Is literary whiplash a thing? It should be. But it’s not a bad thing. I’m a big fan of reading widely, reading weirdly, reading all sorts of stories, fiction and non, and there’s nothing I like more than reading stories by people who are different from me, or who live differently than I do. The world is such a fascinating place. The Solace of Water by Elizabeth Byler Younts (Thomas Nelson, 2018) ended up on my TBR list thanks to another blogger’s review, and I’m glad it did, because it’s a lovely read.
Dee Evans is grieving hard after the accidental drowning of her four year old son Carver. Her older daughter, Sparrow, was tasked with watching him that day and got distracted by a boy; now Carver’s gone, Dee is nearly paralyzed with grief and barely able to tolerate being near Sparrow, and the whole family is moving to Pennsylvania, where Dee’s husband will take over preaching at his childhood church. Things are different in Sinking Creek: not necessarily better, but different, and Dee isn’t sure how to relate to the white townsfolk when there are no signs telling her what she can and can’t do.
Her Amish neighbor Emma is another mystery. While Emma’s church’s stance is to not get involved in the racial tension amongst the English, Emma can’t help but find herself drawn first to Sparrow, then Dee. Emma carries multiple heavy burdens of her own and recognizes the pain that her new neighbors carry. Sparrow, however, is carrying more pain and stress than she lets on. While she strikes up an innocent but secret romance with Emma’s son Johnny, she also copes with other, more unhealthy measures, ones that will almost cost her everything when her pain, Dee’s grief, Emma’s desperation, and the town’s racial tension come to a head.
First off, major content warnings for this book. Child death via drowning, stillbirth, alcoholism, self harm, and racial tension and violence are all front and center in this book. If now is not a good time for you to read about these subjects, be gentle with yourself and choose something easier on your soul.
Dee’s grief is a terrible burden, and her anger at Sparrow is perhaps even worse. Because Carver’s death happened on Sparrow’s watch, Dee’s inability to forgive her daughter and Sparrow’s guilt combine to make an absolutely gut-wrenching maelstrom of emotion. At times, each woman’s anguish and desperation are tough to read, but Ms. Younts handles it with aplomb. Also carefully treated is the tension between blacks and whites that simmers in the town; it hadn’t occurred to me that black people who moved from the overtly racist, pre-civil-rights-era south, might be confused and apprehensive about the rules of the not-as-overtly-racist-but-still-very-racist north, and I appreciate the perspective on that that this gave me. I still have so, so much to learn.
Emma’s burden, while different, is no less. Her pain over the loss of her infant daughter, combined with so many years of keeping both her husband’s and her own secret, alienated her from her family, her community, and what she truly wanted in life, and it was easy to both sympathize with her pain and feel her joy at the connection she made with Sparrow and so desperately wanted to make with Dee. While I have no desire to be Amish, reading the descriptions of Emma’s simple ways resonated with me and ended up affecting my next book choice! I love when that happens.
With Emma being Amish and Dee being a preacher’s wife, The Solace of Water is heavy on Christianity and Christian themes like forgiveness, but without being heavy-handed. Thomas Nelson is a Christian publisher, yet I didn’t find this to be overly preachy or even overly religious; the religion and beliefs of the characters are merely part of their lives and not something the author is trying to sell to her readers, which was something I very much appreciated.
The Solace of Water is a cathartic novel, full of pain, desolation, secrecy, and the capacity for suffering and loneliness, but ultimately, it’s a novel of friendship, forged connections, redemption, and forgiveness of self and others. I’m so happy that it ended up on my TBR list, because despite its heavy subject matter, it made for a thoroughly enjoyable weekend read.
Would you believe I’m actually feeling better??? It’s amazing!!!! Of course, that means I entirely overdid it on Sunday, trying to get caught up, and spent a good part of yesterday struggling to walk, but let’s not talk about that.
Let’s talk about this book.
