April 1st, and I am just foolishly exhausted these days, my friends. Spring is a time of new growth, new beginnings, lots of changes, and that’s certainly true here for me. Good changes, to be sure, but a little unexpected, and it’s stuff that will definitely affect my reading for a while. But that’s okay. Change happens, it’s the only constant in life, really, and the only thing we can do is roll with it, lean into it, embrace it and make the best of it. And I am!

March was definitely an interesting month, for reasons I’ll get into a bit later. There’s been an interesting and exciting update for me in terms of reading as well – old hat for most of you, I’m sure, but huge for me. But we’ll get to that in a bit. 

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in March 2025

1. Almost Paradise by Susan Isaacs

2. Medical Terminology for Dummies by Beverly Henderson

3. Not Another Banned Book by Dana Alison Levy

4. Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger*

5. Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

6. Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights by Ashley Hope Pérez

7. The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights by Archie Bongiovanni

8. Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham

9. The Bad Seed by William March

10. Tear This Down by Barbara Dee

11. Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging by Julie Ryan McGue*

12. Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli*

13. Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand

14. The Sign for Home by Blair Fell*

15. The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman*

16. Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

17. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor

18. All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

19. Where Are You, Echo Blue by Hayley Krischer*

So, one of the biggest surprises this month for me is that I have finally come to embrace the audiobook!!! For years before, I couldn’t do it; my mind would wander and I’d miss huge chunks and come back to find the characters in entirely different countries, and suddenly people were dead/missing/on fire, and I was like, “But wait, I thought they were in church/helping old ladies across the street/juggling pandas, what happened???” But this month, I was like, “You know, I think I’m ready to give this another shot.” And lo and behold, I loved it! I listen in the car by myself, while I’m in the store, when I’m preparing food and cleaning and hanging laundry, when I’m eating lunch in my car on my work Saturdays. Any time my hands are occupied and I’m doing manual labor or driving, I’m reading with my ears, and it’s amazing. The books marked with asterisks are those I listened to this month. 

Almost Paradise was a book I first read as a teenager and recently came across at a thrift store, so I decided to see how it had held up. There’s a lot more…weirdness…than I remembered, but I did realize that this book was and still is indicative of my enjoyment of family-saga-type novels, so that hasn’t changed one bit! The Bad Seed is the novel that spawned the creepy movie I watched over and over again as a kid, about a child serial killer. The movie followed the book exceedingly well, so kudos to the folks who made that happen. Rhoda is a creepy little shit. The Sign for Home, a dual narrative between a deafblind man and the man working as his interpreter, was excellent (even though I didn’t love the open-ended ending) and really informative about the deafblind community and experience. And…The Invisible Hour started out just fine, and then got weird about halfway through. Apparently Alice Hoffman was all, ‘What if a modern-day cult survivor had the hots for Nathaniel Hawthorne?’ Like…okay? It was good up until that point.

Anyway. Twelve fiction, seven non-fiction (including a few graphic nonfiction and graphic memoirs). Six audiobooks. Only three from my own shelf, but I’m reading one of those in chunks in between other stuff, so that kind of accounts for that. I think three of these were from my TBR? A few of them were, but I’m honestly not sure how many; some of them might’ve just been stuff I discovered in the New Books section of the website at work and slapped them on hold immediately. Hard to tell sometimes!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Up to four books right now. Three of them don’t come out for a bit – one *may* be out, but I’m #3 out of 9 to have it on hold at the library, so it’ll be a bit for that. The other one, it’s a political book, and I was on hold for it, but due to the changes in my life this month, I took it off hold, because I don’t have the time or space for it at the moment. I’m thinking I’ll get to it this summer (because heavy political reads make for great summer reading, right???).

Books I Acquired in March 2025

I don’t have a picture, unfortunately; my daughter has turned the living room into her craft emporium, and, well, that doesn’t look great in pictures. But picture a medium-sized stack of mostly hardcover books and that’s what I brought home from the latest $10/bag library book sale!

Some of them are for me, some of them I’ll read to/with my daughter. She also got some books, so we both walked away happy. 

I also purchased another huge and expensive book, but I’ll get to that!

Bookish Things I Did in March 2025

The book sale.

Working at the library.

Hitting the books (again, I’ll get to this).

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Anne Bogel’s What Should I Read Next, which is always just a delight! I may even go back to the beginning once I get caught up and start over again. : )

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

I picked up my copy of All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs by Elie Wiesel, and I’m reading it in 50-page chunks at a time in between other stuff, so that kind of fits in here. It’s a beautifully written book, and, of course, emotionally devastating, and that’s why I’m taking it easy with this one.

Real Life Stuff

Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy, friends. March was a surprise of a month!

I’ve mentioned that I’m planning on going back to school in the fall; I’m going to get my certificate to become a medical coder. Don’t get me wrong, I love love love my job at the library, but unless you have an MLIS, library jobs are almost never full-time, and while my pay is great for what I need at the moment, long-term, I’d like a job that actually pays a living wage, you know? Plus there’s the physicality of the job. Shelving is hard on the body, and I already live with chronic pain. I’m managing it well now, though I’ve dealt with a few issues that I’ve already had to work to correct (the development of some rotator cuff tendonitis, and some right-side spasming in my back after my shifts due to, I figured out, favoring that side because it’s my bad side!). I’d stay at the library forever if I could, but I also have to be realistic about my needs in all categories, and this isn’t what I’ll need long-term.

