Month: May 2024

Books Read in May 2024

*Book Group Selection | Bolded Means Favorite

Picture Books

*Ahoy! by Sophie Blackall
*The Last Zookeeper by Aaron Becker

Middle Grade

*Kyra, Just for Today by Sara Zarr

No matter the protagonist, Sara Zarr writes them so you root for them and also want to give them a big hug. It was also interesting to see how holding together the household and being A+ in that category meant that she had trouble keeping up in school.

*The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

Nice job writing about 1999 and providing a sci-fi twist. I love Entrada Kelly’s characterization.

*The Wrong Way Home by Kate O’Shaughnessy

It’s an age-appropriate book about a member of a cult! The story traces Fern’s attempts to get back to the cult, the place she has been the happiest, and also her evolving thoughts about life outside the cult. There’s also an idyllic California beach town and people who help Fern and her mother adjust to their new lives.

Young Adult

*Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson and Ekua Holmes
*Icarus by K. Ancrum
Wide Awake Now by David Levithan

Young Nonfiction

*American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky by Sherri L. Smith and Elizabeth Wein
*My Antarctica: True Adventures in the Land of Mummified Seals, Space Robots, and So Much More by G. Neri and Corban Wilkin

Grownup Fiction

Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang
Chemistry by Weike Wang
The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner
Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

The Partner Track by Helen Wan

Hoo-boy do I dislike the law office culture on display in this novel. Wan kept me reading through my dislike with a well-formed main character to root for.

Grownup Nonfiction

The 2-Hour Job Search: Using Technology to Get the Right Job Faster by Steve Dalton

Breaks the scary task of networking down to efficient and manageable tasks.

The Job Closer: Time-Saving Techniques for Acing Resumes, Interviews, Negotiations, and More by Steve Dalton

The companion to the 2-Hour Job Search, this book also got me to stop obsessing over resumes (strive for error-free—no one really reads them all the way through) and cover letters (he gives a framework) and made updating my LinkedIn profile a breeze. He also discusses how to interview, how to negotiate, and how to get off to a great start at your new company.

Dalton’s two books are making my job search less of a herculean task.

Beyond Getting By: The Financial Diet’s Guide to Abundant and Intentional Living by Holly Trantham and Lauren Ver Hage

This wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I’m looking for a process to decide who to donate money to as well as something to help me understand the tradeoff of increasing my retirement contributions another percentage point annually given my current percentage.

While this didn’t meet my needs, it was full of good information and written in a breezy style. I suspect that the 32 hour workweek won’t be widely adopted in my working lifetime as it has at the Financial Diet, but it would be nice.

Rebel With A Clause: Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian by Ellen Jovin

A good book for the room in your house where you spend time intermittently and need something you can pick up and put down. The grammar information was good, and the writing about grammar was engaging, but I found eventually found repetitive setup of each vignette tedious. Her descriptions of the people visiting the grammar table were particularly annoying annoying after a while.

Mending Pillowcases

The red pillowcases I use are wearing out. The material is thin with holes and the seams are coming unraveled. As someone with time on my hands, I figured I would mend them with big patches. The size of the patch indicates just how decrepit this pillowcase has become.

I finished one corner, then noticed a few more holes, so I needed to add a patch.

You can see the technique. Cut the patch, draw a swoopy line, then tack the patch to the pillowcase, then big running stitch.

And you can see how much of the pillowcase is becoming a patch.

I used variegated perle cotton thread, and also a blanket stitch for the edges.

The seams needed a lot of assistance, so they got this cavalcade of stitches.

Close inspection of the other pillowcase found similar problems. It was at this point that I looked up the cost of new sheets, decided I could afford them, and discarded this project.

That’s one of the best thing to come with my middle age. When I cry uncle, I get rid of the project. It doesn’t need to be hanging around reminding me I haven’t finished it.

SKS: Idaho: The Sportsmen’s Paradise

As I type the postcard’s words into the title, I see that an apostrophe has gone missing from the card.

Sara calls out the same thing that was my first thought: only sportsMEN?

Sara has gone back to Coeur d’Alene because her father died, and so this Idaho postcard comes to me. She said that the weather was chilly enough to have a fire and for her sister to make potato leek soup, both nice things.

How to View and Appreciate Great Movies—Completed

Kanopy, the library’s free streaming service, gives me access to the Great Courses. I’m planning a Hollywood Movie Musicals project, so I thought I would start with a film appreciation course. Today, I completed it.

Eric R. Williams was my teacher, and he taught the 24 lectures with the glee of a learned film fan and the enthusiasm of an overexcited dad. There were times that his antics were cringeworthy, but his full-hearted love of film overcome those moments.

Not overcomable was the use of really bad computer generated versions of movie scenes. I’m sure they had to use them for copyright reasons, but I had to look away while they were playing, rendering their use moot.

Another fun thing was that his set was full of fun Easter eggs, like the license plates above the window. I got THX 138 first (George Lucas’s first movie), and eventually the 007 clued me into James Bond’s license plate.

I had to look up the other two. CNH 320 is the Dukes of Hazzard license plate. I can’t find the specific meaning of the 125 PCE plate, but I have learned that 0-499 PCE is reserved for California license plates that are used in film and movies.

This course gave me a solid start to my movie project, and I’m hoping to refer to my notes often. Thanks to Mr. Williams, the Multnomah County Library, and Kanopy for this free resource.

Camino de Santiago “Walk” Completed

I started “walking” the Camino on December 23, 2024, and here I am having finished my walk in May.

That’s significantly longer than most people take to actually walk the Camino, but since my walk was based on steps, there you have it.

I now start the longest expedition: the Appalachian Trail. As the number of kilometers is longer than 2,000, I don’t expect to finish this walk for a very long time.