I have a tough time falling asleep at night, and I wake up a lot, so I keep a podcast going in my earbud all night. The sound helps me drift off to sleep, and when I wake up, it gives me something to focus on besides my anxiety-based thoughts (like, “OMG, I’ll never get enough sleep and then I’ll be a mess in the morning and I’ll drive off the road and kill everyone!” Zero to a hundred in no time flat, my brain). My current listen is Smart Bitches, Trashy Podcast, and I love it. Last month, I woke up one morning for no good reason at 4 am and Episode #296 with author Julia Whelan was chugging along in my earbud. Sarah Wendell, the host, was asking Ms. Whelan if there were any books she’d been reading lately that she’d like to recommend, and Ms. Whelan immediately said, “Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017). As she launched into the description, I’m pretty sure I gasped in the early morning darkness, and I immediately rolled over, grabbed my phone, and added it to my Goodreads TBR. As someone who usually just tries to stay still and fall back to sleep as quickly as possible, moving around when I wake up is serious business. THAT is how much I wanted to read this book. I was beyond thrilled when I checked during more awake, more daylight hours to find that a local library had a copy of this.
Solène Marchand is almost forty, a successful art gallery owner and single mother of a young teenage daughter. She’s fought hard to be where and who she is, leaving her unhappy marriage after her husband had different ideas of who she should have been, and while she may be lonely, she’s still content. Everything changes when her ex bails on taking her daughter and friends to an August Moon concert, August Moon being THE hot British boy band. Solène steps in, and a backstage meet and greet with the band puts her on the radar of Hayes Campbell, adorable, sexy band member who is twenty years her junior. What Solène thinks is just flirting turns into something else when Hayes begins to pursue her despite his crazy and hectic schedule.
Hiding everything from almost everyone she knows, including her daughter, Solène and Hayes begin a deeply emotional, incredibly sexy tryst, meeting up in cities along his tour route, tucked away in the back of darkened restaurants, spending their time backstage at concert arenas and Hayes’s hotel rooms. Solène hadn’t expect to actually fall for a twenty year old boy bander, but he’s in just as deep as she is. And when the real world- Hayes’s fame, Solène’s daughter, their age difference- creeps into the fortress they’ve carefully constructed around themselves, Solène needs to make a lot of difficult decisions.
My synopsis of this does NOT do this book justice. This book is complex, studying society’s attitude towards age and aging (and the difference between male and female aging), feminism, parenting (and the different roles men and women are expected to play and expect each other to play), relationships, friendship, and fame- what it’s like, how we react to it, the positives and negatives and dangers of it. It’s romance, but- potential spoiler alert here- its ending kind of kicks it out of traditional romance territory. (It’s not a true spoiler, as almost immediately Solène begins to question the longevity of her relationship with Hayes. With a twenty-year age difference, how could one NOT?)
In the past, when I’ve read books with characters who are involved in the art world, they often seem humorless, dry, and detached, but Solène felt more immediate, more present and real. Her complicated feelings about her relationship with Hayes, especially in relation to her young daughter, made her extremely sympathetic and relatable- obviously, I’ve never been in her shoes before, but as a parent, you’re constantly forced to pit your child’s needs with your own needs and desires, and it’s a never-ending battle of how much or how little you have to sacrifice, and what you can still keep in your life while still giving your kids everything they need. So while the inclusion of Isabelle, Solène’s daughter, as a character gave the story more of an edge of anxiety that I’m usually comfortable with, it also kept the story emotionally real. Solène has to make a lot of hard decisions throughout the course of this book, and I think most of them show her as selfless, or eventually selfless (which…isn’t always a great quality, you know? While putting others first is usually a great thing, at some point, if you’re always selfless, you start to lose…yourself. And if you don’t have yourself, what DO you have?).
