Earlier this month, my older daughter and I spent a morning reading and birdwatching by the lake. When we arrived at our usual spot, lifeguards were dragging battered rental canoes to the water’s edge, and maintenance crew members were rolling mowers off the truck, so we headed to a less frequented part of the shore and lingered there until nearly lunchtime. It was lovely.
While some summer breaks are, metaphorically speaking, mornings by the lake punctuated by flurries of activity, this summer break has been a flurry of activity punctuated by the occasional morning by the lake. Yesterday over lunch, though, I realized that at least four days of (metaphoric) mornings by the lake stretch ahead of me. Walks, books, and music practice; maybe a movie or two and some games. I don’t even care that it’s supposed to rain. Again. The house is clean. The yards are mowed and trimmed. The refrigerator and pantry are full. This is going to be great!
Speaking of books, here are commonplace book entries from True West by Sam Shepard:
Act Two, Scene Five
LEE: It’s not a film! It’s a movie. There’s a big difference. That’s something Saul told me.
AUSTIN: Oh he did, huh?
LEE: Yeah, he said, “In this business we make movies, American movies. Leave the films to the French.”
Act Two, Scene Nine
LEE: Sounds original now. “Intimate terms.” That’s good. Okay. Now we’re cookin! That has a real ring to it.
[…]
LEE: (continues) “He’s on intimate terms with this prairie.” Sounds real mysterious and kinda’ threatening at the same time.
And from the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf:
Lines 24 – 25
Behavior that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.
With Beowulf, I reached sixty books read this year. So how am I doing with my reading resolutions, particularly my “Read from the shelves” challenge? Well, twenty-seven of those books were from my shelves; seventeen from the library, twelve acquired this year, and four other. With only a little more than half the year remaining, then, it seems unlikely that I will read one hundred books from my shelves. But my acquisition rate has certainly slowed, and I will handily meet my goal of thirty non-fiction titles — I’ve already read twenty-one. Of course, only ten of those were from my shelves, and my goal was twenty-four non-fiction titles from the shelves, so I have some work there. It’s achievable, though.
I also remain optimistic about reading at least one book from each of the following “special collections”: Shakespeare, poetry, NYRB, Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, philosophy, art, and children’s / YA. In fact, I reread Hamlet last month and will reread Vonnegut’s Player Piano over the summer. As for my close (re)reading of Moby Dick, that may be a fall project.
That gives new meaning to “pressed into my commonplace book,” eh? I get hook-hand while writing thank-you notes, so it’s hard for me to imagine copying an entire book.
Over the Easter break, my older daughter and I spent a lovely day in Lake Geneva — breakfasting, shopping for antiques and books, walking, and later, just sitting by the water.
Attended 
We visit the beautiful 
The weather has been so odd, and the trees and plants are taking it hard. For example, the ginkgo in our front yard dropped all of its leaves this morning — they were still green. The forsythia rebloomed and then froze. The same with both rose bushes. Although fall colors have been difficult to find, however, some autumn gold glimmered during our walk in a new-to-us park near campus yesterday.
From Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study:
