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

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I just finished reading Bad Summer People, which is a little like White Lotus set on Fire Island. You know someone will die because the book begins with a dead body. But you mostly forget something will happen because the people are so terrifically awful that you’re sucked into their drama even though you’re not really rooting for anyone to win.

I felt guilty enjoying it so much because the residents of the very real Saltaire (the town fictionalized as Salcombe in the book) were upset by early versions of the book satirizing Fire Island life. I’m unsure if any characters or situations were based on real people or events, though I’m assuming from reactions that the answer is yes.

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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.

In honour of Father’s Day, I give you this great article that appeared in Elle of all places back on Mother’s Day. It’s about how people won’t just allow the person to be a child-free woman. She is called “a mother of words” or asked if she has “fur babies” or is a “plant mommy.”

She touches on it but doesn’t delve deep into the other side of this story. Can you imagine someone asking the new guy at the office if he has fur babies? Or is a plant daddy? No, you can’t because it doesn’t happen. Men may be asked if they have kids, but no one then spends time trying to point out to them that Father’s Day is for them because they give birth to new ideas.

Unless the person calls their pet their fur baby (something I wholeheartedly endorse and the way I think of Beorn), please do not call animals in their house their fur baby. Let us enjoy what men worldwide get to enjoy; a quiet acceptance of their choices and circumstances, as if they are the captain of their life ship.

Measure of Love is on sale for 99 cents from now until the end of the month. 99 cents. Even candy bars cost more than 99 cents. And in this case, you get a whole story. 6 to 8 hours of entertainment, depending on how quickly you read.

It has been a long time since my last book, and I’ve been playing with a new story for a few years. I’ve put it aside because it is so hard to wrap my brain around anything right now with the twins leaving. But maybe this is the kick I need to pick it back up again.

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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.

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And now the blogs…

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:

• “Pronatalism and Anesthesia” (Finding a Different Path)

Okay, now my choices this week.

PocoBrat asks if grief makes you mean. She is becoming irritable with people after the loss of her dog, and she writes, “I don’t know if some B.S. detector switch has flipped in my brain or if it’s business as usual and grief has nudged out extra emotions making them conspicuous to me. Either way, I’m finding it difficult to live with this version of me.” Grief burns through energy, and patience is an action that often requires a lot of energy. Sending peace of heart.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix writes about feeling your feelings. She talks about what happens when you don’t let out your feelings. And she explains: “If I frequently cry quietly… If I occasionally cry loudly… If I use my words to tell a person why I am mad, sad, or disappointed… If I journal honestly… If I blog vulnerably… It gets out. The feelings get out. And they don’t stay stuck.” I needed to read this post this week.

The roundup to the Roundup: Measure of Love is on sale. 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 June 9 – 16) 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.

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 May.

The Soulmate (Sally Hepworth): Hepworth books are hit-or-miss. They’re always well-written, but the plot is sometimes so farfetched that I can’t suspend disbelief. This was one where I also guessed the ending early on. It’s okay that it was forgettable because I enjoyed the act of reading it at the moment, which is a long way of saying that I’ll read her next book, too. They’re all solid four-star reads.

In the Lives of Puppets (TJ Klune): I bought his first book (first book that I read, that is) for everyone. I thought it was amazing. I recommended his second book to a bunch of people. I thought it was moving. I am on the fence about how I feel about this book. It is complicated, and as you’re laughing over the robots’ conversations, the author presents some uncomfortable answers to the questions at the heart of the book: Can we love beings who do terrible things? What if they don’t have free will and are forced to do terrible things? What if they do have a choice and make a terrible one?

A Rule Against Murder (Louise Penny): The books in this series just get better and better and better. This one was even better than book three, and I loved book three. It’s a great mystery, and while I ended the book with a few questions I’d love to discuss with someone else who read it, I leave the story super impressed with Penny. Again and again and again.

La Belle Sauvage (Philip Pullman): I listened to this as an audiobook. Michael Sheen is one of the most talented book readers on earth. I rarely have time to listen to audiobooks, but I would make time to listen to this one again.

What did you read last month?

I’ve said it before: I am terrible at saying no. The whole thing makes me feel guilty because I can usually say yes, just at the expense of my own happiness. So I guess I have no difficulty when I have a clear-cut reason attached to the “no,” such as being out of town. But if I technically could say yes, but I’m not saying yes because we all have limited time, emotional energy, or money, I feel guilty, which makes me botch the no.

So I always pause and read any article about how to say no. And this is a good one.

Beyond the how-to, I liked the idea that there is a difference between selfishness, which feels purposeful, and putting yourself first, which feels healthy when done if necessary.

Putting this here in case it helps anyone else.