I finished listening to this over the weekend, and I‘m still not sure what I think about it. I frequently found the way the narrator described things and how he inserted himself in the story entertaining. However, the way things came together at the end seemed abrupt to me, and my overall impression was more a so-so than a pick.

I put this on hold for #AuthorAMonth, but just now got to it.

#1001books #audiobook

It‘s been a long week full of a lot of things, but this morning I‘m taking a little break from it all to catch up on this book with a cup of coffee before church. I continue to love the mix of history and science and art in these daily pages, and the photos and art chosen are just beautiful.

#NaturaLitsy #ATreeADay

💛 Last weekend I got to watch my nephew play in his senior Homecoming game!
💛 It was also the annual fall festival in my hometown with lots of fun festival food, including the pineapple whip in the photo.
💛 Mums and pumpkins and beautiful weather to enjoy it all
💛 Getting a step closer to adding high school math to my teaching certification
💛 The pets!

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

I didn‘t have a word to share from my reading today, but then I stumbled across a short video from Merriam-Webster about expletive infixation that included the definition of grawlix. This led me to an article with a bit more history of grawlixes, so I‘m sharing with the rest of you. Links in comments ⬇️

grawlix: a string of typographical symbols used in place of an obscenity, especially in comic strips (noun)

#WeirdWords #WeirdWordWednesday

Westfallen has been my read at school, but I brought it home this weekend to finish. It‘s an interesting alternate history caused by communication between a group of middle schoolers in 2023 with another group in the same town in 1944. I found it interesting, but I‘m not a big fan of stories that explore the butterfly effect. Additionally, this one turned out to be the start of a series instead of the standalone I expected.

Another Saturday edition of weekly joys

💛 More apples 🍎 I made chunky applesauce last weekend & need to decide what to make today. 🍏
💛 They harvested the soybeans around my house this week. I love being around for harvest, and Luthien loves that we now have open fields for running.
💛 Happy cats
💛 Making it through Homecoming week at school
💛 A beautiful Saturday morning and iced coffee

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

September 2025 #BookSpinBingo

September was a good reading month with some truly interesting books. I think Tombland was my favorite, but I enjoyed almost all of these.

#BookSpin 1 - Quartet
#DoubleSpin 13 - Where Wolves Don‘t Die

#MonthlyStats #ReadingStats #DaiseysReadingSummary

I finished listening to this book this afternoon, and it has all the emotions. There‘s so much humor mixed with so much frustration, anger, and sadness for these characters. I thought Backman did an amazing job of weaving together the past and present stories.

📷: Gandalf & LaGata keeping me company in the backyard while also listening to Luthien run in the field.

#LitsyBookClub #audiobook #TurnThePage #Readathon

Good morning! A slightly different view from my backyard than last night, but it‘s my favorite place to be on these beautiful fall days. I spent some time making these breakfast biscuits to pull from the freezer on busy mornings, and now I‘m catching up on some A Tree a Day reading. These short anecdotes about trees from all over the world continue to be so interesting.

#BookAndBreakfast #NaturaLitsy #ATreeADay

This is a fairly short book, but it took me a long time to read because I found it depressing. I did find it interesting that it is somewhat based on Rhys‘s own affair with Ford Maddox Ford.

📷: It was a beautiful evening to enjoy the hammock and a fire in the backyard with Luthien.

#1001books #TurnThePage #Readathon

I love the idea of a weekend readathon. I hope to finish a few books and make some progress on others. I‘m close to done with Quartet and My Friends, and it‘s almost time for Westfallen to go back to the library. I haven‘t picked up A Tree a Day all month, so I want to remedy that. I‘ll probably listen to some more audio as well.

#TurnThePage #Readathon
#LitsyBookClub #NaturaLitsy #1001books

💛 My new yellow mum is blooming, and my established purple mum is getting close!
💛 The pets, this week two very content cats
💛 Apples 🍎 🍏
💛 Baking and sourdough focaccia specifically
💛 A beautiful Friday evening

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

I enjoyed this book, but I don‘t think I would have as much reading it all on my own. I tend to enjoy more plot focused stories, and this was definitely character focused. Additionally, it was a bit difficult to stay connected sometimes when it skipped chunks of time and revealed major changes from those periods. The narration by Jeremy Irons was great, and absolutely helped my appreciation.

#HashtagBrigade #1001books #audiobook

@catiewithac This is a fantastic swap package! Thank you so much! I had completely forgotten that this book was on my to read list, and it sounds absolutely fascinating. All of the goodies are perfect for settling in to fall, and the recipe tea towel is such a creative idea.

#AutumnComfortSwap

Yesterday I got out my sourdough starter with the plan of starting dough overnight for some kind of cheesy garlic focaccia. I saw my aunt and she gave me a jar of apple pie filling that hadn‘t sealed, so I decided to make two versions instead. I used the basic focaccia recipe from this book and then did my own thing with inclusions & toppings.

