Holy moley, can you believe it’s April already? I’m not fooling! We’re one month closer to SUMMER! \o/
March went by so quickly! Not a bad thing, in my opinion. Spring has always been my least favorite time of year, but this year hasn’t been so bad in terms of depression and feeling like I just want the season to pass so we can get to summer. I think my having learned to enjoy the seasons for what they are and getting outside no matter what the weather has really helped, as has my time at the garden where I volunteer. We’ve tromped out in the snow to cut down buckthorn and haul the wood back to the fire, so I’ve learned exactly what I need to wear in order to be comfortable at every temperature range. So, to sum it up: spring this year has been okay for me so far!
What it has NOT been this year has been full of reading! I’ve been SO busy getting other stuff done around the house that reading has kind of fallen to the wayside, but I think we all know that life is just like that sometimes. : )
Anyway, let’s get this recap started, shall we?
Books I Read in March 2024
1. Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World by Harold S Kushner
2. Transitions by Elodie Durand
3. Everyday Sisu: Tapping Into Finnish Fortitude for a Happier, More Resilient Life by Katja Pantzar
4. Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lives, and My Journey to Finding Home by Jane Blasio
5. Not So Shy by Noa Nimrodi (read out loud to my daughter)
6. Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases by Lydia Kang
7. Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson
8. No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder
9. Ungifted by Gordon Korman (read out loud to my daughter)
10. The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon
11. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
12. A 1000 Mile Great Lakes Walk by Loreen Niewenhuis
13. Mascot by Charles Waters and Traci Sorell
14. Epic Homesteading: Your Guide to Self-Sufficiency on a Modern, High-Tech Backyard Homestead by Kevin Espiritu
15. Discover Nature Around the House by Elizabeth P Lawlor
16. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
This is my slowest month of reading in a LONG time (I finished the four books in the last two days), but I’ve spent a lot of time doing stuff other than reading. Craft stuff, stuff around the house, doomscrolling the internet, taking walks, attending garden meetings and garden work days, having fun with my youngest daughter on spring break, stuff like that. It’s been a busy month, so reading took a bit of a backseat. That’s okay, though; I made up for it in terms of quality!
Patient Zero was gross and fascinating; Relinquished was incredible, heartbreaking, just as good as The Girls Who Went Away and so relevant right now. No Visible Bruises was just a gut-punch of a book and one I think should be read by every single person alive. The Exvangelicals was also incredible; if you or someone you love has been through or are going through the process of deconstruction, this is the book you need, because it’ll help you understand so much. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes was one I’ve wanted to read for a long time, and I’m so, so glad I did, even though it hurt my heart in so many places to read how much humanity has harmed the lakes (there were sections that I had to put the book down and doomscroll the internet, because the ecological devastation was just so painful to read about). And I LOVE Loreen Niewenhuis’s books and am so, so very jealous of all her adventures; A 1000 Mile Great Lakes Walk was so much fun to read!
Seriously, a great month in terms of the quality of stuff I read. So many five star reads!
Sixteen books this month; thirteen nonfiction, three fiction. Five of these books came from my own bookshelves (hopefully more next month!).
State of the Goodreads TBR
Keeping this low, still. We’re at 6. My youngest daughter and I are reading through one; I’m on a waitlist for another; a third doesn’t come out until August. The other three are new; they’re available at local libraries (well, they EXIST at local libraries; whether or not they’re currently on the shelves is up in the air); I just haven’t made it over there yet.
BUT.
I sat and did some thinking about what I want my reading to look like in the future this month. I made a few trips to wander the library and pick out what I felt like reading that looked good on the shelves, and while that was fun, I also felt a little unmoored. Once I was at home, I sat with that feeling for a bit and then asked myself if there was something I wanted to read about that I’d been putting off the past few years while I tackled my TBR, and another trip to the library answered that question for me.
I want to read more about nature.
