Reading on a Rainy Day

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Showing posts from January, 2020

Choosing from Dystopian Titles | Reading from my Shelves

One of my goals this year (as in years past) is to read more books from my own shelves. I'm aiming for a conservative pace of one book a month, hoping that feels doable. This month, I picked Becoming . While trying to decide what I wanted to read next month, I decided to list the top three books that are calling out to me. As I was writing this post, I found it very interesting that all the three books below are set in dystopian societies. I wonder what my brain is trying to tell me. I typically find it hard to walk away from dystopian titles, especially those that are less focused on individual heroism and more on how the society responds and adapts. What feels dystopian today could be tomorrow's reality. These books are all written by women authors and also came heavily recommended, which is how they found their way to my shelves, of course. Of the three books below, the most recent one is a 2019 release while the oldest book is from 2011. The Testaments by Margaret

When the Going Gets Tough | Weekly Snapshot

Remember the cold and cough I mentioned couple of weeks back? It took two weeks for it to complete its round through our house. I was the last to get hit but also took longest to recover - a very busy work week meant I couldn't rest much either. Thankfully that's behind us and hopefully we are done for this season. Frustrated about Last year has been one of our most expensive years ever. On top of all the usual expenses like bills, taxes, school expenses, and living expenses, we've also had to replace our roof (thankfully covered by insurance), buy a whole new A/C unit (gah! have you ever noticed how much these things cost?), get a new car, a new fridge, and a new dishwasher. The car was the lone leisure expense, everything else was a necessity because things broke. It got to a state where if each of these items weren't expensive, we would have laughed at the coincidence and ridiculousness of it all. And then, yesterday, our wall microwave decided to join its o

2020 Reading Goals and Challenges

Is is too late to share reading goals? Although I have been thinking about my 2020 reading goals for a while, I kept going back and forth between wanting to write about it (and thus feeling held to my words) and just going with the flow (which, as we all know, is not as fun). Half the joy is in the planning. Before I talk about 2020, let me be honest - my reading count for each of the past three years was in the single digit. I did however read parts of many self-improvement books. When I was in the mood for one, I read enough of the book to get a gist of what it's suggesting and then I was done. So, with such minimal reading in the preceding years, I don't want to go full on gung ho about my reading goals for the year. I'm keeping them simple, and hopefully achievable and intentional. Read more Let's start with a basic goal, yeah? If I can beat the numbers from last year, I'll consider that a win. But I'm going to go a little further - I'd like

BusyTown and Little Critter | From the kids' bookshelves

I don't recall if I ever mentioned this before - my daughter LOVES books. She can't read by herself yet though she knows her letters and understands the concept of print awareness. If you volunteer to read a book, she's definitely going to be in the audience. My son hasn't shown a lot of interest in books yet - he is more into destroying stuff and tearing papers so I'm taking my time with him. Most days, the only time my daughter and I get to curl around a book is before bedtime. So we make a big deal out of it - some days, we negotiate with each other on how many books should be read that night. She's always for more, the merrier. I try to keep an eye on the clock. No matter how many books we read, we do make it fun. She usually has at least one question per page, so it's a while before we are done. Richard Scarry's BusyTown While we do read different books and authors, some weeks, I try to focus on a particular author or series. Last couple of we

A look back at the past three years

On December 20th of last year, my phone buzzed to wish me a happy blogiversary. It had been 10 years since I had started this blog. As in the past two years, I wondered if I wanted to archive this site. I thought it a pity that I had hit a milestone and yet, wasn't blogging anymore. However, I was still too attached to the idea of blogging, even if I wasn't actually doing it, and I didn't want to obliterate my 7-year treasure trove of experiences and opinions in here. When I had first started blogging, I was a grad student going through an existential crisis ( translation: I was doing anything and everything but working on my thesis ). When I hit pause on the blog in 2017, I was mom to a 2-year old and had just changed jobs and moved to a new city. Through my blogging life, I had graduated, landed a job, seen my brother through a terrible sickness, got married, adopted a dog, lost my mother-in-law, bought my first house, got promoted, welcomed a baby, lost a dear uncle,

Under the weather | Weekly Snapshot

It's been a somewhat miserable tail-end of the week over here. Almost everyone got hit by something like the flu. We didn't try to get an official diagnosis but I'm pretty sure it was the flu as multiple kids in my daughter's pre-k class has been diagnosed with it. By now, we're beginning to get over it but I'm bummed that the weekend is over before I could even enjoy it. Although my daughter recovered first, she caught some respiratory bug last night and has been coughing almost non-stop. It's happened before so I was hoping it will pass soon but when that didn't happen by noon today, I was ready for any kind of soother to help her through those dreadful-sounding coughs. We just returned back from a trip to urgent care and the breathing treatment seemed to have helped a wee bit. Still not out of the woods though. Looking ahead: Work is going to be busy this week. There's a major release that we've been preparing for, but we'll at least

Happy New Year! My First Book of 2020

Happy New Year! Blogging after a long break sure feels very refreshing (and almost without expectations, which is a great feeling to have). I'm still working through my comeback post but in the meantime, I've been debating which book to start the year with. For the past week or so, I've been reading V. E. Schwab's A Darker Shade of Magic . As engrossing as this book is, it isn't a fast read (yet). So I found myself yearning for a break after nearly falling asleep while reading it (to be fair, it was past my bedtime). Usually if I'm reading a book like that, I like to pair it with a fast-paced nonfiction book. But for some reason, I was struggling to find the right one. In the past, I didn't care much for the first or last book I read in a year. The year end/beginning weeks were usually busy and I'd always been acutely aware of the tall stack of books waiting to be read. However, being on a blogging break did wonders to my TBR - it wiped it out empty.