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 October.

What We Can Know (Ian McEwan): This book is an excellent reminder that sometimes you feel bored or want to stop something or don’t know where it is going, but if you hang in there, you will have your mind blown. What a fantastic ride. What a hard gulp of a thought about what we leave behind and how it will be interpreted in the future. This is one of my favourite reads of 2025.

Lyra’s Oxford (Philip Pullman): A bit thinner as a story than the Collectors or the novels. Enjoyed it because I enjoy all time with Lyra in Oxford, but it feels more like a sketch than a finished drawing. Still, as a completist, I felt like I had to read this one before getting to The Rose Field.

A Particularly Nasty Case (Adam Kay): I liked this but didn’t love it because it felt like a repeat of This Is Going To Hurt without the emotional bits. On the plus side, I laughed quite a few times. It’s a cute cozy mystery with an unlikeable narrator but I wanted to like him. There is a moment early on when the narrator points out why he and Nina should be friends on paper, and that’s kind of how I felt about the book. We should connect on paper.

Serpentine (Philip Pullman): Again, His Dark Materials completist, so I needed to read this tiny novella before continuing on to The Secret Commonwealth. Each tiny Lyra story hurts and heals my heart. This one was no different. I love this world so much. I’m glad I decided to reread and catch up on the novellas I missed on the way to the Rose Field. It is a great way to spend time in this tumultuous world.

Guilty by Definition (Susie Dent): Word nerds, rejoice. I read two books set in Oxford at the same time — The Secret Commonwealth (Philip Pullman, fantasy) and this — and they often visited the same places: The Trout or Cornmarket or Godstow. So it was a very strange experience jumping back and forth from real Oxford to fantasy Oxford, and a great way to experience the word play of this mystery. I loved being in the CED (or… alternate OED) offices, learning about the world, and following the twisting path of the story.

What did you read last month?

Guess who is phasing out of baby food? Quentin Aeneas is now a big boy, and we’re weaning him onto adult food. He likes it because Quentin pretty much likes everything with the exception of birds. He passionately hates birds and still growls whenever he hears one, which is about 30 times per day. And then he looks at me as if to say, “Am I wrong?” And I respond, “I know. Birds are the worst.”

He still loves Josh so much and gets excited when he comes home. Bedtime is the best. That makes him so excited that he has to popcorn around in a circle and yank all of his hay out of his bowl. Just because. And then run through it because there is that much joy in his heart.

He is super patient when I’m doing yoga, and though he often talks to himself, he never begs for his vitamin C cookie until I’m finished and closed the iPad. He loves the weekend when we share an apple for breakfast. And while he will eat carrots, peppers, and cucumber on his own, he likes an audience when he eats lettuce, and he’ll sometimes wait until I can sit down with him to begin eating, even if it means waiting a long time.

But best of all, he loves having his head rubbed, and he finally does what I loved so much about Beorn: He rests his head in my palm while I stroke between his eyes. I love to watch him get blissed out and then become so happy that he has to run around in a circle to let it all out.

Be yourself, Quentin!

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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:

• “On the Road with Those Who Get It” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Another blogging milestone. No Kidding in NZ reached 15 years of blogging. I love this thought: “Thanks for reading, being here, writing in parallel on your own blogs, being part of my No Kidding life. I’m not sure how much longer I will continue, as blogs seem to fall out of favour, and readers dwindle. But if I can reach one new person, it’s worth continuing.” It is about reaching one person at a time. And very happy to be one of those people who have learned from you.

Lastly, Middle Girl writes about meeting up with her cousin, whom she hadn’t seen in decades due to divorce. She explains: “While we are close in age, we have people and experiences in common, the second half of our childhoods and a large chunk of our adulthoods were spent in separate worlds. Her memories and my memories did not align.” It’s a story with a bit of a twist, and it brings out thoughts on family and the meaning of those ties.

The roundup to the Roundup: Eternally happy Quentin Aeneas. 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 November 7 – 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.

Many years ago, my brother introduced the kids to Trader Joe’s cat cookies for people, and they immediately became a shopping trip staple.

When we dropped the kids off at college this year, we swung by their local Trader Joe’s for cat cookies and Bamba, and they were sold out of both. Panic! They grabbed other snacks, and I said I would pick up these treats at our local Trader Joe’s before our October visit. That way, I would be sure they would have them.

While Bamba was quickly back on the shelves, there continued to be a blank space where cat cookies should be. Every time we asked about it, the person would check the computer and tell us they would be back in stock X days later. We would return, the shelf would be empty, and we’d be told there was a delay, and now it was Y says later. They have not been discontinued. They’re just having trouble getting them in stock.

