The local school system put out a video for “67 Day” (of course, they did), with children doing the hand gesture and then jumping into activities centered on the number 67.

And there was one question I loved:

Would you rather read 67 pages of your favourite book or 67 pages of a new book?

Meaning, you don’t have to commit to the whole story, but you can have 67 pages you know will be enjoyable (favourite book), or bet on 67 pages that could become your new favourite book because they are mind-blowingly good. Or maybe terrible?

I would opt for 67 pages of my favourite book because I’m not big into gambling. I’d rather know what I’m going to get. What about you?

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 November.

A Beginner’s Guide to Dying (Simon Boas): I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but there was a book that kept popping up on “best of” lists, and when it came in at the library, I decided to check out the short audio book. I liked that this book started by pointing out that every single person on earth is a beginner in their own death. We never get to become an expert on our own dying because we only do it once. That quirky truth is a good example of what you’ll find in this lovely, helpful book: a bit of humour, a bit of profound knowledge, a bit of useful advice. It’s less a book about dying and more a book about living. I am so glad I read it.

The Secret Commonwealth (Philip Pullman): This was my first time reading this book as part of my massive re-read of His Dark Materials before the release of the final book. This is the rare series where each book gets progressively better with each book, and this book, the 9th in the series, is the best one yet.

Other People’s Houses (Clare Mackintosh): Mackintosh is one of my favourite writers, and I always enjoy spending time with Ffion. This was a great thriller, and I liked it as much as I liked the first book in the series. I hope she brings Ffion back for a fourth book (especially after that cliffhanger ending), though really looking forward to a standalone thriller from Mackintosh this spring.

The Queen Who Came in From the Cold (SJ Bennett): As always, SJ Bennett is an absolute treasure, and I hope she writes many many many more of these books. They’re fun, enlightening, clever. I love the note at the end over what was real, what was invented, and what was borrowed and twisted. Clever, clever, clever x 1000.

The Impossible Fortune (Richard Osman): It has gotten to the point where I should just give Osman books five stars from the get-go because they are always five stars. Even the acknowledgments page was five stars. I loved the twists in this book. That’s all I’ll say.

What did you read last month?

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

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I have a new game I love called AITA Guesser. Every day, it pulls three real AITA situations from Reddit, and you have to guess how people voted. So you’re not voting whether YOU think the person is an asshole. You’re voting on what you think other people think about the person. Or sometimes I guess what I would have voted if I had encountered this situation and see whether I align with the majority.

I’m enjoying this game so much in a way that I’m never drawn to actually reading or voting in AITA posts. I guess it’s the difference between seeing whether I’m right or wrong vs. giving feedback to a stranger.

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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.

This sounds like the ideal retreat (for me). Manor house. Check. Everyone is on board with silent reading time. Check. Talking about books. Check. Lack of pressure to do anything more than read? Check. Check. Check.

Actually, it sounds like they took walks, listened to stories, and played games. So minimal pressure to do anything else, but those other things all sound like things I’d like to do, too.

I would want to do it with people I know, but I could also be happy doing it with a group of strangers in an awesome space. There’s a part of me that would feel a bit guilty — I traveled so far to do something I could do by myself at home? But I think it would make me happy.

Would you want to go?

Once a week, I diligently run down all of the tasks on my backup list, which includes backing up this space. I back it up four different ways, not truly understanding which type of backup I would want to use if I had to restore the site. Better safe than sorry.

So I was making my weekly backup in the cPanel file manager, when instead of clicking on the folder, I somehow MADE THE FOLDER DISAPPEAR. Like it was gone. And there is no undo button in the cPanel.

This story clearly has a happy ending because you are reading it on my blog, but I felt completely sick in that moment. I had no clue what I did. All I knew was that the file was not in the trash, and if you looked for my website on the internet, it showed a fatal error message because THE WEBSITE WAS GONE.

I started opening up nearby folders and finally found the folder inside another folder. Then I had to figure out how to move it back to the correct place. And then check that everything worked again. The whole thing unfolded in only a few minutes, but I felt sick for hours afterward because it was such a stupid mistake.

Note to self: Be extra careful when working in the cPanel.

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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.

Not a Wasted Word has a post about the stories we tell ourselves. In this case, it’s using coincidences to confirm that something is meant to be. She gives examples of small things and big things, but I related a lot to the post because we all try to make sense of a (possibly) chaotic world. But this is the part I found so interesting: “Anyway, I am definitely telling myself the story that, THIS WAS MEANT TO BE! Which makes me a little worried that I’m not considering all the issues. Can I be clear minded about something when I’m telling myself this story?” Yes? I think?

Lastly, The Barreness dumps out her brain and catches us up: From a trip that went well to car troubles to a scary moment with her FIL. She writes about the aftermath: “We went to a restaurant in town to stare at each other, ask each other over and over “you okay”; my hip/thigh pulsing in pain and try to process the evening that just unfolded under a beautiful full moon in front of the gallery on the biggest night of the year … Totally normal, totally surreal, absolutely baseline for this year.” I especially love the captured moment of kindness at the end.

The roundup to the Roundup: A blog backup horror story. 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 December 5 – 12) 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.