I feel like I should explain myself. A few weeks ago, I said I was going to be posting my weekly reading, well, weekly again…and then I didn’t. I should have known better not to commit myself to a new schedule right when school was starting. Then I started thinking, again, about how I do my reading updates.

This is not exclusively a book blog, but I’ve pretty much only been posting book-related things lately. I know I have a lot of family and friends who read this blog to see what is going on in my family’s life and I haven’t been posting about that much lately. Part of that is because, until recently, not much was going on.

So, this is my new plan. On Sundays, I’ll post an update post that will cover what is going on in our lives and the books I’m currently reading (but not books I’ve finished). However, in the Sunday of each month, I’ll include a monthly recap which will have all the books I’ve read over the past month and my “three things I want you to know about them.”

Okay, business is done. So, this is what is going on in our lives. School is in full swing–both kids are going full-time in person and it has been great. Yes, they are wearing masks and I want to say something. People who whine about how unfair it is that kids have to wear masks can, for lack of a better word, suck it. Mask wearing is universal at both school and kids are not complaining about it. Yeah, it will be great when they don’t have to, but don’t use kids wearing masks and your pawn in your ignorant culture war (end of rant).

Chris has also started with activities–he’s been doing swim lessons again, which has been great. When he was younger, he was not doing well with swimming lessons and it was frustrating for everyone all around. However, we had to take some time off due to the pandemic and now he’s loving it. I think he’s gotten over some of his fear of the water and he’s doing well, which is great for his confidence.

Lillie has been busy with Girl Scouts. Because we could do basically nothing last year, I’m working to make this year as much fun for the troop as possible. This may be the death of me, but there you go. Last weekend, we had a “Camp Craft Party Night” which the girls seemed to love. I needed a stiff drink afterwards, but it was worth it. As for other activities, Lillie will start up with volleyball next month, which she is looking forward to.

School-wise, things are going very well. Chris does not have 5th grade teacher Lillie had, as we expected (after last year, a first grade teacher retired and that caused a domino reshuffling among the teachers and Lillie’s 5th grade teacher is now teacher 4th grade). Chris did, however, luck out with who he does have for his teacher. She’s been great for him and he has a big smile every time he leaves school.

Lillie is loving middle school and she has some great classes! Creative writing AND Drama? Where was that when I was in Middle School. Her one complaint is that school starts too late. Lillie is very much an early to bed, early to rise kid and middle school starts later than elementary school and, on Wednesdays, it starts even later (they have late start instead of early dismissal). So, now she has time to kill before school. For a few days, she just wandered the house aimlessly, but lately she has been using the time to do some non-school reading–which is always a good thing to see.

Pat is still working at home and will be doing so indefinitely. I quite like having him home during the day, even though I don’t actually see him much during the day. The house is weirdly quiet, though. I think the one having the hardest time with this is Alice!

This past Wednesday was our 14th wedding anniversary and we celebrated by…not doing too much! We did get German take out, which was good and oh-so-filling. Maybe by the time our 15th anniversary rolls around again, we’ll feel comfortable eating in a restaurant.

Okay, what am I reading right now? I currently have 5 books going. I’m still working through The Lightning Thief with Chris, but I’ve spoken about that here before so I won’t say much more about that until we finally finish (whenever that may be!).

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This book first came on my radar last Spring but, let’s face it, April is not when I want to be reading a book called Wintering. So I set up a library hold, suspended it until September first, and then forgot about it until I got the message that my hold was in. I wrote last year about my Hygge feelings (which actually have very little to do with Hygge, but I won’t get into that here) and this book is similar in that it talks about taking quiet time for yourself to rest and recover. However, this one is much more about mental health and self-care and less about candles and comfy socks. So far, I’m really enjoying it but I’m only reading a chapter a day to savor it.

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
(my apologies that I don’t know how to do the correct Vietnamese characters in her name).

This book is the next one for the Diverse Book Group that my library runs. It is set in Vietnam with dual time-line. One story is a young girl during the end of and then the ensuing aftermath of the Vietnam War. The other is her grandmother telling her stories of her younger life. I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve read any novels about the Vietnam war and, for a history major, I know very little beyond the broad strokes of the war. This book is really heartbreaking and, well, is probably one of those painful truths that Americans SHOULD read. I’m sure that everyone who only wants rainbows and unicorns taught in history classes will hate this book (which makes me like it even more!).

A Distant Grave (Maggie D’Arcy #2) by Sarah Stewart Taylor

I read this first book in this series a year ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one. I’ve heard it said that these books are very Tana French-ish, which tells me I should finally get around to reading Tana French one of these days. The main character, Maggie D’Arcy, is a Long Island detective, but the bulk of these books take place in Ireland. And, folks, you will want to go to Ireland!

I’m not that far into this yet so I can’t say that much about it, but I do expect it to live up to the first book in the series.

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

After taking the summer off, I’m back to using the Serial app! I decided to dive into Spooky Season and debated between this and Dracula (I have not previously read either). I opted for Frankenstein because it was shorter. There you go. That being said, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. I think the last book I read on Serial was Jekyll and Hyde, which I had read before but decided to try again and I still absolutely hated it, so I’m glad this one looks like it will be a better hit for me. I’m supposed to finish this in mid-October, so you probably won’t hear more about it from me until early November.

So, that’s what I’m reading now. As usual, I’m linking up with Kathryn at Book Date and her It’s Monday…What Are you Reading? blog hop.