We tried up until the trip, tried random Trader Joe’s along the way, and tried up in their college town one last time. No cat cookies.

I haven’t given up. The Cat Cookie Crisis of 2025 has only made me more determined to keep at this until I can present tubs of cat-shaped cookies to the kids. Making me a hero.

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The kids also taught me the term “rubberducking.” It comes from computer science, where coders are encouraged to “explain their code, step by step, in natural language—either aloud or in writing—to reveal mistakes and misunderstandings.” And they do this to a rubber duck or other inanimate object.

I needed it explained because a person said to me, “I’m not a rubber duck!” And I didn’t understand the reference. It’s when another person uses YOU as their rubber duck. They’re not telling you so you understand them better. They’re using you as a rubber duck to talk through their problems so they can hear them outside their head. And the point the person made is that humans absorb emotions, rubber ducks do not, so talking at someone for a half hour while listing out all of your issues is not a productive conversation. It’s rubber ducking.

So now you know, too.

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 audiobook. It’s called A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas, and I liked that it 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.

He says, “I am obviously as much of a novice as you are at this dying business and may well be talking bollocks.”

But to that end, these are the profound takeaways I captured. And while he points out that they are nothing new, they appear in every book about dying. We know that our relationships matter more than our jobs, that the things we worry about rarely come true (and if they do, we deal with them), that we should take more time to enjoy life, but even though we know all of these things, we don’t behave as if we know them.

And for what it is worth, he mentions midway through the book that they went through “10 fruitless years of IVF,” and I think that experience plays into this advice, too.

“All of our tombs will be unvisited in a few short spins of the rock around the star, but the smile you gave the check out lady might still be rippling forward.”

It’s profound to think about: With the exception of the genealogy fans in our families, most people will be forgotten to have ever existed in a few short generations. But the tiny ways we impact other people while we’re here may still be rolling forward, impacting the world in the future. He’s not talking about the major discoveries or inventions. He’s just talking about the small kindnesses or moments of connection we extend to other people.

“We fret about what other people think of us, even though actually other people devote much less time doing so than we imagine. A huge mistake we all make — I think it must be hardwired into us — is to compare ourselves only upwards. Social media probably makes this worse.”

It’s so true — we always compare ourselves up (“I’m not doing as well as she is”) vs. down (“I am so grateful that I have this job”). It would make more sense when you feel yourself comparing yourself in one direction to also look behind and realize where you’re not and happy that you’re not.

“I don’t advise consuming too much news as it’s too skewed toward the awful, and can leave one just hopeless and wrongly depressed about the state of the world.”

Such a good reminder to close down the news app. It doesn’t make you ill-informed. The important news has a way of getting to us even when we try to shut it out. But understanding that we’re being manipulated by the media and what is reported and how. So dip into coverage, get what you need, and then go and process it yourself (or do something about it).

“Thoughts and emotions arrive, and they fall away. The past exists only in our memory, and the future, only in our imagination. By recognizing that, we can focus on the present, let go of worry, and even pain, though I’m not quite there yet, and understand that so much of our suffering is actually made by ourselves, both through our expectations and our inability to see how beautiful we all are at our core.”

Very true.

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

He quotes Queen Elizabeth’s words, but I wanted to set them here, too. Big love = big grief. There’s no way around the cost.

“We humans are programmed to focus on the negative. To remember losses more than gains and hardships more than softships. That kept our ancestors alert and alive on the savanna. However, many developed countries today seem to be experiencing an epidemic of depression, pessimism, and anger. This simply isn’t justified by the conditions we live in.”

He admits that there are problems in the world, big issues that need addressing. But the book is also scattered with reminders that the negative lens doesn’t always serve us. And the solution is to stop the comparisons, stop the things you know are making you unhappy, and connect with the people you love.

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 this week: ambient panic. Being surrounded by low-frequency panic at all times. It’s not a new term, but it kind of perfectly describes the world right now. Or always? It’s so hard to know.

I think I look at the past through rose-tinted glasses because I got through it. Whatever “it” is, it has happened, and I am on this side of it with all of the knowledge and memories and experience. Whereas the future is like an invisible steamroller. It may go by you on the street and crush someone else, or it may roll right over your body and smash you to bits. And you can’t get out of the way because you have no clue where to go because that is, of course, the issue with invisible steamrollers.

The future, on the other hand, feels do-able. Just being in this moment. Breathing. But then I tell myself that I can’t stay in the present forever. The future has to roll by.

Or does it? Can’t I just stay here, always in the present?

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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.