January Wrap-Up

The Prince & The Dressmaker by Jen Wang

A fun YA novel about a prince who likes to wear dresses and the seamstress he discovers. Definitely had modern sensibilities despite taking place 200 years ago. 4/5

Dinosaurs of the District of Columbia by Peter M. Kranz

A fun little book about dinosaurs found in my area. Short and readable with lots of visuals. 4/5

Hobo Mom by Charles Forsman

A slim graphic volume with minimal colors. Lots of feelings. Good utilization of the visual medium to show, not tell. 4/5

The Humans by Matt Haig

The Good Place meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I greatly enjoyed this. 5/5

Andre the Giant by Box Brown

It didn’t have quite the level of detail I would have wanted but was definitely interesting. 3.5/5

My Friend Anna by Rachel Williams

It’s hard to feel bad for so many of the wealthy people Anna ‘Delvey’ Sorokin hurt. But all of the ordinary people? That’s a different story. Williams did her own audiobook and actually did a good job. 4/5

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

Since they’re all on Kindle Unlimited and I’ve got Kindle Unlimited, it seemed as good a time as any to reread the series. It still holds up, even if Rowling has revealed herself to be a trash fire of a person. 4/5

Bad Island by Doug TenNapel

A very fun and interesting story about a family vacation gone very awry. 4/5

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

I go into more detail here but it was very good. 4.25/5

Thirsty Mermaids by Kay Leyh

A small pod of mermaids enjoy human booze and decide to get legs to go get more. There’s just one problem. They don’t know the spell to turn back. A very fun romp that touches on the power of friendship and chosen family 5/5

Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier by Mark Adams

Adams retraces the 1899 Harriman Expedition around coastal Alaska. An excellent balance of history and memoir, I greatly enjoyed this book. 5/5

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

A group of middle aged final girls are being targeted. Hendrix did a great job with this classic trope in the modern era. A few things I thought would happen did but there were so many twists and turns. 4.25/5

Children’s Books from January

My newly 2 year old spawn and I read a variety of new books. Some were purchased or found in Little Free Libraries. Others were from the library.

Cat’s New Hat by Rebecca Purcell

A cat must retrieve his hat on a windy day. Fun and cute. 5/5 from the kid, 4/5 from me

Goodnight Virginia by Adam Gamble

A cute book that highlights fun things in our state. 4/5

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs: I Love Them All by Chad Geran

A silly and fun books about dogs. I’m a Dog Person so I loved it. 5/5

Are You a Cow? by Sandra Boynton

It’s a good primer for basic animals but not her best. 3/5

The Girl and The Wolf by Katherena Vermette

A wolf who helps. I loved it 5/5

Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds

Funny and spooky fun 5/5

A Tangle of Brungles by Shobha Viswanath

A (good) silly way to teach names of animal groups. It has a cadence I really like. 4/5

I Love My Fangs by Kelly Leigh Miller

A sweet and spooky story about losing teeth 5/5

Green Tractor by Valeria Petrone

A green tractor helps on a farm. Spawn gives it 5/5 but it was 3.75/5 for me.

Future Engineer by Lori Alexander

Very similar to the [science field] for Babies. I liked it. 5/5

Mr. Lion Dresses Up by Britta Teckentrup

My son wanted to read it but it was only in Spanish. Between Google translate and context, we got to enjoy it. 4/5

A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars by Seth Fishman

More about absurdly large numbers than stars which I found mildly disappointing. The art is excellent though. 4/5

La Llorona and Lucha Libre from last year are still favorites. The Scariest Thing in the Castle came back. The spawn loved it last year and had fun in the library but once we were home, he started crying every time we tried to read it.

I set a goal of reading 20,000 pages this year so all these little books count on the first read. The toddler insists on reading his favorites multiple times but I don’t want to know how many times I’ve read Goodnight Moon.

Magic for Readers

A mysterious death at a magic high school leads to them calling in a private investigator. Ivy Gamble knows about magic because her estranged sister teaches at the school. Now, Ivy has to solve a murder while dealing with family baggage.

Sarah Gailey is on my author TBR for the year because I’ve heard so many good things about her work. She has a diverse collection of genre fiction to her name. I opted for this one since I decided to reread Harry Potter this year.

This is definitely a magic school that deals with adult issues like sex, teen pregnancy, and the subversive kind of manipulations only teenager girls do. It was gritty and messy in a realistic way. The magic was also more complex. There are echoes of actual science in some of the explanations. The level of complexity Gailey brought to her magic system was excellent.

Ivy, the PI, was a very realistic and compelling character. She was very flawed and had so many emotional scars. Her denial was hard to read but it was so human and well done. The ending wasn’t the best little bow of happiness you want for someone as broken as Ivy but it was very realistic.

In making her characters and story close to real, it was also kind of depressing. I have similar damage to Ivy and it was so hard to watch her keep making mistakes. That knocked it down a smidge for me. 4.25/5

LOL, No

Someone posted this list in one of my book groups. As a toddler mom, I laughed. This list is meant for a very specific type of bookish person. They have one job, disposable income, no kids, ample free time, reliable transportation, and NO ONE ELSE.