I want to learn more about plants, animals, trees, gardening, and nature in general. I also want to learn more about the Great Lakes (more on this later), since I live in a Great Lakes state. I want to have the kinds of knowledge and skills that the people I volunteer garden with have, and I’m fortunate to be surrounded by libraries that are full of great nature book collections. So that’s why I picked up The Death and Life of the Great Lakes when I did, and why I ordered A 1000 Mile Great Lakes Walk via interlibrary loan, and grabbed Epic Homesteading from the New Books shelf at the library. Expect more nature books in the near future!
Bookish Things I Did in March 2024
My younger daughter and I went to a library $10-per-bag book sale; she filled up most of the bag, but following my want-to-read-more-about-nature theme, I came home with these!
I also grabbed a history book for my daughter from a Little Free Library. We’ll read a little bit of that every day when we finish the food book we’re reading now. : )
Current Podcast Love
Still listening to Smart Bitches, Trashy Podcast at night while I fall asleep/wake up in the middle of the night, but when I do volunteer work and walk, I’ve been listening to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, which I’ve REALLY been enjoying! The premise of the podcast is that the host, who is from Louisiana but now lives in Indiana, interviews experts in their fields whose work involves some aspect of the Great Lakes. It’s fascinating! I’m learning so much, and some of it ties directly into what I’ve read so far about the lakes. I’m one thousand percent nerding out over this podcast and loving it so much!
Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge
On Chapter 18 of Norsk, Nordmenn og Norge; it’s been a slow month for learning Norwegian and my brain hasn’t been cooperating on that front. Maybe I’ll start up reading a bit of something harder in the summer…
Real Life Stuff
Busy, busy month!
Spring break was just absolutely lovely. My younger daughter is going back to school tomorrow, and I don’t want her to, we’ve had so much fun! (Can you believe I’m actually missing homeschooling her right now? Fortunately we’re only about eight weeks out from the end of the school year!)
My time at the garden where I volunteer has started to transition from our work rewilding the woods to getting the main garden ready for planting. I’ve really enjoyed helping with the rewilding, so that’s something I’ll keep up with doing next year. I’ve learned a *ton* about identifying trees and plants and how to use various tools, and I think all of this has helped with strengthening my back as well. This past Saturday, I weeded an entire garden bed that was right along our constructed spillway, which was awesome and also meant that I came home absolutely covered in mud. It felt good. : )
Younger daughter came down with her major illness (besides our bout of COVID last year) since kindergarten. Poor kid, she was miserable, coughing constantly and her ears were bothering her. I took her to the doctor after it was clear she wasn’t getting better on her own, and she ended up needing a round of antibiotics to clear up the sinusitis that had filled her ears with fluid. No fun!
I did a bunch of knitting this month; nothing super fancy, just pockets for all my cardigans that didn’t come with pockets. I’ve got four more pockets to sew onto two other cardigans, and then this will be complete! It’s SO satisfying to be able to slip my cell phone into a pocket of a cardigan that didn’t previously have pockets. TAKE THAT, STUPID FASHION MANUFACTURERS! I CAN MAKE MY OWN POCKETS!!!!!!!!!!
The month ended on a shitty note. My computer died last night, and the resident fixer has…issues…with needs that are not their own, on their exact schedule, so I took four hours this morning to reboot an old computer so I could do my volunteer work on there and then post this. Do I want to do this every day? Absolutely not, especially since the keys have a habit of double and sometimes triple typing letters, which ends up making my hand hurt with all the backspacing I need to do. So I may just be going techless for a while. Who knows.
That’s about it! My younger daughter turns ten in April; Passover is coming (so I need to start menu planning like RIGHTNOW); the seeds I’ve started will likely take over the kitchen this month (wish me luck there, haha!). I’m looking forward to it all.
Wishing you a beautiful April with plenty of great reading, great weather, and lots of peace and happiness. See you next month…maybe.
She's probably at the library... 