Since I've Been Gone

You may have noticed I took a little blogging break.... we've had a lot going on at work and on the weekends lately and blogging has just taken the back burner. But I'm back and excited to share what's been going on since I've been gone.

First and perhaps most exciting:

Our house is starting to look like a house! We took Jason's parents by the model yesterday and were pleasantly surprised to see how much progress had taken place in the last few weeks. We have a pre-construction meeting this week (a misnomer given that construction has clearly begun) and I'm hoping we'll get an update on when it will be complete.

I've also spent the last couple of weeks having a bit of a reading renaissance. I've always been a big reader but haven't really felt like I've had the time to devote to reading these last several years. But over the last three weeks or so I've devoured three books...all of which I'd happily recommend.

1) Bossypants by Tina Fey It's a quick read and incredibly funny. I mean, come on....it's Tina Fey! What do you expect?

2) The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman A collection of vignettes describing life at floundering English language newspaper in Rome and the quirky characters who work there. In some ways it is more an interconnecting collection of short stories than a novel. Engrossing and at times heartbreaking.

3) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Susan Egan. This Pulitzer Prize winning book is this month's book club pick. It was interesting that I read it immediately after The Imperfectionists as they are structured very similarly. Like that book, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a collection of vignettes (told in the first, second, and third person depending on the chapter--one is even told completely through powerpoint!) that looks at the lives of a number of music-loving people who have crossed paths with one another over the course of a number of decades--both past, present, and future. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm now on the look out for other good books--any suggestions?