Happy December! Somehow this year is coming to a close already. Time just speeds up when you’re an adult, doesn’t it? I remember months stretching on forever like March of 2020 when I was a kid, and now we just blink and a whole new year is happening. Wild.

It’s been cold here, and we’ve gotten another round of snow since Halloween, but nothing major, and it’s warmed up enough now to be rainy and gross, so that’s festive! I’ve been busy busy busy getting house stuff done, so there’s been less reading than other months, but this was soooooooooooooooo necessary. I’ll get to all of this in a little bit. Super worth it to me, even though I’m currently buried in a stack of library books twenty feet tall…

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

Books I Read in November 2023

1. Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate by Alexandra Minna Stern

2. Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga

3. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by Christina Lamb

4. A Good Country by Sofia Ali-Khan

5. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

6. Our Great Big American God by Matthew Paul Turner

7. The Prophet Calls by Melanie Sumrow

8. Inside This Place, Not of It by Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman

9. Surely You Can’t Be Serious by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker

10. Meant to Be Mine by Hannah Orenstein

11. The Assignment by Liza Wiemer

12. After the Fire by Will Hill

13. We Need to Talk About Antisemitism by Rabbi Diana Fersko

So, much less reading than usual this month, but that’s fine with me in this case, because I got so much done in the rest of my life. Seven Fallen Feathers, about the mostly unresolved deaths of Indigenous Canadian children at boarding schools (recent deaths, this isn’t history) was just tragic and infuriating to read about; Surely You Can’t Be Serious, about the movie Airplane! and the men who wrote it and fought so hard to get it made was just an absolute delight to read. I’ve been a fan of not just Airplane! but the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team ever since I was a young teenager, so this was a wonderful and fun read. And fun fact: turns out Sofia Ali-Khan, author of A Good Country, lived in my town for a while! I nearly fell out of bed when I got to that part of the book. There were no dates about when she was here, so I’m not sure if our time overlapped or not, but that was super cool to read! She wrote about places and things that are familiar to me and that I see every day around here. So wild when that happens!

13 books this month; five fiction, eight nonfiction. Twelve of these books were from my TBR! Speaking of which…

State of the Goodreads TBR

Slowly, slowly, we’re creeping to the end. I’d hoped to be further along in the process, but with all the work I’ve been doing around the house this past month, that seriously cut into my reading time. Such is life! Last month, we left off at 55 books, and now, we’re at the lovely number of…

43 books!

Getting it done. Hopefully at some point in January or February, that’ll be down to close to nothing. I still have a small list of interlibrary loan books, so those may take a bit to come in. I’m cool with those hanging out on the list for a bit while I read them in between other stuff. : )

(It’ll be 42 later today; I have a heavy nonfiction book I’m on the verge of finishing. I’ve been reading it in 25-page chunks, so it’s taken me a while. And it would’ve been 41, except I added one last night, but that’s for something I’m writing, so it barely counts, right?!?!??)

Books I Acquired in November 2023

None! 

Bookish Things I Did in November 2023

Does organizing books count? I did get a heap of books off my bedroom floor and stored into some empty containers in my closet (where they will hang out until I start to read them in between reading stuff I find when I wander the library after my TBR is cleared out!). This feels good!

Current Podcast Love

Still plugging along listening to Leaving Eden! I’ve also been listening to more music, though, so that’s cut down on my podcast time. 

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

No movement on this, which is fine. My focus is elsewhere right now. : )

Real Life Stuff

BOY, have I been busy.

It started with my younger daughter’s room. I spent about three days overhauling that when the weather turned cooler. I took a few days off afterwards, and then went, ‘Huh, I should clean out that weird closet in the upstairs hallway.’ (It’s the weird closet because it’s located over the stairs that go into the basement, so the bottom of the closet is about at chest level for me. It goes to the ceiling, and then goes back about four feet. No shelves, just…space, so. The weird closet.) I emptied everything out there, realized no one needs seventeen mismatched bedsheets, packed those up, got rid of a whole other bunch of crap, organized everything in there, and drove all the stuff we no longer needed to Goodwill. That felt SO GOOD. And the closet has a TON of empty space now.

So the next day, I tackled the linen closet. Threw out a bunch of stuff, organized everything else, collected a bag of every pair of glasses everyone in this house has ever worn (it was seriously like over fifteen pairs, wtf), collected TWO BAGS of expired prescription medicine, and drove them to their respective end points at the eye doctor’s donation bin and a local pharmacy’s drop-off bin. This felt AMAZING. And the linen closet also has a ton of empty space now.

And so I went on with the entire rest of the house. I overthrew just about every room we have, every drawer, every cabinet. I collected, I recycled, I threw out, I vacuumed, I scrubbed down, I organized. I ended up making four trips to Goodwill and a local charity that helps folks get back on their feet, dropping off 5-6 boxes/garbage bags/giant plastic bags of stuff per trip, for a total of over 25 containers of stuff gone from my house! My garbage and recycling bins were also full to the top for two weeks (usually, we’re lucky if we have one single bag in our garbage can). Do you know how good this feels? SO, SO GOOD. I highly suggest trying it. 

Everything is so much easier to deal with now. My closet is organized. My laundry room has a TON less stuff in it. Nothing falls out of my kitchen cupboards when I open them now. There are no crumbs in the drawers, and I can find exactly what I need in my utensil drawer because there’s about 50% less stuff in there. My spices are organized and condensed; my containers for leftovers all have proper lids and I can find them quickly. I know where everything is and exactly what we have, and I can shut my coat closet with no problem!

Guys, this feels GOOD.

It was also exhausting, like, physically exhausting. But I’m going through a really good streak right now with my chronic pain, so I wanted to plow through it all in order to ensure I got everything done that I wanted, because I never know how long it’ll last. But it lasted long enough for me to get the 20+ items on my to-do list accomplished, and it’s still going, so I feel extremely lucky right now.

So what’s next? Reading, of course! That’ll always be on the list. But…I’ve also started writing again, something I haven’t done seriously in a while, and this also feels so good. It’s been making me feel extremely happy the past few days, and I’m gonna continue to ride this high. Writing is something that makes me feel like me, and that’s not something I’ve gotten to experience enough of in the last decade or so, so I’m going to keep this up.

So if you need me, I’ll be chilling in my much emptier house, turning the pages of my book or tapping away at my keyboard, feeling pretty damn happy with all that I got done in November. 

Wishing you all a wonderful, productive December, full of love, light, warmth, and the best reads of the year! : )