Moving on! It’s March already, can you believe it? Summer and the long days of reading on the porch are coming!

It’s been a quiet month here, a little bit depressing on and off, but I’m keeping on keeping on, doing what I can to combat it, and that’s all I can do, you know? This time of year has traditionally been kind of crummy for me, what with the weather always being so weird. But thanks to climate change and El Nino, we’ve got some warmer days coming up, so…Not that I love what’s happening to our planet, but I’m definitely going to try to help my mental health by taking advantage of the weather and getting outside a little more. That always helps. : )

Let’s get this roundup started, shall we?

Books I Read in February 2024

1. The Kindness Diaries by Leon Logothetis

2. Old Fashioned On Purpose by Jill Winger

3. Runaway Amish Girl by Emma Gingerich

4. The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right Wing by Tina Nguyen

5. We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian

6. This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry

7. Remix Judaism by Roberta Rosenthan Kwall

8. Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands by Robert Satloff

9. Occulted by Amy Rose

10. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

11. The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren

12. The Woman They Wanted by Shannon Harris

13. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

14. Something Wilder by Christina Lauren

15. Brief Histories of Everyday Objects by Andy Warner

16. Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin

17. Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking

18. Getting Me Cheap: How Low-Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty by Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson

19. Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder by Jo Nesbø

And here I thought I hadn’t actually read that much this month! That’s pretty funny.

It’s been an interesting month of reading. My TBR, which I’ll talk about more down below, is almost non-existent at this point, and so I’ve had two or three trips to the library where I’ve just wandered and picked out stuff that looks good. It’s liberating, but also a little scary! Will I like this new stuff? Will I be bored and put everything down ten pages in? NO IDEA!!! (I did have one book that, 40 pages in, I decided, nope, not the book for me, and put it in the return pile for the library.) I almost don’t know what to do with myself there!

Some great reads this month, though. We Were Once a Family and Getting Me Cheap are both damning accounts of everything wrong with American society. This Will Be Funny Someday had me laughing out loud; Katie Henry is a perpetual favorite of mine and this book was great. And Prairie Fires is something I’ve wanted to read since it came out; it wasn’t on my TBR, but I grabbed it on my first ‘wander’ trip to the library and absolutely blew through it and loved every single page. Man, Laura and Rose just kind of sucked in a lot of ways…

19 books this month; six fiction, thirteen nonfiction (one of these was graphic nonfiction!). Seven of these books came from my TBR; four of them came from my own shelves.

State of the Goodreads TBR

Here we are, folks. Last month, we left off at nine. I added one book to my TBR this month (Hana Khan Carries On, then I immediately requested it from the library BECAUSE I CAN DO THAT NOW!! It came in like two days later, haha), and now, I’m down to…

3.

Three books.

Y’all, I did it! I’m considering this pretty much conquered at this point. Because one of those books (Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day by Clemency Burton-Hill), I ordered used from Amazon, it arrived, and my daughter and I are going through it – one entry and one piece of classical music per day. One book, I’m on the waiting list for at the library (last time I looked, I was #8 out of 9), and the other book doesn’t come out until August.

When I started tackling my TBR in, I think, 2015 or 2016, it was up to 332 books. I read it down to 78, and then the pandemic hit, and it ballooned back up to 200-something. And now, it’s a low number, and I won’t ever let it get that high again.

The plan now is to free-read from the library AND read down some of the books from my own shelves. The Kindness Diaries has already found a new home in a Little Free Library a few blocks away (the Katie Henry book stays because it’s autographed!). As I read some of the books I own, a good portion of them will move on to new homes and I’ll be able to make some room on my shelves.

This feels good. : )

Books I Acquired in February 2024

I did get that copy of Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill; we’ve been really enjoying listening to a short piece of classical music in the mornings, so if that’s something you’re interested in, I can’t recommend this book enough!

I also came across a copy of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan in a Little Free Library near me, which thrilled me, because I’ve been wanting to read this for some time. A friend of mine says it’s a pretty depressing read, so I’m working up the courage to get to it soon!

I think that’s it, though!

Bookish Things I Did in February 2024

Nothing that I can think of, other than dropping off a few books (and bringing one home) at some Little Free Libraries.

Current Podcast Love

I’ve been listening to some back episodes of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books as I fall asleep, and that’s been fun to catch up on! That’s where I learned about Hana Khan Carries On, and I put it on my TBR and requested it in the morning. Super fun to be able to do that! 

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Hmm. I don’t really have anything going here, other than continuing to work through my Norwegian book, Norsk, Nordmenn, og Norge. (Chapter 17 now! Woot!) Eventually I’ll start working my way through something else; I still have (UGH) that half-read copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to finish…

Real Life Stuff

What a month.

Older kid ended up with a positive COVID test on Valentine’s Day – not the best gift! Fortunately, she isolated in her room and masked whenever she came out, and we got lucky, and no one else in the house got it. She only has a lingering cough, which isn’t a surprise, so fingers crossed that that’s all the side effects that round left behind. 

I’ve still been very active with my gardening group! I skipped one indoor meeting (I still mask indoors, but with my potential exposure, I didn’t feel right going to this and potentially exposing other folks), and as luck would have it, we didn’t have our Saturday work day on the week I would’ve skipped, so that worked out. But every other Saturday, I’ve been out there helping to cut down buckthorn and move the piles of trees and branches elsewhere. It’s an amazing workout, and we’ve opened up a lot of the area we’ve been working on to more sunlight, and that will in turn help the native plants thrive. Yay, rewilding! 

My cooking kick from having read Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken continues. I now have a sourdough starter! I’ll actually be making my first loaf of sourdough bread later on today, so wish me luck, haha. Never thought I would be this person. : )

That’s about it! Lots of reading, a little writing (I’m now at over 54,000 words, yay me!), a bunch of knitting (I designed, knitted, and stitched on pockets to a cardigan that lacked them, and now I’ve got two more for a different cardigan, and am working on the pockets for a third. Don’t let the patriarchy tell you you can’t have pockets, my friends; make your own). Doing my best to keep on keeping on, one foot in front of the other.

Be well, friends. Stay healthy, stay safe, and find some uplifting books to read. I’ve been trying to better balance the harder stuff I’m usually drawn to, and that’s been kind of nice. Hopefully you’re able to do the same. Happy reading!