It’s terrible so I’m reading it for filth.

1-4 Bwahahaha

5-7 These are mostly doable, although I can trust my brutish spawn around paper yet. Fortunately, our libraries have board books.

8 & 10 OK

9 You lost me at collage

11 I’ll tweet it. Maybe.

12-14 I’ll do that with all that uninterrupted free time I have working part time and wrangling a toddler.

15 Fucking where Susan?

16 A plant because I need another to keep the toddler and dog from getting into

17-20 No.

21 Are you volunteering to babysit?

22 I live in a condo. Whose lawn am I using?

23 I actually kind of want to do this so I’m not mad at it

24-26 Bwahahaha

27 I do want to do this. I’ve only been to one branch in my county

28 Moot

29-32 With all that free time I don’t have. My area is pretty liberal so I’d have to fight censorship elsewhere.

33 I have a kid. This is a daily occurrence for even mediocre parents.

34 & 35 When?

36 Fun in theory

37 Fun idea if you have slightly older kids

38 Done it. I like reading while walking on the treadmill but lack the free time.

39 Maybe

40 & 42 This costs money. Keep it.

41 & 44 Or I could keep focusing on books I’ll enjoy. Fun idea for someone else.

43, 45, 46, & 48 When?

47 & 49 I’m in.

50 & 51 Bwahahaha

52 Solid idea

Less than 10 of these are things I want to spend my limited time on. A quarter of these made me say “You know there’s a pandemic, right?”

I suspect there’s 2 reasons the author thought this breathtakingly tone deaf list was worth ‘printing.’ She young and naive enough to not realize not everyone lives the way she does. She’s old enough to know better but is too insulated or self-involved to care.

2021 Casual Challenge Wrap-Up

How did I do half-heartedly trying several reading challenges?

Personal Challenge

Christmas – Christmas by the Book
Parenting – Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting

Missed: Mythology/Fairytale, Reread

I only missed 2 from by personal challenge but I think some of my time would have been better spent rereading a book I loved than some of the 3 stars reads I had. I definitely want to try to delve more into retellings of common lore in 2022. It’s one of my favorite tropes.

PopSugar Challenge

TBR book with the prettiest cover – The Wisdom of Wolves

I missed A LOT of these. I’m kind of sorry about ‘oxymoron in the title’. That could have been fun. I might be able to stretch OK Boomer to fit ‘social justice issue’ but it wouldn’t really make a difference.

BookRiot Read Harder Challenge

Middle grade mystery – The Halloween Moon
Cover you dislike – The Mary Shelley Club
Latinx Memoir – Travesia

The Mary Shelley Club cover did not represent the book at all. It was a very random choice IMHO. Travesia was a mediocre graphic memoir about a girl and her family illegally crossing the US border. It would have been better as a picture book and needed more detail to be a decent YA book. I missed quite a few of the other challenges but that’s not surprising since I wasn’t really trying. It’s hard to fall into most of these.

Reading Glasses Challenge

I nailed all the activities but I did not read a poetry collection and I don’t think I read a banned book. I probably read something recommended by a librarian but as someone who mainly reads ebooks and audiobooks, it’s hard to know. Not by best but not my worst.

Professional Book Nerds Challenge

I missed 5 out of 12 which is pretty disappointing. This is one of the more attainable ones but I didn’t feel like reading a cookbook or play. I read a lot of recent releases rather than something from 20 years ago. I could stretch Christmas by the Book to fit Book about a Book but I’m not that pressed about it.

Books in the Freezer Challenge

Four word title – The Mary Shelley Club
Heard about on the pod – Halloween Fiend
Indie author – Halldark Holidays
Freezer Book – The 2020 Commission Report

Missing are trans author, Latinx author, and book from when I was 17. The 2020 Commission Report is speculative fiction written as nonfiction about what a nuclear war with North Korea would have looked like. While most people wouldn’t consider this horror, it unsettled me more than any other horror book I read this year. I used to drive past the Pentagon regularly and live in one of the areas mentioned in the book. This was so possible and written very much like a federal document. It definitely made me uncomfortable in the way good horror should.

Not my best, even for a casual attempt. 2021 was a bit of a mess so I’m not mad about this. Maybe I’ll do better this year since some of these seem easier. Maybe not. I’ll keep reading either way.

December Wrap-Up

Making the best use of my snow day and posting my reading for 2021’s final month.

