Arright, friends, here we are in July!!! Mid-summer, and it’s been a weird one.

Cold temperatures. Almost zero rain. So much smoke we’ve been stuck indoors several days with the worst air quality in the world (not an exaggeration, unfortunately). I don’t love that; that means zero nature walks for us and no reading out on the porch for me. Huge thumbs down on that one.

But I’m surviving (ISH; still not doing great), and at least there’s reading getting done, along with a few other projects, so. Yay for that?

Anyway.

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in June of 2023

1. Disobedience by Naomi Alderman (no review)

2. Mr. Perfect on Paper by Jean Meltzer

3. The Fifth Beatle by Vivek J. Tiwary (no review)

4. The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

5. The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle by Jennifer Ryan

6. Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

7. Great Events of the 20th Century by Readers Digest Association (no review; read a few sections every night for months)

8. Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre

9. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

10. Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

11. The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris

12. Stolen by Elizabeth Gilpin

13. Testimony by Jon Ward (review to come)

14. The Evangelicals by Frances FitzGerald (no review; I’ll talk about this below)

15. We Carry Their Bones by Erin Kimmerle (review to come)

16. Only When It’s Us by Chloe Liese (review to come)

17. All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell (review to come)

I feel pretty good about this month! There’s been a lot of days of reading out on the porch, where the only noise is traffic from the highway and not my husband and daughter screeching and screaming as they run back and forth in front of me (OY). It’s why I love summer so much; I can escape the noise of the house. I’m a little behind in terms of posting, but really, not much! Another reason I love summer.

Seven fiction; ten nonfiction; one graphic nonfiction. ELEVEN of these came from my TBR!!! Three were read for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. Speaking of which…

Reading Challenge Updates

REGARD THIS BEAUTY!!!!!!!!!

The sole reason it’s not finished yet is that the book I’ve picked for that final category doesn’t come out until July, and I’m already on the waiting list at the library for it! I’ve really enjoyed doing this challenge, but I admit I’ll also be really glad to be done with it and continue to blast through my TBR. Phew! This has been a LOT of reading! If I have a chance, I’ll make a post specifically about this challenge when I finish it.

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, we left off at the happy number of 111 books; this month, we’re beginning at…

103 BOOKS!!!

I’m almost down to double digits, y’all!!!

Feeling pretty good about this.

Books I Acquired in June of 2023

It’s been used book sale heaven around here this month! Check out these gorgeous piles!

Some are for me, some are my daughter’s. I’m looking forward to diving into all of them! We’ve got another used book sale in July, but the big cram-everything-you-can-into-a-bag-for-$10 sales are done until next year, sigh.

Bookish Things I Did in June of 2023

Just the book sales!

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to Digging Up the Duggars while I do my volunteer work. At night, I’ve been listening to American History Tellers as I fall asleep at night. I really like this one. History is a good subject to listen to as I fall asleep; there’s no loud music, there’s no funny bits to get me laughing and NOT fall asleep, and I already know the outcome to everything, so it’s not anxiety-provoking. This one works well for me!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

When we left off, I was reading a combination of O. Henry short stories and On the Road by Jack Kerouac (UGH; I’ll be glad to be done with this. Dude sucks), but I put those aside for a bit to tackle the scariest category in the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge: the longest book on your TBR. And that book, for me, was The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances FitzGerald, an absolute brick of a book at 638 pages of readable text (more if you count the notes and index, but I didn’t read those) and incredibly information-dense. To be entirely honest, without this challenge, I likely would’ve let this sit on my TBR for years, intimidating the hell out of me, until I finally deleted it in shame, but because of this challenge, I picked it up and read 25 pages per day, usually out on the porch. It wasn’t always easy; the book started off pretty slow for me, but it picked up when the timeline got to about the 1950’s, and I started to enjoy it then – but those daily 25 pages were a LOT. But I did it, I read the entire thing, I finished, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself!

I’ll get back to O. Henry and Jack Kerouac (ugh), but there are a few parenting books I want to tackle this summer, so I’ll be using my time usually reserved for this project to wade through those.

Real Life Stuff

Oy, y’all. 

I’m not going to sugarcoat it; I’m struggling right now. Life is tough. There’s just so much going on, and I feel like I’m carrying a lot.

Still doing my best to figure out what the heck to do with my youngest for school. She NEEDS to be around other kids; that much is obvious. And to be honest, I think she learns better from people other than me. But she still has a LOT of anxiety about the pandemic; I took her to a play put on by the local two-year college at the library, and she really struggled at the beginning with all the other unmasked people in the room (we’re still masking), and in the building as a whole. She made it through, but she didn’t want to stay there and freaked out every time someone coughed or sniffled (and with the air quality being so poor here because of the smoke from the wildfires, there was a not-zero amount of that). I’m worried that if she goes back to school, she’s going to be so anxious and panicked that learning will be difficult. But she obviously misses being around other kids (and the homeschool group options around here kind of suck, so…). Do I send her back and just deal with her anxiety (and possibly getting sick; so many parents have had so many complaints about their kids just being sick all year long), or do I keep her home and protect her from illness but she ends up feral from not having adequate social interaction? WHICH PROBLEM DO I CHOOSE? 

