It’s JUNE!!! Halfway through the year. Wild to think that 2024 is halfway done already. Where has this year gone???

My apologies for being a day late; our internet has been riding the strugglebus, so I wasn’t able to get this written this week or posted yesterday. It’s been a week, lemme tell you. Anyone have any magic fairy dust to improve life? I could use about 237489347823 gallons if you do…

But summer break has started, my younger daughter is out of school, and we’re having a good time spending our days together. And reading, of course, always reading. Except this month was a little slower than normal, but that happens. 

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in May 2024

1. A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

2. Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson

3. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

4. Malka by Mirjam Pressler

5. Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World by Brooke McAlary

6. Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki

7. Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine Coldstream

8. Linked by Gordon Korman (read out loud to my daughter)

9. Wavewalker: Breaking Free by Suzanne Heywood

10. The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence by Stephen Kurczy

11.Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future by Rob Dunn

12. The Smart Girl’s Guide to Going Vegetarian by Rachel Meltzer Warren (read out loud to my daughter)

13. My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

With the end of the school year and LIFE, there just hasn’t been as much reading time lately as I would’ve liked. PLUS, I’m still working my way through my own shelves – but with this comes a few slow patches. I’m currently meandering through Mexico by James Michener; if you’re familiar with his books, you know they’re wonderful, but they can all be used as decently-sized doorstops. I was able to somewhat fly through his Hawaii and Alaska years ago, but Mexico is a little slower for me, being that bullfighting, uh, isn’t really my thing. So I’m reading it 50 pages at a time in between reading other things, and that’s one of the reasons my reading has been a tad bit slower this month. I’m currently at something like 300 pages in; at 672 pages, I’m hoping I’ll finish this month.

What was a good read this month? A Well-Trained Wife, obviously; that book ripped my soul to shreds. Tia Levings is a paragon of strength and resiliency and I cannot wait to see the conversations this book sparks when it’s released in August. Evicted was downright depressing, especially considering things have just gotten worse since its publication. Cloistered? Fascinating! Nuns have a reputation for being cranky and mean, but who knew they were so awful to each other??? The Quiet Zone was a really interesting read; turns out the area isn’t quite as WiFi-free as has been advertised. And My Life in France was just an absolute delight. I’m not much familiar with Julia Child’s cooking show or her recipes (and I felt a little weird reading the book while eating a discount pizza from Walmart…), but her enjoyment of food and French culture and the joy she found in life comes through loud and clear in this book. I truly enjoyed every page of this.

Thirteen books; three fiction, ten nonfiction. Five of these books came from my own shelves (this is a lower number this month due to the long read that Mexico is! Once I finish my current read, I already have my next from-my-own-shelves ready to go). 

State of the Goodreads TBR

So, we’re up to five books on the ol’ TBR! My daughter and I are going through one (the year-long book on classical music); I’m on the waitlist for one; one doesn’t come out until later on in the year, and the other two are available at other libraries I haven’t made it to yet. Not doing too badly here!

Bookish Things I Did in May 2024

So, given that it’s the start of summer, those giant shove-everything-in-a-bag-for-$10 book sales will be starting up soon (one happens later on this month!). The organization that puts them on put out a call for donations, so both of my kids emptied out their shelves of things that they were ready to give away, and I made two trips over to the donation location! They also received a few of my books. I also donated books to a bunch of the nearby Little Free Libraries. I feel pretty good about this. : )

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Dateline as a podcast at night; their narration is so good at putting me to sleep (NOT saying that it’s boring, haha! It’s just calming, despite its gruesome subject matter). I’ve also been listening to The Slow Home Podcast (also known as The Tortoise in its later iteration) with Brooke McAlary. I didn’t realize she had a podcast when I read her Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World this month, but I’m enjoying it. It’s difficult to listen to when I walk, though, as we’re in an emergence zone for both the 13- and 17-year cicadas, and their droning is a bit loud and overpowering when I’m outside. I don’t find their noise unpleasant by any means, but it’s definitely LOUD!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

So, I guess my challenge right now is just reading down my own shelves. I’m moseying my way through Mexico by James Michener, along with a book of 100 opera stories (my intent is to read one story each day, though that doesn’t always happen). Next up, after I finish my library book, is a copy of Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy by Michael Tucker, which has been sitting on my living room shelf for approximately 23478379423 years.

Real Life Stuff

Everything and nothing all at once, it seems!

May was an extraordinarily busy month. Nothing particularly special, to be honest, but it seemed like tons of things happened all at once that had me running around like crazy. Constant appointments, things that needed to get done, yardwork that has started up with a vengeance and needs to be tended to constantly (thus eating up a decent portion of my time every day). It would be awesome if I could get some help with that, but that’s not in the cards, so I’ve been chopping up the yard into three parts and doing 20-30 minutes a few days a week, along with tending the garden plants that are still alive. 

The garden where I volunteer is in full swing again! It’s been a fabulous marathon of planting, digging, fertilizing, weeding, installing fences, picking off asparagus beetles/slugs/eggs (yeah, it’s as gross as it sounds), checking for ticks (current count: 5), and enjoying the people there. The garden is my other happy place besides the library, so I’ve been enjoying every second of getting absolutely filthy there.

My own garden, however, has been getting almost entirely mowed down by the adorable rabbits that have taken over my yard. Jerks even ate all my sunflowers! They’re so lucky they’re cute (and they really, really are. Watching the baby bunny practice its turning, twisting jumps the other night was just disgustingly adorable). I can’t even be mad about it. Fortunately, the things I’ve been growing in buckets are still okay (FINGERS CROSSED). My yard snakes have also been busy; one came to visit me while I was reading on the porch a few weekends ago (wasn’t the least bit scared of me, it just climbed up, checked things out, then slithered back to the bush in the front yard); another left a skin out front as a gift. I have the weirdest little ecosystem going in my yard, and I’m constantly amusing my garden friends with stories and pictures of the weird things that happen in my yard.

That’s really about it. What’s up this month? More appointments of various sorts, including my younger daughter’s yearly checkup, and an art class at the library. There’s a book sale towards the end of the month, so we’ll hit that up. My older daughter turns 22 that day as well, but I think her plans involve spending the day with friends, so we’ll figure out some sort of celebration on a different day. And hopefully there will be plenty of days of reading out on the porch. : )

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, lovely June!