The first rule about Book Club is… you don’t stop talking about Book Club. I went and joined an actual big-girl book club, you guys.

I’m pleased to report that I did indeed finish the first book on time and show up for the in-person discussion. This is what we read the first go-round: This is How is Always Is. I suspect would have missed this one had it not been selected for me, but I found it to be surprisingly endearing and insightful… and that’s basically what any good book club is all about– expanding one’s reading repertoire.

Said book club even let me select our second book! This was one passed along from my college professor Auntie who never steers me wrong, so I’m hoping it’s a hit. It’s post-apocalyptic, with a YA feel, in the same vein as Divergent or Hunger Games. (I simply cannot take a serious photograph and I don’t know how I managed to do that to my face.)

Like I need to read more. Whenever I find a stray chunk of time (typically whilst waiting in the car for the kids at one activity or another) I crack the spine of a book.

Additional recent reads:

The Fringe Hours has been an encouraging nonfiction read. Long on my radar, it only recently felt applicable and timely for the full season of [driving]life I’m in.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning was such a good, simple read, in the spirit of Marie Kondo. My minimalist-loving brain was amen-ing in agreement throughout.

Untangled was SO informative, my much older sister and I devoured it in tandem as *ahem* we’re finding “guiding teenage girls through the seven transitions into adulthood” extraordinarily *ahem* pertinent *ahem* these days.

A friend asked me to proof Hidden Joy in a Dark Corner, a touching and powerful (though oft difficult to read) memoir.

I enjoyed this thorough biography of LM Montgomery, House of Dreams. Quoted, from Maud, “If we write truly out of our own heart and experience, that truth will find out and reach its own.”

Running with Scissors is a brazen, bawdy memoir; I can’t recall who recommended it but it was similar in spirit to the Glass Castle, making the reader feel a touch insane themselves as they immerse within the author’s own crazy past.

Aaaand for my wee bairns: 

I believe Rainbow Valley is the 7th installment from the Anne saga. It details her children’s lives and although charming (think Jo’s Boys) we’ve found it slower going than all the others before it.

Little Man enjoyed The BFG (I read it aloud to the girls before he was born), both book and film adaptations. He also enjoyed fizzy whizpopping frobscottle, but didn’t care so much for snozzcumbers.

He also enjoyed Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which I’d read to his big sisters our first year of homeschool.

Caused a brief side-step of a unit study for homeschool fun.

This is a big statement for a bookworm likey myseft, buuuuut Charlotte’s Web might be my all-time favorite. FOR SURE it was formative and helped shape me as a passionate, young reader. My mom read it aloud to me as a youngster, and I read it to the girls when they were tiny. Little Man was overdue. 

I picked up these fun, modern Shakespeare adaptations for the girls to read solo to compliment our proper study of the Bard and his works this year. OMG Shakespeare

And a few volumes I picked up just for looks, for my collection of musty antique tomes:

What are you reading?