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 four books I liked from November.

Amberlough (Lara Elena Donnelly): I’ve had a hard time putting my feelings about this book (and the others in the trilogy) into words, so maybe I’ll start with this: I was only a few pages into my library copy when I decided I needed to own all three books in the trilogy. It is that good. Think Isherwood meets Le Carré. It’s the tail end of a queer renaissance in a decadent fictional city, with a right-wing fascist waiting in the wings. Spies. Black market hustlers. Cabaret performers. Secret messages. It is fantastic.

Armistice (Lara Elena Donnelly): This is the second book in the trilogy above. It took me a few pages to get my bearings; some characters from the first book are back plus many new ones. We’re in a new setting with its own connected but distinct political situation. This feels like a middle book in a trilogy, but I mean that in a good way. It’s connective, taking us deeper into the world, and leaving the reader excited to start the third book.

American Royals (Katharine McGee): I liked her earlier series (The Thousandth Floor), so I sensed I would enjoy this alternate American history where we have a royal family, and I was right. It is such a fun book; the perfect piece of mind candy at the end of the day. Like her other series, the point-of-view switches from chapter to chapter. I think my highest compliment is that I enjoyed being in every character’s brain.

Diary of a Bookseller (Shaun Bythell): I’ve written about this book a lot on the blog, but it’s a fun read. It’s a diary of a year in the life of a Scottish bookseller. A lot of food for thought in the pages. Definitely recommend it for a light read.

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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Another thought from Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. (Can you tell I marked up his book?)

On page 294, he tells a story:

In the afternoon a customer spent about an hour wandering around the shop. He finally came to the counter and said, ‘I never buy second-hand books. You don’t know who else has touched them, or where they’ve been.’ Apart from being an irritating thing to say to a second-hand bookseller, who knows whose hands have touched the books in the shop? Doubtless everyone from ministers to murderers. For many that secret history of provenance is a source of excitement which fires their imagination. A friend and I once discussed annotations and marginalia in books. Again, they are a divisive issue. We occasionally have Amazon orders returned because the recipient has discovered notes in a book, scribbled by previous readers, which we had not spotted. To me these things do not detract but are captivating additions – a glimpse into the mind of another person who has read the same book.

While that is a bizarre thing to say to a second-hand book dealer while in his shop (why did the person wander around if they don’t like them?), I’ll admit that I prefer new books, though I also buy used books. I like the idea of recycling and the cost of used books, but I love holding crisp, new books.

Do you like used books?

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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.

Once upon a time, I was thinking about going back to graduate school for a degree in library science. Like teachers and doctors, the world always has a need for a librarian. It seemed like a stable job, and I’ve realized over the years that––for me––job stability is connected to job satisfaction. My favourite jobs: the ones that had no end-point and could potentially continue forever. My least favourite jobs: the ones that were always in-flux with layoffs and sweeping changes.

Even if you come through the layoffs, you don’t feel comfortable on the other side. You’re just uncomfortable with a job vs. uncomfortable without a job. Believe me, I’d rather have a job than no job, but I’d also rather be comfortable and in a quiet job than feeling unstable but in an exciting job.

But I spoke recently with a librarian, and she told me all about how often librarians lose their jobs due to budget cuts. So much for that.

I recently came across this interesting post that’s a few years old. The author talks about designing your ideal education plan if money and time weren’t an issue. He writes about how his education plan wouldn’t be based in the classroom, per se, but as I thought it through, I decided that mine would. I would love to be back in a classroom, learning something new.

I would love to get a degree in library sciences. I’d love to study at Oxford and would spend the rest of my life starting sentences with, “When I was at Oxford…” Then I would switch universities and go somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else, jumping from university to university across the world.

I would take an enormous crate of books with me and spend a year in the Maldives, reading on the water. I would travel, of course, and learn a Scandinavian language properly by speaking it in the everyday world rather than in a classroom. I would apprentice with a mechanic and learn how to fix a car. And then I would apprentice with a zoologist and learn how to care for various animals.

And then when I got back to the normal world, I would settle down in a small town near water that needs a librarian and can promise funding the position for at least the next fifty years. And that’s where you would find me with my wealth of knowledge.

What would you study during your ten-year education plan and what career would you take afterward?

It’s Friday the 13th. If you look back at all the old Roundups, you will see that I have a compulsive need to point out that it is Friday the 13th every time the Roundup falls on the 13th. Telling you this serves zero purpose.

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I wanted to see Frozen 2, and ChickieNob agreed to go with me last weekend. I pointed out to her that when I was growing up, the only thing Disney offered me were princesses who didn’t resemble me who spent their time singing about princes. They were mostly running away from vs. running to–or, really, sleeping or waiting–and they were the animated personification of vanilla pudding.

She gets complex heroes who are finding their own way in the world and discovering on their adventures that they are “enough.” Complete. Their damage is where the light gets in, and their differences are cherished and celebrated because those traits save the day.

Plus they get better music now.

And I like Olaf.

I would have gone to see it alone, but I’m glad she came with me so I have someone to sing “Into the Unknown” with while I drive.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles has a post about being invited to a baby shower-ish event. What non-Jewish people don’t realize is that our baby events come after the baby is here. So the baby is at the event. I mean, they often get tucked away in a quiet space so perhaps it’s not as in-your-face as a big pregnant belly. But I always found Jewish baby events hard because the baby is present. She writes, “I’ve now received several invites to this event, like the new mom is somehow worried I’ll miss it if she doesn’t use every available avenue to deliver this invitation from text message to post. Or maybe she just wants to beat me over the head with it. THUMP. I’m a mom! THUMP! I’m a mom! THUMP! Did I mention I’m a NEW MOM!” Laughing and cringing at the same time.

No Kidding in NZ has four rules for getting through Christmas. It is literally a holiday about a baby. It may be really hard for you this year. But, as she points out in the first rule, it’s just one day. It’s all great advice: go dive in.

An Unexpected Family Outing also has advice for Christmas for grieving parents. I love the idea of an ornament swap with another grieving family. Or to hang a stocking. She has 19 ideas for how to remember your child during the holidays.

Lastly, Inconceivable! has a post about what she did after wrapping up her family building efforts. She writes, “When Arthur called an end to our efforts on trying to conceive, I found myself in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis.  I’m not sure why this surprised me – I’ve spent the better part of a decade trying to get pregnant and then stay pregnant in ways that were invasive, emotional, time-consuming, and expensive.” She makes space and fills herself with music. It’s a lovely little post.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th. I loved Frozen 2. 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 6th and 13th) 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.

It’s time for yet another deep thought brought to you from a passage in Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. I’ll start by saying that I love new books. If a book has been published recently, I justify the cost of a clean, new copy by knowing that my purchase helped the author’s sales rank so I actually just gave myself the gift of possible future books because it will help them get another book deal.

But if it’s an older book and sales figures aren’t going to affect future book deals, I save money (and trees) and buy used. We have great second-hand book options around me, and I go several times per week. Can’t get the amazing finds if you don’t hang out in the store and grab them as they come in.

But I’ve never thought about the book donors––the regular people who provide the books I’m buying at the second-hand shop.

Bythell writes about how interesting it is to hold a book that you know belonged or was touched by someone of historical significance. He says on page 275: