Now, Go. See. Do.

Tag: read

Summertime Reading

It’s officially summertime and with it comes summer reading programs. I was the kind of kid that loved getting the libraries summer reading program and checking off how many books I read. Now, I live through my kids and make them do it.

Read All Day: June

1. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman ????????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

People were… exhausting. They made her anxious. Leaving her apartment every morning was the turning over of a giant hourglass, the mental energy she’d stored up overnight eroding grain by grain. She refueled during the day by grabbing moments of solitude and sometimes felt her life was a long-distance swim between islands of silence.

2. Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano ????????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Humans need community, for our emotional health. We need connection, a sense of belonging. We are not built to thrive in isolation

3. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ??????

Genre: Fictional Thriller

I know better than to take life directions from someone without a moral compass.

4. The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin ????????

Genre: Young Adult

It’s peculiar how no-words can be better than words. Silence can say more than noise, in the same way that a person’s absence can occupy even more space than their presence did.

5. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson ????

Genre: Historical Nonfiction

The speech set a pattern that he would follow throughout the war, offering a sober appraisal of facts, tempered with reason for optimism. “It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour,” he said. “It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.

6. Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore ????????

Genre: Fiction

Stop micromanaging your life and just live it; joy and meaning will follow. Find the happy medium between being daring and responsible. Cultivate that balance. Do your best. Be good to yourself, even when—especially when—life isn’t being good to you.

7. Finding Chika: A Little Girl, An Earthquake, and the Making of a Family by Mitch Albom ??????????

Genre: Autobiography

The most precious thing you can give someone is your time, Chika, because you can never get it back. When you don’t think about getting it back, you’ve given it in love.

8. The Whisper Man by Alex North ??????

Genre: Thriller

If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.

If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home.

If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass.

If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.

9. The Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler ??????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

A big surprise that was no surprise at all. If you are a black person in the United States, you live each day with the knowledge that this scene or one very much like it may be in your future. You needn’t have done anything illegal or have broken any rule.

10. Vampires in the Temple by Mette Ivie Harrison ??

Genre: Fiction

There had been vampires her in the salt lake valley when Brigham Young and the pioneers first arrived, but they’d been corralled onto the island after the the Vampire War. They’re not humans who have died and come back to life. They’re homo vampirus, related to us on the same family tree as Neanderthals, a relic of evolution that had died out around other inland salt lakes centuries ago according to the archeologists. The ones here survived for reasons still being studied.

11. The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward ??????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Did all siblings revert to their childhood selves when they were together, or was there a way to transition to functional adulthood even while being in one another’s lives?

12. Less by Andrew Sean Greer ??????

Genre: Fiction

Boredom is the only real tragedy for a writer; everything else is material.

13. Paris for One and Other Stories by Jojo Moyes ????????

Genre: Fiction, Short Stories

…tell me…the best thing that has ever happened to you.’

‘The best? Oh, I’m kind of hoping it hasn’t happened yet.

14. An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks ??????

Genre: Thriller

People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons: survival, hate, love, envy, passion. And money.

Now, Go. See. Do.

~meemish

Spring is For Reading

We are heading in to my favorite seasons, spring and summer. I love the sun as much as I love books. Give me both and I’m in heaven. My perfect reading spot is on the beach, but give me a book, a hammock and sunshine anywhere and I’m one happy lizard.

Read All Day: May

1. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins ????????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Someone once told me that the only good advice for grief is to stay hydrated. Because everything else is just chingaderas.

2. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver ????????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I found the old me, still in here, and the new me sitting right alongside her. We made friends.

3. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren ????????

Genre: Contemporary Romance

That’s the whole point of luck, isn’t it? You have to trust that it’s not fleeting.

4. The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth ????????

Genre: Mystery

I worked hard for everything I ever cared about, and nothing I ever cared about cost a single cent.

5. The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James, Rachel McCarthy James ????

Genre: True Crime

This book is almost entirely about people who lived in small towns a hundred years ago. As much about how they died as about how they lived. But the flash of death illuminated the lifes the victims have lived.

6. The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare ????????

Genre: Historical Fiction

It is the hate that is the enemy. Not men. Hate does not die with killing. It only springs up a hundredfold. The only thing stronger than hate is love.

7. The Breakdown by B.A. Paris ??????

Genre: Thriller

I never really remember doing any of it, which should worry me more than it does…

8. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center ??????

