Cleaning out the TBR

I have been spending some time lately cleaning out my To Be Read lists. I have them everywhere, or at least in more places than I probably should. I have shelves in my house that are just for unread books, I have books in my office, and I have a library wishlist. And then there’s Goodreads plus all of the kindle books that I somehow own.

There are books that overlap on some of those lists. There are books that I don’t even remember adding to the lists. There are just so many books. Something I have noticed while purging is the change in my reading desires and interests over the years. I can see what interests and hobbies have been cut from my life. And I am able to zero in on the things that I love, the genres or subjects that I just can’t get enough of.

But in going through them I am finding it easier to clean out some places and not others. when it comes to my shelves at home or on my kindle I struggle with purging the books that I haven’t read. But with my Goodreads or library wishlist, I can prune with no mercy. I can’t even claim that it is because I have already spent money on the books, but cause most of my kindle books were either free downloads or gifted to me.

So why then is it hard to clean them out? I think it is because every true book lover fears running out of books to read so we hoard them. I also think we desperately try to convince ourselves that we will read them all eventually, even though we know we won’t. Or maybe there is some other reason that I will never figure out. But I will still continue pruning and purging my lists, and while I’ll never fully clean them out, maybe I’ll be able to better remember the books on them that I really do want to read.

Questions and Answers

I guess this could be labeled as a ‘get to know the blogger’ post this week.

It is not a secret that I read a lot. That concept is crazy to some people and they don’t understand how I can do it. Other people I’ve encountered want to read more and ask me how I manage to do it. So, I’ve compiled a list of questions that I get asked pretty regularly and have answered them here for all of you as well.

How many books do you read at a time?
Two, one fiction and one nonfiction. If I’m honest sometimes it’s multiple nonfiction at a time.

How do you balance them?
I specifically only read one of each larger genre of fiction/nonfiction so I don’t mix up my plots. I won’t start a new fiction until I have finished my current fiction. If I am reading more than one nonfiction at a time they’ll fall into different subgenres like a memoir and a gardening book for example.

How do you choose what to read next?
Typically if I have been given an advanced reader’s copy of a book that will be my priority, but sadly that doesn’t always happen because of other things going on in my world. However, if a publisher reaches out to me specifically vs the means I have of making requests to them their books will by default go to the top of my priority list. If I don’t have any arcs then I will scroll my bookshelves, library (in person and ebooks), and my kindle shelf until I find something that calls to me.

How do you find the time to read each day?
My nonfiction reading happens during the day. I do freelance work from home so I have flexibility in my schedule to read during the day and call it working. I read fiction at night before bed. I also have a fantastic bathtub where some additional reading of whatever in-progress book my soul is leaning towards happens a few times a week (this is also where that extra nonfiction book tends to sneak in).

Why is the time split having nonfiction during the day and fiction at night?
Years ago I mentioned to my therapist (who is amazing and had known me for years at this point) that whenever I read nonfiction at night I couldn’t sleep. She said that was because my “fixer/problem solving” brain was being triggered and I wanted to focus on the nonfiction I just read instead of resting.

What are the best books of each type you have read this year?
Fiction has to be The Younger Wife. I haven’t wanted to stay up reading or read a novel in the middle of the day in forever and I could not put it down (I wrote a full review last month when it was published that you can read here). Nonfiction is probably The Book of Hope. Jane Goodall is an amazing person and an inspiration as to what the world needs in humans. This book was written half pre-Covid and half mid-Covid so it is extremely timely.

What are you reading now?
Fiction: I am reading an advanced copy of A Letter in the Wall, by Eileen Brill that comes out May 24th.
Nonfiction: I am finishing up Grateful American, by Gary Sinise and then I’ll be starting Living on Purpose, by Amy Eliza Wong which is another advanced copy of a book coming out May 24th.

I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me. Check out the about page for more information on that and how I get my hands on these fantastic books.

Ukraine

Like most of the world, I have been struggling to process everything going on in Ukraine. Once again these people are being forced from their homes because of the tyrannical oppression of another country’s leader. And like many, I feel at a loss of what I can do to help. And while books don’t make things better, they can educate us on the history of this oppressed country, buying them can help the authors there to provide something for their families, and sometimes they can give us the inspiration to find a way to help those in need. So I’ve compiled a list of books here that cover the history of Ukraine, fiction stories set there, and books written by Ukrainian authors.

