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 read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about 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 March.

Greenwich Park (Katherine Faulkner): This was a super quick read. I figured out the plot early on, but I still had fun seeing it unfold. The best moment is the last line in the book. She totally got me, and it was a great twist.

Mouth to Mouth (Antoine Wilson): I wrote about one of the central questions in the book last month. It was a mindblowingly good read. This is the sort of book you want to read with another person so you can discuss. It asks the question: what makes someone a good person? As humans, should we always help another human? If we do, should we be rewarded? And does the wealth of the individual matter? For instance, if you save someone poor, would you feel like you deserve a reward? What if it was someone extremely rich? A great book asks questions and then steps back and lets you think. This one does just that.

Good Rich People (Eliza Jane Brazier): This book was bananapants in the best possible way. It reminded me of Samantha Downing, so if you like her, you will probably like this. It’s creepy, terrible people doing creepy, terrible things. I was totally glued to the story.

The Paris Apartment (Lucy Foley): I feel the same way about every Lucy Foley book. They are engaging, page turners BUT I figure them out very early on and then feel irritated as they unfold. The opposite of how I felt reading Greenwich Park. So I raced through the last third because I wanted to confirm and move on. Yet I know I’ll put her next book on my to-read list, too.

The Appeal (Janice Hallett): Definitely will be one of my top 5 books from this year. I loved this book so much that I bought it plus her next book before I read one page. You can read it from cover to cover like a normal book, OR you are trying to solve the crime by reading through emails and text messages as the lawyers are doing in the book. It is so much fun to see it come together, and now I want to re-read it to see all the clues that were in front of my face the entire time. Totally brilliant.

What did you read last month?

While there has always been people raising the flag on the difficulty of Mother’s Day, it feels in the last two years or so that the sentiment has hit the mainstream. I commented on it last year when the Royal Collection Trust sent out a message asking if I would like to skip any Mother’s Day messages. They sent the same email this year, too. And then Debrett’s, the etiquette guide, had a post about “surviving Mother’s Day.”

Under the “Be Aware” section:

“Remember that not everyone who wants to have a child is able to do so, and many women are contemplating, or undergoing, the arduous process of assisted conception. Bear in mind, therefore, that people in this category are not likely to be enraptured by the glorification of Mother’s Day.”

The UK seems far ahead of the game with being sensitive to the way people may experience the day. I’m hopeful the rest of the world may catch up and think about how everyone may not approach the same holiday in the same way.

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

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I learned a new term that explained so much: psychological reactance. It’s “a reflex reaction to being told what to do, or feeling that your freedom is under threat.” Freedom is a loose term: someone impinging on your free time can bring out this reflex. Or your manager telling you that you need to do something differently. Or even annoyance at a book club you’ve chosen to join because you now feel obligated to read books that someone else is telling you to read.

It’s that initial thought of, “But I don’t want to.”

I guess knowing the name of it (beyond what Josh always calls it: “the don’t wannas.”) means that you can combat it. You can acknowledge what the feeling is, tell yourself that you can feel it for the next ten minutes, and then need to set the feeling aside and be open to the request or demand. Or counter with what you will do if there is a good reason to push back against the request.

I guess I just liked learning a new word.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Everyone has been sharing this Twitter thread of random facts, which kicks off with a promising, interesting, and easily checkable fact: “Every ‘c’ in Pacific Ocean is pronounced differently.”

But then there are all of the facts that appear in the list that sound wrong but are probably true and are difficult to confirm without Googling such as: “Sharks have been around longer than the rings of Saturn.” Have they? Saturn feels kind of old. Maybe its rings are younger. Sharks have probably been around for a while. Googled it. It’s correct.

Or, “If you are over 45, Earth’s population doubled during your lifetime.”

Or, “There are 6 state capitals west of Los Angeles.” Which is followed by “27 US states extend north of the southern tip of Canada.” (I had to Google that one.)

It’s fun to read through, though I’d love for someone to go through and fact-check it.

I spent the night before getting my progressives feeling like I made an enormous mistake. I imagined I would put them on, the world would be blurry, and I would promptly vomit in the store. Okay, perhaps not vomit, but not be able to function.

I walked into the store with my stomach in knots.

But they weren’t as bad as I feared. They also weren’t as good as I hoped. I was getting accustomed to a new prescription and the progressives at the same time, which possibly made it harder than it would have been if I had spread out the transition process. The world was blurry on the edges, and I felt seasick every time I moved my head. But when my eyes were pointing forward, I could see far. And when I looked down, I could read my watch — something that hasn’t happened with my glasses on in years.

I decided to wear my progressives from 9 to 5. Then I would switch into my distance glasses. If we went out, I would wear distance glasses. I gave myself the first hour of the day in my old distance frames, and the rest of the day (except for when I was wearing progressives) in the new distance frames.

The result is that three weeks in, I’m feeling okay with the progressives. I can keep them on to read brief things, though I still like to take them off to read books. Headaches from the new distance prescription have mostly stopped. I can see the world again. I probably should re-read this in the future the next time I’m dreading something.

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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:

• None… sniff…

Okay, now my choices this week.

Cup of Jo has an essay from a person who was born after her parents experienced two children born still. I’m accustomed to hearing about loss from the parent’s perspective, and it was interesting to hear how a child (now an adult) processes the space that exists between her older sister and herself. She writes: “The babies: this is what we called them. The babies. We — our eventual family of four — knew them as one, though they hadn’t come as one. They were never going to grow up to be anything other than the babies, the big brother and sister I never had.” It is such a powerful piece about loss and families and how we take care of each other and hold memories.

A Separate Life has a most excellent rant about the portrayal of women over a certain age. Think granny. And not even spry granny. She writes: “Over and over again, we see this on our screens; the grandparents of young children are almost always portrayed as extremely elderly. Yet the reality is that most young children have active grandparents in their 50s (give or take a decade).” It creates a weird phenomenon where 60-year-old women are aged up to portray 80-year-olds.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix gets through a hard month and can breathe easier in April. She writes about something I rarely see discussed: how do you know when you need help? She explains: “There were a couple of times where I wondered if I needed to bring in some more support. I am not afraid to ask for help, but I’m not always aware of when I reach that point. I informally assessed my life but determined I was still functioning. So I just continued to feel and process.” Food for thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: Adjusting to new glasses. 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 April 1 – April 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.