It's been a long time since my last post (almost 2 years actually) and so much has happened. My high school boyfriend, Ben, and I reconnected and last September we welcomed our son, Ryder. He was six months old on the 24th of March and he's growing like a weed. Pictures will follow eventually. With the world in the state it is at this precise moment, I have nothing but time on my hands and I decided to revive my blog. So here's the start of something new.
I have a good job as a nurse's aide at a rehab. It's a little scary given the current state of affairs but I love it very much. I work 3 nights a week, 10pm-6am while daddy's home with the baby. I took a CNA class back in January/February and now I just need to schedule the exam in the next 2-3 months. I hadn't worked since early September when the baby was born so it was a bit of an adjustment period.
Since I haven't written anything in so long I'll make this my 2020 goals and set up for the remainder of the new year. Like always this blog will be primarily about books but I'll add in interesting tidbits from the YouTube channels I like, the self care apps I use, and other things I find interesting and valid.
Onto my 2020 reading goals. I've started a bullet journal that is all books all the time, it's nothing special but I love it and it gives me something resembling a creative outlet. My goals for this year, in no particular order are:
- Read 40 books total (I didn't do so well last year, only reading a total of 30 books and some months I didn't finish any at all. This seems like a reasonable amount and so far I am right on track).
- Read (Listen) to more audio books (I listened to my first audio book while travelling between where I was living and my boyfriend's apartment until we moved in together and enjoyed it. I have half a dozen from Audible and I've listened to a couple from the library while doing other things).
- Buy less books; use the library more (I have too many books already, so I hope to use the library for books I don't absolutely need to own).
- Revive blog (It's the end of March, but I'm doing it)
- Read more nonfiction (I read a lot of fiction and I want to read more nonfiction especially biographies and memoirs)
- Read more Kindle books (I have quite a few unread books on my Kindle and I figure if I start reading through them I might eventually be able to start to transition from hard copy books to ebooks)
So those are this years goals. I'll finish up this post with a short overview of what I've read in January and February including the format the books are. A proper March wrap-up will come in the next couple days and we'll get going properly then.
I read 5 books in January: 1 historical fiction, 1 thriller, 1 adult contemporary, and 2 young adult fantasy.
- The Wicked King by Holly Black (2019); the second book in The Folk of the Air trilogy. This was a reread prior to reading the final book in the trio. I loved it just as much as I did the first time I read it and was very excited for book 3. 5/5 stars
- The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black (2019): the third book in The Folk of the Air trilogy. It wasn't a very popular read on GoodReads and with the Booktubers I follow but I enjoyed it and the way that they wrapped up the story. 4/5 stars.
- The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman (2019): an adult contemporary about a introverted young woman named Nina who is very comfortable and set in her ways until she's saddled with a family she never knew existed and her life begins changing rapidly. I identified strongly with Nina and loved this book immensely. 5/5 stars
- The Wives by Tarryn Fisher (2019): I HATED THIS BOOK. It had poor depictions of mental illness, using mental illness as badly done plot devices, which is one of my absolute least favorite tropes. Really there were no redeeming qualities to this book and it was definitely a miss as a Book of the Month pick. 1/5 stars.
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (2008): this book is a epistolary novel about the occupation of the channel islands during WWII. I saw the movie on Netflix and loved it so this became my first library book of the year. I enjoyed it a lot and would definitely recommend it as a slightly different WWII novel. 4/5 stars.
The only book I bought in January was my Book of the Month selection a thriller/ghost story called The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James.
In February, I read a total of 6 books: 2 thrillers, 1 mystery, 1 nonfiction, 1 romance, and 1 literary fiction.,
- Final Girls by Riley Sager (2017): this was a good solid thriller novel about the sole survivors of mass killings, the so-called "final girls". It had a plot twist that I didn't see coming which is always nice in a thriller and I'm glad I tried Riley Sager for a second time when I found the previous book I read mediocre at best. 4/5 stars.
- Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (2019): a nonfiction book about the sex lives of 3 very different women in the United States. It wasn't my favorite book I've ever read but it was written like a novel more so than a nonfiction cultural study which I enjoyed. The three women weren't very likeable but they did feel like the real women they were and I enjoyed it a decent amount. 3/5 stars.
- The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (2019): this is the first Ruth Ware book I've ever read and it was sort of a retelling of the Henry James book The Turn of the Screw which I do really really like. It was a good solid book, written in hindsight via letters from the nanny to her lawyer. The only complaint I had with it was the lack of a 100% definitive ending. 4.5/5 stars.
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017): I read this book because Hulu was making a TV series out in March with Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon that looked really good. It's a slice of life kind of book about life in the suburbs and the secrets and lives seemingly ordinary people have to maintain appearances. 4/5 stars.
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939): classic mystery from The Queen of Mystery. I read this once in middle school (20 years ago or so) and I decided to reread it before launching into other Agatha Christie novels. It was just as good as I remembered. 4/5 stars.
- The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams (2019): one of the biggest romance novels of last year. It's about a baseball player who is going through an impending divorce with his wife and gets brought into a book club with influential men in Nashville who read romance novels to better understand and romance women. I hated the main character but by the end I did enjoy the book well enough. I'm more looking forward to the sequel that follows one of the side characters who I enjoyed much more. 3.5/5 stars.
I bought more books in February as the publication of a sequel I'd been waiting for necessitated a trip to Barnes & Nobel, my weakness and I ended up with four purchases.
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare: my Book of the Month pick. It's a book about a young woman in Africa trying to balance her schooling against the expectations of her society.
- The Other Windsor Girl by Georgie Blalock: a historical fiction book about Queen Elizabeth II's sister Margaret.
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: I read a book by her last year that I absolutely loved and BookTube recommends this one as well so I got it.
- Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland: the sequel to Dread Nation which is a alternate history about zombies in post-Civil War US. I loved the first one and anticipate reading this one.
Anyway this is the end of the first very long blog post, expect another soon.
Happy Reading!
Richelle and Emma
