What September meant for me:
School fully back in session
Chilly mornings (which I like)
Darkness arrives earlier (and I also like)
Wordle
Local politics
Local library
Red leaves
Dumbbells
Household chores
Frustration
Neighborhood walks
Houses for sale (not our’s)
Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album (all of it)
Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather
Kaos on Netflix, Agatha All Along and Inside Out 2 on Disney+
Vibe Check and Ologies podcasts
4 books finished, 2 DNFs
I finished reading This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz. I really liked Lenz’s first book Godland and gave it 5 stars, but this one is just ok and only got 3⭐️. It’s a blend of memoir and ranting against the patriarchal marriages of the US.
The Wild Robot was my pick for bedtime reading to my son. I liked it more than he did. But that’s ok. One of the reasons we take turn picking bedtime reading is because it’s a shared experience, so I want to be able to read middle grade fiction that I will enjoy too. And it broadens book exposure for my son. Not all of the bedtime reading can be like Percy Jackson books, even though that’s very much my son’s preference.
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan is so good. It is (thus far) the best book I’ve read in 2024. It’s an Irish novel about a family, focusing mostly on the women of the family with 4 generations total, but mostly focusing on 3 of them. It has very short chapters, which I tend to like in books. It felt like the perfect book for the weird time of fake fall and late summer.
The last book I read was finished just before September ended and it’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third book in the Time Quintet by Madeleine L'Engle. I think the 3rd book is the best of the series, though I honestly didn’t remember much about the books (especially after the 1st one) so it’s like fresh reading for both of us and maybe I’ll like the next two even more. This is the only one in the series to win a National Book Foundation award, so maybe it is the best. Either way it’s nice that even though the 1st book was my idea to read (and share a childhood favorite) the 2nd and 3rd books of the series were my son’s picks for bedtime reading and he’s given each one 4 ⭐️, which is very generous for him.
Madeleine L'Engle’s books were my fav growing up. I’ll have to introduce the kids to them.