Friday Round-Up

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all find some way to share some love today, be it with a significant other, a best friend, or a relative. Or if you're feeling particularly grumpy, here's grumpy cat to sympathize with you:

And now for a summary of cool things from this week:)

If you missed it, here's yesterday's post on the blog for Twenty in Paris, 

continuing my summary of my time abroad thus far.

An isolated shed found while on a walk near my house

"When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write because there is some lie I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing." George Orwell

This reminds me of the posts I wrote this week on being an au pair. I've wanted to spread the word about the largely unknown treatment of au pairs for a long time, and I was delighted at the conversation it sparked on Facebook. No matter how well I write about it or what people think about it, I'm just happy to put it on the discussion table.

Duty- I'm about 1/3 of the way through this one, and it will probably still take a few weeks to finish. It's a dense read (political memoirs aren't necessarily the most compelling reads, no matter how much you're learning, haha), and I have class starting soon, but I have to just power through:)

The Fault in Our Stars- I just started this one as an audiobook, and I am loving the reader's performance. She brings out the humor of the book perfectly, and it already seems to me that seven hours of happy listening will not be long enough. I'm also really appreciating the honest views towards cancer, especially as I'm (fortunately) never really confronted with the topic.