Genre: Romance

It’s amazing how brave you can be when you feel safe.

9. The Library Book by Susan Orlean ??????????

Genre: Nonfiction

All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.

10. Restart by Gordon Korman ????????

Genre: Fiction, Middle Grade

What was so wrong about the old me that now I have to be somebody else?

11. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston ????

Genre: Romance

He’s not afraid of anything he feels. He’s not afraid of saying it. He’s only afraid of what will happen when he does.

12. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett ????????

Genre: Historical Fiction

Thinking about the past impeded my efforts to be decent in the present.

13. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid ??????

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I don’t need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like… happens.

Now, Go. See. Do.

~meemish

Still Quarantine Reading

Month two of quarantine and I’m still reading. In between reading, I’m doing puzzles and listening to podcasts (oh, and homeschooling my kids). The outside world may be scary and unsure, but in my house is a library of adventure. I choose adventure.

Read All Day: April

1. The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo ??????

Genre: Historical Fiction

We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.

2. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs: Big Questions by Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty ????????

Genre: Nonfiction

We can’t make death fun, but we can make learning about it fun. Death is science and history, art and literature. It bridges every culture and unites the whole of humanity!

3. Normal People by Sally Rooney ????????

Genre: Fiction

I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared what people thought of me.

4. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys ????????

Genre: Historical Fiction

Your shoes are carrying your most valuable possession—your life. Do not delay. Everything else can be replaced.

5. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger ????????

Genre: Fiction

Insatiable, impatient, impossible.

6. Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia ????????

Genre: Young Adult

There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.

7. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky ??????????

Genre: Young Adult

Try to be a filter, not a sponge.

8. A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum ????????

Genre: Fiction

Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender, as normal as the bosoms on a woman’s chest, as necessary as the next generation growing inside her belly.

9. The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey ??????

Genre: Parenting

In order to help children make the most of their education, parents must begin to relinquish control and focus on three goals: embracing opportunities to fail, finding ways to learn from that failure, and creating positive home-school relationships.

10. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides ??????

Genre: Mystery

Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?

11. The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis ????????

Genre: Historial Fiction

I learned about getting saved. I learned how someone could come to you when you were feeling real, real bad and could take all of your problems away and make you feel better. I learned that the person who saved you, your personal saver, was sent by God to protect you and to help you out.

12. I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella ??????

Genre: Fiction

My phone’s my life. I can’t exist without it. It’s a vital organ.

13. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes ????????

Genre: Fiction

Your head is the house you live in, so you have to do the maintenance.

14. Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong ????????

Genre: Autobiography

The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone’s race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail.

15. Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright ??????

Genre: Nonfiction Science

Diseases don’t ruin lives just because they rot off noses. They destroy people if the rest of society isolates them and treats them as undeserving of help and respect.

16. The Second Sister by Claire Kendal ??????

Genre: Mystery

Why are so many fairytales about sisters saving their brothers? All the ones you told me last week were.

He is right. Hansel and Gretel. The Seven Ravens. The Twelve Brothers. Our mother seemed to know hundreds of them.

We should write a different story. I want one with a sister who saves her sister.

17. When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger ??????

Genre: Fiction

I feel like we just stepped into an episode of Housewives.

Now, Go. See. Do.

~meemish

Let’s Talk Books

It’s cold here and getting through the tail end of winter would be hard for me if I didn’t have some good books to read. A few of my choices were in honor of Black History Month.

Read All Day: February

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ??????????

Genre: Classic

They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

2. Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane ????????

Genre: Fiction

We repeat what we don’t repair.

3. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb ????????

Genre: Nonfiction

Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth.

4. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward ????????

Genre: Fiction

And I get up because it is the only thing I can do.

5. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell ??????

Genre: Mystery

I’d subliminally determined at this point that the only way to really know what was going on in the world was to listen to women talk. Anyone who ignores the chatter of women is poorer by any measure.

6. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare ??????????

Genre: Fiction

I feel a free that I didn’t feel in long time and when I smile, it climb from inside my stomach and spread itself on my teeths.

7. The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley ??????

Genre: Mystery

I have learned that under certain circumstances, a fib is not only permissible, but can even be an act of perfect grace.

8. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ??????

Genre: Fiction

What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.

Now, Go. See. Do.

~meemish

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