Thoughts
-
My Reading Month: January
Last year, I started slow, but a stressful fall meant that I leaned into reading to keep myself sane, and I ended up finishing over 100 books in 2019. I don’t say this to brag because I do sometimes worry that the quantity of what I read can decrease the quality of my enjoyment. I feel ambivalent about it all, but the truth is, if I love a book, I love a book, no matter how quickly I read it, and that has to count for something. That reading momentum also meant that I finished the year feeling jazzed and motivated about reading, which is a wonderful feeling to have!…
-
2020 Updates
Whoops, I’ve fallen off over the last few months, and for that I apologize! This year, one of my goals is to take the time to make this blog a little more regular, and to find a few ways to amplify even more voices. I wanted to update you all a little on my reading/story goals for 2020, and keep an eye out for some award updates (I’ve missed quite a few!) and book posts coming in the next few weeks Reading Goals: Every year, I participate in the Goodreads book challenge and in another challenge called 52 Books Around The Year that has a group on Goodreads. While they…
-
My Reading Month: October
With the year wrapping up, I have been trying to tackle the last books on my Around the Year in 52 Books challenge, which has been difficult as many of them have be delving into the “classics”, which is a realm I dread. Sometimes these books lead to surprising and wonderful discoveries, but quite often I end up bored, and frustrated by archaic world views and writing that (at least to me) doesn’t hold up in today’s world. I feel like this is a challenging point of view, and I want to make it clear that there are classics that I absolutely LOVE, so this is not a blanket statement.…
-
My Reading Month – September
I had one of the biggest reading months of the year this past month – albeit through a combination of short books, audiobooks and some graphic novels. I feel like the change in light helped too. It is so much easier to read in the mornings when I wake up in the dark and can read in front of a cozy fire curled up under a blanket with my morning tea. This month, I could share a lot with you, but I sort of want to just share this one really incredible and totally out of left field book that might be one of my favorites of the year. I…
-
Audio-book Guilt
As a lifelong reader, I have struggled this year as I have found myself more and more drawn to audio-books. In my current lifestyle, I drive about an hour each day, and that combined with a stressful job means that I often just don’t have the energy to dedicate to reading an actual book. However, I have been spending my commute devouring hour after hour of audio-books and I have been loving them. But I struggle with what an audio-book actually “is”. I add these books to my Goodreads account, and technically they count towards my “books read”, but I don’t know if I am reading? Sure, what I am…
-
My Reading Month: August
So I have had a stop and start sort of reading month. I’ll be honest here – this month has flown by and between some crazy life changes and some crazy job stuff, I simply have not read all that much. When my brain gets overloaded, I tend to gravitate towards podcasts and television instead of books. I’m not sure this is necessarily the best choice, as reading is certainly equally relaxing, but it also takes so much more effort and sometimes I just don’t have it in me (and lets be honest, sometimes trashy television feels SO good). I do have one book to share with you all, which…
-
My Reading Month: June
Audiobook Gold, Great Sequels and Old Friends
-
Book Subscription Box – Boxwalla
As a lover of reading, I have long been intrigued by book subscription boxes. I currently do the Book of the Month club, which I love for so many reasons, namely that you can choose the book yourself and you can skip a month if there isn’t anything you are that interested in, which I do quite often. However, I recently branched out to try a new box, called Boxwalla. I wanted something that wouldn’t come too often as I struggle to get through the books I own already). I also needed a box that wouldn’t double up on books I already had or pick books I had little interest…
-
My Reading Month – Trees and Murder
I feel like I have been coming out of a bit of a fog over the past month – between work and life things, my life has been incredibly crazy over the past year, and it is so lovely to begin to have a little breathing room. I still have not found myself reading all that much over the past month, and have only finished 1 or 2 physical books. This is probably due to the fact that the one of my other obsessions, RuPaul’s Drag Race, has been airing the final episodes of its most recent season, so I have been going down that rabbit hole instead. (Go Big,…
-
Diversity in Children’s Literature: The Pride Month Edition
The generally white, always heterosexual parents of my favorite children’s books as a kid are a stark contrast (at least in terms of sexuality) to the world I was brought up in. However, while same-sex couples I grew up around never stood out as different to me, it was still incredibly difficult for non-heterosexual friends of mine, raised in that same community, to explore and express their personal feelings, and issues of intersexuality and transsexuality were never discussed (or shown on the pages of my books). In fact, I vividly remember reading Middlesex as a (maybe) 14 year old and being kind of mind-blown by the idea that a person…
