August was hot. While I felt like I made it through the first days of summer in a better mood this year, it seems my summertime seasonal depression had simply decided to wait a bit to sink in. That’s okay. I am grateful for that respite, and overall August was good. Both my baby squids have August birthdays, so we did some small-scale celebrating. Dance class started again, which is always the highlight of my week. I didn’t finish many books this month, but just three more books will hit my goal for the year, so I am well ahead Read More
Tag: Book Review
Everything I Read in July 2021
July was a good month for reading and will help me achieve my reading goal well before the end of the year. It was miserably hot and humid, so I only went outside to mow the lawn, and listened to audiobooks while mowing. Life kept throwing curve balls during July, but I don’t want to dwell on that, so let’s get right into talking about books. Shall we? The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon In June I took a little road trip and attended the Fouke Monster Festival. It was a lot of fun and suffice to say, I met Read More
Everything I Read in June 2021
We are halfway through 2021 and I am well ahead of my reading goal. Last month I only finished a couple of books, but I had started several of these. Summertime in NWA is hot and humid, which makes for good stay-in-the-AC-and-read weather. Here are the books I read and my opinion on them. Click the underlined titles or images for Amazon links. The Assassin’s Blade I have been a little heavy on the nonfiction lately, so I was in the mood for fantasy. I previously read Throne of Glass, and I had some issues with it, but I decided Read More
Everything I Read in May and Why It’s Only Two Books
May was a transition month for me. I only finished two books, but that is not a fair representation of how much reading I did. In the first few days of June, I have finished two more books, but those will go into next month’s book post. Summertime is traditionally the hardest for me, and last year my health completely feel apart during this time, so my #1 focus right now is prioritizing health and the rest and self-care that helps me maintain it. I also began teaching weekly classes in the PBT Institute community this month. More on that Read More
Everything I Read in April 2021
Sitting with my cup of coffee at 5am on a Saturday morning, I try to think of April and realize, it snowed, didn’t it? I gave myself the month off. In March I finished my PBT Institute coaching certification. I decided to start my coaching classes in May. There was some prep work to do in April, but I also focused on rest and enjoying springtime between rain storms. I received both my vaccine shots during the month, and I attended a beautiful outdoor wedding. Maybe April was the month things started to find their way to a new normal. Read More
2021 First Quarter Goals Update and Books I Read in March
I’ve typed a first paragraph a few times and deleted it. What do I want to say about the first three months of 2021? They happened. There has been good stuff and difficult stuff. I never made a post about what my goals are for 2021. That’s okay. I will just jump in here and tell you how I am doing with them. I made progress on some goals, and I read some books. Let’s talk about that. Goals So Far Activity. One goal is to attend another 125 Pure Barre classes by the end of the year. That will Read More
Books I Read in February 2021
February is a short month, but I finished to read another seven books in addition to the seven I read in January. After reviewing what I read in January, I mentioned my intention to read more fiction. I did a direct flip and six out of seven were fiction in January. Some of these will count towards a challenge that my book club is doing. After being in a reading slump for a lot of 2020, it feels really good to be off to a great start. According to Goodreads, I am seven books ahead of schedule for my 2021 Read More
Books I Read in January 2021
How is reading going for you in 2021 so far? I read seven books in January. I’m going to give some brief thoughts on each one here, then I need to get to reading some fiction, because six of my seven January reads were nonfiction. The images on these are huge. I don’t know why and I’m not skilled enough to change them, but if you click on the image, it will conveniently take you to the book on Amazon via affiliate link. Happy reading! Monsters of Men is the third book in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. Read More
Gettin’ Gritty
Do you have grit? I imagine that most people like to think they do, but maybe I am projecting, because I want to be gritty. I can point to numerous situations in my life that have called for grit, times when I persevered. There have also been times when I quit. Times when I dropped one goal for another, games I lost, balls I dropped. Does that mean I don’t have it? This post is a sort of two-fold review. I listened to Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. It has been on my list for Read More
Untamed: Building a Coalition of Cheetahs
Back to my original question: What do I want to say about this book? I loved it. I was on the waitlist at the library, but when a friend starting sharing about it, I had to buy a hardcover version also. I have so many notes, highlights, bookmarks. There was only one thing in the book I disagreed with, and that is more an issue of semantics. The love-at-first-site narrative and “my sexuality is Abby” raises a few red flags for me, but I also kind of relate. I have referred to my own sexuality as “hetero-monogamous” because when I’m Read More