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 July.

The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett): This book is such a good read. I had no clue where it was going or where we’d end up, and I loved that. There were a few places where the coincidences were a bit much and one analogy Bennett drew that bothered me, but I could overlook those things because what remained was so achingly beautiful. I couldn’t wait to get back to the story every day.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins): This is just squeaking by onto the side of mostly liking it. Does it recapture the magic of The Hunger Games trilogy? Not a bit. But it’s an interesting backstory of how cruelty can form. I was happy when it was over, but I was also happy that I read it.

The Guest List (Lucy Foley): I was looking forward to reading this book set in Ireland while in Ireland. Oh well. It was a completely enjoyable mystery. Like The Vanishing Half, I was okay with the mountain of coincidences because I liked everything else in the book. I especially liked the ending and all of the nods to Agatha Christie along the way.

Sex and Vanity (Kevin Kwan): I adored the Crazy Rich Asians books, and I adored this book, too. It’s not in that world, though the name Astrid pops up (and you just know that it’s the original Astrid). It is ridiculous fun with the ultra-rich. My only complaint is that Kwan sent me on such a Googling spree that it look forever to get through the book because I kept getting distracted looking up various designers and locations.

Exciting Times (Naoise Dolan): This was probably my favourite book of the month. If you like Sally Rooney, you will likely enjoy Naoise Dolan. It’s about an Irish girl teaching English in Hong Kong, and the two relationships she’s having the same time. Dolan captures relationships so beautifully, the good ones and the bad ones. She made me feel like I was there in Hong Kong, hanging out with Ava and Julian and Edith. True—that’s the word I would use to describe this book, and it’s one of my highest compliments.

What did you read last month?

Along with the paint-your-own-pottery place, I learned about a second closure last week: My college coffeehouse. On one hand, it feels really far away—the last time I was there was about 19 years ago—and on the other, it is the setting of some of my favourite college memories. I loved this coffeehouse so much that I chose apartments near it so I could be close all four years.

I called it my home away from home because back in the days before cell phones, if someone wanted to find you, they needed to know where you hung out. I was either at home, in the literary magazine office, in the etching lab, at Hillel (the Jewish student union), or—more often than not—studying at Espresso Royale. I found it on the first week of school. In warm months, I got an iced decaf raspberry mocha. In the cold months, I got a hot almond milk.

So I have a lot of happy memories of studying with friends at this coffeehouse in the evening, but one of my favourite memories is meeting my conversation partner there weekly. In my first month at college, I saw an advertisement on a kiosk looking for native English speakers to serve as conversation partners. I filled out a form, asking to be placed with a woman, preferably one who spoke French or Spanish. My match was with a man who spoke Indonesian.

Okay.

But I gave it a try, and we met for years at the coffeehouse to talk. He would bring photo albums and use the pictures to practice descriptions. Or I would ask him questions about Indonesia. And we’d just talk… over coffee… or doodle objects when we couldn’t use circumlocution to get around an unknown word.

In the very beginning, he would leave me an answering machine message on Wednesdays to make sure I remembered that we were meeting the next day, and the messages always began: “1. PM. Thuuuuuuuuursday. Espresso Royale.” To this day, I cannot take down my Espresso Royale mug without hearing his voice in my head, reminding me of our upcoming meeting.

That’s what I thought about when I heard that Espresso Royale had not survived coronavirus, another business succumbing to the economic downturn and long term closure. My conversation partner and studying with friends and iced decaf raspberry mochas. (And also the people who would have sex in the single-room bathrooms at the back of the store. I gave them a few seconds of nostalgia time.)

It’s not just a business. It’s someone else’s receptacle for their memories. And it makes me so sad every time I hear about another placed closed forever.

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

*******

CNN had a piece on a couple who built their own island over the last 29 years. The pandemic hasn’t really changed much for them because they’ve set up their lives to be completely sustainable on their floating compound.

It’s not that it’s easy—they have an exhausting number of tasks per day in order to be self-sufficient. But they also don’t have to worry about losing their home because they couldn’t pay the mortgage.

