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While reading isn’t a competition, sometimes there is excitement in a new achievement.  It’s a Maas miracle darling readers, one of us has already finished her reread of  House of Earth and Blood (#1) for our conversation on Friday, February 11 at 7:30 pm CST.  One of us hasn’t touched it in days, and doesn’t plan to pick it back up until the weekend.  Is it going to be a problem?  Not at all.  Is it going to be amusing?  We can only hope!  If you’d like to find out, sign up here to be sure you get the link to Virtual Book Club!  

Ashley IN MEDIAS RES

• Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi
• A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage by Cyndie Spiegel

Nikki IN MEDIAS RES

• Tools of Engagement (Hot & Hammered #3) by Tessa Bailey
• Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi
• House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas
• Declutinger at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White
• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

Ashley FIN

• House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas
• Crazy for Loving You (Bluewater Billionaires #4) by Pippa Grant
• Wild Open Hearts (Bluewater Billionaires #3) by Kathryn Nolan
• Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass
• Women & Money by Suze Orman
• The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships by Harriet Lerner
• The Mogul and the Muscle (Bluewater Billionaires #2) by Claire Kingsley
• The Price of Scandal (Bluewater Billionaires #1) by Lucy Score
• The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne
• The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1) by Helen Hoang
• Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
• Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth: Your Guide to Analyzing, Buying, and Managing Vacation Properties by Avery Carl
• Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes #2) by Sonali Dev
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman *

Nikki FIN

• Refugee by Alan Gratz
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown
• HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by Elizabeth Holmes
• Someone Perfect (Westcott #9) by Mary Balogh
• Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass
• Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power by Christiane Northrup
• The Witch of Duva (Grishaverse #0.5) by Leigh Bardugo
• Someone to Cherish (Westcott #8) by Mary Balogh
• Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy #3) by Leigh Bardugo
• The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne
• All Things Bright and Beautiful (All Creatures Great and Small #2) by James Herriot
• Procrastinate On Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden
• Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes #2) by Sonali Dev
• Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche (Enola Holmes #7) by Nancy Springer (audio)
• Persuasion by Jane Austen*
• The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman*
• The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness by Morgan Housel*
• Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1) by Sonali Dev*

*Fini in December 2021 

Dear readers, this list feels a bit misleading, so before we start this Reading Life Review, here’s a bit of a reminder.  We last reviewed our reading life on December 27th, so this list includes five days worth of holiday reading time between Christmas and New Year’s.  To give some clear context, Persuasion was the last book Nikki finished in December, and the first book Ashley finished in January.  Now, back to your regularly scheduled reading life review.

I have so many feelings about my reading life this January.  We’ve already discussed our Persuasion related reads, so I’ll refer you back to those posts.  Since we shared our reading goals for 2022, I updated mine a bit.  I want to read more nonfiction, especially since I don’t have a daily title to read, as we did The Daily Stoic in 2021 (which was a really fun read and I might do it again in a few years).  I looked at my shelves, both dead tree and electronic, and made some decisions.  I have been reading at least one chapter of a nonfiction book each day, and it’s been a nice adventure so far.  It’s helping me to get through more of the nonfiction books on my TBR list and my holds list, even adding a couple of titles that were recommended by friends in December.  I also finally finished the Shadow and Bone trilogy and adored the ending.  I only wish it wouldn’t have taken me so many months (I started it on vacation, in July), and I’m really excited to keep reading in the Grishaverse. 

As always, Enola Holmes was a fun hang, even more so because of how Enola and Sherlock sort of, kind of work together on this case.  All Things Bright and Beautiful was also a great escape (as is season two of All Creatures Great and Small).  Something about the simplicity of the Scottish Dales and a small farm town in the early 1940s sounds like a delight.  I’m sure I’ll continue the series (as I am the show, even though the show doesn’t follow the larger arc of the book, but does include many of the fun, and gross, stories of veterinary practice).  

