One of my many views while listening to the tagged book. Unfortunately, my own kids' homeschool and substitute teaching a writing class this afternoon is going to mess up my preferred rainy-day plan (blankets, kitty snuggles, audiobook, warm beverage, maybe some crocheting). The teaching is good stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's not a cat and a blanket.

Picked up my CSA share then ran to the library to pick up my hold and unintentionally made an amusing arrangement in the trunk. Food for the Dead on top of food for the living.

This is an amusing, twisted little story. Highly unlikely but still fun. Lately whenever a contemporary (2018 or after) book has an "x years later" epilogue, I imagine what that epilogue would look like if the author had known covid was on the horizon. The reality of the pandemic kind of constrains my imaginings of any story past the back cover. Among other things.

Silo helped me with my audiopuzzling this morning. He had strong opinions about which areas of the puzzle I should concentrate on. (Or maybe he was trying to convince me to do something more productive, like sit on the couch so he could warm himself on my lap.)

Wow, what a fun Christie mystery! It was also very cool to hear it read by Kenneth Branagh. I just saw his (somewhat over-the-top) Hamlet for the first time and was reminded of how good an actor he is (if a little cheesy at times). His voice acting in this audiobook is excellent. One of my great joys in life is hearing British people do American accents, but even Branagh's American accents were good (and only a little unintentionally amusing).

I'm not sure how I feel about the "ghost boys" device, but I love how Rhodes invites readers to see the many perspectives of a very messy and nuanced situation. You have an event that is clearly wrong, the killing of a child, and around that are the people and context that explain and complicate things. The novel recognizes the inclination to despair and the need to grieve while highlighting the necessity to take responsibility for making change.

Well, I'm done with the series. This installment feels very much like a wrap-up. Without a strong narrative arc, it reads to me less like a story than like a list of things the characters did. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sad the series is done.

This memoir is poignant in itself but even more so with the handful of intersections between Paul's life and my own. His daughter was born in the same hospital where I birthed mine, and we both worked at Stanford Sierra Camp, although I worked a fall conference season while he, as a Stanford student, worked the summer camp. He writes about his mortality with emotion but without melodrama or trite sentiments. It's a beautiful and devastating story.

December #bookspinbingo card! #bookspin and #doublespin are both nonfiction. What are the odds? (1 in 190, actually)

I will fill in the "gift" titles once I get my gift books. Maybe I shouldn't take the gift books as a given, but my spouse has been getting me five books for birthday/Christmas for about the past twenty years, so there is ample precedent. If he decides to take this year off, I'll just find five more titles!

@TheAromaofBooks

December #bookspin #bookspinbingo list! I almost sat out this month, but #bookspinbingo seems to have become an integral part of my reading life...I can't imagine a month without a bingo card!

The 5 "gift books" are space holders for the library books my spouse always gets for me for birthday/Christmas. The rest are mostly books I'm reading with my kids or spooky/creepy reads for #holidayhorrors

@TheAromaofBooks @Patchshank

November's #bookspinbingo results:

12 books read
1 bingo
#bookspin finished (but not #doublespin)

Not as amazing as last month, but not too shabby (and in better balance with my non-reading life).

@TheAromaofBooks

Not an exciting photo for a noteworthy event: I sent out my #CreepyChristmas #CC swap today! If I didn't mess anything up, it should arrive with plenty of time to spare before opening day.

Thanks again for hosting, @teebe ! This was so fun to put together, and I am so excited for my match to open everything!

Audiopuzzling. I was on the fence about this series after the first book, but I'm getting more into it now. Still more political intrigue than I can easily follow, but I like the character development.

Finished the tagged novel while the pie cooled. I won't say much since this is my #lmpbc book this month, but I didn't really get into this one. Some of the storylines are more interesting than others, and they don't come together as well as they might. The pie was good, though.

Audio-IKEAing!

Almost mistook this mantis for a leaf while audiowalking today. Luckily I figured it out before I put my foot down. (I like crunching leaves; I do not like crunching critters. I doubt they like it much, either.)