So. I’ve been planning on this for a while, and I’ve spent all this year studying an Anatomy and Physiology textbook, along with three medical terminology books, in order to prepare for going back to school. I had all my prior college transcripts sent to the local community college, and when appointments opened up for advising for the fall semester in March, I scheduled one and went in (this was the 24th). My advisor is an absolutely lovely woman; I liked her immediately. She and I discussed what I wanted to do there at the community college, and I showed her how I’d been studying already. She kind of laughed and told me I’d be overprepared for the program (hey, if you’re not overprepared, you’re underprepared!), and then she looked in her computer and said, “There’s a medical terminology course starting the 27th, do you want me to add you to that?”

Um. I thought I had a few more months to study before starting actual class, but then I thought, ‘You know, one less thing to do in the fall,’ and I said, “Sure, sign me up!” So she added me to the virtual class, I went around the corner and paid for it, and that was it.

I’m now enrolled in college!

I’ll have this class, two in the fall, and three in the spring (that’ll be a LOT, what with parenting AND working, but I’ve got this. Those classes *should* be less memorization-intense, so, fingers crossed). I went home from my appointment, and my older daughter, who is also a student at this community college, showed me how to log in to Blackboard, where we found that the class was already available! I figured out what book I needed, ran back over to the school (it’s only 10 minutes away), bought the book I needed, and started my schoolwork that night. 

I’m already several chapters ahead of where I need to be – mainly due to the fact that I’ve been working hours per day to learn all of this information since September.

I’ve also currently got a 99.2% in the class, after two tests. : )

So, you know, it pays to be overprepared! Thanks, past me!

So this is a huge reason why audiobooks are super helpful right now! Most of my reading time is spent with The Language of Medicine by Davi-Ellen Chabner. But I’m okay with that. I’m investing in myself and in my future here. : )

That’s my big news this month. I hope you’re all doing as well as can be expected under *gestures broadly* these circumstances. Be kind to yourself; it’s hard out there, and so much of *gestures again* is making it more difficult. Having something to focus on like I do definitely helps.

Wishing you all a month of great reads and warming spring temperatures!

Whew, February flew by so fast! I can’t believe it’s already March. We’ve got a bit of false spring going on, and I can’t say I hate it. It’s following a fairly nasty cold snap, so I’ll take not freezing to death for a bit, although I’d still enjoy a really big snow (CAN YOU HEAR ME, WEATHER GODS???). The milder weather has me excited about long sweaty days at the garden where I volunteer, which is one of my favorite places in the world – the other places being, of course, libraries. : )

February wasn’t a bad month, so to speak. The world is an absolute dumpster fire, and the people in charge are absolutely barely sentient pools of diarrhea, but I’m finding joy in the little things, and it’s helping. More on that in a bit, though.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in February 2025

1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

2. Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret (read out loud to my daughter)

3. How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (read out loud to my daughter)

4. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

5. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

6. Don’t You Know There’s a War On? by Avi

7. The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us by Rachelle Bergstein

8. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

9. Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill

10. Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

11. The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City by Kim Foster

12. Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice by Bryan Stevenson (read out loud to my daughter)

13. The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

14. The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

15. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

16. Cooking for Gracie: The Making of a Parent From Scratch by Keith Dixon

Kind of all over the place this month, but that seems to be how I roll these days. A mixture of books from my own shelves and stuff I grabbed from work. Remarkably Bright Creatures is absolutely delightful; if you haven’t read this yet but have been considering it, this is your sign to pick it up. It’s the sweetest story of a random group of people, brought together by, of all things, a wildly intelligent octopus. The Genius of Judy is also fantastic. I grew up reading her books and this is a great trip down memory lane, through Judy’s life and the changes in the culture she and her books brought forth (all told in a super fun and readable style). Year of Wonder is FINALLY off my TBR! I enjoyed listening to the classical music within and I’m keeping the book for future use; I’d love to revisit all those pieces again at some point. 

The current dictatorial bullshit in the White House can’t stop me from celebrating Black History Month, and that’s why I picked up Black AF History, which I HIGHLY recommend. Michael Harriot is brilliant, and the book is informative, funny, infuriating, thought-provoking, and an all-around phenomenal read. I read Just Mercy to my daughter for the same reason; I’d read the adult version years ago and found it incredibly moving, so I was happy to find the Young Reader’s edition at work. It opened some excellent conversations between us.

Now.

There are no words for how much I loathed, loathed, LOATHED On the Road. That. Book. SUCKS. Every character in there SUCKS. I wanted that car full of misogynistic little mouth-breathing twerps to roll over the edge of a cliff and vaporize immediately upon impact pretty much on every single page. By the end, it was making my skin crawl. I’m glad I read it so I can rage at exactly how horrible it is to everyone I know and never, ever stop (and also avoid anyone who says it’s their favorite book, because NO THANK YOU). 

Phew. 

Sixteen books total. Six fiction, ten nonfiction. Seven from my own shelves (includes one ebook). Not a bad total, considering this is a shorter month and I’ve been busy studying otherwise. ONE was from my TBR! 

34 for the year so far.

State of the Goodreads TBR

4 last month; 4 this month. I’m on hold at work for two of them, one doesn’t come out until later in the year, and the other is out and we’re getting a copy at work, but it may be one that I need to wait until I have the mental space for it. We’ll see.