#sourdough #cookbook

Enjoying Sunday morning book and breakfast and then more of this book while I also meal prep breakfasts and clean up the kitchen before church.

#BookAndBreakfast #LitsyBookClub #audiobook

This was a great novel in verse. Poems are aligned left and right along with other spacing to highlight aspects of the story. It has wonderful literary references, figurative language, and football details. It‘s all wrapped up in the story of Kareem figuring out his own way as a Syrian American. It‘s set in 2016 & 2017 with the executive order banning international travel from Syria and other countries directly impacting Kareem‘s family.

💛 A family get together and a beautiful view over a lake
💛 Late summer flowers
💛 Bacon & tomato sandwiches on homemade sourdough
💛 The pets, including a very happy, running beagle
💛 A rainy Thursday as it‘s been very dry

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

Sometimes you just need to enjoy a book with your supper. I‘m already in the middle of several books, but I picked up this one that came off my holds list. It‘s a novel in verse about a middle school Syrian American boy who wants to be on the school football team. It‘s full of football and bookish references.

#TRS2025 #ReadAndEat #NovelInVerse #MiddleGrade

I‘ve been listening to Brideshead Revisited this past week, but I‘ve felt like I‘m not listening closely enough when I read the posts and comments. Today, I found this podcast and listened to a few episodes. They look at it from more of a religious aspect, and they also discuss a variety of passages that help me consider it in more depth. I‘ll put a link to the first episode in the comments.

#HashtagBrigade #1001books #audiobook

Ezra Cloud is an Ojibwe high school student who splits his time between Northeast Minneapolis where his father works as a college professor and Red Gut in Canada where his grandparents live a traditional life of hunting and trapping. After an incident with another student at school and a fire at the student‘s house, his family decides he will move spend the winter with his grandparents. ⬇️

I had quite a bit of driving yesterday to & from family events, so I listened to the last several chapters of this book. This one felt slower than some of the others in the series, but the combination of Shardlake, Nicholas, & Barak gave a great variety of perspectives. I found the English history of the rebellions fascinating while also frustrating. I appreciated the additional historical notes after the story.

#audiobook #ShardlakeBR

cafard: melancholia, depression (noun)

#WeirdWordWednesday #WeirdWords

I enjoyed listening to this audiobook although it often made my heart hurt. Baldwin absolutely has a way with words. Seeing as this was his first novel, I think it would be interesting to see how his writing goes on from this very church oriented story. I did feel that the end was a bit abrupt.

#1001books #audiobook

📷: I listened to quite a bit of this while walking with Luthien and working in the yard this weekend.

Another Saturday edition of weekly joys:

💛 Fresh baked sourdough rolls
💛 An extra day at home for Luthien to have time to run and me to catch up on chores
💛 Snuggly pets
💛 Friday night pizza and football
💛 Beautiful weather

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

I enjoyed this historical fiction about a brother and sister who work at Bletchley Park while also trying g to unravel the mystery of their mother‘s disappearance. There‘s lots of interesting information about codes and code breaking. I agree with some other reviewers that the ending is a bit rushed, but overall it‘s a great story with an interesting group of characters, including mentions of a few real people who worked at Bletchley Park.

I started this morning by baking these sourdough rolls and reading this book, a sequel to Misty of Chincoteague, that I happened across as we were sorting through things at my grandparents‘ house. It‘s another story of the pony penning on the island and the kids taking care of an orphaned foal.

#BookAndBreakfast #MiddleGrade #SummersEndReadathon

August 2025 #BookSpinBingo
I listened to some great books this month and managed to read a few in print as well. I think Fingersmith was the favorite as it definitely kept me intrigued.

#BookSpin 19 -
#DoubleSpin 20 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

#ReadingStats #MonthlyStats #DaiseysReadingSummary

I‘m still only in the middle of Book 2, but I‘m getting some pages in today with lunch and hope to get back in the habit of reading a few pages each evening.

#KLBR #DoorstopKristin #ReadAndEat #SummersEndReadathon

💛 Watching hummingbirds enjoying a new feeder
💛 Cooler evenings in the hammock in the back yard
💛 The pets, including a cozy Gandalf and a happy Luthien out exploring today
💛 Watching my nephew play Friday night football
💛 The long weekend to catch up and relax, including reading for #SummersEndReadathon

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

I haven‘t made as much reading time for this book as hoped, so I gave in and downloaded the audio. It‘s fine, but when I‘ve read books by an author before, a perfectly good narrator just doesn‘t sound right in my head. I‘m finally far enough in that I‘m getting adjusted and into the story. I started Part 2 today, and it‘s good to see Shardlake meet Barak again.

📷: My #audiowalk with Luthien this evening

#ShardlakeBR #audiobook

I started this book during our independent reading time in seminar today, and I did not want to stop when the bell rang. I‘m really intrigued to see where this story goes. However, the book has to stay on my desk at school for the week, so I may not get much further until this weekend.

