going and finish it, but I also want to read it along with her at her class’s pace–which is pretty slow, lol.

Luckily I’ve got another book I’m reading called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab, and I’m loving it. It’s about a young woman in the 1700’s who prays to the gods for a different life, one where she is free and belongs to no one–but oops, she prays to “the gods who answer after dark” and gets her wish, but at a price. The price is that no one remembers her–not her parents, her best friend, not even the old witch who told her about the old gods. No one over the next 300 years ever remembers her. She is free to wander the world for as long as she likes, but it’s an unbearably lonely journey. I’m only several chapters in and I love it.

After watching Star Wars Visions, I decided I wanted to know more about the Ronin in The Duel, and so ordered Ronin, by Emma Mieko Candon. It comes out on October 12th, and I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be a unique Star Wars read–containing familiar Star Wars elements like lightsabers, the Force, droids, etc. but also things we’ve never seen before. I’d been trying to decide what Star Wars book I wanted to read next, but nothing called to me in particular; but once I heard about Ronin, I thought “Yes!” Can’t wait.

And speaking of Visions, I saw this custom poster for The Elder (my favorite Visions short) by TRIGGER on social media. It’s awesome!

Speaking of Star Wars, I discovered a new special on Disney+ called A Galaxy of Sounds. It’s a tribute to the sound and visual technicians of Star Wars, and it’s really cool to listen to parts of the movies without the John Williams soundtrack (which is fantastic, of course, but sometimes masks the other sounds we might not notice). It’s got 5 to 10 minute shorts with titles like “Wonder,” “Excitement,” “The Light Side,” “The Dark Side,” “Beeps,” etc. It’s put together quite well, and I enjoyed it. Made me want to watch all the movies again!

I also watched Lego’s Terrifying Tales, since I enjoyed last year’s Holiday Special so much. This wasn’t as funny or entertaining to me, but it had its moments. I especially liked the story “The Wookie’s Paw” where Luke joins the Empire instead of the Rebellion and is trained in the Force by Vader. When they swing across the chasm on the rope and Vader kisses him and says “For luck,” I lost it, lol.

In Marvel, the penultimate episode of What If? (Ultron Won) was just fantastic. When this whole thing started, I wondered about the Watcher, but never imagined he’d become an active character in his own right. Now he’s fighting for the fate of the multiverse, and actually asks for help from dark Dr. Strange. It just boggled my expectations, and I love it! Can’t wait to see how it ends next week.

So that’s about it for this week. What’s been entertaining you? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!