Books I Acquired in February 2025

…did I acquire any books this month? I don’t honestly think I did! I think we came home from a thrift store with two books for my daughter, but none for me.

Bookish Things I Did in February 2025

I worked at the library, of course! I also used my community college library card to check out their copy of The Meth Lunches. None of the other libraries around here had a copy of that one, but the community college did, so I swung by there on a Sunday afternoon and used my free-because-I-live-in-the-community-and-pay-taxes-for-this-college card (you should check your local community college; many of them offer free community library cards! There may be restrictions; you may only be able to check out a certain number of items – I’ve lived in places where the total checkout was limited to 2, but I’m able to check out 40 items from my community college), and walked out with the book I wanted. I was super excited to be able to do this!

Current Podcast Love

Guys, I’m in trouble. I’m back to listening to What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel. It’s definitely helping me to stop doomscrolling, walk away from the internet, and pick up my book, but omg, they talk about so many awesome books on this podcast and I want to read them all!!!!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Welp, I finished On the Road, which I had started as part of my Read Harder Challenge a year or two ago. I’m still super busy with studying and preparing to go back to school in the fall, so I’m not sure where I’m going next with this. I’m going to have to put some thought into it…

Real Life Stuff

Phew, it’s a dumpster fire out there, friends! But in here, I’ve got books, and my kids, and things to study, and the garden where I volunteer, and working at the library, and so I’m trying to keep things as calm and peaceful as I can.

Work didn’t slow down much at all in February (those 43,000+ items we circulated last month had to come back at some point, and more went out!). We’ve been busy, busy, busy. I started shadowing passport appointments, so that’s nerve-wrackingly fun! (It’ll get better the more I go through the process, it’s just a little scary now because it’s new.) And, and, and…I GOT A RAISE!!!! It’s because of the increased duties being a passport agent, so YAY FOR THAT!!! I’m pretty proud of myself there. : )

My daughter and I cleared out a bunch of old books that she no longer needs, so we’ve got three bags ready to go. I’ve said we’re going to take them to Little Free Libraries, but the organization that puts on used book sales in the area over the summer will be collecting soon, so I may wait and drop them off all at once there. We’ll see! We’re going to go through some more books later on, maybe during spring break, because I’ve got a ton of old homeschool books that are too young for her these days (first grade stuff isn’t going to cut it for a kiddo going into middle school next year, if we ever need to homeschool again). Might as well go to someone who can use it, and free up some space for us!

What’s next in March? Work, of course. Studying. Mid-month, I have to make an appointment with an advisor at the community college I’ll be attending next year, to see exactly which courses I’ll need to sign up for (and then I can sign up for classes in April; all of this is already plugged into my calendar). I’m SO excited about getting all of this going, you have no idea. The weather will hopefully cooperate with us getting the garden where I volunteer up and running, or at least pre-up and running (we were able to get some rewilding work done in February, plus play in the snow a little, so that’s been great!). And reading, of course. I’m still working through my own books and trying to balance that with all the amazing books I come across at work. It’s not easy!

Hang in there, friends. Wishing you a month of finding peace wherever you can, because it’s in short supply out there. There are still great books to be read, and we still have each other. Make it all count.

Happy New Year!!!

2025. We were supposed to have flying cars and teleporters and food pills by now (so we can stop cooking all the damn time!), and instead we have…*gestures vaguely out the window* whatever all that mess is. But we still have books, and for that, we can be grateful. (Until all those are banned, and then I riot. Join me.)

(Sorry, feeling a little cynical today, I guess.)

This has been a year of growth for me, of major revelations, and long-term goal setting. It’s been the first year of what will be a lot of years of hard work, but I’m here for it, and I’m ready for the challenge. I’m also ready for a year of great reads ahead, although I know my reading is likely going to look a little different from here on out. And that’s okay. To everything there is a season, and if I put in the work now, there will be time to read more in the future. : )

But anyway.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in December 2024

1. The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner

2. What’s Wrong?: Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine by Erin Williams

3. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (read out loud to my daughter)

4. The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh

5. The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food: Step-by-Step Vegetable Gardening for Everyone by Joseph Tychonievich

6. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (read out loud to my daughter)

7. Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer

8. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (read out loud to my daughter)

9. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (read out loud to my daughter)

10. Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

11. What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan

12. Medical Billing and Coding for Dummies by Karen Smiley

13. Good Harbor by Anita Diamant

14. The Covenant by Naomi Ragen

The biggest book I’m not counting here is the anatomy and physiology textbook I read in its entirety (and finished this month!) and took notes from (148 pages of typed notes, which, handwritten, filled three and a half subjects of a notebook). I’m now studying 1-2 chapters of notes per day in order to more fully understand the material, but as you might suspect, this took a LOT of my reading time this year. I’m more than okay with this, though! It’ll pay off in the future.

The Lost Year is a middle grade novel I discovered at work when I checked it back in from the book drop. It tells, in dual timelines and multiple narratives, the story of the Holodomor (haven’t heard of it? Yeah, neither had I, which was the instant I knew this book would be coming home with me). It’s an excellent, if extremely sobering read. The Summer Place was great; Jennifer Weiner is always a win for me. The read-alouds with my daughter were good; we read in the mornings instead of her watching television while she eats, and that helps us get through a lot of books together.

