April Update & May Goals

▫️Between my continuing CFS flare and the Passover holiday I read nothing in April! My May reading goal is to at least catch up on #LMPBC since other littens are counting on me for that one
▫️ I‘ve been going to my Tai Chi classes sporadically since some of them conflict with my work schedule, so my goal for May is to practice at least twice in between each class and to follow along with the video of any class I miss.

YES!!!

#mgbuddyread

There‘s a lot I‘m excited about on this month‘s board!

Excellent spins @TheAromaofBooks ! I‘m behind on our North and South read for #Pemberlittens but one of my #BFC goals this month is to catch up on all my buddy reads, and The Starless Sea is one of those books that has been on my shelf since it first came out and I‘ve been excited about it the whole time but still always had other priorities, so I‘m thrilled to have a reason to put it at the top of this month‘s list!

Opera Singer by Ross Gay
#pacify #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

#pace #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

Emily Dickinson has been one of my favorite poets since high school, but I only recently realized just HOW much other people edited her work after her death. I‘m excited about this volume by Christine Miller that preserves exactly what she wrote including her own edits (though thankfully retyped since the poets handwriting is completely illegible!) This month I‘m starting a side by side reading of it & my old standard B&N version. 👇🏼

#BFC2022 March Update & April Goals -

This was a hard month for me, so I didn‘t meet any of my goals.

🔹My goal of yoga twice a week totally didn‘t happen. I did zero yoga sessions last month 🙈. Starting this week I‘ve signed up for a qigong class once a week and I‘m hoping the class structure will hold me accountable.
🔹My daily meditation goal was probably at like 30%. For April I want to increase this to at least 75%

I think this will be a month with lots of carryover cause life definitely got in the way of reading, but here‘s my April #Bookspin and #Bookspinbingo list @TheAromaofBooks

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

#LMPBC #Round14 Update

I finished this month‘s books & definitely enjoyed both! I‘ll be sending The Personal Librarian to @Jerdencon & Snapdragon to @LibrarianRyan tomorrow

I got The Secret Wife in the mail today. Thanks @suvata Looking forward to reading that one!

I don‘t think I have The Perfume Thief back from #Round13 yet. @phantomx Do you have that one? If so, can you let me know when you send it out so I know when to be on the lookout?

This was my first time reading Sandition, and I really enjoyed it! I‘m leaving off at the point Jane Austen did right now to give myself some time to imagine where she might have taken this had she lived. Reading the last thing she wrote has made me interested in reading her works in order, which I‘ve never done. So I think once I make it back around to this again (maybe sometime next year?) I‘ll be ready to try a version someone else completed.

This month‘s #MGBuddyRead was another excellent MG historical fiction piece, so it fits in well with my #MiddleGradeMarchThroughTime list. I was too young in ‘86 to be aware of the Challenger launch and disaster, but not so young that I was unaware of the general mood of the country and I can tell they really got that right. Things like the parents‘ conflicts over women‘s rights and the social conflicts the kids face at school all felt spot on.

I love Lisa See! As usual for one of her books, I learned new things about a corner of women‘s history I was previously unaware of, and I cried. #AuthorAMonth #Booked2022 #SetInChina @Soubhiville @BarbaraTheBibliophage @Cinfhen @4thhouseontheleft

#object #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

This is a subtle , sophisticated romance that spins backwards over the course of a lifetime starting at ch. 20 and ending at ch. 1 This unusual construction still leaves plenty of room for surprises along the way. Spanish artist and writer Jordi Lafebre was a great surprise. I found this affecting, emotional, and heartwarming.

This is one of the better pieces of MG historical fiction I‘ve come across. It explores the history of hereditary deafness on Martha‘s Vineyard in the early 1800s, as well as the sharp racial tensions there between the white settlers, the Wampanoag Indians, and the black freedmen all sharing the island. I learned that Martha‘s Vineyard Sign Language was one of several dialects that played a major role in the creation of modern ASL.

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

Mark Doty is one of my favorite poets, but I‘ve actively avoided reading this for 15 years because it‘s considered a follow up to his 3rd book, My Alexandria which was all about his partner Wally‘s diagnosis with and decline from AIDS. It was a masterpiece, but reading it was brutal and I wasn‘t ready to revisit that. Atlantis is published the year after Wally‘s death, and the tone changes in this book. 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

I started my book for #LMPBC #Round14 #GroupA yesterday. I‘m loving this one so far! It‘s definitely thought provoking, and I‘m finding myself writing more notes that I often do, even in postal markup books. So far it‘s easy reading even though it‘s not really easy subject matter, so we‘ll see how far I get this weekend. @suvata @Jerdencon @smalldogs_bigbooks2419

#Pantone2022 #OrchidBloom @Clwojick

There were a couple poems in this collection that I loved, and a lot of individual lines that were definitely worth savoring, but as a whole it didn‘t really work for me. Most of the poems seemed unnecessarily obfuscated. Even after reading them 2 or 3 times I had a hard time focusing on a lot of them and extracting meaning.