#TeachersOfLitsy #YA #TRS2025

I enjoyed this book, but as other reviewers have said, I sometimes felt that it had too much going on. I found Covey‘s story incredibly interesting and enjoyed figuring how it all fit together. However, there were so many characters and relationships, that in the end I didn‘t need details for all of them. I think a narrower focus could have been stronger.

#LitsyBookClub #audiobook

Happy Friday!

💛 Iced Pumpkin Carmelicious coffee on my last day of running errands before the start of a new school year
💛 First day of school for a new school year!
💛 Fresh tomatoes for salads for lunch this week
💛 The pets, especially this adorable beagle who thought she should just get to stay snuggled in blankets when I needed to leave for work.
💛 Smooth first week of school completed!

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

This was an incredibly interesting, sometimes sad, sometimes even humorous look into working in the mortuary and cremation business. I think the author makes a great point that in many ways our society has become too separated from the realities of death. I appreciate her writing to share more with the rest of us.

I‘ve seen many interesting reviews of this book, but it took a #StudentRecommendation to make me pick it up.

#audiobook #Nonfiction

I sent out my #AutumnComfortSwap box this morning!

It has been a very long time since I read the original novel, so I can‘t speak for exactly how well this adaptation compares to it. However, it fit well with what I remembered and was a great story with fantastic illustrations. Alanna is one tough and determined girl!

#YA #GraphicNovel

It‘s a hot day and also my last Saturday before the new school year starts, so I took an afternoon break from housework to read this graphic novel. It‘s a fun story of a girl obsessed with a fantasy world who finds that world intersecting with her own real world. It‘s also about friendship and realizing everything is not necessarily as it seems from the outside.

#MiddleGrade #GraphicNovel

This book provided a different perspective on Victorian London told from the perspectives of two very different young women whose lives become intricately entwined. There are three parts, and although I liked listening to Sue‘s story more, Maud‘s also completely held my attention. The twists and turns of their stories frequently surprised me and always kept me invested in listening.

#1001books #audiobook
#TBRTakedown August 2025

💛 Prepping my classroom for the school year with new bulletin boards
💛 Dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with a friend I haven‘t seen in a long time
💛 Delicious meals made with fresh garden vegetables
💛 Iced coffee
💛 The pets

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

Today‘s weird word post has to do with me learning about the origin of the name Bluetooth while reading this ARC of a soon to be published #MiddleGrade book. Bluetooth was named for Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson, a Danish king remembered for uniting tribes in Denmark & Norway.

🔗: https://www.bluetooth.com/about-us/bluetooth-origin/

#WeirdWords #WeirdWordWednesday

Maisie is excited to get a phone, even an old one from her Great Aunt Hazel, but then it also means spending the summer at Hazel‘s house and receiving text message riddles from an unknown sender. I thoroughly enjoyed the historical aspects of this story and the almost time travel story. The characters of Maisie‘s family were pretty standard for middle grade, but Hazel‘s pets were fantastic and key parts of the story.

#NetGalley #MiddleGrade

This was an incredible audio collection of all the Sherlock Holmes stories narrated by Stephen Fry! I‘ve read and listened to some of the stories multiple times and others just once. Some are phenomenal and others much less memorable, but overall it‘s a wonderful collection.

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes #Sherlocked #audiobook

I enjoy Elisabeth Wheatley‘s videos and decided I should try her books. This is the first book of a complete series and available on Hoopla, so I thought it would be a better choice than her new series. It has some interesting world building, but it‘s also very much a first book that sets up a series. I‘m giving it a light pick, and I may or may not pick up the next books when I‘m looking for another light fantasy listen.

#audiobook

💛 Canning projects with fresh produce
💛 Evening reading in the hammock
💛 Starting to get my classroom ready for a new school year
💛 Local festival
💛 The pets

#5JoysFriday #DaiseysJoys

chyron: (noun) an electronically generated caption superimposed on a television or cinema screen

#WeirdWords #WeirdWordWednesday

This is a light pick. I found the narrator‘s story interesting because I could sympathize with the difficulties she faced as a woman, but she was also unbelievably lucky while seeming to have no qualms about moving on from one family to another. She‘s without morals through most of it, and I‘m not convinced she‘s truly penitent at the end. I did like how her story came full circle from Newgate to Virginia and both again.

#1001books #audiobook

I‘m not generally a poetry reader, but this collection is by an author from my hometown so I decided to support his work and give it a read. I‘m reading a few poems each morning this week with breakfast.

#poetry #BookAndBreakfast

I‘m behind on our readalong, only starting Part 2 of Book 2, but I‘m hoping to have more reading time this month and catch up some.

Also, I love sunset reading in the hammock.

#HammockReading #KLBR #DoorstopKristin

I agree with several reviews I read for this one. It started out fairly interesting; I enjoyed the flow of the writing and description of the country as they traveled. However, it got old as each section seemed to repeat the same aimless travel to a different place with never enough money, but through some work and theft, they managed enough for drugs and to find another woman to love and leave.

#1001books #audiobook