Fourteen books total this month, bringing my yearly total to 202 books. Ten fiction; four nonfiction (or at least close enough to it); two of these were graphic nonfiction. Nine of these came from my own shelves! 

Speaking of which, I read over NINETY BOOKS from my own shelves this year! I’m REALLY proud of this. It was my goal this year, once I finished up with my monstrous TBR list, to start reading down my own shelves, and so far, so good. I’ve dumped so many books into nearby Little Free Libraries, which makes me happy. More knowledge and shelf space and less clutter for me, more knowledge and enjoyable reading for my neighbors. Everyone wins. : )

Bookish Things I Did in December 2024

I worked at the library! And worked. And worked. And SHELVED. Y’all, we are SO. BACKED. UP. in terms of shelving. It’s utterly insane. The way people read around here is NUTS. When I left work the other night, we had all our shelving carts filled and ready to shelve, and almost all of our return carts full and unsorted. We quite literally cannot keep in any meaningful way, or even come close to keeping up, with the flood of returns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good problem to have, but it’s still exhausting!

State of the TBR

Still looking good! So far, I’ve got the book I’m going through day-by-day as it’s intended (I’ll finish it up in, I believe, February, and then it’ll be off the list), one book I’m on hold for (a co-worker has it checked out right now, haha!), and another book that doesn’t come out until mid-February. Three books total. Not bad.

Books I Acquired in December 2024

…I don’t think I got any for myself. I did get my younger daughter a bunch of books for the holidays, but…I don’t actually think I got myself any. 

Weird!

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Big Mad True Crime, mostly as I fall asleep/wake up in the middle of the night, but when I get some knitting done, I’ve been listening to the Craftsmanship podcast, which has a lot of interesting episodes on various earth-loving topics (soil building, sustainable textiles as they relate to environmental health, rewilding, etc), all stuff that’s very much up my hippie alley.

Stephanie’s Read Harder Project

Still no movement on the Whitman. I WILL get back to this, hopefully soon, especially since I’ve finished the A&P textbook and am now just studying from my notes. Surely there will be a FEW minutes in there between note studying and medical terminology for poetry, right??? 

Real Life Stuff

It was a seriously busy month at work. I passed my Passport Agent test (yay me!), so next up is shadowing appointments with other Agents at my workplace (no solo appointments until I get the groove of it, fortunately!). But remember a few years back, when my town got the new library building? It’s PHENOMENAL…but the community is definitely using the new space very differently than they used the last building, and that includes checking out WAY more physical materials. Our library year wrapped came out at the end of November (so these numbers don’t even include the whirlwind that was this month!), and by then we’d already circulated over 499,000 PHYSICAL ITEMS. We’ll *easily* have hit over half a million physical items this month, and boy, do I believe it. The amount of returns we get and thus have to reshelve is just pure insanity some days. Again, excellent problem to have (Oh no, I live in an extremely literate community! Help!), but it can be daunting when you’re the sole shelver for a shift, you walk in to see 8+ full carts, you’re also on the schedule to cover for other co-workers’ breaks during that time, AND you hear books being returned all night long in the book drop. 

See what I mean? So if you ever go to the library and look up a book, and then find it’s not on the shelf like it says it is…be kind. I promise you, we’re absolutely doing our best to get it back out there. It’s not easy. 

That said, I LOVE this job. I adore my co-workers, who enjoy the library insanity as much as I do; I love my patrons, especially the ones who are so super excited when a hold comes in (high five to the guy who shouted “YES!” when he saw that his SECOND inter-library loan had come in along with the first the other night; the delight I feel when I have patrons who are just as enthusiastic as I am when my holds come in is extreme); I love the kids, especially the toddlers who, upon realizing that their little toddler voices echo in our entryway, make all kinds of fun vocal noises, and their parents, who are desperately trying to shush them (it’s okay! We get it, and we find it adorable); the oversharer kids (sorry about your dead parakeets, little friend!); the English-language learners, who have put up with my terrible Spanish and who enthusiastically communicate back and forth with me via Google translate; the patrons who just want to chat, about books or otherwise; and the ones whom I can help with book- or author-related questions without having to look anything up (shoutout to the girls looking for books by Saadia Faruqi, Sarah Mlynowski, and Barbara Park). There’s something new and fun and interesting every single shift, and I enjoy it all. I’ve had absolutely CRAZY days at work, but I’ve never had a bad day at work, and that says a lot about what a great place this library is, I think. : )

In between work, it’s been a lot of studying for future back-to-school, and my determination here is off-the-charts. I have notes, books, apps, programs I’m using from my library, Google docs, flashcards. They’re never going to know what hit them when they get me as a student! I’m bringing the same enthusiasm and determination to this as I am to my work at the library (one of my co-workers referred to me as ‘the Energizer bunny,’ so). 

What will January bring? More information, hopefully; I’m planning on contacting the head of the program I want to do at my local community college and seeing about setting up a meeting to discuss the program and what I’ll need to do to enroll with her (she invites this; she may punt me over to an advisor, and that’s fine too!). Work, of course, and more studying. Weather’s not looking good for this next weekend off – I’m only able to get to the garden where I volunteer every other weekend these days, and if it’s too cold, our workdays are cancelled, so if that’s the case, I’ll use that as extra study time, though I do miss the garden when I’m not there, I miss it terribly. But it’s a temporary sacrifice; all things here are for a greater purpose, and temporary sacrifice now means greater gains in the future. And I’m ready for an excellent future, no matter what the rest of the world looks like out there.

