I’ve said it before: I’m not a fan of the Labor Day holiday. Just when you’re settling down and getting back into post-summer routine, everything is disrupted yet again. Of course, I wish all national holidays were on Fridays because it just makes more sense to me. So this, Sunday afternoon, is the end of it for me. I’m working tomorrow and no one can stop me. I did, however, enjoy a lot of great down time over the weekend.

I read Dale Loves Sophie to Death by Robb Forman Dew, a book I’d never heard of until it showed up on the National Book Foundation’s 60 Years of the NBAs blog. You know I love “domestic fiction,” (or literary fiction, as it is called when written by a man) and Harold Augenbraum’s description intrigued me. Especially the part about it being short. Short books are the best! It’s well written and I was compelled to finish, but I’m not sure I enjoyed it as much as Harold did. Published in 1981, it’s probably among the last (few?) contemporary stories of family life straddling the baby boom era and the birth of generation x, and that in itself is interesting. It’s kind of somewhere between John Updike and Anne Tyler, maybe, in terms of the tone.

Also, I read Rebecca Stead’s new middle grade novel, When You Reach Me. I really, really responded to this book. It’s set in 1979 and narrated by a latchkey kid who loves Madeleine L’Engle, growing up in the city, being raised by a single mom. That’s pretty much my childhood right there, so she had me at hello. But on top of that there’s a great story and though I sort of absentmindedly picked up the book while G. watched a bike race last night, once I started I couldn’t stop til I was done. I kept having to get up and retrieve my notebook and pen to capture some of the memories of my pre-junior-high school life I’d forgotten. I think it’s the first MG book I’ve read since actually being middle grade that I gave myself over to wholly as a reader…not thinking like a writer, not nit-picking, not being jealous, not wanting to go do something else. (The short chapters help—perfect for reluctant readers like me.) I’m not much of a crier at books, but Rebecca moved me. Clearly I now need to go read First Light.

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And I watched movies! Gigantic (not bad), The Informers (kind of bad, except for Brad Renfro’s brilliant performance, which made me super sad, again, about his death), Good Night, and Good Luck (well done, interesting, maybe a little too educational, but I’ve always had a crush on David Strathairn), and Hopscotch (still great).

(Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow.)