These links are to my shop on bookshop.org. If you buy from there I will get a commission from your purchase. And if you buy one of these books or any other regarding Ukraine, that commission will be donated to World Central Kitchen which has been on the ground since day one giving those in Ukraine, and fleeing the most basic of needs: food and hope.

History of Ukraine:
Red Famine
The Gates of Europe
Midnight in Chernobyl
Borderland
Ukraine and Russia
In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine
The Ukrainian Night
The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks

Stories set in Ukraine:
The Last Green Valley
My Real Name is Hanna
The White Guard
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets
I Will Die in a Foreign Land
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Everything Is Illuminated

Authors from Ukraine:
This is a list of contemporary authors with a link to one of their books, others can be found on the bookshop shelves
Serhiy Zhadan
Oksana Zabuzhko
Yurii Andrukhovych
Maria Matios
Iren Rozdobudko

Thank you for joining me on a written adventure to help save some of the world. If you know of any other books that would help to educate and empower us with knowledge please let me know.

Short Stories

This year I had a plan to read more short stories, and I saw it as a way to increase my reading and experience different authors, subjects, cultures, etc., all at the same time. In the two months that I have been working on this plan, I have come to realize that I do not enjoy short stories.

Short stories are assigned regularly in school, and I always hated it. I rarely connected with assigned readings in school, so I assumed I would enjoy short stories more if I were to pick them myself. That was wrong. It turns out that short stories do nothing to feed my soul when it comes to reading. Despite their length, I find myself growing bored quite early in the stories. Maybe that is because I expect the attention-grabbing action to happen early since it only has a few pages to tell a complete story instead of hundreds.

Now that I have come to recognize and accept my feelings towards short stories and admit those feelings to the world, I have taken them off of my reading plan for the year and re-focus on my other reading intentions.

Birthday Books!

Today is my birthday! 

I was reminiscing the other day about books we used to intentionally read with our kids around their birthdays. And as I get older it means that they are getting older too, so it cued up the nostalgic mom feels as well. But, these are also books we tend to buy as gifts for the new early readers for their birthdays, because well, I gift books, it’s what I do. 

So what are my go-to birthday book gifts?

How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Birthday? My son loved all of the How Do Dinosaur books so they hold an extra special place in our hearts.

Happy Birthday to You, by Dr. Seuss. I am aware. That he is a controversial figure right now, but I’m trying to focus on the fact that hundreds of children would not be the avid readers that they are without his books. I know that looks like I’m sweeping controversy under the rug, but after the last 2 years, I’m tired of focusing on the bad, and it’s my birthday so I’m only having good thoughts today.

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Birthday Again, I know that I have seen many a post about people of my age revisiting these characters and realizing that Papa Bear needed a reality check. But, also, again, it’s my birthday, and I’m asking you to indulge me and not ruin my gifting ideas.

Birthday Monsters and Happy Birthday, Little Pookie, by Sandra Boynton. I mean who doesn’t love Sandra Boynton books? I could probably write an entire post about how much I love her books.

I hope you enjoyed my gift to you of sharing my favorite kid’s birthday books. 

I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me.

Veterans

In honor of Veteran’s Day I went looking for some biographies of service members that I had not come across before.

The Man Behind the Guns, by Edward Longacre

Valor of Many Stripes, by Scott Baron

Women Military Pilots of WW2, by Lois Merry

John Langellier has an entire series on North Texas Military biographies and memoirs. Many seem quite interesting and I’ll probably be adding them to my try to-read list for next year.

If you have a favorite veteran biography let me know because I love biographies, and veterans are such an important group in our world.

I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me.

Crappy Book Year

I don’t know about others, but for me, the entire year has been fairly disappointing in new books. I am stingy about giving 4 and 5 stars, but I haven’t come across many new books deserving of them this year. 

While talking about this with my husband, we began to wonder if the COVID pandemic is partially to blame. So many people had more time for writing, and the demand for books was higher in 2020. It made us wonder if editors were stretched too thin and that maybe the usual attention to detail was pushed aside in some cases, like with consistently best-selling authors. Were their projects placed into a pile of “don’t worry too much, they know what they’re doing”? Because in a few cases this year, I have to wonder if that was it.

And then there’s indie publishing. Were they short-staffed or overwhelmed with great ideas that maybe didn’t get worked through as well as they should have before going to the presses? I’ve encountered a couple of indie publishers that I think publish anything they are presented with because they don’t want to discourage writers, but some of them should not have been put out.