I do want to talk a bit about Refugee.  This is not a fun hang of a book, but when I realized when my fourth grader was reading a book about three teens who were refugees in the 1940s, 1990s, and the 2010s, I promptly found a way to do a buddy read via audiobook.  The story was masterfully told, rotating through the three, as they journeyed from Germany, Cuba, and Syria with their families.  I’m glad I listened to this book for me, because some of the stories were very familiar and others, well, I’m glad they are now. I’m also glad to be able to talk about the book with my child when he decides to finish the last few chapters.

On a similar note, I was listening to this while my county announced they were adjusting the way several books are taught in the curriculum.  There is a group that has complained about the content of these books which include Hatchet, Walk Two Moons, George vs George, and Feelings.  I will confess I’ve read none of these books, but based on the same group’s complaints about a number of books in high school libraries including Homegoing, I have my suspicions that I and my people should read them all (they have already read almost all of them in class, and I am not sad).  In case you have littles and are concerned about what they might find in the content of books, I highly suggest you preview or buddy read with them, either together or separately (which is usually how it goes at my house).  I know what they’ve read this way so I can invite the conversations and am prepared for the questions (mostly, so far).  It matters to me that my children are exposed to a wide range of ideas and are equipped to evaluate those ideas for themselves, so when you’re helping little people with their reading selections, remember what matters to you, and play the long game, towards raising adults who are independent, kind, and capable, at least most days.  To borrow an idea from Refugee, tomorrow belongs to the young people, and it’ll only be as amazing and thoughtful as they are.  They need all the tools and support they can get.  

I’m ending this month glad for what I’ve read, but still tweaking my new practices.  How does this last day of January find your reading life?

~Nikki 

I texted Nikki around the 22nd freaking out because I only had two more spots open in my planner for the month of January. I discussed this issue at some point last year, probably March, when I read 15 books and ran out of spaces to put my read titles. 15 books in a month is what some people would call ridiculous. And, my feelings about the number of books I read this month do make me feel a little ridiculous. It’s just that reading and specifically reading the titles I decided to squeeze in between our blog titles brought me so much JOY that I can’t hate it. But, I might need to slow my roll a little bit in February. I probably would have read other/different titles had I had access to Kindle Unlimited, so I feel pretty good about what happened overall regardless of my ridiculousness. 

What happened is that I re-read the Bluewater Billionaire series by four of our favorite romance authors. We posted about them for the entire month of February 2020 so check out our posts here. They were comfort reads for me this month, for sure; a filler for times when I didn’t know what else I wanted to read, or for when I had a dead tree nonfiction going, or when I just needed some smut. (And Nikki wasn’t able to buddy read a new to us title.) In addition to the Bluewater comfort reading that occurred, I started House of Earth and Blood and promptly decided that I was going to finish it instead of jumping into our titles for February. It was partly comfort read, partly Maas’s fault that her writing is addictive, and partly that I didn’t want to have to try to fit in more ‘finished titles’ in my January list. Yeah, so what. I can curate my reading life however I damn well please. And finishing House of Earth and Blood on Friday made my heart happy. (And I’m ready to discuss all my additional highlights from this read in addition to the ones I had from my first read two years ago! Prepare yourself by reading and going to this post from 2020.)

I did read more nonfiction titles than I expected this month. One was a dead tree I have owned for years, one was a re-read, and another was one that’s been on my TBR that I fit it in during my drive to Louisiana to help my sister with the niblings while they moved last week. I’m glad I used my time wisely and did more than consume podcasts and music during the 16 hours I was in the Jeep. I did read one new release nonfiction, Short Term Rental, Long Term Wealth by Avery Carl that’s specifically about short term rental (STR) real estate investing – something I needed to have read in order to help myself and my investor clients. I’m really pleased with my nonfiction consumption this month, even though I didn’t create a habit around it like Nikki has.

Every month you read should be about joy. Enjoyment of your reading life should be your number one goal and all the others are secondary. Remember we’re here to help you curate a reading life you love as well as share ours with you, so let us know how we can help you meet your 2022 goals, enjoyment being #1.

~Ashley

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