Happy New Year to all of you! I wish you all a year of peace, good health, love, friendship, and excellent reads. Be kind out there; we need each other to make it through. 

And just like that, it’s the last month of the year! We’ve only gotten a dusting of snow that barely lasted for 24 hours, and the temperature has definitely plummeted (as I type this, it’s currently 15 degrees), so while the calendar may not say winter yet, winter has definitely arrived. 

It’s been a YEAR, friends. Lots of changes, tears, heavy introspection, a lot of difficult decisions about a path forward for myself personally, but…I think I’m figuring things out, and I’m cautiously optimistic about where things are headed, eventually. 

But we’ll get to more of that later on. For now, it’s all about the books.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in November 2024

1. Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune

2. Day After Night by Anita Diamant

3. The View from Saturday by EL Konigsburg (read out loud to my daughter)

4. Magical Meet Cute by Jean Meltzer

5. The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff (read out loud to my daughter)

6. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

7. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson (read out loud to my daughter)

8. Forest Therapy: Seasonal Ways to Embrace Nature for a Happier You by Sarah Ivins

9. Behind the Bedroom Wall by Laura E Williams (read out loud to my daughter)

10. Edible: An Adventure Into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet by Daniella Martin

11. The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan

12. Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian (read out loud to my daughter)

13. What Was the Holocaust by Gail Herman (read out loud to my daughter)

14. Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

15. They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms by Mike Hixenbaugh

It was a slow month for me personally, but my daughter and I have been absolutely blowing through books. Between work and the studying I’m doing in order to go back to school in the nearish future, my reading time has been cut down drastically, which is a bummer, but it’s also a good tradeoff, one I’m willing to make for now.

We weren’t the hugest fans of The View from Saturday; I don’t feel like that was EL Konigsburg’s best. But everything else we read together was great. Good Night, Mr. Tom was from my own childhood; Michelle Magorian’s Back Home is one of my favorite books of all time, and we’ll be tackling that soon. The Underground Library was great. Jennifer Ryan has become a favorite author of mine, and this was just a lovely book all around. And I cannot recommend They Came for the Schools strongly enough. The town Mike Hixenbaugh writes about, Southlake, Texas, reminds me so much of where we lived in Tennessee – the same damn fights over the same subjects, the same types of people falling for the same propaganda and lies in exactly the same way. If you want to see where this country is headed, you need to read this book and understand how little thought is put into the book bans (and the hatred) that are storming the country. 

Fifteen books this month; ten fiction, five nonfiction. Ten of these came from my own shelves! Despite working at the library, I’m doing a great job of sticking to my goal of reading down my own shelves! 

Bookish Things I Did in November 2024

…you know, I don’t know that I did anything bookish at all, other than go to work and shelve and help people get new library cards and find the materials they need, but that’s good, right? : )

State of the TBR

Still only two books on there! I’m waiting for #2 to come in; it’s been on order at work for like six weeks. *taptaptap* The other one, I’m still going through day by day as it’s intended.

I do have a list of books I’d like to read in my work notebook, however! I spend a lot of time on NoveList when I’m working the front desk (and if I have any down time while working the drive-up window), so I’ve been making a list of books I find on there that look interesting. They Came for the Schools was the first book I read from that list!

Books I Acquired in November 2024

Hmm. I did bring home a few gardening books from the thrift store, along with a copy of a survivalist handbook called When All Hell Breaks Loose. And I got a copy of The Complete Persepolis for my daughter to read when she’s a little older; that’s a really important book, and it’s already been banned in a bunch of places, so I’d like to have a copy for my own shelves.

I also picked up a second medical terminology book, but that’s probably not as fun for everyone else!

Current Podcast Love

I started a new one this month! After the election, a friend of mine posted about a podcast she’s enjoyed for a long time, Big Mad True Crime, and how the host was receiving a lot of blowback for posting about her disgust over the election results. Being also disgusted by the election results, I decided to check out the podcast, and it’s fabulous. I’m 80-ish episodes in and really enjoying it. If you’re into true crime and haven’t given Big Mad True Crime a listen, check it out!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Project

*laughs hysterically* WHO HAS TIME??? I’ve currently been reading about the components of blood; does that count?

Real Life Stuff

So yeah. This month.

Lots of doom scrolling this month, which didn’t help my reading stats, but seeing other people’s disgust with US election results made me feel a little more sane. I also did a bunch of stress-knitting, and now have a pair of wrist warmers for work when I work the drive through window, one for a garden friend, and am ⅔ of the way through a pair for my coworker, so there are upsides to all of this.

I’ve done my best to spend time outside as well, going for walks during the few times I’m available during daylight hours and continuing to volunteer my time and energy at the garden. The people there also help me feel sane, and the time outside restoring the garden’s ecosystem and chopping down invasive buckthorn has been wonderful.

I’m doing a lot of studying for eventually going back to school, so my mornings and afternoons are taken up with A&P, medical terminology, and a Universal Class course on medical coding (along with cooking, cleaning, and running errands), so I often feel like I’m cramming five million tasks in a slot designed for about four, so it’s a constant struggle to get all the things accomplished that I want, but I’m doing my best!