Super fun book by and about the Ravenmaster at the Tower of London. I learned about this one from Effin Birds on IG and got the audiobook when I found out it was read by the author. I periodically think it would be cool to keep a hawk or a raven and was rearranging furniture and thinking just this when I heard Chris Skaife say how if you keep a corvid, there will be chaos every time you move anything in your house. So, maybe a hawk instead.

This novel has a little more political intrigue than I generally have the patience for, but the interactions and developing relationships between the characters are interesting, as is the time period and geographical setting. Overall a fun audiobook to finish while making a somewhat sylvan-looking mask I'm gifting to someone not on Litsy (so not spoiling any surprises by posting...unless someone here was hoping to be surprised with a mask).

Worked on the tagged #lmpbc book and enjoyed this view of construction while my kiddo experienced a teenage rite of passage: wisdom tooth extraction. She's home and doing well so far, but with keeping up with timers for gauze, ice packs, and meds and translating her gauze-speech requests, I'm getting less reading done.

Between a so-so and a pick. I like the idea behind this one, but it feels a little like McMahon explains the mysteriousness out of the story. Also, Piper and Margot are flat enough characters, I kept forgetting which sister was which. Not entirely sure what the point is of Jason's character at all. Still, it's a satisfyingly eerie story.

Although stronger in some parts than others, overall this is an excellent post-apocalyptic novel. Dimaline's one-step-from-reality plot reminds me a little of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, how Atwood intentionally made everything that happens in that trilogy something that had already happened in real life somewhere. The Marrow Thieves is particularly chilling because I can't quite dismiss it as outrageous.

The plot elements come together a little too tidily to be entirely realistic, but I appreciate that the author presents the Cuban revolution in a nuanced way, showing how it was good for some people and not at all good for others. The author also does an excellent job showing the helplessness and longing of the preteen years and how well-meaning adults sometimes miss the mark. From the Build Your Library homeschool curriculum level 6 book list.

This one reads a bit like a farce, with some fairly ridiculous characters and a pretty unlikely plot. The tone actually reminded me a little of Cold Comfort Farm. Enjoyable, I suppose, but not one I expect to return to.

An overall pick for the moral/ethical questions raised and despite Penny making the mistake many of us have in thinking that the arrival of the vaccine(s) would lead swiftly to the end of the pandemic. I also think she puts too much emphasis on the lasting effects of pandemic isolation, or maybe it was just worse in Quebec. Or maybe it hit people harder who were used to interacting a lot more with a lot of people, and I'm missing that perspective.

This novel surprised me. For most of it, I wasn't sure if I liked it. I started wishing I'd read the paper version instead of audio because I had trouble keeping the characters and relationships straight, but the last 1/4 or so, it all comes together into something that feels horribly inevitable (in part because Orange has been prepping us for it the entire time). This is another piece of California I hadn't really looked at before.

Not my favorite of the series. I felt a little emotionally manipulated by this one, and that never puts me in a good mood.

November's #bookspinbingo card. Let the game begin!

@TheAromaofBooks

But ACK! I forgot my #bookspinbingo blackout (and I'm sure I forgot a couple of readathons, and I know a few of my books mentioned Halloween and I forgot to factor that in, but this is the best I'm going to do tonight).

So, add that to the totals above for:

My Week 4 Total: 1670
Bingo Blackout: 100
My Grand Total: 5425

#TeamSlaughter
#scarathlon2021

Thank you for being such an awesome team captain, @clwojick !

A pick for the main mystery, a so-so for the internal Sûreté intrigue, which is hampered by a few too many twists.

Two more to go in the series!

It's a little cobbled together, but I think it's a passable November #bookspin list.
@TheAromaofBooks

I left the colored pencils at home so can't mark this one in right away, but with The Length of a String, I have achieved my very first #bookspinbingo blackout! Now to tally my points for #scarathlon and make a November #bookspin list to post by Nov 2. @TheAromaofBooks

This is a cute story about what makes us who we are, and I'm glad I read it, but it doesn't hold together as tightly as it might. There were some opportunities for tension that I think the author missed out on, and I'm not keen on seventh graders dating each other. I did, however, enjoy learning about Luxembourg and Luxembourgish. I read this with my son as part of Build Your Library homeschool curriculum, level 6.

