Happy beginning of fall! Though I don’t love the longer nights, I can’t say I’m sad to see the hot summer weather go. It even started feeling and looking more like fall as soon as the calendar said the seasons had changed, which is unusual for here! I hope your fall is off to as good a start as mine is. Here are a few things that I’m excited about this week (as well as fall weather, of course!). I hope you enjoy them, too!
The Women’s Prize for Fiction
I was delighted when Susanna Clarke’s weird and wonderful novel Piranesi was announced as the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. I’ve been meaning to write some sort of post about it since I read it, but it is difficult to figure out what I can say about it without giving away anything. So for now, I will leave it at telling you to go read it as soon as possible, and that it is a short and quick read, so it won’t take you long to read at all!
The Women’s Prize is awarded to a novel written in English by a female author of any nationality and published in the UK in the previous year. In case you want to catch up some of the recent top books by women, the Women’s Prize shortlist is a good place to start:
- The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
- Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
- Unsettled Ground, Claire Fuller
- Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi
- How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Cherie Jones
- No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
Pall Mall
Thanks to Jack of Living London History for acquainting me with the origin of the name Pall Mall. Before it became a major street, it was used to play pall mall, a sport similar to croquet that fashionable men apparently enjoyed while dressed in their fabulous sixteenth and seventeenth century best. The long, narrow alleys used for the game lent themselves well to renewed lives as streets after the game’s popularity waned. The now-extinct game has been supplanted by croquet. It’s a slightly disappointing development, but perhaps it is just as well, since I am sorely lacking the appropriate attire.
The National Book Festival
The Library of Congress’s annual National Book Festival is all online this year, which means you can see festival events from wherever you are. Authors from many different age groups and genres are featured, including literary powerhouses like Kazuo Ishiguro, essayist Roxanne Gay, Women’s Prize shortlisters Britt Bennett and Yaa Gyasi, and fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg, among many others. The videos of the discussions and author talks are available on demand on the festival’s website.
These Astonishingly Good Snacks
This weekend, I went to Nashville after a tragically long absence. I had a grand night out on the town with my cousin, which included my first trip to Sixty Vines. We split the brussels and the crispy zucchini. Not to be dramatic, but I had no idea brussels sprouts and fried zucchini could be this good. Both still managed to be light despite being fried and drizzled with tangy, flavorful sauces. The two plates were plenty of food split between us– and allowed enough room for cheesecake afterward. If veggies aren’t as much your jam, our neighbor highly recommended the mushroom toast and the wood grilled shrimp. (Surely anyone would enjoy the cheesecake!)
The Rain
It has been raining all week, and I have been enjoying it immensely. I love a rainy morning, especially if I’m able to embrace the darkness and sleep in a bit (as you may have noticed if you’re following me on IG, I even have a favorite rainy morning mug for my coffee). I love a rainy afternoon, especially if I don’t have to go anywhere. I love a rainy night, especially if I’m able to curl up drink some herbal tea and read. I love the way it sounds, the way it looks falling, the way it makes the leaves shine in the cloudy light– all of it. I’m also excited about the fact that this week’s rain is supposed to cool this weekend off and make it feel just a little bit like fall.
