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 April.

The Magicians (Lev Grossman): ChickieNob and I listened to the audio while we did our daily indoor walk. This is one of my favourite books, so it made it easier to carve time into every afternoon to exercise because I knew I was going to be spending time listening to the adventures of my book friends.

A Game of Cones (Abby Collette): This is the second book I’ve read in her Ice Cream Parlour Mystery series. I adore this series. I like every character. I like that she throws in a Hebrew or Yiddish word here and there. Is the plot believable? Of course not—it’s a cozy mystery. But reading it was a true pleasure. I liked every minute I was with this book.

Her Dark Lies (J.T. Ellison): I didn’t rate this book on GoodReads because I didn’t know how I felt about it. It had zero plot twists. Everything you think will happen, happens. I didn’t understand what she was doing with this. It was like the romance equivalent of a mystery in the sense that you knew everything that would happen, and there were no surprises. But, at the same time, I devoured the book. It was like… a paper soap opera.

Murder in G Major (Alexia Gordon): Another cozy mystery—this one set in Ireland with paranormal elements. If you like cozy mysteries, this is a perfect cozy mystery. Loved the characters, the town, and the plot. I plan to read the whole series because the first book ends of a cliffhanger.

The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien): I’m still rereading Lord of the Rings every morning in 15 minute increments. And I love it. Of course.

Good Girl, Bad Blood (Holly Jackson): This is a sequel that may be even better than the original book. A warning: it has a really dark twist at the end. But the only thing I would change about this book is the title. It’s a terrible title, right? For a really amazing book. I cannot wait for the third book in this series.

The Good Sister (Sally Hepworth): This is another book that I didn’t rate on GoodReads because I didn’t know how I felt about it. Once again, infertility plays a role in the plot in Hepworth’s book. It’s super read-able in the sense that you’ll race through it. But a bunch of pieces of the book made me feel squicky. I’d be curious how other people felt about the book.

What did you read last month?

I won my second GoodReads book! It was a book that I didn’t remember adding to my TBR, though I love it so I’m thrilled that my subconscious mind clearly did me the favour of filling out the giveaway form. It’s hitting a little close to home—woman experiencing anxiety after her twins leave for college (which happens to be my alma mater)—but still, it’s better than thinking about the current gasoline issues hitting the east coast.

Distraction!

By reading about something else that gives me anxiety!

Anyway, it is pretty much the most exciting thing that has happened to me since the last time I won a giveaway, which was right at the beginning of the pandemic. It feels really good to win a book.

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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 in order 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. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Not Obviously Sad” (Finding a Different Path)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has fantastic words of advice for anyone trying to make the decision whether to live child-free after infertility. Learning how someone else arrived at a decision can help a person find their own path to resolution. I love her bulleted list.

No Kidding in NZ has advice on how to get through hard days, like Mother’s Day. Getting out of your routine and going somewhere else is helpful to consider on all dreaded days. Moreover, I love this: “It is an invented holiday, and within a few days it is forgotten, and I refuse to give it too much power over me.”

Infertility Honesty honours “the person – or, more accurately, PEOPLE – I have been through my entire string of lived Mother’s Days knowing I’ll never be a mother.” She reflects on how she has changed over the years; how her reaction to the day has changed over the years. She takes the day and turns it into a celebration of being who you are and loving yourself in the moment.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof asks an important question: “Dear reader, is there a time when you put your own needs before everything else?” The simple answer is affirmative, but the more nuanced answer is that it’s hard to put your needs first. To practice self-care when it’s not easy to practice self-care. Sending a hug because this post hit close to home for me, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: I won a book! 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 7 – May 14) 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.

The New York Times had a great piece about the idea of the entire nation taking a one-week, paid vacation. All on the same week. Everyone included.

Of course, this would mean that people couldn’t go to hotels or restaurants or travel very far. Hotel workers would be off, same with restaurant staff, and travel workers. Hospitals may throw a wrench in the plans—we kind of need health care workers to keep working—and it would be really hard if you needed something at the store during this time. But other than those things, as long as everyone is willing to stay local and not do anything, it could totally work.

Vacations are hard because life continues on without you. Planning needs to happen. Getting back up to speed once you return needs to happen. It can sometimes feel like more work to take a break than to not take one.

But this idea is perfect because every single person would be off at the same time. Across the world. Everyone would get somewhere and then just… stop.

I’m in.

There was a piece in Vox recently that was about the decision whether or not to have children, but I thought the advice in the piece was applicable to anyone at a crossroads during infertility as well. Just as it is hard to know whether or not to begin with family building, it’s also hard to know whether to continue with family building.

I guess the article got me with these lines:

Most people who contact me say they feel like they’re the only one who can’t decide. I let them know immediately: They’re not the only one. Our society allows little room for ambivalence around this topic.

That’s because we, unfortunately, live in a pronatalist world where the unspoken message is that everyone should want children and should have them, the end.

It is hard to detach from that pronatalist society to make it a personal decision (instead of a societal one) because we are always surrounded by that message. And the people around us are also influenced by it. Therefore, it’s like trying to have a conversation while surrounded by noise. It takes a lot of effort to separate what a person wants as an individual from that larger societal message. And I think this is equally true no matter where you fall on the want spectrum. Society just has a way of getting very loud in delivering its message of what it thinks you should do and how it thinks you should do it.

The other piece of this article that grabbed me: “It’s important to know that a person’s desire and decision are not always the same, nor is the goal for them to be the same. The goal is to know your truth about each of them.” In other words, these are two separate things that we sometimes try to solve at the same time. And we can’t always deal with both simultaneously. Sometimes it’s about figuring out one, accepting it, and then figuring out the other.

She gives six steps to help people decide, and many are helpful in also deciding whether or not to continue with family building when you’re in the middle of it. Placing this here in case it helps anyone.

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

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I am all for normalizing death—it is a part of life—but I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the idea of thinking about death five times per day, an idea from Bhutanese culture.

More, I’m thinking about whether you can take a practice out of one culture and drop it into another and get the same results. Despite that, I thought this video was fascinating.

What is your reaction?

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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.