And Hayes. *SWOON* I’ve got a special place in my heart for boy bands, British or not, and Hayes and his fellow bandmates are so well-written. They’re young, but not immature; lively without being annoying; sharp, witty, sarcastic, intelligent, and sexy as all hell. Hayes is mature without seeming over-written or artificial; his feelings for Solène are deep and authentic. The chemistry he and Solène have is off-the-charts hot, and if you’re more into chaste romances, this isn’t your kind of book. By necessity, Solène and Hayes spend the vast majority of their relationship tucked away somewhere private, and so there’s a lot of hot monkey sex, some of it somewhat graphic, in these pages. It’s all so well and beautifully, reverentially written, though; this isn’t smut for the sake of smut.
The end, which, as I said boots this book out of traditional romance territory, is a bit gutting, but not surprising, at least not to me. I thought it fit the story and the characters perfectly, and it was the only honest ending that Ms. Lee could have written. Anything else would have been even more heartbreaking and soul-crushing, and while it’s not the ending I wished for the characters, it’s the only realistic one, the only one that I would have believed.
The famous person/normal person relationship trope is my absolute favorite, so this book ticked a lot of boxes for me and I’m so happy I just happened to wake up at the right moment to hear about it! Talk about serendipity. I’m looking forward to seeing what Robinne Lee writes next, because I enjoyed this so very much. She’s hooked me as a fan with her writing style, her way of seeing the world, and her understanding of the complexity of human emotions.
Have you read this? Are you a fan of the famous person/normal person relationship trope? What about the older woman/younger man trope? (That one usually weirds me out a little more. My son is just about three years younger than Hayes, so…nope. Not quite for me, but it worked well in this book.)
Hey, remember when I got sick a few weeks ago? Would you believe I’m STILL sick???
I had to go back to the doctor this week to get stronger antibiotics because the Amoxicillan wasn’t cutting and had left me with some serious ear/jaw/face pain, and I’m *still* not feeling great (coughing, runny/stuffy nose, ear/jaw pain and lack of hearing in my left ear, which is weird). I’ve got a message into my doctor this morning; she wanted me to call if I still wasn’t feeling great by Friday, so…we’ll see.
All that is to say that the other night, I was feeling like hot boiled crap and could barely move. I desperately needed something to read that I could just get lost in, something that I could enjoy but not have to work for. I’ve been wanting to read Lauren Dane for ages (seriously, she’s straight fire on Twitter), and her Second Chances (Carina Press, 2010) was available as an ebook at my library. Onto my kindle it went, and I crawled into bed and started reading.
After ten years of living in Paris and traveling the world, Rori Simon has returned to her small hometown of Oakley, TN for good. Her ex’s cheating was more than she could take, and she’s glad to be back near her family, especially her sister, even if their mother is more than a little judgmental and overbearing. It doesn’t take long before Rori, a late bloomer who definitely blossomed during her time away, begins attracting all the hot hometown hunks, including Jude, local libidinous Lothario and the half-brother of Rori’s sister’s husband. Jude is spicy hot and everything Rori’s ever wanted, but when Jude’s immaturity rears its ugly head, Rori finds comfort and long-term happiness in the arms of Zach, an old friend’s younger brother.
But remember the title: Second Chances has a lot of twists and turns, situations that you might not see coming, and impressive character growth. It’s romance at a fairly high heat level, including quite a bit of BDSM and D/s (I’m not opposed to reading that, but I hadn’t noticed the allusion to it in the Goodreads blurb and so it surprised me a little when it showed up), so if that’s not your bag, baby, there are plenty of other great books in the sea!
Rori was a little too perfect for me to really enjoy her as a character. I did like that she was a writer, and apparently a successful one at that, making a living off of her novels. Characters who are involved in any aspect of writing and publishing always make my reader heart happy. And Zach…he was a giant teddy bear of a character who was beyond sweet and sexy. I had his character arc pegged from the start, but Jude… Jude was a serious prick of a character in the beginning. I really liked his redemption arc and how much he changed by the end. It’s rare for my feelings to shift so dramatically about a character, so Lauren Dane really worked some magic here.
