As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from September.

Big Little Truths (Liane Moriarty): As solid as the first book (Big Little Lies), so if you liked that book, you will likely like this one. The kids are older, the adults are perimenopausal, the peninsula is still the greatest place on earth to live, and everyone is so completely themselves that you would know who is talking if someone dropped you into a scene. Really enjoyed spending time with everyone again.

The Barbecue at No. 9 (Jennie Godfrey): 4.5 rounded up for allowing the reader to relive Live Aid along with the story. It’s a book about truth and lies. The family you were born into, and the family you build through friends and partners. It’s really a lovely book.

The Castle (Jon Ronson): Ronson books are always thought-provoking. This one zigged and zagged a lot, and you spend your time reading about the lives of people you would probably not want to spend time with. I don’t know if I was invested deeply in figuring out what made them tick, but I enjoyed how invested Ronson was in that process.

Time Travel for Beginners (Jaclyn Moriarty): It was a two Moriarty month. (Jaclyn is Liane’s sister.) For 3/4ths of this book, I thought it was a sweet, easy five-star read. It made me think, there was some intriguing confusion, and there were so many lovely moments. But that ending? It pushes it to six stars. Brilliant. What an incredible commentary on the enormity of love.

All In (Claire Powerll): 4.5 rounded up. It’s a bit like a paper version of White Lotus but with a moving childless after infertility plot line that weaves through the story. I read it in small bits before bed, and it made me feel a little like I was on vacation at a lovely resort. In other words, transported.

What did you read last month?

Before I got a house, I always thought I’d be the sort of person who decorated said house for holidays. Maybe I was more of an indoor-decoration sort of person; I couldn’t see myself storing an eight-foot skeleton or blow-up spider or orange-and-black lights. But I thought there would at least be a few uncarved pumpkins dotting the surfaces.

There were for a year or two, and when the twins were super little, we had window stickers for various holidays that they put up. But by the time they were in Kindergarten, we had stopped most of the decorations, and I’m not even sure where they went. It’s almost like they scurried away because they sensed my lack of commitment.

I’m not sure why I don’t decorate for any holiday. I mean, we celebrate holidays. We have food that I make or activities that we do. But I don’t put up decorations to mark the time of year. Nothing outside the house, but also nothing inside the house.

I could always do this. Literally nothing is stopping me. But I still don’t do it, even though I appreciate the effort that other people go through to make the world a little happier.

Do you decorate for holidays?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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If you like the idea of sudoku but find it tiring AND you’re better with words instead of numbers, you may like Wordplete.

You need to remove letters from each line to make words (horizontal and vertical). The number of letters you need to remove is at the end of the row (or column). Once you delete the unnecessary letters, you win. It’s probably easier to play and understand because I’m terrible at describing it.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Amy Tector posted on her Substack about starting a television club (similar to a book club) with your friends or family. They get together, make dinner, and then eat it while watching 1 – 3 episodes together, pausing to talk about the show.

It’s appealing in the same way the Silent Book Club was appealing in that you don’t need to prepare beforehand (so no annoyance when you’ve dedicated time to a book that no one else reads), it’s somewhat social, and you’ve scheduled in time to watch something that has sat on your “to watch” list.

It feels like a nice throwback to the college years when we would all get together on Thursday nights to eat dinner and watch Friends. Back then, you couldn’t watch ahead, so you didn’t have to worry about someone getting bored and bingeing the rest of the season in between. I guess you now need to promise that you’ll wait for everyone else and the assigned date.

Or, doing it with people from afar, you could also set a date that everyone needs to complete their viewing, and then jump on a Zoom and discuss. That’s how we watch things with the ChickieNob when she’s at college, and we’re at home. We also have shows for all four of us that we watch slowly whenever we’re all in the same place, but those are things like Taskmaster, which are less annoying to leave large time gaps between episodes.

I like this idea.

The organization spree continues. We tackled the front hall and moved about 50 books from the table to bookshelves in another room. We went through a catch-all paper box and unearthed notebooks from grade school and a plastic recorder. (That’s where that went!) We tossed and tossed and tossed, and now I love the front hall.

We still need to do drawers, but we decided to focus on surfaces first. Once everything looks great, we’ll tackle spaces that can’t be seen.

Next stop: The living room.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Septembermögen” (Elaine ohne Kind)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Scientist on the Roof has a list of the 5 things she’s doing to bring sanity to her day. I think it’s so important to know what makes you feel good (or even just settled) and do those things without compromise. If you don’t have a list of five things that you do daily or weekly to make yourself feel good, use this post as a reminder (and inspiration?) to find your own.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ is writing about a book on navigating grief as she reads it. She touches on a point in the book: “Grief is probably the most common universal experience of all humans.” This truth is why we should pay attention when someone is talking about the experience. We can learn from one another and make each other’s paths easier to navigate.

The roundup to the Roundup: I love neat spaces. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 2 – 9) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.