My older kid has come out as transgender, and I love her forever and always no matter what. I’ll be referring to her as my daughter and she/her from here on out, so y’all know. It’s just other people that make this stressful; I wish this world were more understanding and accepting. Maybe do something kind for someone else today, to help make life a little easier for someone else, okay? 

I’m trying to take care of my mental health right now and am considering going to see a therapist as well. I’m dealing with a lot of stress, some of pandemic-related, some not, and I’m also trying to get out of the house a little more (not easy when you’re the only one wearing a mask in indoor situations, and not easy when I’m terrified of bringing home COVID again). I showed up to a local permaculture/sustainability group’s outdoor art event this month, and I’ll definitely go back again, because those are absolutely my kind of folks. It was a lot of fun. : )

Take care of yourself, friends, and be kind to one another. So many of us are carrying so much right now, and you can’t necessarily tell that just by looking at someone.

Wishing you all a lovely July! 

It’s April! The month that really *should* be spring, but is instead usually just a gloppy mixture of rain, chilly temperatures, random bizarre snow, and sometimes unseasonably warm days around here. It’s a completely unpredictable month here, and sometimes even May can still be downright cold, so there’s no celebrating the warmth yet. More indoor reading, which is just fine by me!

It’s been a quiet-ish month around here. Dental woes, which are never fun, but we’re on spring break from homeschool as I write this, so that’s at least a bit of relief. More reading this week, and getting caught up on All The Things that I don’t have time for throughout the school week. 

I’m still making my way through the stack of books I checked out from my library before it closed for the big move to its new home, along with books from another local library, so it’s all good!

Let’s get this recap started, shall we? 

Books I Read in March 2023

1. A Pho Love Story by Loan Le

2. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

3. The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

4. The Elissas by Samantha Leach (review to come)

5. Rose Madder by Stephen King

6. Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan

7. Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood by Melissa Wagner (no review)

8. Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds

9. History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote by Kate Messner (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

10. History Comics: The National Parks: Preserving America’s Wild Places by Falynn Koch (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

11. Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America by Maria Hinojosa (no review; I’m not smart enough to review this!)

12. A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick

13. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsalle

14. Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa (no review: I’m not smart enough to review this!)

15. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon (review to come)

16. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones (no review; I’m not smart enough to review this)

17. The Little Gymnast by Sheila Haigh (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

18. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor (no review; read as part of my personal Read Harder challenge)

Not a ton of books this month, but Rose Madder was long, over 600 pages, and some of the nonfiction I read was super information-dense and heavy, and I’m definitely a little slower on those. I chose not to review a few of these, because to be honest, I don’t feel like I can do these books justice, and I don’t necessarily think the world needs another random white lady talking about race (the books and their authors speak for themselves more than enough). I read books like Once I Was You and Under the Skin because the world definitely needs to listen to  more Black and brown women’s voices, and White Too Long, while written by a white man, is honest about the racist history of Christianity in America. All of these are worthy reads. 

 I think this will be the stopping point for my daughter and me in the Penderwicks series for now; we tried to start the next one, but it skips forward five years in time, and the beloved family dog has since died (six months before this book begins), and my daughter, who freaks out at anything about anything that mentions death, didn’t want to continue. So we’ve switched to reading a few books that I loved when I was younger. The Little Gymnast was a favorite for me when I was her age; I can’t say it’s held up well – SO much telling, so little showing, and there are way fewer gymnastics than I remember – but next we start The Girl with the Silver Eyes, which I adored as a kid, and I think my daughter will love as well. 

Ten fiction; eight nonfiction; one graphic-nonfiction. Seven of these books came from my TBR. Ten were read for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge.

Reading Challenge Updates

Coming along swimmingly here! Here’s what this looks like now:

Out of fifty books, I’ve read 32, so I’ve got 18 left to go! I feel like I’m doing okay here, and I’m pretty proud of the progress I’ve made!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, we left off at 123 books. After reading a whole bunch from my TBR, I’m now at…

Drumroll, please…

120!!!

I really want to read this down to as low as I can. The lowest it’s been in the past ten years has been in the 70’s (that was right before the pandemic started, and then we all had nothing to do but sit at home and add books to our TBRs, so it blew up again at that point). When I’m not participating in reading challenges, I tend to read almost exclusively from my TBR, and I’d like to get it low enough that I also feel more able to just browse in the library from time to time without my TBR exploding. We’ll see!

Books I Acquired in March 2023

None!

Bookish Things I Did in March 2023

…not really anything I can think of, to be honest!

Current Podcast Love

Same as it ever was! Still making my way through both Digging Up the Duggars and Leaving Eden when I work out; still listening to The First Degree as I fall asleep.  

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Progress! This month, I delved into The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor. I was familiar with one or two of her short stories before reading this, but that was it, and after reading one story a day every day in March, I can confidently say I’m not the biggest FOC fan in the world. I was about halfway through the book when I realized I really wasn’t enjoying this, and after a few days of pondering, I realized why: everyone in her stories is just absolutely terrible. They’re horrible, awful people, and thus, I just don’t care all that much about them as characters. Read and learn, I guess! 

I’ve got a massive book of O. Henry’s short stories; we’re talking like over 1000 pages long. Some of the stories are quite short, so I think I’m going to split my Read Harder time in between that and a few other shorter books. I’ll read a short story, then dedicate whatever time I have left (I set the timer at 30 minutes for longer books) to reading some from one of these books. 

Real Life Stuff

Oof. For the last month, I’ve been dealing with some dental crap. Dentist is kind of a try-something-and-wait-and-see personn, which I don’t hate, but it also means I’ve been in the kind of mouth pain that wakes me up in the middle of the night since the end of February, and that I’m beholden to Advil and Aleve 24 hours a day. I’m now in another wait-and-see period, so I’m basically just not eating much, and only drinking (cold and warm bother me, too) when necessary. BLAH. 

It’s been spring break this past week, which is wonderful; I really needed this time off. We’re actually pretty close to being done with everything I had planned for the year and have delved pretty deeply into our supplemental Women’s History unit that my daughter had requested, which has been great. After we finish with absolutely everything on our list, we’ll just learn whatever looks awesome when we’re at the library and go from there! 

Our library move is going well, from what I can tell. All the books have been packed up and moved over to the new building; we can see books on shelves in the children’s department when we drive by, which is, of course, SUPER exciting. They’ve still got some minor construction work to do; we can see that the main staircase by the entrance still needs a railing, stuff like that. Should everything stay on schedule, the library is set to open at the end of this month, and they’ve sent out community invitations for the grand opening. It’s likely going to be too people-y there for us the first two days (which are on a weekend); our plan is to go that Monday to return our books and explore. We’re excited!

What’s up next in April? Passover starts this week; I’ll just kind of be sucking on matzah (chewing hurts, so…). I have to schedule an eye appointment at the end of the month; I went in six months ago and my eye doctor didn’t like some of the changes she was seeing, so she wanted me back in six months – and that’s fine because I think my prescription in my right eye got worse, AGAIN. The new library will open, my daughter will turn NINE, and hopefully I’ll get plenty of reading in there with all of this going on.

Wishing you a lovely month filled with excellent books that speak to your soul. Be well, friends. : )

Hello, March! The weather is still cold and gross (despite our lack of decent snow this winter, booooooooo), and it’s going to stay that way for a few months, but with the turn of this calendar page, spring and summer and sun and warmer weather feel as though they’re within reach. Brighter days are coming, in more ways than one, and I’m so excited! Long summer days of reading on the porch are in sight!

We’ve got some great things cooking up here locally, and I’ll get more into that below, but excitement levels are at fever pitch here and will remain so for several months. Reading has gone really, really well around here lately; I’m blasting through the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge and having so much fun doing so. While I’m nowhere near being done yet, I likely won’t finish completely until we’re on summer break. One of the prompts is to read the longest book on your TBR, and my longest book is something like 700-800 pages, so I’m saving that for when I have fewer things on my plate. ANYHOODLE…

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in February 2023

1. One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

2. Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult by Michelle Dowd (review to come)

3. Hidden Figures (Young Readers’ Edition) by Margot Lee Shetterly (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (no review)

5. Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok (review to come)

6. Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier by Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

7. Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young

8. Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

9. Lovingly Abused by Heather Grace Heath 

10. Horrible Histories: France by Terry Deary (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

11. Disaster Strikes!: The Most Dangerous Space Missions of All Time by Jeffrey Kluger (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes (review to come)

13. Love Your Life by Sophie Kinsella (review to come)

14. Muhammad Najem, War Reporter by Muhammad Najem, Nora Neus, and Julie Robine (no review)

15. Getting Rid of Bradley by Jennifer Crusie (review to come)

16. The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (review to come)

17. Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks and Scones by Ngozi Ukazu (no review)

18. How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days by K.M. Jackson (review to come)

19. The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin (review to come)

20. Black Boy by Richard Wright (no review)

That’s a pretty good month of reading! Been doing my best to read mostly from my Pop Sugar Reading Challenges, but I do let a few others slip in here and there, variety being the spice of life and all. Really great month for reading out loud to my daughter! I don’t add everything I read to her; most of what we read for school doesn’t make the list, but I do add the books we read at bedtime and the longer chapter books we read for school (rule of thumb: if it’s something I would read on my own, I add it. I didn’t add, for example, the Magic Tree House books she and I read for her language arts curriculum this month). Five major read-alouds this month; that’s awesome!