While I do have to suspend my disbelief a little for novels like these- small hometowns that are *that* overrun with searingly hot, single men who are instantly drawn to the heroine like cat hair to black pants? I mean, I’ve seen the dudes from my hometown and yikes– this book was exactly what I needed when I needed it: something light, fluffy, easy to read, a book that I didn’t need to think about but could just fall into and enjoy. There’s not a huge, overarching plot, no novel-length goal that Rori’s aiming for; Second Chances is more the story of trying to build- and rebuild- a life upon one’s return home, and it’s been interesting to look back on the novel and see exactly how many second chances really were in this book. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of what Lauren Dane can do in the future.
A side effect of reading this book was making the song Second Chance by .38 Special, one of the WORST APOLOGY SONGS EVER, run through my head constantly. The song is about a dude who cheated on his girlfriend and is trying to woo her back, with such horrifying lines as,
I never loved her I never needed her She was willing and that’s all there is to say
Like…bro…you’re not helping your case one bit by framing it like that. Maybe don’t do that?
Are you a Lauren Dane fan? Care to recommend any of her other books to me? My TBR list awaits!
Good morning/afternoon/evening, readers! I hope you’re having a fabulous day. Would you look at that- it’s Wednesday again, so that means it’s time for another WWW Wednesday! (Again? Wasn’t it just Wednesday???)
WWW Wednesday is a superfun bookish meme hosted by the lovely Sam of Taking on a World of Words (hi Sam! Thanks for hosting!). It’s all about answering three VERY important book-related questions:
What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?
Are you ready? Let’s play!
What are you currently reading?
So, I’m still sick. I woke up yesterday feeling like I’d been run over by a bus, with pain still raging in the left side of my face, head, and jaw (and coughing! I’m still coughing!). Off to the doctor we went, and I came home with a prescription for stronger antibiotics. So far, they *seem* to be working out better (*crosses fingers*); I’m not as bad off this morning as I was yesterday. All that is to say that last night, I was half-dead and wanted to throw myself in bed and read something that I didn’t have to work for, that I could just lie there, try not to die, and get lost in the story. Second Chances by Lauren Dane, the story of a woman who returns to her hometown after years away, fit that bill. I read through 30-some percent of it and then crashed, but I’m enjoying it so far.
What did you recently finish reading?
I couldn’t resist Big Rock by Lauren Blakely; any book that can make such innuendos with both the cover and the title (and the font!) gets my inner twelve-year-old snort-laughing.
I also finished American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer. This was utterly amazing, infuriating, and eye-opening. It’s the kind of book that makes you need to take a breather every once in a while, because some of the information in there is just so brutal and intense. I cannot recommend this highly enough, especially if you live in the US.
What do you think you’ll read next?
So, usually I have a whole stack of books lined up, just waiting for me. This illness has seriously kicked my butt, and I’m plum worn out. I have no stack other than the books on my own shelves (and we all know those don’t count, right?). I’m really hoping to be back to my normal self in the next few days and get back to my regular reading. After making a stop at the grocery store today, my daughter and I are going to hit up the library in a nearby town; they’ve got a few books from my TBR list (whether they’re in stock remains to be seen), including The Solace of Water by Elizabeth Younts, Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, andThe Idea of You by Robinne Lee. So hopefully one of those will be next on the list, and hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon!
And that’s it for this week’s WWW Wednesday! What are you reading this week???
Sometimes, you see a book’s cover and read the blurb and it’s so unbelievably over-the-top that you can’t even, and it goes straight onto your Goodreads TBR. That’s what happened with Big Rock by Lauren Blakely. Her name was one that kept coming up over and over again in the things I’ve been reading online and listening to, and so I figured I’d check her out. Off to my library website I went. Big Rock was one of two of her books that they had on the shelves, and after reading the premise, I snickered. Loudly. (For real, go read the Goodreads blurb. I’ll wait.) Apparently, the whole story started when, according to the acknowledgements, Ms. Blakely asked a friend if they could make a C look like an R, and…well, that’s some pretty clever graphic design, if you ask me. *snort*
Spencer is, to put it lightly, extremely well endowed. He knows how to use what he’s got, and the ladies about town appreciate his playboy ways. His life thus far is pretty sweet- son of the owner of one of the country’s most successful and well-known jewelry store chains, creator of the uber-profitable Boyfriend Material dating app (known for featuring absolutely zero dick pics), and now, with his best friend Charlotte, co-owner of The Lucky Spot, one of New York City’s hippest bars. With all that and a handsome face to boot, you’d think Spencer would be an insufferable asshole, but…he’s not. When his father decides he’s ready to retire and sail the seven seas with his wife, the man looking to buy his jewelry business is eyeing the WHOLE family before he makes his final decision, and this includes on-the-prowl Spencer. What’s a man about town to do but convince his best friend that a fake engagement will help Dad seal the deal?