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

#Pantone2022 #Poinciana @Clwojick

I finished up the last book for #LMPBC #Round13 #GroupP & I‘ll get it in the mail ASAP. This was a lot of fun and I flew through it. I thought it was really original and made some bold character choices. I‘m glad it was part of this round. I love how different all our picks were! #LGTBQBookBingo #TimeTravel #BBRC Teen Angst Cyberpunk #PopSugar2022 #ProtagonistWhoUsesAMobilityAid @bibliobard @WanderingBookaneer @phantomx @Kenyazero @LibrarianRyan

Christine, thank you for encouraging me to visit Pooh and Christopher Robin this month! I had such a wonderful time revisiting this childhood favorite! ❤️🤗🐻📚 I‘m so glad this was our #ChildrensClassicRead and my #BookSpin for March. @TheBookHippie @TheAromaofBooks

#oar #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

My first book of the month was one of my #MiddleGradeMarchThroughTime books. This was an excellent story showing all the spiderwebbing places in a young life pain and suffering can intersect, but also how easy it is to supplant suffering with joy. It was written well, and got me curious enough to do some research on Jewish exiles from Cuba, which was interesting.

I‘m very excited about my #BookspinBingo grid this month! It has a lot of variety built in, and some titles I‘ve really been looking forward to! @TheAromaofBooks

My #BookSpin this month is the #ChildrensClassicRead book and my #DoubleSpin is from my list for #MiddleGradeMarchThroughTime so both those should be a lot of fun!

Hmmm… super hard choices again this month. I‘m not totally convinced this formula is actually going to lead to my top read of the year, but I‘m having enough fun that I‘m filling it out.

#MonthlyWrapup
My top February reads are in the grid above.
In total I read:
33 books
25 non-male authors
17 BIPOC authors
7 audiobooks
14 ebooks
11 print books
14 nonfiction
4 poetry
4 graphic novels

I went through a seriously mood reading spell towards the end of this month so I‘m pleased and surprised I did as as well at #BookspinBingo as I did this month. @TheAromaofBooks

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

This has been on my TBR for ages, so I‘m grateful to #PopSugar #BecomingAFilmOrTVSeriesIn2022 to get me to read it, & I‘m excited to see the adaptation! As I read this I wondered how it would have affected me differently if I‘d read it pre-pandemic. I know during the early days of lockdown I kept thinking how it felt like we were living in some of the dystopian novels I‘d read, & I‘m not sure I‘d have wanted this to be part of my mental library.

February #BFC update & March Goals:
▪️It took me until the very end of the month to get into a rhythm of daily morning meditation, but now that I have hopefully I‘m set up well to continue that goal into March.
▪️I did not keep on top of the housekeeping, and I‘m a visual person so it really makes such a difference to my mental state, so for March I‘m adding more structure to this goal, requiring me to work on the housekeeping some every day.👇🏼

Hard to believe March is upon us! But I went ahead and made a March #Bookspin list, so I guess I accept this. (Though that does mean that school vacation ends and I have to go back to work 😭). @TheAromaofBooks

I couldn‘t get more than a few chapters into my #DoubleSpin book this month, so I‘m bailing on it. Maybe I‘ll pick it up again one day when I‘m more in the mood, but for now I‘m crossing it off my TBR. I chose it for a steampunk prompt, and I‘m going to replace it with a Gail Carriger sequel I know will be fun. @TheAromaofBooks

I don‘t remember which Litten‘s review had me requesting this from the library, but I‘m glad I checked it out. This book tries to bridge that cultural gap between immigrants and their children which can sometimes seem insurmountable, and, of course, uses food and stories to do so.

It took me a couple chapters to get into this audiobook. There were definitely sections where I was wondering what all the hype was about, and thinking maybe this just isn‘t for me, and then I‘d hit sections where I‘d be completely consumed by Will‘s story. I learned a lot about him, his family, and his career that I didn‘t know before, and overall I‘m definitely glad I read this one! #Nonfiction2022 #ImAdventurous @Riveted_Reader_Melissa

Set in the 50s in San Francisco‘s Chinatown, this is the quintessential coming out story. It forces us all to ask ourselves the question, if we were faced with the same choice, would we slip quietly back into the fold of family life, or would we stand up and say this is who I am! Deal with me! #BBRC Adult New Adult #PopSugar2022 #TwoBooksFromTwinTowns #LGBTQBookBingo #Holiday @LibrarianRyan @Kenyazero

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

This is the 4th book on the pandemic I‘ve read, & it‘s definitely the one I‘ve been searching for without realizing! I actually read this twice. My library hold came in on audio first, so I listened to it before I read it. Then halfway through my read I ordered a copy. Amanda Gorman is a great reader, so I always get something new listening to her. But this book has concrete & visual poems, so you‘ll miss a lot if you don‘t see the page layouts.

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick

#Pantone2022 #Potpourri @Clwojick

True to the collection‘s name it alternated stories abound robots & fairies. After each story the authors explained why they were on team robot or team fairy, which was always very funny! Most short story collections end up being worth reading for 1 or 2 great stories even though the rest are just meh. In this collection the ratio was completely reversed. Every story was great! The standouts were the ones where I thought: I would read this novel.

#note #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

#AestheticallyMatched @Clwojick