Work is AWESOME. I’m now regularly working the front desk, helping people check out, renew/replace their library cards, answering questions, directing patrons to where they can find certain things in the library, and all the other tasks that front desk work entails. I’m also just about to finish up my passport agent training, which is SCARY AS HECK, but I want to be as helpful as I can to my team and that involves being another employee with the skills necessary to do all the available jobs, so wish me luck as I prepare to take the final exam!

That’s about it. What’s coming up in December? Hanukkah, of course, which starts on December 25th this year (which is convenient; the library will be closed, so I can make my giant batch of latkes that night. Love those things, but they’re pretty kitchen-destroying). Winter break, which will be nice to have my younger daughter home more. My mom is coming up to visit our local zoo with us this upcoming weekend, so I’m really looking forward to that. 

Wishing you a joyful whatever-you-celebrate-at-this-time-of-year. Stay warm, do what you can to take care of yourself and the ones you love, and find some great books to escape into when this life gets to be too much. Stay strong out there, friends.

Back again for the monthly update! Not quite full-time fall temperatures here in the Midwest, sadly, but at least it’s not in the upper 90’s, so I’ll take that. (Seriously, give me the cool, blustery Octobers of my childhood and not this I’m-still-sweaty-when-we-walk-to-school-in-the-morning nonsense, what is this mess???) September was just a toasty whirlwind of a month, and I’m more than aware that it ended in a nightmare scenario for a lot of good people in the US. I’m so sad to see the pictures coming out of North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Utterly, utterly heartbreaking.

I’ll talk more about work below, but suffice it to say here – it’s awesome. I love it so much!

Anyway, let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in September 2024

1. The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans

2. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by AVI (read out loud to my daughter)

3. Honey by Isabel Banta

4. The World in Your Lunch Box by Claire Eamer (read out loud to my daughter)

5. Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical, Religious Cult by Faith Jones

6. Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy by Cait West

7. Stripped, 2nd Edition: More Stories from Exotic Dancers by Bernadette C Barton

8. I Can’t Remember If I Cried: Rock Widows on Life, Love, and Legacy by Lori Tucker-Sullivan

9. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann

10. Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel

11. Catching Air by Sarah Pekkanen

12. The Matchmaker’s List by Sonya Lalli

13. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

14. Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You by Marley Dias (read out loud to my daughter)

15. Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

16. The Frindle Files by Andrew Clements

17. Given Up for Dead: American POWs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga by Flint Whitlock

18. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt (read out loud to my daughter)

19. Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus

20. Do I Know You? : A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination by Sadie Dingfelder

21. Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix (read out loud to my daughter)

Whoa, twenty-one books! That’s a pretty great month. I think things will be slowing down a little from here for other life reasons, but this is more than I thought I’d read. The Unclaimed was just a heartbreaking read about what happens to unclaimed bodies in Los Angeles; the whole thing made me sad. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians is an absolute DELIGHT of a book. I cried multiple times throughout this; I cannot recommend this highly enough. Truly one of the sweetest books I’ve read this year. The Shipping News was…not my usual fare. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t quite enjoy it either. It was a different one for me, that’s for sure. And The Frindle Files, Andrew Clements’ last book (*sob*), what a lovely way to top off a brilliant career of getting kids to love reading and books and stories. If you enjoyed Frindle, don’t miss this one.

Twenty-one books! Ten nonfiction, eleven fiction (one of these was a graphic novel). Eleven of these were from my own shelves; four were from my TBR. I’m happy with that!

Bookish Things I Did in September 2024

I did go to a book sale and came home with a bag of books, but I didn’t get a picture of my loot. Mostly fiction for my daughter and me; lots of Andrew Clements for her, a Jennifer Weiner, a John Irving, a Gilly MacMillan, and two Anita Diamants for me (among others). It was a good time!

State of the Goodreads TBR

I was at six last month; this month, with a bit of luck and diligence (and hunting for some books not at my library!), it’s at three! One, I’m going through day-by-day, as it’s intended; one, I started reading yesterday; and the other comes out this month, so we’ll see how fast I can get a copy of that. Not bad!

Books I Acquired in September 2024

Just the books I mentioned above from the book sale, plus a book I’ll talk about a little below.

Current Podcast Love

I’m all over the place here. First, I was listening to a podcast called Myths and Legends; I really enjoyed this and will definitely go back to it. Now, I’m mostly listening to And Then They Were Gone, a true crime podcast about missing people. Heartbreaking and utterly fascinating.

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Still slooooooooowly making my way through Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, on the days I have time, which isn’t often enough, unfortunately.

Real Life Stuff

PHEW. Busy, busy, busy. I run my butt off at every hour of every day, trying to get stuff done. Work is going REALLY well; I love what I do at the library, I love learning new things and being as helpful and productive as I can, and I love my co-workers, who are kind and thoughtful and patient and fun and funny. I couldn’t ask for a better job. 

Eventually, though, in a few years, I’m going to go back to school, and I’m looking at doing the medical coding certificate program at the local two-year college, so in my spare time, I’m starting to prepare for that. It’ll be a few years, but I figure I can get a head start on getting familiar with medical terminology (I bought a used book for this!) and preparing for the anatomy and physiology course I’ll have to take  (I dug out an A&P book from my basement shelves). I’m spending a lot of time studying these, and I have to say, I’m really enjoying it. It’s nice to feel like I’m actually using my brain these days! It definitely keeps me on my toes, though.