But as we all know, when it comes to romance novels, best friends and fake engagements don’t stay fake for long, and within days, Spencer and Charlotte are seriously burning it down. Spencer can’t believe all of this was sitting right under his nose for so long. Just as he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s feeling something he never expected to feel, it all heads south, and Spencer’s got to make things right, FAST, before he hurts and maybe even loses everyone he loves.
First off, I’m usually not at all a fan of the whole ‘fake dating/engagement/marriage’ trope. I don’t like lying in fiction and usually find the premise so unlikely that it kind of throws the whole rest of the story off. That didn’t really change here; I’m definitely not a convert to the trope and you won’t catch me singing its praises anytime soon. But Lauren Blakely made the story work well for me. Spencer is a fantastic character, carefully crafted in order to not stray into chauvinistic territory. He’s confident without being smug, alluring without being cocky, self-assured without being irritating. That’s no simple feat for a writer and I very much appreciate her hard work in that area. He may have had a different woman on his arm most nights before his agreement with Charlotte, but there were never any hurt feelings, and Spencer was not only respectful to women- all women- he routinely stepped in when other men were letting their misogynist flag fly. As both a narrator and the hero, Spencer gets an A+ and two enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
If you’re more in the market for a chaste romance, you can probably guess from the cover that Big Rock isn’t the book for you. This book is a five-alarm habanero bouquet with extra ghost pepper sauce. Have your fans and fainting couches at the ready, readers, because Lauren Blakely leaves scorch marks on every page, and you’ll find yourself panting, “I’ll have what she’s having!” after every smoking scene with Spencer and Charlotte.
Phew. I’m glad I picked this up. Spencer’s definitely more alpha male than what I typically enjoy, but having the story narrated by him and having his every thought accessible made him such a sympathetic character that it absolutely made this story. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more Lauren Blakely in the future! *dons fireproof suit*
Going hand in hand with my fascination with cults and other closed groups is my interest in prison (I mean, they’re all on the big list of Places I Will *Hopefully* Never Be, right?). I’ve got a list of ten other books I’ve read about prison; it’s one of those subjects that both intrigues and infuriates me, and I’ll almost always at least read the inside flap or back cover if the title makes it obvious prison is the subject of the book (and most of the time, the book ends up coming home with me). Hearing about American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer had me running straight for Goodreads and clicking on the Want to Read button.
In 2014, working with Mother Jones magazine, Shane Bauer went undercover at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, employed as a prison guard making $9 per hour. You read that correctly; starting pay for prison guards in a private correctional center, whose lives are in danger the second they step into their workplace, who suffer from rates of post-traumatic stress disorder higher than soldiers returning from the Middle East and who commit suicide at a rate two-and-a-half times higher than the general population, barely make over minimum wage. This assignment wasn’t just a way for Bauer to get a sneak peek at the world of privately run prisons; it was personal. In 2009, Bauer, along with two others, were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan and accidentally strayed too close to the Iranian border; as a result, Bauer spent 26 months in an Iranian prison. Upon his return home, still suffering from PTSD, he became interested in the US prison system and found himself at Winn, a private prison run by then-Corrections Corportation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic.
