How on earth is it November???

I blinked, and October faded away in a glorious burst of reds, golds, oranges, and yellows. It’s still really pretty here in my neck of the woods, though we had a drive-by drop in temperatures and actual SNOW for Halloween, despite the rest of the time being fairly mild-ish fall weather in the 50’s. My tiny garden has been put to rest for the winter, the dehydrator is going full-time in order to dry the herbs I harvested, and I’ve been busy getting the house in order lately. It’s been nonstop. Still on a blogging break; trying to figure out where my mojo went, but at least I’m still getting some reading done, along with a bunch of house projects, so that’s a good thing.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in October 2023

1. How Bad Are Bananas? by Mike Berners-Lee

2. How We Fight White Supremacy by Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin

3. Exile by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

4. Troubled by Kenneth R. Rosen

5. Casting Lots by Susan Silverman

6. Extra Credit by Andrew Clements

7. Cults by Max Cutler

8. The Nature of Oaks by Douglas W. Tallamy

9. The Pain Gap by Anushay Hossain

10. The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell by Jordan Sonnenblick

11. The Family Gene by Joselin Linder

12. What Doesn’t Kill You by Tessa Miller

13. Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele

14. Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

15. This Narrow Space by Elisha Waldman

16. We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin

Sixteen this month, which is honestly more than I thought I’d gotten to. I’ve had a LOT to do this month in terms of family obligations and just life stuff, so my reading time has been next to nothing a lot of days. The Nature of Oaks was absolutely fascinating; if you like nature writing or even being out in nature, you CANNOT miss this one. Douglas Tallamy goes through the year of an oak tree, month by month, and all the fascinating things that are going on with the tree and the many, many forms of life oaks support, even when it looks like nothing’s happening. SUCH a good book. This Narrow Space is a memoir by an American Jewish pediatric oncologist who moved to Israel and treated Jewish, Muslim (many of them Palestinian), and Christian patients. It’s an absolutely heart-wrenching book; it’s very well-written, but so unbelievably gutting that I kept putting it down to either doom-scroll the internet (which should tell you HOW gutting it is) or clean something (which should also tell you how rough of a read it is!). Very much worth it, though. 

Sixteen reads this month. Thirteen nonfiction; three fiction; one graphic memoir. Twelve of these were from my TBR; three were read-alouds to my daughter. Speaking of my TBR…

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, we left off at 66 books. I did a little bit of TBR tidying up; I took off, I think, two or three books. One I tried and it just wasn’t the book for me; another just isn’t as pertinent to my life anymore, and I think the third one I took off because it wasn’t what I thought it was (about nature, but more UK-focused, whereas I was looking for something on the nature closer to home, seeing as though it’s extremely unlikely I’ll ever get to the UK, sadly). All that said, our current total is…

55 books!

Making progress. Really looking forward to being able to wander the shelves and also read some of the stuff on my own shelves. 🙂 

Books I Acquired in October 2023

None!

Bookish Things I Did in October 2023

…I don’t think I did much of anything bookish, to be honest. We visited a bookstore so my daughter could grab a few books, but I didn’t come home with any. I think I did drop a few books off in a Little Free Library or two near me, though.

Current Podcast Love

Focusing mainly on catching up with Leaving Eden while I walk and do my volunteer work. Sometimes I listen while I’m cooking and cleaning as well, though not the past few days, as I’ve had this *really* stupid headache that will not die. Sigh. Fortunately, it was gone by Halloween, but those multi-day headaches are a real mood-killer!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Still no movement on this, which is fine for now. I’m getting other things done.

Real Life Stuff

Ugh. Headache. Caffeinating the heck out of it seemed to help, thankfully! 

Life has been really busy this month. I’ve got a little bit of my getting-stuff-done-at-home mojo back, so that’s at least good. I got my younger daughter’s room looking better than the tornado-distaster she usually keeps it in, and I’m back to following a daily cleaning schedule so that the house stays in a state of not-Hoarders, so I’m happy with that. My chronic pain has been both good and bad this month – bad at the beginning, but it’s chilling out now, so I’m really thankful for that! I’ve also been really enjoying my days volunteering in the gardens of a local sustainability/permaculture group; the joy I get from being there, helping out, interacting with such amazing, knowledgeable people, and learning from them, is absolutely unmatched. We’ll still be active in the winter, doing some restoration and rewilding work, so I’m looking forward to bundling up and pitching in!

My older daughter is busy looking at which school she’ll be at next year; fingers crossed that it all works out, especially financially! My younger daughter is a handful as always. Her counselor and I are working in the framework of her having (or at least being in the ballpark of) pathological demand avoidance, a diagnosis that’s more common in the UK but that’s gaining some traction here in the US. It explains a LOT about her personality and why things have always been so tough trying to get her to do anything. I’ve got high hopes that we can find ways to help her understand appropriate behavior and begin to implement it in time. She’s a good kid; she just needs to learn to use her powers for good. 🙂 

What’s up next in November? I’m in the US, so this is Thanksgiving month! Younger daughter has that entire week off, since that’s the week the school schedules parent-teacher conferences (we’ve already had a LOT of contact with her teacher, so I’m not sure if there’ll be anything new to learn by then, but we’ll schedule one anyway!). Cooking for Thanksgiving is usually a two-day affair for me, but I honestly don’t know our plans yet this year, if we’re going to do anything with family or not. Something we’ll have to discuss, I guess. I’ll likely prepare for both scenarios, just in case; I don’t want to get to that Wednesday night and suddenly everything is canceled because someone is ill and we’re left with no plans! I’m really looking forward to that week off school, though. I appreciate those so, so much.

That’s about it, though; we’ll see what the weather brings. I’ve been enjoying the cooler fall temps and have still been getting outside a lot; that helps so much with my mental health. I don’t dislike winter at all; I still walk when it’s cold – as long as there’s no ice and it’s not windy. Nature is still pretty great, even when it looks like most of it is asleep. There’s always something to see out there.

Wishing you all a warm, comforting November, full of love, beauty, gratitude, safety, abundance, and, as always, a stack of great reads. Be well, friends.