That’s the biggest change lately. Otherwise, I’m still reading every chance I get, desperately trying to keep my head above water everywhere else. Most days it feels like I hit the ground running before 6 am and don’t get a second to breathe before I go to bed around 10:30. My Fitbit sure loves my step counts, though!

That’s really all I’ve got right now; I’m a pretty boring person this month. Hopefully you’re also doing well and safe; my heart goes out to everyone that’s been devastated by Hurricane Helene. I know there are more hurricanes coming down the chute, and it worries me.

Stay safe and healthy, friends (COVID is still out there; a number of folks I know have been down with it lately). Wishing you a lovely October full of beautiful leaves and great reads!

Another whirlwind of a month, filled with work (which is filled with books), back to school, and a little bit of reading stuffed in here and there. And mosquito bites. They’re TERRIBLE here and I’ve been the recipient of an absolutely egregious amount of mosquito bites this month. Hideous. Hopefully you’re faring better wherever you’re at.

The heat has been a little nuts here recently, but fortunately, we’re trending back downward. Who knows when the actual fall temperatures will come in; with climate change, we’ve had some Septembers with plenty of days in the 90’s still, so. EW. I’m more than ready for jeans, sweaters, hoodies, and NOT sweating to death in the car while I wait for my work shift to start.

But anyway.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we???

Books I Read in August 2024

1. Separate But Not Equal: The Dream and the Struggle by Jim Haskins (read aloud to my daughter)

2. The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America by Mark Sundeen

3. Minimal: For Simple and Sustainable Living by Laurie Barrette and Stéphanie Mandréa

4. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

4. Joey Green’s Incredible Country Store: Potions, Notions, and Elixirs of the Past – and How to Make Them Today by Joey Green

6. Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg (read aloud to my daughter)

7. The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves

8. Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

9. The Book Proposal by K.J. Micciche

10. Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts by Claire LaZebnik

11. Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

12. Edible Plants: A Photographic Survey of the Wild Edible Botanicals of North America by Jimmy Fike

13. The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family by Jesselyn Cook

14. Perfectly Clear: Escaping Scientology and Fighting for the Woman I Love by Michelle LeClair

15. Marshmallow & Jordan by Alina Chau

16. That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones

An okay month. The Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen was an impulse grab at the library that ended up being a fascinating look at the lengths some people go to to live out their ideals of a simple life. The Girl He Used to Know was just intensely delightful fiction about a woman with autism and how she makes her way in the world and finds (and loses, and refinds) love. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did – granted, I went into it blind and had no idea what it was about, but I really, really enjoyed it. 

Sixteen books this month; eight fiction, eight nonfiction. NINE of these came from my own shelves! I’ve actually gotten over 40 books read and off my own shelves this year so far. I’m REALLY proud of that! The Little Free Libraries around me are bursting at the seams with my books. : )

Bookish Things I Did in August 2024

I worked at the library, does that count? (I hope so!)

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, the list was at seven books; this month, it’s six. One book, my daughter and I are going through day-by-day, as it’s intended; one book is in processing at another local library, so I’m waiting on that; one book doesn’t come out until October; one book is on my footstool right now, checked out from another library (because it’s checked out at mine!); one book, I’ll have to get through interlibrary loan; and the last book just became available at my library as an ebook! It’s checked out to someone else right now, but I’ll get to it when it’s in. I’m pleased with all of this!

Books I Acquired in August 2024

The only book I brought home with me this month was a copy of Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune. It came from a trip to deposit books at Little Free Libraries near me.

Current Podcast Love

I’ve listened to all of Dateline, so I’ve moved on to listening to Park Predators (from the makers of Crime Junkie), a podcast about true crime cases that happen in national parks. Super fascinating! 

When I walk or do volunteer work, though, I’m still listening to The Slow Home Podcast with Brooke McAlary.

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

I’m on-and-off reading a chunk of pages from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. It’s been on my shelves for ages and I’ve never read it. It’s a lot, though, and I’m not super into poetry, plus my schedule is sometimes a little intense during the days and I forget. So I *will* eventually get all this read, but who knows when?

Real Life Stuff

And it’s September again.

The library is a little less busy now that summer reading is over. I’m being trained to work the front counter and the drive-up window, which is pretty cool. I love it there so much, and I have the most amazing, intelligent, funny, patient, and kind coworkers in the world. I truly hope the community understands what an amazing team runs their library and what an incredible resource it is. We’re so lucky to live in a place with a library like this, and I’m so lucky to be a part of it. 

I did find my first ooh-that-looks-good book while shelving (that’s Edible Plants by Jimmy Fike, #12 in my list this month!), and put my first book on hold after hearing a patron talk about it! So the occupational hazard begins.  🙂

Kids are doing well; younger daughter is back to school and loving it (she begs me to leave early for school every day so she can hang out with her best friend for a few extra minutes before the bell rings); older daughter starts classes in a few weeks and is enjoying spending time with her significant other.

That’s kind of all I have to report for the moment! We’re finding our happy balance between work/life/school and all that comes with those things. I couldn’t be more grateful for my wonderful job and my awesome coworkers. I’d take a full-on break of these awful summer temperatures – and we do have a slightly cooler streak coming up! – but there are definitely still days in the mid-80’s in the forecast, which, ugh. Not all that bad on the days I’m off, but when I’m in work clothes and driving to the library, it’s too far to walk, but close enough that the car doesn’t really cool off before I get there. And then I always have about seven minutes or so to wait until I can reasonably sign in, so I bake in the hot car until then. Bring on temps in the 40’s, please! 