I got some sweet stuff in my #HHS #HauntedHollowSwap from @shortsarahrose ! An adorable card, a bookmark, a tasty-smelling candle, and two books I've been wanting to read and that are just in time to toss into my overnight bag for a teensy road trip! Thank you so much, Sarah, and thank you for hosting, @wanderinglynn !

Enjoyable but highly unlikely story. Kind of makes me want to have an escape plan and/or take a road trip.

#TeamSlaughter team read, plus 9 hours for two readathons = 230 points
#scarathlon2021 #screamathon #littenlisten

I'm still enjoying these novels even though they're getting increasingly difficult to believe and are becoming a little predictable. Great for listening to on long walks, though, and I like some of the new developments for some of the regular characters.

Nice and spooky, quick listen, but a little dated. Reading it makes me want to watch the movie again.

I like how Stage explores the ambivalence of motherhood and the identity shifts that accompany becoming parents, but the story is a little too step-by-step and the characters a little too flat for me. I don't find fictional therapy sessions interesting (not just because fictional mental health treatment is so unrealistically effective and easy to access), and WHY haven't these people childproofed their house? At least stop sharpening the pencils.

This one started out bizarre and good but by the end was just bizarre. It has elements of Lindqvist's other novels in it and purports to be a description of the experiences that led him to become a horror writer (appeasing the monster), but I am deeply skeptical. It is an interesting look at the concept of the monster within, which Lindqvist explores at length in his novels, as well as the idea of unintended consequences.

Despite the title, glass houses don't play much of a role in this novel. As I read these books, I'm made aware of my unconscious United Statesian view of Canada as a kinder, blander version of the US, which is not like Penny's Quebec at all. I've visited Ontario and PEI, but our 2020 Montreal trip was scuttled due to the pandemic. These novels remind me that I need to reschedule the trip...and now make time for the Eastern Townships, too.

This one is a little different from the previous novels. It's a little silly, quite unlikely, but I enjoyed it. Although I think I could probably give this exact same review for most of the Gamache books.

We had visitors this week, which, combined with helping my kids prepare for music competitions, gave me much less time to read than I had in Weeks 1 and 2, but I ended up with 260 points for Week 3.

Total for Weeks 1-3: 3,765

#scarathlon #TeamSlaughter @clwojick

My #gettbr selections arrived while I was at work today, way earlier than I'm used to getting them. Excited to get started on these! Any suggestions for where to begin?

My sister-in-law sent me a bookish Halloweeny t-shirt, which coordinates really well with my Halloween mask!

Caught sight of this orb weaver and her sister (just behind her but not in the picture) while audiowalking today. Today was a challenging one (neighbors acting a fool in their one-sided feud with us, among other little inconveniences), but this find and the accompanying book were a welcome diversion. And the weather was gorgeous. Trying to focus on the good stuff.

Super quick memoir from the woman who, at age 6, desegregated her neighborhood elementary school in New Orleans. I love how Bridges shows us this story through her eyes as a child and how she's grown to contextualize her experience over time. Invaluable addition to my ongoing education about race and racism in the United States.

Very Ishiguro and so, so good. I love how the story unfolds and just kind of gets under the skin. This is a poignant look at the way that we decide on a social order and then do whatever it takes to justify that order, including dehumanizing people as necessary.

Week 2 Total: 1090
Cumulative Total: 3395
This is not including bingos, which I'll add at the end.
#TeamSlaughter #scarathlon

My children are recording for a music competition. I brought my book, but my "proud mama" emotions are making it hard to focus on reading. This is the first time since the pandemic began that my daughter has played with a live accompanist and the first time my son ever has, and I am just amazed at the progress they've made in their playing, even with all the stress and uncertainty of the past year and a half.