In the four months that Bauer spends as a guard at Winn, he witnesses a host of human rights violations, including denying inmates medical care (while no one died under Bauer’s watch, he does recount the story of several inmates passed away due to Winn’s negligence, and mentions contact with an inmate who lost his feet and fingers due to gangrene that Winn refused to treat until it was too late; Robert Scott eventually settled out of court with CCA, but you can read his complaint here, where they gave him corn removal strips and shoe inserts to treat his gangrene), denying them food and water, and cutting security in order to save money until no one is safe (one correctional officer watches video feeds from at least 30 cameras; at meal time, two unarmed officers supervise 800 inmates). Physical and mental health care for inmates is stripped to the bone or whatever is past that, and Bauer and his fellow guards have nothing but a radio with which to call for backup to protect themselves (presumably to call other officers who are armed solely with a radio?). If you’re familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment, Bauer’s experiences at Winn mimic that; over time, he finds himself becoming angrier, enjoying the power he holds over the inmates, acting out of a sense of revenge and malice instead of the level-headed reporter he walked in as. He realizes he’s changing but is powerless to stop the prison’s effect on his thinking, his demeanor, his morale. Just as he’s considering quitting but is finding it difficult to break away, his hand is forced due to an emergency situation with a fellow reporter and the local police, and Shane Bauer flees Louisiana to write and publish his story.
Interspersed with Bauer’s personal tale is the history of corrections in America and how racism and the drive for profiting off the suffering of others has shaped the industry. There is no discussion of prison in America without delving heavily into America’s history of racism, and there’s a LOT of information in here that will have any decent person seeing red. Penitentiaries only came into favor in the South in order to give white people a separate punishment from slaves. Consider this quote: “People like Governor Claiborne worried that whites, kept in the same miserable quarters as enslaved African Americans, might naturally sympathize with their plight and become potential recruits for the abolitionist cause. A penitentiary would help that.” Adding to that horror is the fact that pre-Civil War Louisiana made money from selling inmates’ children into slavery; when slaves were imprisoned in mixed-gender populations, female prisoners would become pregnant, and though they were allowed to raise their children until the age of 10, past that, the child would be auctioned off, and the proceeds would be used to fund white schools. I spent a lot of time reading this book, staring off into space, taking a few deep breaths and quietly seething.
Beyond that, the history of American corrections is one that leans heavily on torture. There are content warnings for this book due to descriptions of fairly graphic punishments that absolutely qualify as torture, some of which result in death (multiple torture-based deaths are mentioned throughout the book). There are also multiple mentions of prison rape, but none are graphic; more disturbing is the general attitude of the corrections industry that rape in prison is inevitable and there’s no point or reason in trying to prevent it.
American Prison is an absolutely chilling and upsetting exposé that needs to be read by every American citizen. While I take no issue with prison itself and the need for a place to rehabilitate criminals, I very much take issue with our lack of rehabilitative programs in general. We are a society whose corrections correct nothing; instead of preparing criminals to return to society as better citizens and human beings, we exact revenge on them for their crimes, and if we return them to society at all, it’s as people who are far more damaged than when they went in, who have few or no skills necessary to make a healthy place for themselves in American society, and who have little chance to avoid returning to prison. (Along those lines, American society does little to invest in its people from the start; watching any show based on prison- Jailbirds on Netflix is an example of something I’ve recently watched- or reading anything about prisons and prisoners make it obvious that this is a society-deep problem; parents and parenting, lack of jobs that pay a living wage, drugs, lack of basic necessities such as food, medical care, and housing, underfunded educational systems, poor daycare options, all of this and more go into the failure of what leads people down the path to imprisonment, and we do little to counter any of it. The prisons alone aren’t at fault, but their brutality doesn’t remedy anything.)
Bauer does a phenomenal job of maintaining a cool journalistic mien in his reporting of the absolute hellhole that is CCA/CoreCivic. In many, many instances, CCA falsifies data to the state and remarks that they had no record of incidents that Bauer personally witnessed and recorded (and for which there would have been a paper trail). Bauer’s accounts of the travesties committed by CCA/CoreCivic aren’t the first criticisms I’ve read about the private prison industry, and I have nothing even close to resembling a positive opinion of them or the idea of making money off of forced labor or imprisonment.