And what about self-published books. With the internet and everyone being at home last year, self-published books were on the rise. But who reviewed them first? Was there a peer-editing or beta reading process, or did they just through them out to the world? 

I am aware that I could be totally off on all of this. It could just be me. Maybe I’m on book burnout. Or maybe I’m onto something.

I know that there are plenty of people who disagree with my thoughts, and I love that. Books are not meant to resonate with everyone. I know that for every book that I don’t enjoy, someone else considers it a favorite. And that is one of the great things in the book world. We unite in conversation over our bookish opinions, whether we agree or not. I love hearing why someone hated a book that I loved or loved a book that I hated. 

Classic Literature

Let’s talk classic literature. Do you love the classics? Do you avoid them? Do you adore one author but hate another? Me, I love Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, but I cannot stand Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy. I’m a big Jane Eyre fan but can skip everything else from the Bronte sisters. 

What makes classics such a genre of love or hate? It seems as of all the literary genres out there, the classics are without neutral territory, you’re either a huge fan or you avoid them at all costs. Is it the outdated writing? Is it our modern and industrialized lifestyles? Is it a lack of tension and excitement compared to what was scandalous then versus now? 

Maybe it is our technological century, but so many of the classics are easier to ingest by watching a movie version (even then I still can’t stand Tolstoy). I feel this goes for kids’ classics too. My kids hate Beatrix Potter books, but they have enjoyed watching every version of them as a movie or show. The same goes with Paddington Bear and Mary Poppins. 

This is another struggle for me as I would prefer to read the books, but when I cannot get through it I question wanting to watch the movie. Many times with these older stories the movie is better because they have at least cut down the descriptive text and modernized some language. But sometimes the movie is just as difficult to get through. 

And sometimes, both the book and movie versions are great. The ones I immediately think of are Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

So do we just give up on reading classic literature and wait for someone with a more patient and artistic mind to turn it into a movie? I don’t intend to do that as there are some classics that I can get through. In fact, I picked up Nabakov from the library and will be cracking into Lolita soon, or at least trying.

I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me.

Back to School

Back to School time this year is going to look very different for a lot of families. My children will be going back to in-person schooling for the first time since March 2020. They’ll also be going to a new school (a side effect of military life). So there has been a lot of talk about school anxiety in our house for a while. 

When they were younger, we would find books about going to school and read through them in the weeks leading up to the first day. Some of the following are old favorites in our house; others are new but still look like great reads if you’ve got an anxious school-age child that needs a reminder that school can be fun.

If You Take a Mouse to School Who doesn’t have fun with these books? And since everyone is familiar with one of the books in this series, you know you can’t go wrong with it.

My Weird School These are the easiest chapter books, but my kids still go back to them at times when they need something to reset their moods.

My Mom is Going Back to School This book is adorable and a fantastic idea! Kids get confused sometimes when parents go back to school, so having something to help explain is a handy tool. There is one for dads too. 

Back to School with All New Rules This focuses on the idea of going back to school with COVID restrictions and precautions in place. 

This year will be an interesting experiment for us all, even after last school year’s crazy everything. Good luck to you and your children!

I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me.

Why She Wrote

It is not a secret that I am a sucker for a biography. Make it about an author or a woman, and I’m even more likely to be drawn to it. Then, there are the few that hit the trifecta; Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers is one of those books.

Why She Wrote is a fantastic collection of the basics you need to know about some of the most notorious female writers out there. It covers a brief family history and other interesting personal histories about each author. But then it gets into the struggles that they faced trying to get their works published in an industry that even today does not give women writers all the credit that we deserve. 

The format of this book is a great medium to reach different types of readers. There is a page of written text with information about the writer, and then there are a few pages of graphic novelized biography about them as well. This means that those who don’t like to read do not have to read much before getting into the graphic pages, and those that are not into graphic novels (like myself) can dive into the writing and gloss over the drawn pages. 

The read on this is so simplistic but incredibly informative. And the format makes it an easy read. I read the entire thing on a plane during our spring break trip. 

I think this would be a great addition to libraries and English classrooms in both middle and high schools. I have a few friends who teach middle school English, and I am considering sending a copy of this book to their classrooms.

 I am an affiliate member with bookshop.org, so any purchases through the links in this post will give a commission back to me.