Nine fiction; eleven nonfiction; three graphic novels/nonfiction. Eight of these books were read for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. Four came from my TBR. 

Reading Challenge Updates

Looks like I’m at 22 books so far for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge! Not quite halfway done, but I’m making excellent progress and reading a lot of really great books along the way. Here’s what my sheet looks like right now:

Moving right along!

State of the Goodreads TBR

So, with the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, I’m not making quite as much progress on my TBR as I would like, but that’s okay. It’s a worthy tradeoff. Last month, my TBR stood at 125 books; as of right now, I’m at…123 books. Slow progress is still progress!

Books I Acquired in February 2023

I don’t think I got any books for me this month. I did pick up a few for my daughter from a thrift store, including two combination social studies textbook/workbooks for fourth and fifth grade that I’m excited about using, a graphic novel called Becoming Brianna by Terri Libenson that looked like something she’d enjoy (I’ll probably end up reading this at some point), and wonder of wonders, The Little Gymnast by Sheila Haigh, which I was OBSESSED with as a kid! I can’t wait to read this out loud to her. We also grabbed two Magic Tree House books from a Little Free Library.

Bookish Things I Did in February 2023

Nothing! 

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to the same things as last month:

Leaving Eden and Digging Up the Duggars while I exercise or craft;

The First Degree when I’m falling asleep.

I have so many more bookmarked, but just not enough time!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

I finished with Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was interesting from a historical perspective, but not all that wonderful as a book (dated, still horrific racial attitudes even from the ‘good guys,’ oozing with Christian propaganda at every turn which, as a Jew, is just kind of tiresome to read), and I moved on to Black Boy by Richard Wright. I finished that yesterday, and next I’ll hit up a book of short stories by Flannery O’Connor that has been staring accusingly at me from the basement shelves for far too long.

Real Life Stuff

It’s HERE!

THE BIG MOVE!!!!

Not for me, nor this blog. I’m staying put in all my various homes. But…

OUR LIBRARY!!!!

So, when we first moved to this town, there was a lot going on regarding our library. The building was old, out of date, and in need of massive repairs. It also needed an entirely new HVAC system (plenty of times, the library would have to close during the summer because the AC broke down and it would be something like 85 degrees in there. I always felt *so* bad for the librarians and workers on the days they were still open and it was just SO stuffy in there). The library offered seminars and tours, telling and showing our community what needed to be fixed/redone, WHY, and how much it would cost the village, and then showed them why an entirely new building was actually the more financially responsible choice for the long term. And then it was put on the ballot during an election, and it passed!

And then things stalled. 

And stalled.

And stalled.

People argued. The park district (on whose land the current library sits) threw a fit. Social media boiled with people bickering about how, since THEY didn’t use the library, obviously NO ONE used the library, so why did THEY have to pay for a new one? (Even before the pandemic, our library would often get uncomfortably crowded. Obnoxiously so.) Plans for a new library site happened and fell through; contracts were made, then broken. It was all so much drama that didn’t need to happen, but finally, FINALLY a building site was procured, the abandoned grocery store that had once stood at that site (and had begun to crumble, and had long been an eyesore for the town – so you KNOW some people threw a fit about it being demolished!) was torn down, and construction began (and you KNOW those same people threw whiny toddler fits about the completion date changing, because God knows construction delays have never, ever happened before in the history of construction and this must be some sort of government conspiracy to make us all pay more in taxes and not, say, a global pandemic affecting the availability of materials, and aren’t you glad Bob is here on social media to tell you all the truth??? Can you HEAR my eyerolls???)

And now, finally, construction is nearly completed! The old library’s last day of operation is March 8th, and moving to the new building, which is just around the corner and down two or three blocks from the old, is set to start March 13th. The library will cease physical operations during the move, and barring any delays, will reopen April 22-23rd. During that time, they’ll still offer ebooks, and due dates will be suspended (so you KNOW we have a massive stack of schoolbooks checked out!), so we have to hang on to everything we have checked out, just like we did when the pandemic started.

The good thing is that first off, our library cards work at other local libraries – some because I registered our cards there, and others because our library is a member of their system, so they automatically offer reciprocal borrowing privileges. And since I knew this was coming, I arranged our homeschool year so that basically all we need now are books that come from other libraries near us! So this will cause us absolutely zero stress or sweat; we’ll happily read what we have and make use of other libraries until our brand-spanking–new library building opens up just a few days before my daughter’s birthday. What a great birthday gift, eh?

So THAT’S why we’re all so excited around here! When the time comes, I’ll take a picture in the new library and start using that for my monthly roundup posts. The one I’ve been using has served me well, but it’s time to move on.