If you’ve never read a book about prison, American Prison would be a good place to start. I’ve read quite a few, and while some of the historical information was both new and shocking to me, nothing Mr. Bauer stated about working in a private prison or about CCA/CoreCivic itself was new to me. Even before his article came out, the company was on the defensive, guns blazing, with accusations about Bauer’s journalistic integrity and his lack of understanding of company policy (which is rich, coming from a company who was ready to promote him right before he left). His every mention of CCA/CoreCivic left a bad taste in my mouth, and honestly, it’s horrifying to me that a company is allowed to run like this at all. In other words, based on the reading I’ve done over many years, I’m entirely confident in Mr. Bauer’s account of his time at Winn, I wouldn’t trust a single thing said by CCA/CoreCivic, and I highly recommend American Prison.
Another glorious month of reading is in the books! (Heh. Pun intended.) These monthly roundup posts are probably my favorite kinds of posts to pull together. Seeing everything I read throughout the past month, reflecting on the things I’ve learned…it feels kind of cool, you know?
This hasn’t been the easiest month. My daughter was sick, AGAIN. Two doctor appointments later, she was finally diagnosed with a sinus infection…and then I got sick (which is what happens when you spend an entire week mopping up your kid’s snot and catching her coughed-so-hard-she-puked vomit in your bare hands). It was a pretty awful three-day weekend over Memorial Day (yes, we have urgent care, but it’s still $100 bucks just to walk in the door, but suffering and misery for three days until you can see the regular doctor means only a $25 copay! Yay, American healthcare…). I was able to get into the doctor Tuesday morning; she peered into my ears and up my nose and threw a crapload of antibiotics at me, because my ears and sinuses are a hot mess. I’m still experiencing some discomfort, but it’s not as fierce as it was in the beginning, thank goodness.
Fortunately, this was a pretty great month for reading, so let’s get down to the business of what I read this month, shall we?
23. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America- Morgan Jerkins (no review due to illness)
24. What the Witch Left- Ruth Chew (no review, read out loud to my daughter)
25. The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam- G. Willow Wilson (no review due to illness)
26. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic- Alison Bechdel (no review due to illness)
27. The Best We Could Do- Thi Bui (no review due to illness)
Doing nothing but hanging out at home and being sick gives you a lot of time to read…
Book Challenges Update
This is the month I finished both the reading challenges I took up at the beginning of the year! Having never finished a challenge in the past, this feels like a big deal for me. 🙂
For a book in the backlist of a favorite author, I read Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie; for my third book of the year by the same author, I read Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren; and for a book I chose for the cover, I read Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris. Voilà! First completed challenge. 🙂
And then, because I have to get everything done as fast as possible in order to prevent my anxiety from flaring because there are THINGS LEFT UNDONE, I also completed Book Riot’s 2019 Read Harder Challenge! Here’s what that list looks like:
Yay me!!! I’m pretty proud of myself for being able to stick with these tasks until completion. I’ve discovered a ton of new authors, learned some fascinating and disturbing things, opened my mind to new ways of thinking, visited far away places in distance and time, read new-to-me formats… I started the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge because I wanted to see if I could even complete a challenge at all, and I picked up the Read Harder Challenge because I felt like it would help me grow as a reader. It definitely did, and I’m planning on taking up this challenge in the future as well.
And now I’m completely challengeless! What’s a girl to do? Well, I’ve got 97 books on my Goodreads TBR (it WAS down to 50, thank you SO much, fellow book bloggers, for constantly posting about interesting books that I just HAVE to read… :D), so I’m going to focus on plowing through that for a bit. I’ve got so many books on there I’m looking forward to!
