Weekend reads and many transitions...

The last few weeks have been busy, emotional, and full of transition. I celebrated my sixth wedding anniversary last weekend, which also marked four weeks until our Little Reader is due. As we scramble, badly, to finish our baby prep, I learned my youngest cat, Grace, had kidney failure and would need to be euthanized.

Last night, she passed away on her own, in my arms, comforted by our remaining elderly cat who slept with us until Grace's last moments. It's been very hard this year to have lost two cats, both of whom I've had for more than a decade, ahead of Little Reader's arrival -- to lose loved ones just before a new loved one comes feels, well, cold.

I haven't felt much like reading -- clearly a theme of my pregnancy, shamefully -- but have three current reads that are a welcome distraction from the stress and heartbreak. This weekend, I'm finishing up Sherry Jones' The Sharp Hook of Love, which is a decadent and engrossing novel of Heloise and Abelard. I'm quite smitten. I've just started Judith Starkston's Hand of Fire, a historical novel that features a heroine just given just a few lines in the Iliad. It's fabulous. And finally, I plan to begin Lois Leveen's Juliet's Nurse, a historical novel about the nursemaid to Shakespeare's Juliet.

What are you reading this weekend?

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