Reading on a Rainy Day

One more week down, again a very busy week in work but thankfully with far less worries.  Life My last couple of months were very busy with work, since I started a new project. While there's more coming up over the next few weeks, I am also hoping that maybe I have passed the point where it stops being a part of every waking moment and allow me to be able to read without interrupting thoughts fluttering around in my head. We'll see.  We got enough snow yesterday for the kids to be able to play and make a snow man. All the snow melted by noon but we are getting more overnight so hopefully there's more snow fun to be had.  Reading After not being able to stay with a book long enough to be pulled into it for the past couple of weeks, I was desperately looking for a book that was both a fast read and also one that I would love. That was a high bar to meet even under the best of circumstances, but luckily, yesterday morning, I found just the book. I devoured Meichi Ng's Bare

Published in : 2020 Format read in : ebook Location : Los Angeles, US Rating : 4/5 Why I read it : I believe I saw this book first on the Morning's ToB longlist and then same day came across a copy in my library's Overdrive catalog and decided to read it. One line review : A slow mental destruction waiting to happen, live, as you read the book - not fun but also reinforces how easy it is to miss the signs. Who should read it : If a little stream-of-consciousness and reading about mental illness is something you gravitate towards, I would recommend this book to you.  Soon, you’ll have your own beautiful boy or girl who will look at you with their perfect little face and you’ll feel love and hope and, mostly, you’ll feel the weight of everything that’s ever happened to you and everything that will ever happen to them and you’ll want to run. Thoughts : At the beginning of Pizza Girl , we learn that our unnamed protagonist is pregnant, just out of high school, and working as a pizz

2020 has been a decent year in reading over here. In some ways, it was better than the past few years when the amount of time I spent reading had been steadily declining. Constant changes in life and work were major factors then. Of course, 2020 is no stranger to change but luckily, it didn't keep my away from reading, though it may have influenced it significantly.  A huge chunk of my reading this year came from picture books. I wanted to start tracking them this year since I was reading them with my kids - there were whole months I didn't track any because it did become one more thing to do so my actual count was probably more than what I have tracked.  Favorite books read in 2020 I love how different these six (plus 2 for the March Trilogy volumes) are though there are some similarities as well among some of these. Middle grade book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret was my first favorite read of the year and I only wish I had read it as a child. Rage Against the Min

Oh gosh, what a dreadful week this has been in the US - it wasn't even supposed to be this bad. When I went to sleep on Tuesday night, it was with some anxiety about what the Georgia election results will yield and I woke up in the middle of the night to learn that one of the races had been called. Wednesday really should have belonged to the Georgia winners, instead, we have a terrifying and disgraceful incident to remember. I will be lying if I said I'm no longer worried. The week of the Inauguration is going to be super nerve-wracking. Last week... ... was very tiring. After a nice long break last week, both my husband and I returned to work (from the comforts of our home office). The big change for us was that my daughter returned to school in-person while my son started preschool (or rather almost-preschool). Return to school was actually much smoother than it tends to be and my son actually loved going every day. Since last March, this week was the first time ever that wo

2020, in more ways than one, was a different and atypical year. After three years of minimal reading and blogging, this is the year I dusted the cobwebs off my bookshelves and opened my blog back up to see if I could be here more often than not. There was no way to know without diving right in. And so, I managed to create a routine for the first two-and-a-half months and it felt very good to be blogging again.  And then as a cruel take on the phrase 'best-laid plans', a virus of all things wrecks the world in March. In addition to now taking our work home while also looking after a then-preschooler and a toddler, my company went through a layoff. Thankfully, I still had a job but I was looking at months of adjustment to new routines in all spheres of my life. It was not easy, not by any definition of the word, but thankfully, luckily, it wasn't too bad. The rest of 2020 went by in a blur. On the one hand, I was extremely grateful for the extra family time that we all got. W

Happy New Year again, fellow readers! Three days into this new year - how are we all doing?  The week that was We had my husband's brother's family over for this week and it felt so good to meet them after so long. Like us, they stay home most of the time, barring the occasional grocery runs, so we agreed that a visit will do us all good. Whenever they have visited us in the past (pre-Covid), we've made short day trips or gone shopping often. It was funny that we did none of that this time and still had loads of fun. We watched a lot of movies, played board games, and spent the night of New Year's Eve listening to our favorite current and classic songs. My daughter and her aunt danced away to K-pop while my son took joy in waking everyone up at 6 in the morning even when we had stayed up late the previous night. They just left this morning and so, we're going to spend much of today doing very little and getting ready for the week.  Wrapping up and Planning ahead Ove