That’s the big news around here. We’ve had a few get-togethers with family recently; we’re relaxing our precautions a *little* bit, but still keeping our circle small. My daughter had a sleepover with a friend, and she ended up with a runny nose afterwards, which she’s utterly furious about, so…sleepovers may be put on the back burner for a while; I don’t think she’s fully ready to handle them yet. But that’s fine. More sleep for us!

That’s about all I’ve got right now. Wish our library workers luck for a safe and delay-free move, and stay safe and healthy, my friends. : )

Happy New Year!

2023. I was born in the 80’s; 2023 sounds like we should be at the height of futuristic technology: flying cars, hologram traveling, that sort of thing. Instead, we have a pandemic that won’t die because we’ve decided it’s more important that the economy is strong and thriving than humanity.

OY.

It wasn’t a bad year here at the Library household, though. We’ve all remained healthy, knock-on-wood (we’re still extremely careful: N95s everywhere we go, hand sanitizers in every car, no hanging out maskless with anyone, everyone is up to date on vaccines. I have ZERO desire to get long COVID). My daughter came home from public school to be homeschooled when the mask mandates dropped, and we’re finally in a really good place, with a great schedule that works for both of us, and learning methods that really seem to work for her. I had to play with it a LOT this year, shifting things around when her behavior made it clear that what we were doing wasn’t working, but that’s all been a good reminder for me to stay flexible and never get too dialed in to whatever it is we’re doing. The point is that she learns, not necessarily that she learns with the first thing we try.

But let’s talk books and get this roundup started, shall we?

Books I Read in December 2022

1. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

2. The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

3. The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

4. The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum (review to come)

5. My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

6. Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna (review to come)

7. Killing Season: A Paramedic’s Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic by Peter Canning (review to come)

8. The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

9. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire (no review)

10. The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World by Roz Hopkins (no review; read as part of my daughter’s school)

11. The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (review to come)

13. Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic by Emma Goldberg (review to come)

14. After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes (no review; I’m not smart enough for that)

15. Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind by Julie Metz (review to come)

16. You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (review to come)

Lots of reading to my daughter this month! The Egypt Game was one I missed as a kid, but both my daughter and I really loved it. The Travel Book is something I pulled off my shelves at the beginning of the pandemic, and we began learning about one country per day, moving the magnetized pin on our wall map onto the country of the day. And this month, we finally finished it! Such a cool experience. We may go back to the book in the future, but for now, we’re using different books in the morning: some nature stuff, a history book with a small entry each day, and a very large poetry book.

Still behind on posting reviews, but I’ll catch up, I promise!

Six fiction, ten nonfiction; five books read aloud to my daughter. Ten of these books came from my TBR.

Reading Challenge Updates

Okay, friends. Buckle up.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my reading lately. Now, y’all know how much I love nonfiction and challenging my brain a little bit. But I’ve been thinking a lot about balance lately, and how I really do need to dive into fiction a little more frequently. And so this year, I’ve decided to take part in the 2023 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge!

There are so many good categories this year, and out of the 50 categories, I can still fit in 25 books from my TBR, so that’s what made this challenge the winner for me. And for the remaining 25, I’ve got a lot of stuff that I’ve wanted to read, but that never made my TBR, so it’s really a win-win all around. I’m really excited to get started on this, so stick around to follow my progress. If you’re participating in this challenge as well, let me know!

The last reading challenge I completed was the 2020 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, and then the pandemic screwed with my schedule and I couldn’t get it together to do any others, but I’ve got everything planned out this year, and I’ve totally got this. : )

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, I started off at 127 books. A few got taken off, a few got added on, leaving me currently at…125 books.

Book math, y’all.

But it really could be worse. It didn’t explode back into the 150’s or 160’s like I was kinda expecting it to, so I’m definitely happy with this number.

NOW.

I’m ending the year at 125 books, but I started it at 162 books.

I read 180 books this year, most of them from my TBR, but MY TBR ONLY WENT DOWN BY 37 BOOKS?!?!!??

RUDE.

Books I Acquired in December 2022

I picked up a few Jewish books from Half Price Books early in the month; It’s a Mitzvah by Bradley Shavit Artson, and Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall (which is on my TBR). Both came home with me, so I’m looking forward to engaging with them.  

I did buy some other books, but those were for my daughter. She received the full set of Raina Telgemeier graphic novels, and she was THRILLED! Now she can stop checking them out of the library every. single. time. we. go.

Bookish Things I Did in December 2022

No bookish events!

Current Podcast Love

Listening to Behind the Bastards as I fall asleep; Robert Evans is so smart and funny and such a great researcher and writer, and I really enjoy this one a lot. I’ve also been listening to some Ologies with Alie Ward, which is always lovely.