The Wisdom of Wolves by Jim and Jamie Dutcher

An excellent piece of nonfiction about how wolves truly are. They (eventually) talk a bit about how variable pack structure is, the relationship to other animals, and the hatred of them by humans. I just wished there’d been a bit more. 4/5

Christmas by the Book by Anne Marie Ryan

This was the perfect blend of sweet and satisfying Christmas story and real world hardships. I highly recommend it. 5/5

OK Boomer, Let’s Talk by Jill Filipovic

I’ve never felt both so seen and so depressed by a book. I go into more detail here. 4/5

A Cross-Country Christmas by Courtney Walsh

This felt exactly like a Hallmark holiday movie as a book. Old feelings, slightly contrived situation, plot that stretches my willing suspension of disbelief. It was fine. 3/5

If the Fates Allow by Rainbow Rowell

A short story and Christmas during COVID times. Enjoyable but as a lifelong East coaster, I didn’t get a lot of the Midwest references. 4/5

A Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting by Susie Allison

Informative and draws on a mix of personal experience as a teacher and as a mother. We’ll see how the advice applies. 4/5

Jingle Bell Pop by John Seabrook

A short nonfiction audiobook about popular Christmas songs. Enjoyable, informative, and well done by the narrator. I just wanted a little bit more of the music talked about in the work to play as an example of what was being discussed. It’s not like Bezos can’t afford it. 4/5

I Am Not Starfire by Yoshi Yoshitani

I did not realize this was based on the Teen Titan characters but it’s still fun going in blind. Starfire’s daughter is nothing like her so teen angst happens until hero angst happens. I really enjoyed this. Very fun. 5/5

A Dog Year by Allison Hilborn-Tatro

A sober, neurotic therapist takes in 2 elderly shih-tzus when their owner dies. They help break down her walls and open her life. 3.75/5

Halldark Holidays edited by Gabino Iglesias

This was pretty good for an indie anthology. The stories were a solid mix of quality and theme. The downside was quite a few typos they missed. My average was 3.8 which sounds about right. As a toddler mom and Dog Person, my tolerance for dog and infant death has plummeted but there was still plenty for me to enjoy. 3.75/5

Empty the Pews edited by Chrissy Stroop

A diverse, interesting, and important anthology from folks who left their Christian faith. I talk about more here. 5/5

Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide by J. K. Rowling

Almost all Harry Potter content is currently available on Kindle Unlimited so don’t @ me. It seemed to switch back and forth between Rowling’s actual thoughts and ‘nonfiction style telling of fictional story.’ Pick one. Still fun but Rowling’s behavior and lack of narrative consistency want great. 3.75

The assortment of short works led to this being a prolific reading month. I’m glad I’m ending this year on a good note.

New Year No Buy

I have too much stuff. One of the big things my husband and I want to do in the new year is declutter and get more control over our condo. The last thing I need to do is add to the chaos.

For the month of January, I’m not allowed to buy the following.

No makeup

In the last 6 months, I can count the number of times I’ve worn makeup on one hand. With caution around the latest COVID variant, I have even less of a reason. There’s lots of fun cosmetics out there (ya girl loves color shift) and I don’t need any of them.

No lotion

I have multiple lotions to work through before I order any more

No soap or body wash

I’m friendly with a soap maker. I currently have a backlog of fun soap to enjoy. If you know of any affordable and cruelty body wash, I might consider it to mix it up later in the year.

No shoes

I have winter boots and sneakers that will serve my purposes well. I cannot fathom a reason to buy shoes before February.

No audiobooks

I have a backlog of great options and access to multiple libraries.

No ebooks

I have a backlog of great options and access to multiple libraries.

No physical books

I’ve barely read physical books for 2 years. My spawn is not getting less grabby or demanding. I can skip this for a month or three.

No music

I have large and various collection of music. Unless Taylor drops another surprise album, I’m not spending money on it this month.

No jewelry

I wear the same stud earrings 95% of the time so my piercings don’t close. I rarely wear necklaces or scarves because I wear my mask on a cord.

No clothes

This is one of the tougher ones. My body has been on a weird journey since I gave birth 2 months before the pandemic hit. Finding clothes that fit well has been work.

I found cotton blend bootcut pants from Macy’s and bought 3. I found wicking polyester bootcut pants from Target and bought 3. I found a tee that fit well at Costco. I have it in 4 colors. I found a good wicking tank top and have it in several colors.

I’m slowly starting to have a uniform. Clothing that just works is a beautiful thing. Getting here was such a journey that I got in the habit of always being on the lookout. I need to break that twitch.

I’ve got 3 content subscriptions. I’m keeping Libro.fm to support my local indie. I’m currently trying to pause my Audible subscription. Their originals keep me coming back but I’m trying to space out how often they get my money. Harry Potter just came to Kindle Unlimited so I’m keeping that for now but would like to cancel it by the end of Q1.

One thing I want to do with the money I’ll be saving is getting some things mended and altered at the tailor. Use what you’ve got.

January TBR

Here’s my TBR for the beginning of 2022.

Tip of the Iceberg by Mark Adams

I already started the audiobook. It’s a mix of personal memoir and relevant history. Alaska is one of my favorite places I’ve ever been so I’m excited. I’m hoping to grab the physical book from the library to see if there’s any pictures.

The Humans by Matt Haig

My library has a waitlist while Kindle Unlimited has it. I’ve been curious about Haig’s writing for a while. I’ve heard this is an alien studying humans while pretending to be one of us.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling

It’s free, readily available, and still good.

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

A graphic novel I got from my library. My condo ate it so I need to find it and read it before it’s due back.

I’ll probably read another free Harry Potter short while I’m at it.