Anyway. Fingers crossed that those cooler fall temps make their way to us sooner rather than later (let’s pretend climate change isn’t a thing right this very moment, okay?  For my sweaty, sweaty sake?). I wish you all a safe, happy, healthy September, filled with excellent books!

And once again, here we are in August. The school year is looming over us; the kids will be going back in two weeks here (and I know some of our southern friends have either already started or start this week). Transitions are always a little sad, aren’t they? June and July are full of such promise, and for me, sending my daughter back to school makes me a little teary. She’s just so nice to have around, you know? : )

But it’s been nothing if not a season of changes around here, anyway! My new job is going SO well, even if it means the rest of my life is a little rushed and there’s *definitely* way less time for reading. I’m getting to help other people read, and that makes me incredibly happy.

But more on that later.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in July 2024

1. More Than Enough: How One Family Cultivated a More Abundant Life Through a Year of Practical Minimalism by Miranda Anderson

2. Diet for a Changing Climate by Sue Heavenrich (read out loud to my daughter)

3. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon

4. How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Dr. Michael Greger

5. What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms by Jonathan Metzl

6. A Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary (read out loud to my daughter)

7. Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey

8. Simple Matters: Living with Less and Ending Up with More by Erin Boyle

9. Double Trouble by Joanne Levy (read out loud to my daughter)

10. The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living by Mark Boyle

11. Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preacher’s Daughter by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock

12. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

13. Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder

14. Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy

I’m still finding a balance between getting stuff done around the house, spending time with my youngest daughter (and that will change again when she heads back to school), work, and reading, but that’ll adjust over time. 

My favorite book this month by far was In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume. This had been sitting on my shelves for years now, and I absolutely devoured it. It’s a multiple narrative, which I LOVE, and it’s about the community of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which suffered a series of plane crashes over a series of three months in the 1950’s. Absolutely fascinating and wonderful and just so Judy Blume. I loved it. Hilariously enough, I had to sort a cart with the audiobook of this book on it at work the day after I finished my own copy. High five to the local person who was reading along with me! : )

But I have to give a shoutout to How Not to Die, which has entirely revamped my diet in a good way. I needed that dietary kick in the pants, so thanks, Dr. Greger!

Fourteen books this month! Two fiction, twelve nonfiction. Six came from my own shelves; none from my TBR. 

Bookish Things I Did in July 2024

Another $10 per bag book sale the day before I started my new job!

And of course, there’s also my new library job. Can you believe I’m getting paid to spend time in the library??? I still can’t. It’s a lot of fun, and physically challenging at times as well (those full rolling carts are HEAVY, y’all! Plus I’m basically doing squats all shift long. Expect me to appear on a THIGHS OF STEEL exercise video soon…), but I’m really, really enjoying it!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, it was at six; this month, I’m at seven. One, my daughter and I are going through; two I have on hold; two don’t come out for a bit yet; one, I’ll have to get from another library; and the last one is available through my library as an ebook. 

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Dateline as I fall asleep; still listening to The Slow Home Podcast with Brooke McAlary as I do my volunteer work or go for my rare walks these days. 

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

No movement here this month. We’ll see about next month, when my youngest daughter goes back to school and my schedule changes yet again!

Real Life Stuff

Work-life balance struggle is real, even for part-timers! I’m still doing absolutely everything around the house by myself with no help, from dishes to cooking to laundry to cleaning to mowing the lawn, I’ve just added in 16-23 hours of outside-the-house work every week, so trying to get everything done and still have time for anything else is tough. School starts in two weeks, so that’ll mean doing it all on even less sleep! But maybe then I’ll have a little more free time? Or at least the ability to listen to podcasts while I get things done, so there’s that. 

Work really is fun. There’s always SO much to do; sorting carts and shelving is basically like trying to bail out a boat full of holes (by the time I get a cart shelved – and I’m pretty quick at it! – two more carts of material have been returned), but it’s enjoyable (although, bless you if you check things out from the upper shelves. Holy cow, all the squats I’m doing to get to the lower shelves!), and I’m having a good time. Things should settle down at work in a few weeks when the kids go back to school, though. I kind of figured they would, but my coworkers confirmed this last night. Which is good; I think when I left last night, despite my shelving three carts in the children’s section, there were still three more full carts ready to shelve and at least one to be sorted. I live in a very literate, reading-friendly town!

How fun are the Olympics??? We’ve so been enjoying watching basically every event we can, and the time difference has really been working out with my schedule. I can see the live events during the day, before I go to work, and I’ve been able to catch a little bit of other stuff here and there when I get home at night. Gymnastics (Simone! Jordan! Frederick! Steve!), swimming (HOLY CRAP, KATIE LEDECKY!), diving, it’s all been great. I’m looking forward to watching track and field (SHA’CARRI!!!) when that starts. There’s something so inspiring about watching these athletes who’ve trained so hard all their lives for this event. Amazing what the human body can do!

Be careful out there, folks. Like half my Facebook, near and far, has COVID right now. I’ve started wearing my mask at work in order to protect myself (holy coughing patrons some nights, Batman!), and I feel a lot safer and more confident when I’m wearing it. 

Wishing you all a happy back-to-school season, whether you have kids or you’re going back to school or even if you just gaze fondly at the back-to-school section at the store. Happy reading, and support your local library! : )