I’ve also been working on a lot of cross-stitching lately, and as I stitch, I listen to Leaving Eden, the story of Sadie Carpenter’s life in and exit from the IFB cult. I adore this one SO MUCH, and I’m so very, very far behind in it, but I have a *lot* of stitching to do, so I may get caught up yet! I also listen when I’m in the kitchen, so that helps as well.

And when I bike or treadmill at night, I’m listening to Digging Up the Duggars, which is also a lot of fun and keeps me looking forward to exercising!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Still making my way through The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I don’t have much left to go; when I finish, I’m already planning on starting Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which I’ve somehow managed to not read yet. It’s already waiting for me on my footstool!

Real Life Stuff

Another pandemic year down in the books.

It’s been another weird one. Started out pandemic-normal, and then the schools near us dropped their mask mandates, and we pulled our daughter out of school and became instant homeschoolers. Not as crazy as it sounds; I homeschooled my older son until he went to fourth grade (at or above everywhere he needed to be in terms of grade level, tyvm!), so I knew what I was doing. It hasn’t been without its challenges; my daughter is a completely different kid in terms of personality, so it’s taken a LOT of switching things up and around to figure out what works for her. I *think* we’re in a good place right now in terms of the kind of schedule and learning methods that work for her. We’re far beyond the place I thought we would be at this point in terms of what we have done, so I’m happy with her progress. We’re going to be focusing a lot on her writing in this new year. She’ll eventually go back to school, and I want her to be a strong writer when she does.

My grandmother died this past month. It wasn’t unexpected; she was in her late 80’s and had pretty severe Alzheimer’s and cancer, so we’re glad she’s not suffering anymore. She was my last grandparent. I feel pretty fortunate to have lived to 42 having grandparents in my life. She was a librarian and a teacher, and my love of books is, in a large part, thanks to her. I find comfort in the fact that I’ve passed that love on to my children, that I taught them to read, and that that little part of her lives on in us, in my children, every time they read a word.

Other than that, December was a pretty quiet month around here. No hustle and bustle here, just Hanukkah candles, a delicious platter of latkes (I get better at making these every year!), a low-key Christmas, and lots of reading during the cold snap.

In terms of New Years goals, I’ve got plans to continue my personal Read Harder challenge, and I’m going to use that to encompass reading everything in the house. This has been on my mind for a while; I own so many books that I *want* to read, but that I just don’t make time for. This will be a way to force me to make them for them, even as I continue (slowly) reading down my TBR. (WHICH I WILL. I WILL CONQUER YOU, TBR.) So stay tuned as I update my progress on that.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, peaceful, and prosperous 2023, full of many good books and lots of insight and introspection!

It’s the most wonderful time of the yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaar! (Mostly because I get a break in a few weeks, and there will also be LATKES. YUM.)

Welcome to December, my fellow readers! So strange to think that the next time I’ll post one of these recaps, it’ll be 2023. This is a year that has gone by in a blur of worry and stress, of new discoveries and reshuffling, of mindfulness, tears, and determination. And books, of course. Lots and lots of good books! (I’m still behind in reviews. That’s okay!)

Speaking of books, I also found out this past month that my town’s new library will be opening up in April of 2023. We drive by it often, as it’s on Main Street, and they recently posted a video walk through so you can see how the construction is going. The outside is mostly done; they’ve got lighting in there (and there are TONS of huge windows; seriously, sitting in this place is going to be so full of light and gorgeous!), and they’ll be starting to work on all the inside full-force soon. I’m so excited about this, I could scream! It’s SO much bigger than our current functional (kind of; the A/C breaks down constantly, the walls leak, the building is so old, it’s impossible to be ADA-compliant, etc) but way-out-of-date building. I’ll miss this old library, but I’m more than thrilled to welcome our new, updated library in April!

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

Books I Read in November 2022

1. Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change by Aja Barber

2. America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility by Rajika Bhandari

3. Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

4. Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting by Kindra Neely (review to come)

5. A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley (review to come)

6. My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 by Ann Rinaldi (no review; read out loud to my daughter. SO problematic)

7. Looking for an Enemy: Eight Essays on Antisemitism by Jo Glanville (no review)

8. My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration From the Front Lines by Efrén C. Olivares (review to come)

9. Ban This Book by Alan Gratz (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

10. The Summer of Lost Letters by Hannah Reynolds (review to come)

11. True History: Indigenous America by Liam McDonald (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson (review to come)

13. Shores Beyond Shores: From Holocaust to Hope, My True Store by Irene Butter (review to come)

14. Talking to Strangers: A Memoir of My Escape from a Cult by Marianne Boucher (review to come)

15. True Identity: Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin by Paul Joseph Fronczak (review to come)

16. How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing (no review)

Not a bad total for this month! I’m yet again behind in posting reviews, but that happens. I should be able to get caught up over our winter break. It’s just so hard to get everything I need to get done in the morning before we start homeschool work, and then suddenly it’s like 4 pm, and I’m all, “Ehhh, I’ll just post it tomorrow.” Lather, rinse, repeat!

