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It may not be quite October yet, but it’s starting to feel like fall, so we have started jumping ahead to our favorite themed month of witches!  We aren’t quite ready to start Alix E. Harrow’s Once and Future Witches but we’ll be ready to discuss it with you at Virtual Book Club on Friday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. CST.  Registration is open if you’d like to join in this magical conversation! 

Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

• The Only Woman in the Room: Knowledge and Inspiration from 20 Women Real Estate Investors by Ashley L. Wilson
• The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

• Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy #3) by Leigh Bardugo
• The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

Ashley FIN

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• The Awakening with a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin, Introduction by Marilynne Robinson
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
•  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Grumpy Player Next Door (Copper Valley Fireballs #3) by Pippa Grant
• The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) by Pippa Grant *

*Finished in August

Nikki FIN

• The Awakening with a selection of short stories by Kate Chopin, Introduction by Marilynne Robinson
• Love That Dog (Jack #1) by Sharon Creech
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) by J. K. Rowling
• Steamed: A Catharsis Cookbook for Getting Dinner and Your Feelings On the Table by Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• The Grumpy Player Next Door (Copper Valley Fireballs #3) by Pippa Grant
•  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) by Pippa Grant

Am I the only one that feels like I turned around and September was over?  Yes?!  It’s fine, everything is fine.  🙁  I mean, really it is, but I’m in a season of a lot.  Work is a lot, back to school (for the first time in 17 months) was a lot, and we’re all settling in, until whatever the next thing is happens.  What does this have to do with reviewing my reading life?  So, SO much!  I read for posts, and I read for Virtual Book Club, and I even got to read a couple of books that felt like a deep, cleansing breath (yes, the Pippa books, and I love them so much, and The Grumpy Player Next Door might be my favorite of hers).  I also read a book I picked up on a whim before vacation (yes, that was in July) because it looked fun, and then sat. On my nightstand. For weeks.  And weeks.  And it was good, but I do wish I’d have paced myself and tried a couple of recipes rather than reading a cookbook like an actual novel I’m bingeing.  While I don’t recommend the binge method – I do recommend Steamed.  The recipes looked interesting and feasible, and the tone was the perfect blend of sarcasm and what-the-hell that it should have been.

My biggest reading accomplishment of September though, it wasn’t finishing both books on time for Virtual Book Club, which I did, it was finally FINALLY finishing my reread of the Harry Potter series a mere weeks behind Ashley and B.  AND I wanted it noted that three members of my family read Harry Potter books on vacation (S read Chamber of Secrets, and is currently working on Goblet of Fire).  Yes, dear readers, that does mean that I’ve now read Deathly Hallows at the beach twice, although not entirely the second time.  My reread only took me two years, one month, and eight days.  Thank you Goodreads!  

Overall, this month is a win.  I read a nonfiction, a novel in poetry (even though I broke my rule about not reading books about animals – it was fine, but the reason for the rule stands), and had one of my more diverse months in reading with two male authors, two books by Black authors, and one by a Native American, all with publication dates spanning three centuries.  I’m ignoring that it’s only 122 years, but it counts and I’m taking all the wins I can get, because it’s my reading life.  

What are your favorite reading life, or just life, wins this month?

~Nikki 

I concur with Nikki about blinking and September feeling like it’s over, which means I’m also struggling with trying to figure out what to write about. Admitting that I had more books that I planned on reading than the 9 that I completed is frustrating. (Though, I do have THREE more days and I can still finish one or two more!)

Because it’s my (our) blog I can say what I want; Ida was a bitch. Hurricane season is never fun, but when it messes up plans to go celebrate my precious goddaughter turning ONE I get a little hot under the collar. So, even up until 8th, I didn’t know if I was going to be leaving on the 10th for my planned trip to New Orleans. I didn’t end up going, the party got rescheduled, and because I leave this Friday to go there for a real estate conference. I plan on adding some more days on the back end of my trip to visit with the family. I’m still missing the birthday party though, because it got rescheduled for the 9th, and I have to be back to Nashville for a wedding reception that evening. So, yeah, Ida was a bitch and she bitchslapped my schedule around like it meant nothing. What else can negatively affect your reading life more except just your life in general? In theory I should have been able to get more books in because I wasn’t cuddling the bebes, but that is not what happened when my entire brain was overcome with worry for all the people still needing help. Reading The Awakening this month was both a hurt and a balm for my wounded soul.

Virtual book club was an adventure discussing the usual things: the evils of the patriarchy, badass women, and how I didn’t finish my re-read, technically. I finished it that night after we were done with our discussion. It was a super bunch of fun and you should seriously consider joining us in October for WITCHES. We’re a lot of fun, and we think you’ll enjoy our banter.

I read one non-fiction book this month, Deep Work. And, it was good, but I felt like I had heard the “use time blocking to control your daily schedule and don’t constantly check email/use social media as a distraction” messaging enough times that it was a bit of a slog. I told Nikki that I understood the meaty parts of the book by listening to a podcast he had been interviewed on. When I was trying to figure out if I was actually going to complete the reading of a non-fiction book in time for the end of the month (see previous statement about it being a slog of repetition I already knew about), I asked Nikki if the allegorical story of The Go-Giver was a non-fiction book. I was trying to skirt the rules, and the answer is no, dear friends. Even though the short book is filled with business wisdom, it’s still a fictional story. I highly recommend the story to anyone, not just those who own a business, because the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success are useful in LIFE not just business. And NO, I’m not going to tell you what they are, you can go spend an hour or two and read about them for yourself.

That’s not much, but it’s all I have in me to write about because I want to go and cover my planner in my October stickers. I can’t believe Q4 starts on Friday, do you have any goals between now and the end of the year?

~Ashley

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