Monday, January 31, 2022

Gratitude 2022: Intro Post / Grateful for Something Today



I don't know about you, but to me, but to me, this time of year feels a little blah.  Despite super mild winter weather in Reno, and a fun new winter activity of skiing, and my birthday (all things that make the winter blues much better, and thank you to family members for fun birthday celebrations!), this stretch of January - February - March just feels kind of long and dark.  I'm feeling the need to push my mind in a more positive direction.  So I'm going to do a thing that I've done in the past in November, but the truth is that I have more time and more of a need to remember thankfulness in the doldrums of winter:  a daily thankfulness prompt.  

My goal is to do a short post every day in February about something I'm grateful for, following the chart above (more or less - I've done this a few times before and don't want to repeat, so I will modify some of them to allow freedom to write about something new).  If anyone wants to do this along with me - even just occasionally, using extremely brief answers - that would be so cool!  It will bring me so much joy if anyone messages or comments their own answer to these prompts.  I'm only going to post it on Facebook this first day and then keep the rest on the blog, but seriously, I would love it if anyone wants to join along for any of it.  Here we go with Day One:

Prompt #1 - Something You are Grateful for Today



Today, I'm grateful that I got to take Ivy to her preschool dance class.  Ivy loves to dance, and it's been fun to watch her in this activity that combines art and athleticism, Disney songs and friendship.  Ivy is our youngest and she will start kindergarten in the fall, so I'm increasingly aware that these days of shuttling kids to daytime activities and story times and park playdates is quickly drawing to a close.  Whatever next year looks like for me, there won't be Monday morning preschool princess dance class on the schedule.  There won't be a little kid in her car seat with her water bottle and stuffy riding along with me for each and every thing I do.  There's some excitement and freedom in thinking of all three kids being school age, but it's also the end of an era.  And while I won't particularly miss car seats and ziplock bags of Goldfish, I *will* miss the little kid cuddles and the not quite correctly pronounced words and wildly imaginative pretend play and boundless enthusiasm that comes with this age.  So I'm grateful that I still have a little more all day time with this sweet kid and everything that comes with the preschool age.



Monday, January 3, 2022

My Favorite Books of 2021


The Christmas decorations are being packed away, the New Year has rung in, and now:  tis the season to look back at favorite books of the year!  I've seen several of you post your favorites, and I love it!  I copied and pasted  a visual of my full list from Goodreads this year, which I will put below.  Let me know if you've read any of the same ones and what you thought!  

The categories are a little tweaked from past years, but they reflect what I've been reading most recently.  I'm making more of an effort to read older books that have stood the test of time, and it seems both weird and unfair to compare those to the hot new books, so I broke old and new into separate categories.  And my kids are at a great read aloud chapter book age, so there are enough middle grades on here to give that category it's own space.  (I also want to note that I quit early if a book is not worthwhile in some way, so I would give a thumbs up to most all of the books on my finished list.)  Without further ado....

Top Six Favorite Backlist Fiction:

"Silence" by Shusaku Endo

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather

"The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

"And Then there were None" by Agatha Christie

"The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin

"Our Souls at Night" by Kent Haruf

Top Six New (published last year or two) Fiction:

"A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" by George Saunders ---> I don't usually name a top number one favorite out of them all, because Enneagram 9, but this was my absolute favorite of the year.

"Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyasi

"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

"Piranesi" by Susanne Clarke

"Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr

"The Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles (though be careful of that ending, it might make you throw the book across the room)

Top 5 Non Fiction I'm Still Thinking About:

"Nicea and Its Legacy:  An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology" by Lewis Ayres 

"Breath:  The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor 

"None Like Him" by Jen Wilkin

"Gentle and Lowly" by Dane Ortlund

"12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You" by Tony Reinke

Top 5 Middle Grade:

"The Magician's Nephew" and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis

"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin

"The Wild Robot" by Peter Brown

"On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness" by Andrew Peterson


Those are my favorites of the year - let me know what book(s) you loved in 2021!


 None Like Him by Jen WilkinU is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Give Your Child the World by Jamie C. Martin
Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Lanier
Swimming Holes of California by Timothy H Joyce
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser
This Is All I Got by Lauren Sandler
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
it was amazing
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Wild Robot by Peter  Brown
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew       Peterson
The Choice by Edith Eger
The Institute by Stephen King
it was amazing
Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Nicaea and Its Legacy by Lewis Ayres
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Intimations by Zadie Smith
Silence by Shūsaku Endō
it was amazing
Little Pilgrim's Progress by Helen L. Taylor
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go by Nancy Guthrie
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
it was amazing
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Gentle and Lowly by Dane C. Ortlund
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Breath by James Nestor
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
it was amazing
Chasing the Thrill by Daniel Barbarisi
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Loser by Jerry Spinelli
North! or Be Eaten by Andrew       Peterson
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
it was amazing
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
I Survived the Galveston Hurricane, 1900 by Lauren Tarshis
it was amazing
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke
Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Same Lake, Different Boat by Stephanie O. Hubach
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Weary World Rejoices by Melissa B. Kruger