I don’t count everything I read to my daughter – certainly not the smaller nonfiction books we read for her schoolwork, but once in a while, there’ll be something more substantial that I really get something out of, and that’s when I count things like the True History: Indigenous America by Liam McDonald. I almost always count the chapter book read-alouds, however. I earned those! : )

Thirteen of these books were mine alone. Twelve of the books were nonfiction (including memoirs); four were fiction. Twelve came from my TBR.

State of the Goodreads TBR

I started off this month at 133 books. I read twelve books from this list, putting me at…127 books.

TBR math sucks. But I made it to the 120’s!

And it’s only downhill from here (or uphill, in terms of a growing TBR)! NPR has already released part of their Best of 2022 book list, and all the reading challenges will be out soon, giving suggestions and posting gorgeous full-color covers, and I assume my TBR is just going to explode. OY.

Books I Acquired in November 2022

Other than some books for gift, and a few books on Jewish history I picked up from a used book sale at the library, I grabbed this stack from someone on a local Buy Nothing group. (Zero clue why WordPress won’t allow me to adjust the size of the photo here. Weird.)

Bookish Things I Did in November 2022

My son and I popped into a used book sale at a local library. I picked up a book or two on Jewish history, and a few holiday gift books for my daughter, but that was really the only bookish event this month!

Current Podcast Love

All over the place here!

So I started the month out listening to Freakonomics. It’s more about the narration style for me (that calm, cool NPR-type style!), since I listen when I’m falling asleep and during the 234893749823 times I wake up at night (this has very much been a thing lately, sigh), but the subject matter of some of the episodes started to annoy me after a few weeks, and I began to search for something else.

I attempted a few other true crime podcasts and a homeschooling podcast, none of which worked well – seriously, people, a good portion of your podcast shouldn’t be you and your cohosts just laughing. (ANNOYING.) I listened to two other homeschooling podcasts (desperately trying to get ideas and inspiration to switch things up for my daughter, because there are some things right now that just aren’t working for her), and while they were okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, it gets bothersome to constantly have Christianity injected into every. little. thing. I need ideas about how to help my daughter get through math; I don’t need a lecture about how to relate novels to Jesus. (I’m Jewish; a homeschooling podcast isn’t going to change that. Nothing will, which is just how I like it!) I truly don’t mind if the podcast hosts or guests talking about going to church, or incorporating Bible lessons into their homeschool day, that’s fine. I don’t want to listen to how the moms won’t let their kids read books where a character has gay parents. NOPE. Unfollow, immediately.

So currently I’m trying out Honey I’m Homeschooling the Kids. So far, it seems really diverse and has an interesting spread of guests who span the homeschooling spectrum, from unschooling to much more structured. I’m *really* wanting to delve into Book Riot’s For Real, a podcast just about nonfiction books, but my TBR is already crying for mercy at the thought of that, so I WILL get to it, I just don’t know when!

I’ve also been poking into Conspirituality, which is so far over my head, but it’s still pretty fascinating.

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

So, not really much time for this right now. I’ve pulled my copy of Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin upstairs to the pile next to my bed, and every night before beginning my regular reading, I read an entry in this book. It covers over 300 subjects and is 688 pages. I read a lot of it for my conversion class but not all of it, and now I’m reading the whole thing. I like reading it this way; it gives me something to think about all the next day. I’d eventually like to read all of Rabbi Telushkin’s writings.

Real Life Stuff

Right now, I’m basically up to my eyeballs in homeschool stuff again. Math isn’t working out for us, so I’m having to change things up a bit and also relax a lot more, which basically goes against my entire personality, so it’s not easy for me. I’m more of a, “Let’s get everything done NOW NOW NOW so we can do EVEN MORE later!!!” And my daughter just doesn’t work well under those conditions, so this is very much a growth moment for me. It’s hard. I’m still trying to figure out a way – if there even IS a way – to parent this child without her blowing up at me constantly. It’s her anxiety and her perfectionism that causes so much of this, so I try not to take it personally, but it’s really, really hard.

My son is still doing awesome in college and really liking everything, which is a relief! It’s nice to see him blossoming academically. High school classes just weren’t his thing, but he’s all about the stuff he’s learning here in college, so I’m absolutely thrilled for him.

That’s really about it. Nothing else new for me. Hanukkah starts on the 18^th (which is a Sunday), so I’ll be over here cranking out some amazing latkes (seriously the best potato product out there, hands down), but other than that, I’m just trying to maintain my sanity with my pile of books.

Wishing you a lovely December, however you spend it! See you in January for next year’s roundup! 🙂

Happy November! Two months left to 2022. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???

