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 April.

A Deadly Education (Naomi Novik): Wow wow wow. This was incredible. I immediately started reading the second book in the trilogy. It hit the same spot as Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow books. Absolutely loved this world and cannot believe I waited this long to read the series.

A Good Person (Kirsten King): 3.5 rounded up. I’ve noticed a literary trend that now I can stop participating in. I really don’t like the recent slew of books I’ve read with unlikeable characters. People who are just terrible people, not good people in bad situations making bad choices. If you like this sort of thing, and I know many people do, this is a well-written book. But I’ve realized I don’t. So it’s well-written and part of that genre. If you’re into that, this is a good one.

Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke): I’ll start out by saying this is great writing. Great storytelling. I don’t think I was the right reader for this book. Meaning, I think another person would find this book mind blowing. I did not. But I could see how other people will really like it, and there were plenty of moments that made me think. Glad I read it.

Good People (Patmeena Sabit): This is the best sort of book because I couldn’t stop talking about it with people, and I’m still thinking about it weeks later. It will challenge you and move you. You will walk away understanding how little we all know about situations we think we know with your heart a little more open. What an incredible book.

Kutchinsky’s Egg (Serena Kutchinsky): While I admittedly started skimming toward the end, I found the first half fascinating. It’s about the egg, but it’s also about assimilation, family relationships, and making your own mark on the world. I bet it would make a good audio book.

The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett): I liked this very much. I’m not normally a fan of fantasy, but this one grew on me until I had to devour the remaining 150 pages. It’s a complex world, but you quickly grasp how everything works, and the mystery part is great. But the heart is the characters. Loved them. I’m pausing a bit before I start the next book in the series.

Go Gentle (Maria Semple): I adored this book. A pleasure to read. A pleasure to think so deeply. To feel so deeply. Thank you, Semple, for writing a great story.

What did you read last month?

The mark of a good purse book is that you can jump in and out of it, a few pages at a time, and you’ve read the book so many times that it doesn’t matter. You can always remember what was happening moments before. It should have characters you like to hang out with or a setting that you like to visit. It should not be too long, and if it is too long, then the publisher should have found a way to make it purse-size.

My purse book during college was really my backpack book: Crime and Punishment. (I know, I was a real hoot.) Other purse books include a now very smushed up copy of Good Omens, and an equally scuffed Dirk Gently.

I finally got a new A4-sized purse. I went with the Tom Bihn Side Hustle, which is the tiniest smidgen larger than a piece of paper.

It has a little book-holding space inside, so I decided to use it for a purse book. But what to get? The natural choice was The Magicians because I sometimes call it my bible. But there are three Magicians books—how could I choose which one? In the end, I went with One Day by David Nicholls. It always makes me happy and sad to read it, and I can jump in and out of it quickly. But mostly, I love Em and Dex so much that I thought it would always fill me with confidence to have a paper version of them with me.

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

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I skip the AI summaries at the top of Google Search because they’ve been wrong the vast majority of the times I spot-check the information. It recently told me that Go Gentle by Maria Semple “explores themes relating to the Middle East, including the journey of an Israeli and a Palestinian toward peace.” I had Googled her name to see her Wikipedia page, and I was a little surprised because I was 65% of the way through her book and nothing about the conflict had come up. A quick search of the e-book told me it wouldn’t come up, and I can report that it didn’t come up. So… thanks, Google, for more wrong information.

But this post has a ton of Google tricks to get you to better information. I especially like the verbatim mode, which took me first to Maria Semple’s website and then her Wikipedia page. No incorrect AI summary to jump over at all. Passing it along in case it is helpful to you, too.

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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.

A friend linked to this piece in Sage Journals written by a former BlogHer who has been studying internet interactions for 20ish years. Danah Boyd explains that we called it social media because it was a space for socializing online. But if we’re no longer socializing, is it still social media? Or she proposes that influencers have turned it into parasocial media. You feel like you know the person, but you don’t have a two-way relationship.

She writes,

Users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated … We need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.”

I’ve made plenty of friends through blogging who are true friends. Many have stepped through the screen, and we’ve seen each other offline. Others live too far away, so we talk via Zoom. But, yes, of course I’ve noticed what she describes: “Users are now lucky to see personal content that their friends are posting amid the slick content created by the advertisers and strategic creators who dominate most people’s feeds.”

I know that everyday content and simple musings still exist because most of the people I am connected to online post just that. But a lot of this essay rang true, too. I think a lot about this during this time of year because blogging is what got me through Mother’s Day in the early years. (Apologies for bringing it up here if you weren’t expecting that.)

Our soccer team — Tottenham Hotspur — has been teetering on the edge of relegation for weeks… months?… definitely weeks. We were in the drop zone, then came out of it, and now we’re waiting to see what happens with West Ham this weekend, as well as with our own game. It is all kinds of stress.

On one hand, I keep telling myself that nothing will happen to fans if the team is relegated. It will be harder to watch games in the US, but not impossible. We will continue to cheer for our team and hope they’re promoted back up to the Premier League at the end of next season. And relegation may not happen at all. I could be worrying for nothing.

But on the other hand, relegated teams break up. There is always a movement of players from one team to another, but it will happen on a larger scale if they drop down to a lower league. That’s the part that makes me sad. The idea that we’ll watch the game, but all our favourite players will be on different teams.

It kind of feels like the end of college, where you knew it was unlikely that you would have everyone together in the same place at the same time ever again.

I’m bad with change. I probably shouldn’t have started rooting for a team.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix noticed something with her clients who have children who move between their house and another person’s home. When their kids are there, they take care of themselves. When their kids are not, they don’t. And she related because she often sensed that having to accommodate a child’s schedule would have motivated her, too. She writes, “I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation lately. Why do we sometimes do what we don’t want to do in order to get the things we want? Why do we sometimes just think about what we want but never do anything differently?” They are great questions because there are plenty of things I want to do but don’t get started, and other things that I have no trouble doing, even though I’m not super invested in the outcome. Food for thought.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof writes about forcing herself to daydream (vs. distract herself with an audiobook) while on walks. I loved the stream-of-conscious thoughts, and it’s a good reminder to let yourself notice the world around you.

The roundup to the Roundup: Come on you Spurs. 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 May 1 – 8) 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.