Books I Acquired in May 2019
There was this book haul:
from that used book sale, which was unbelievably magic because it was the place where I found the book I’d been looking for since I was TWELVE YEARS OLD. I still can’t get over that, and I’m soooooooooo looking forward to reading that book (which I’m entirely sure is going to be all kinds of early 1980’s romance problematic) as soon as I finish with my current stack. This is going to be FUN.
And then I was lucky enough to win The View from Alameda Island by Robyn Carr from Always With a Book! Kristin always posts such interesting content and hosts fantastic giveaways; Robyn Carr has gotten a lot of mentions on the podcast I’m listening to lately, so I’m really looking forward to reading this. Thanks, Kristin!
Bookish Things I Did in May 2019
The aforementioned book sale was the absolute highlight of my month! I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being happy I found that book and can stop wondering what the heck it is! Once I read down what my library has of my TBR stash, I’ll start reading the books I got from that sale while I wait for interlibrary loans to come in. 🙂
I wasn’t able to make this month’s library book discussion group (my son had a choir concert that night), but I did go in on the first day and sign up for the adult summer reading program! There’s not a ton I want in regards to prizes (I’m putting all my tickets in for the Kindle Fire, but I assume most everyone else will be as well, so I’m not holding my breath), but I’m thrilled just to participate and help bump the library’s numbers up. Each sheet has ten spaces to fill in; after that, you can pick up a new sheet, up to five sheets. I figure I’ll get pretty close, if not finish it; I’ve already turned in two sheets…
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is fabulous!!! I’ve added a buttload of books to my TBR and learned a whole lot from the amazing variety of guests they have on- authors, bloggers (the episode with Kristy, aka Caffeinated Fae, talking about the #copypastecris scandal is so interesting!), podcasters, publishing industry people, there’s really something here for everyone. If you’re a writer (especially of but not limited to romance), there’s also a ton of great advice to be found in this podcast (which I’m mentally squirreling away for when my daughter goes to kindergarten and I have quiet time once again!). I’m SO enjoying every second of listening to this podcast.
Real Life Stuff
Again, not the greatest of months. We *just* had the pukes mid-April, and then my daughter started coughing the day of her birthday party, April 28. The cough lingered for a few weeks…and then came the snot. Rivers and rivers of it, and then a nasty fever that wouldn’t die. We had a few more episodes of puking (snot and coughing, they’re not great together), and finally, on her second doctor trip, they diagnosed a sinus infection. I was already coughing with a sore throat then, but eight days later, I was back in the office, feeling as though someone had kicked me in the face. Antibiotics for everyone! Great googly-moogly, we need a healthier month around here.
My daughter finished preschool!!! I don’t often post photos of her online, but this is too cute not to. First day of preschool:
And the last day (she still had a mega-runny nose here, but had been on meds long enough that I felt okay with her attending the hour-long goodbye party):
She’s changed SO MUCH these past two years! She won the Sweetheart Award, for being sweet and kind and polite to everyone at school (which thrills me and makes me mildly irritated that they’re getting such a different version of my child than the one I get! :D). Onward to kindergarten in August! 🙂
My son finished up his junior year; he’ll be attending some choir-related camps in June, which will include being gone for his birthday, which is a bummer for me, but I understand. He made Madrigals for his choir next year, which is a HUGE deal, and I’m so proud of him (and can’t wait to see him dressed up in Madrigal clothing).
Coming up in June, my son will turn 17 (NOT ACTUALLY POSSIBLE), and he’ll do one and possibly two choir camps. I’ll have another book sale put on by the same people who did the last magical book sale, so who knows what I’ll find there???
My daughter and I are going to be working on her reading this summer. She can read Level 1 books at a slow pace (although she does a lot of guessing. She knows how to sound things out, but she’d rather take what she thinks is the faster route), so my goal is to just keep swimming with her and increase her fluency and fluidity. She’s not a huge fan of the process, but she’s super excited having DONE the reading, and she does enjoy a good story, so hopefully we’ll start her off on the right foot in kindergarten. 🙂
And that’s it! How was your May? Hopefully much healthier than mine!!!
She's probably at the library... 