I’m still behind in posting reviews. I have so much to do in the mornings and during the day that it’s often difficult to find time to get that post up. But I’m not giving up, don’t worry! I love this book blog, and I really enjoy writing about the things I read, because it helps me remember long-term all these books I’m cramming into my brain. I may be floundering, but I’m not about to stop blogging.

It’s been a super gorgeous October here. The colors this year have been phenomenal. We had a fall like this a few years ago, and someone speculated it was because it was cooler than normal. It was a little like that this year as well; the temps dropped from 80 to in the low 50’s almost overnight, and the trees all just exploded with beauty. Driving around town has been so enjoyable this past month!

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in October 2022

1. Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman

2. God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

3. Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse (review to come)

4. Flamer by Mike Curato

5. Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself by Rabbi Donniel Hartman (no review)

6. Girl A by Abigail Dean (review to come)

7. The Nowhere Child by Christian White (review to come)

8. Well Matched by Jen DeLuca (review to come)

9. Kin: A Memoir by Shawna Kay Rodenberg (review to come)

10. Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture by Emma Dabiri (no review)

11. Love Thy Neighbor: The Tory Diary of Prudence Emerson by Ann Turner (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman (review to come)

Not a very long list this month! I simply haven’t had much time to read, so that explains that. Not much I can do about that, either. Oh well.

I read Emma Dabiri’s Twisted simply to gain more knowledge and understanding so that I can be a better ally. I’m not writing a review because I don’t feel it’s my place; I’m obviously not the target audience, but it’s absolutely a great book: history, a little bit of memoir, even a little bit of discussion of some heavy math, all written in an engaging voice that kept me intrigued and occasionally even laughing out loud.

Eleven of these books came from my TBR!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Oy vey. So, last month, we left off at 132 books. But then I learned about a bunch of really interesting books, and I attended a virtual presentation on fighting book bans, where I learned about a bunch more, and so now my TBR is resting at 133. Not as big a number as it could be, but I was really hoping to get it down to the 120’s this month. Maybe next month…though we’re going to start seeing ‘Best of 2022!’ book lists soon.

I’m in danger…

Books I Acquired in October 2022

I think the only book that made its way into my house this past month was Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. There was a copy on the shelf of the Dollar Tree, for some reason, and since I really enjoyed her other book, I grabbed this one to take home.

Bookish Things I Did in October 2022

So many trips to the library! Does that count?

I also attended a virtual program on the recent slew of book banning and challenges across the country, but this was specific to my area, put on by the local group who puts on the book sales I go to, a local book store, a local-to-me-but-national-in-size publisher, and a local Jewish group I’ve volunteered with. SUPER informative presentation, and it’s definitely got me fired up to fight against these swamphogs who think they can decide what everyone else reads.

Current Podcast Love

Really enjoying Maintenance Phase right now!

Funny story about this. My son and I were out running errands last weekend, and he was like, “Hey, I’m going to throw on this podcast I have to listen to for my English class. It sounds like something you’ll like, too.” So he hooks up his phone to the car’s audio system and when the opening music began playing, I turned to stare at him and said, “Oh my God, is that Maintenance Phase?” Sure was! We listened to their episode on Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, since my son’s English class had been assigned a paper on the introduction of the book (and my son had read some of the book for more clarity). It was indeed a great episode!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. I barely have time to do my regular reading. Zero time to do any extra, specialized reading. *sob*

Real Life Stuff

The good: My son is doing *really* well with his college classes. He’s loving everything he’s been studying, he’s super engaged with the material, and he’s excited to go to class every day. He comes home bursting with information and wants to tell me all about it, which is great. It’s absolutely wonderful to see him so enthusiastic about school; I think the time he spent away from school really helped him mature, understand how he learns, and helped him to figure out what he wanted. Huge relief here! I’ve also been over to his campus with him a few times; their library is a-ma-zing!

Our new town library is coming along swimmingly! Their outside walls are finished; there’s brickwork, there are windows in, and it looks like they’re ready to commence on work on the inside of the building. It’s slated to open at some point early in the new year, so that’ll be exciting!

The not-so-good: My back is garbage right now, sending pain down both my legs. My blood pressure is up, likely from stress. Homeschooling is…well, there are good days, and then there are days that are likely responsible for the rise in my blood pressure (I found this out at the eye doctor, who is seeing blood pressure-related changes in my eye vessels, sigh. I have to go back in six months, and I’m supposed to try controlling my stress, which basically means I’m just resigned to going blind at this point). My daughter’s counselor has been out for the past two weeks due to COVID that turned into pneumonia, and my husband’s boss also has COVID right now.

Sigh.

I’m hanging in there, though. I have a massive stack of library books that I’m really looking forward to reading, if only I had time where I wasn’t homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, or running errands (exercise? AHAHAHAHAHAHA). Doing my best, but there are only 24 hours a day, and I’m doing everything I normally do with a significant amount of pain, so it’s rough. But one foot in front of the other…

Wishing you all a peaceful November. Happy reading, friends.