2019 Reading List, Quarter 1 (Jan-Mar)

I discovered Goodreads in January as a place to store the list of all the books read or listened to, instead of hopping back and forth between the library's website, my phone, and trying to recall which of my own books I'd read! Now to organize them into categories...

Actual books
1. The Complete Book of Clean: Tips & Techniques for Your Home, Toni Hammersley-- started the year trying to make the most of my resolution to purge unused/unwanted things and to keep things clean and organized. She recommends daily, weekly, and monthly tasks for each area of the house (kitchen, bath, bedroom) and I was pleased to see that I did most of the daily things on a daily basis! The weekly and monthly-- some of those seemed like overkill, but were useful to think about implementing on as as-needed basis.

2. The Mammoth Hunters, Jean Auel-- my grandmother purged her bookcases of books she didn't want or read any more, and these were in my bag. I've read the series before, so it was a nice light easy read. She does get a bit repetitive and her characters are frustrating in their emotional under-development, but you can't have everything! I'm always impressed by her level of detail and research into the ecosystem of the Ice Age-- from the plants to the animals, you can tell she spent a great deal of time learning about how they lived so many thousands of years ago.

3. Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected--A Memoir, Kelle Hampton. I follow this woman's blog and have read the published story of her 2nd daughter's birth, so I thought... why not read her published memoir? It was... saccharine, written to highlight her previous struggles only to cast a rosy glow over her life now and was a bit one-dimensional.

4. The Complete Book of Home Organization, Toni Hammersley-- I actually wanted this one first, but it was on hold at the library, so I had to wait a while! By this point, my semester had picked up steam so I wasn't able to really dig in the way I wanted and implement some of her strategies to organize. I did snap some photos of pages that I thought were particularly useful but haven't used them yet!

5. The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future, Ryder Carroll-- as long as I'm overhauling my life completely, why not also implement a new journaling method? I'm trying this out as a daily planner style journaling and it's helping me to keep on task and actually do the chores I usually avoid (see: calling to make/change appointments) and it's nice not to have to re-write my task list on a new scrap piece of paper once I get to work. It's also nice to have a page outlining the monthly or weekly upcoming events to help plan dinners and daycare drop-off/pick-up well in advance. The book itself was... ok, good for the parts that were about how to do/use the method, less useful for parts about his ADHD or how other people use the journaling method to create works of art. I mean, they're beautiful pages, but I can see how some would be overwhelmed comparing that level of artistry and detail and never attempt to use the method themselves. We'll see how it goes for the next month or so!

6. The Plains of Passage, Jean Auel-- the next book in the series. She is long-winded.

7. Seabiscuit: An American Legend, Laura Hillenbrand-- picked this up at the townhouse at Mount Snow during our ski weekend and then finished it on a request from the library after we returned home. It was nice to read something I wouldn't have usually chosen.

Audiobooks from my commute
8. The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)-- a murder mystery solved by a protagonist who is a wounded war veteran with a surly attitude. I didn't know it was written by JK Rowling until about halfway through listening, and then some of the superfluous detail and emotional baggage of the characters made sense. I liked it, though, and would probably listen to another of these (this was the 2nd in the series).

9. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer-- chose this one because it popped up and was available when I needed a new audiobook. I liked the format-- all letters written between the characters, so you have to fill in the setting around them. I watched the movie on Netflix afterward and liked the book better!

10. The Mere Wife, Maria Dhavana Headley-- a current take on the classic Beowulf, told from the perspective of the mothers (Grendel's mother and the queen of the castle). Having never read Beowulf in high school, this was interesting but I doubt I'll take on the heavy lift of reading the original.

E-books
None for this quarter-- used paper copies only.

Books read to the boys
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling-- this mammoth book (750 pages!) took a long time to get through, reading 15-20 minutes each night. As I suspected, the dark ending left L very emotional, so we're taking a break from HP until probably this summer. They only get darker and scarier from here on out!

How am I doing compared to previous years? I copied this from last year's post at this time:
In 2017, my Quarter 1 total was 11, but I hadn't started listening to audiobooks during my commutes yet (only during long trips).
In 2016, my Quarter 1 total was 11, but that included through April because I forgot to tally in March.
In 2018, my Quarter 1 total was 14 (!), but I suspect that had a great deal to do with shorter books read (Jean Auel is very long!), or perhaps 2018 was an exceptionally good year for reading.