The pandemic has made me take a hard look at what it means to live a sustainable life. What do we actually need vs. what do we want? And then taking a hard look at those wants: how many of them should stay on the list?

I’m always fascinated by people who figure out how to be self-sufficient; in big or small ways.

*******

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.

Two “mental samplers” two weeks in a row? The virus is giving birth to small thoughts.

*******

I needed to take my car in for an oil change. At this point in the pandemic, I’ve learned that it’s best not to wait on things that could create more problems in the future. The devil I know (the pandemic today) is better than the devil I don’t know (the pandemic in the future). I didn’t want to damage the car by putting it off too long. So we made an appointment and a plan with the local garage.

I’m taking their word that they wore a mask in the car and wiped down the surfaces they touched afterward. But not taking any chances, I drove home with all windows open and then sprayed down the seats with Lysol fabric spray and wiped every surface with disinfectant. I couldn’t believe that I felt so stressed out about an oil change. I also never want to forget how stressed out I was about an oil change.

*******

For the first time… ever(?)… I have no paper library books in the house. I have digital books checked out, but we brought back all of the paper books we checked out before the pandemic. It felt very weird to return the final book through the slot. I had an irrational thought to try to stick my arm back through the slot and snatch one back.

We can’t enter the library to browse, but you can request books and do contact-less pick-up from outside the library. But we’re not going to do that for now. We’re sticking to paper books we own and digital library books.

The whole thing just made me feel sad. The library is such a huge part of my life, and it has been weird not to go inside for the last five months.

*******

One of my mint plants has given birth to a new baby mint plant. I have no clue how it happened because I didn’t root a cutting. It just spontaneously happened. The first day it poked its head out of the dirt, I had no clue what it was. But two days later, I realized that I was seeing tightly packed mint leaves, and now it’s growing at a rapid rate and looking like a normal mint plant. I love it. And a second one popped up its head a day ago, too.

What is new in your world?

At first, I wasn’t worried about Isaias at all. I mean, I was worried for people on the coastline, but I wasn’t worried about our area.

And then the day before the storm was set to hit, we received a bunch of messages about things preemptively closing because Isaias was going to produce heavy winds and a lot of rain. The local government said that people should stay off the roads during the storm. Josh had planned to go grocery shopping the next day, so he moved up the trip and got home before the stores filled.

I spent the evening worrying. We charged devices in case we lost power, but I was more concerned with falling trees.

And then the storm came and went. Our area was okay, so I could have stuck with my original worrying plan to focus all of my anxiety on the coastline. It was weird to worry about something other than coronavirus for a few hours.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “The Stories We Make Up About Home” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, KatherineA
• “A sainthood not extended… virtue (not) bestowed” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “My Unsolicited Advice” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dreaming of Diapers writes about the way the virus has impacted her life. She writes, “Due to the pandemic, my husband got demoted at work and we decided to put our house on the market to adjust to his new salary. And, I’ve tried more of everything to get pregnant and nothing has worked… and I’m terrified to close that chapter of my life for good.” She is writing more now to get out these emotions. For some people, the pandemic isn’t a pause; it’s a completely different path.

Dubliner in Deutschland discovers that distance is relative. Before the pandemic, home didn’t feel far away. During the pandemic, home suddenly feels very distant. I’ve been wondering if the pandemic will change where people live if they haven’t already settled down. I’m sure we’ll be thinking about the impact of the pandemic for years (or generations?) to come.

Lastly, An Engineer Becomes a Mom asks what is your story? She tells her story—the highlight moments—and then points out: “That’s it, it’s just a story. It shaped me, certainly the way I was raised shaped me, yet it’s not me. That’s the part where I think a lot of us get stuck. We get stuck in the story of our lives as if it’s actually us.” She teaches you how to walk through your SFD (you’ll need to click over to understand the acronym).

The roundup to the Roundup: Isaias. 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 July 31 – August 7) 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.