Reading on a Rainy Day

Back in July of last year, I had posted my 10 favorite reads from the first half of the year. I am glad I did that because I realized that both the quality and quantity of my reading went south in the second half of the year. Not that I had a bad 6 months in reading. There were some really stellar books but not as many as I hoped.   First half of 2021 To recap, these are what I loved from the first half of 2021. I strongly recommend all the above 10 books but the ones that I still remember vividly are Almost American Girl , Good Talk , So You Want to Talk About Race (So good that I couldn't even review it - all I can say is read it), They Called Us Enemy , and Gender Queer (also so good I couldn't review it). Second half of 2021 There was a lot in life and work during the second half of the year. My years seem to trend that way - I typically start off willing to juggle a lot and then halfway through the year, lose steam. What I need to do instead is do less, but do those more

Published : 1929   ||    Format : ebook   ||    Location : US One line summary : Two old friends/acquaintances reconnect years later, but there's a lot at stake this time especially with one friend passing as white and several relationships forming or dying. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well. Thoughts : Irene Redfield and Clare Bellew are two light-skinned Black women living diametrically opposite lives with their families. On the one hand, Irene is living comfortably in the neighborhood of Harlem as a black woman, while Clare is passing as white and living with a white husband, who (ironically) detests black people. When their paths cross one day, there is a strange magnetic pull that both brings them together and keeps them apart. Passing is one of those books where much doesn't seem to happen, and yet much does happen by the time the last page is tu

And just like that, we are through the first week of 2022. Did we make it this far? Life Covid is just getting worse and worse again. I know some say it's not as severe as before so it's okay, but c'mon, Covid wasn't even our reality until two years ago, have we already given up on controlling it or wanting to not walk around expecting to possibly getting sick? Over the last two weeks, so many people that my husband or I know have tested positive. I have seen a lot of memes over the last week advising one to quarantine if they are not positive. Quite a reverse now. Anyways, we are trying to stay put as much as possible, masking when outside or near others.  Monday morning, my daughter woke up in hives. We spent all morning trying to figure out what the cause could be - due to the rise in Covid cases, no appointments were available with her pediatrician that day so we finally elected to do a virtual urgent care at Cincinnati Children's. They suspected that the antibi

This may be the earliest I'm getting a new year's reading goals and plans out. I usually wait until mid January so I can be sure I haven't already abandoned them. Well we'll see how long they last, right? 2022 Plans This year, I am going light on challenges - at the moment, I have not signed up for any. I also don't have any major reading goals, other than maybe a few standard ones.  I want to read at least 50 books that are not children's books or comic books. That's on par with how much I read in previous years so shouldn't be too hard to reach.  I would also like to focus on different focus areas or genres each quarter. If I want to. If something is intriguing me. In the past, I jump a lot between different goals or challenges and overwhelm myself a lot. Obviously, I want to read everything I can in not enough time and it still hasn't sunk in that I won't get to all the books I want to read in one lifetime.  Finally, I want to read a series or

           Published : 2020   ||    Format : ebook   ||    Location : US One line summary : Piranesi is happily living his days, collaborating with The Other, journaling his activities, until a tear appears in his life fabric, a stranger starts popping up in his house to communicate with him. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not. Thoughts : Piranesi spends his days cataloguing his activities and taking care of the House where he stays. This is no ordinary house - it has endless corridors, walls, halls, and statues. The floors get flooded and birds fly into the halls. To Piranesi, this is all normal though. According to him, there is only one other person who stays in the house/world. He calls this person The Other.  His sense of normalcy however, is shattered one day when he sees evidence of another person in their world. The Other seems to know who the third person is and believes a terrible danger will b

Happy New Year, fellow readers and bloggers! Here's hoping (again) that this year is the respite we've all been waiting for.  Life It's been a busy week here. We had family visiting us this week from Boston and everyone had a blast. Good food, good family time, all win-win. We stayed up as late as we could on New Year's Eve but eventually decided to crash 20 minutes to midnight as none of us could keep our eyes peeled open. How was your New Year celebration? Are you doing New Year's resolutions? I haven't been doing them for years (I'm more a fan of quarterly resolutions) but I am certainly hoping to get back to a plant-based whole food diet. I used to do that before the renovations and then for as long as we didn't have our kitchen, my eating habits went south. Now that we are on the other side of the two most unhealthy weeks of the year, I'm looking forward to eating better and working out more. My husband got himself a Peloton so I am looking forw