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 December.

The Rose Field (Philip Pullman): What a long strange trip with Lyra and Pan. I started in August rereading the series so I would be ready for this book when it came out. It was wonderful to cross the world with some of my favourite characters and know how the story ends. Or how the story begins, as I think Lyra would probably say when she gets to the end of a good, long tale.

The Shakespeare Requirement (Julie Schumacher): I skimmed the first book in the trilogy, and while it was nice to have a general sense of what happened in the first book before coming into this one, it isn’t necessary. I laughed and cringed through this book. I missed and did not miss academia in equal measure. I liked every character. It was just a great story. Go Payne! Especially Pup-Dog.

The Heir Apparent (Rebecca Armitage): Like The Royal We but maybe a little more think-y. I really loved this book and thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I’ve read many thinly disguised royal family books, and this one had something new to say and said it well. I can’t wait to see what this writer does next.

That’s Not How It Happened (Craig Thomas): I loved this book. Clearly – I devoured it in three days. I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t know the author’s show, but this made me want to see it because this story had big squishy heart. I laughed. My heart hurt for the valleys and cheered for the high points. Such a great story.

The Christmas Appeal (Janice Hallett): I didn’t review this book on Goodreads because it was a re-read, but the first time I read it, I wrote: “Janice Hallett is a gift to the world. I am not a fan of Christmas, but if she is writing the story, I am reading it. And this was so well done – funny and clever. Loved being back with the Players.” Still true.

Best Offer Wins (Marisa Kashino): I had a very hard time with this book. I liked the pacing and the plot. I disliked all of the characters. In fact, I considered stopping because the characters were all so unpleasant that I didn’t enjoy spending time with them. But it moved quickly and wrapped up neatly. I guess I was happy that I finished it. So 1 for characters and 4 for plot, for a 2.5 average. With an extra point for DC references.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (Ragnar Jónasson): It was my first Ragnar Jonasson, but I was deep in before I realized I should have read the first book in the series. No worries — it was easy to keep up with the characters. A great, fast-paced winter read. I’ll double back and read the first book, and then I have the third book on my TBR for next fall.

The Correspondent (Virginia Evans): I’m still thinking about this book, weeks later. I read this in two days. I didn’t think I wanted to read it, and then it became the only book I wanted to read. Heartbreaking, beautiful, frustrating, relatable, this story will stick with me for a long time. The only thing that bothered me were letters back from actual people. For some reason, that crossed the line for me, maybe because those exchanges were tied to loss. But that was a tiny thing for me. On the whole, this was incredible and a good way to end the year.

What did you read last month?

I usually do not use the toiletries provided by hotels. I like my shampoo and my moisturizer — why would I want to use an unfamiliar product with an unfamiliar scent? The one exception is soap. I’m a soap generalist, at least when it comes to hand soap.

But this fall, we were at a hotel we stay at several times per year, and I noticed that the sample toiletries were made with goat milk. I sniffed, I tried, I fell in love. Like hardcore begged Josh to take a vacation so we could return to the hotel, and I could get more goat milk hand cream.

We found it online, sold in a 1 gallon bottle. The version in stores has different ingredients, but this is the one we had in the hotel. I’m considering getting the gallon. It’s less expensive than continuously going back to the hotel.

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Do you sleep with earplugs? I am considering getting Loop Quiet earplugs, which are supposed to block out sound and be okay for side sleeping, with the idea that I could also use them during the day if I had to work out of the house.

But I don’t know anyone who has Loop earplugs. Do they work? Do you like them? And how do you hear your alarm if you sleep with them in?

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

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It is very difficult to not react to negative headlines. Back in the olden days, the newspaper was the newspaper. It was designed to provoke a reaction, but it wasn’t designed specifically to provoke a reaction in you. Everyone on your street who received the newspaper saw the same stories on Monday, and they didn’t see new stories until Tuesday.

But now, the stories you see are sometimes not the same stories other people see. News sites create so much content, and the algorithm can decide what to put in front of you based on what it believes you want to see (or provoke a reaction). The top of my news site is exclusively headline news, followed by opinion pieces on how AI is going to take everyone’s job, followed by articles about retirement. I never see sports, even though I know that section exists in the newspaper. I never see entertainment. Clearly, they showed those articles to me at some point, I didn’t click, and now they don’t show them to me at all.

My point: We have begun reminding each other in this house when we’re being distracted by headlines designed to distract us from real news, or believing a possibility just because the algorithm has delivered 12 opinion pieces over 12 days about the same topic. Instead of reacting, I remind myself that I am being manipulated by what amounts to advertising. It’s just advertising to get me to click or distract me from focusing on something else.

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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.

I am an information hoarder, squirreling away links with a silent promise that I will absolutely, definitely return to this piece of content in the future. I will need it. I will implement the advice, visit the location, and make the recipe.

I have bookmarks on every social media site in addition to the bookmarks I leave behind on every browser, the “bookmarks” I email myself, and the “bookmarks” I download as a PDF and put in a folder to read later. They’re not really bookmarks, but they’re kind of like bookmarks. Okay, they’re technically bookmarks in non-bookmark form.

This piece resonated with me:

The bookmark is a kind of fantasy: Not just in the sense that we can convince ourselves, while employing it, that we will one day transform an old t-shirt into shorts, but that by using it we’re not merely passive observers of our social feeds, but active participants, explorers, collectors. Gathering resources for a life we’re bound to start living.

Gulp.

If I were going to make myself a resolution this year (which I’m not), I would probably make it to bookmark less and return to bookmarks more. And if, within one month, I cannot actually see a future use for the information, I can unbookmark it.

Luckily, I don’t make resolutions.

I was stressing about the fact that three books were all coming to me on the same day from my library holds list, followed by another book the next Tuesday. All four were super popular books, so if I suspended the hold, I would be waiting weeks to get them again.

But then it occurred to me that if you read 5% of a book per day, you would finish it in 20 days, leaving you with 1 day of wiggle room for a 21-day checkout. 5% of a 400-page book is 20 pages, and most books are under 400 pages. I could easily move each book forward by 5% per night, right? 15% seemed do-able.

I checked out the first book and read to 5%. Then I checked out the second book and took it to 10%. Then went back to the first book and brought that one to 10%. I was currently 1 day ahead of schedule! I waited until the next day to check out the third book and bring that to 5%. As long as I always end at the daily percentage goal, I can keep this going indefinitely. Though it feels like 4 books may be my limit.

Take that, library holds list.

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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.

Finding a Different Path is on a hunt for delights. I love this as a teaching concept, and while it’s similar to a gratitude journal, there is something different, too. Gratitude is more about acknowledging and thanking the world for a moment. It feels weighty. Noticing delights is more whimsical and speaks to the fact that there are good things in the world, even when it looks like a dumpster fire. And beyond that, noticing them is kind of the point of living. Love this.

Lastly, All & Sundry writes about two visits: one at a care facility and one at hospice. While I was deeply moved by the hospice story, it was a thought she wrote about in the care facility one that was a light bulb moment for me: “What I now understand is that he has trouble expressing things but no trouble at all receiving, if that makes sense. He can often answer questions, he cannot ask them.” The human brain is fascinating.

The roundup to the Roundup: 5% reading goal. 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 January 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.