Reading Roundup: February 2023

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Dr Seuss

Where oh where did February go and how is it already March?

As with all of the grandest of ambitions, I hit a snag with my writing goals last month when we were hit with not one, not two but 3 different illnesses one after the other (I know, I know, perfectly normal when your kid starts preschool but STILL). Couple that with my 4 month old going through an also-perfectly-normal-developmentally sleep regression and, well, we were definitely in survival mode.

As I’m still recovering from the latest cold, I’m going to go easy on myself this week and publish my reading roundup and I’ll get back to the other content next week (hopefully).

Send all the healthy vibes our way – we need them!

One thing I did manage to do despite being sick was read. And boy did I ever read. In fact, according to Goodreads I’m 3 books ahead of schedule for my 2023 reading goal! Considering I read the bulk of my books in November and December last year…it’s safe to say I’m currently pleased as punch at this development.

So, without further ado, here are some fantastic things I read this month. Enjoy!

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Reading Roundup: January 2023

Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

Julia Child

Last week marked my first week off of blogging for the year (already!) as we all had the flu. However, in keeping with my new resolution to be kinder to myself, I’m proud I managed to blog all but one of the weekends in January! Now that feels like an accomplishment to me.

Today’s featured quote seemed incredibly appropriate for my first reading roundup of the year. See, I’m not sure that a lack of passion projects and interests has ever been my problem. In fact, if I do have a problem, it’s that I’m interested in far too many things. Can there truly be too much of a good thing?

One of my varied interests, as you have probably already gleaned from this blog, is reading. Like all of my other extracurricular activities, it has been hard over the past 3 years since becoming a mother to fit reading into my daily life; in the past its place in my schedule was assured.

I’d like to say I’m finally falling into a new rhythm with my reading, having already read 4 out of my 2023 goal of 23 books, but I know better than to proclaim such a victory so early. Life is fairly unpredictable as a rule and once you add kids into the mix? Well, good luck getting your crystal ball to ever predict anything accurately again.

That said, I’m proud of the amount of reading I accomplished in January. I’ll appease myself with basking in this rare sense of pride for now…

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Returning to the Unfinished

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.”

Christina Rossetti

Way back in September of 2021, I wrapped up my recollections of visiting the Beaches of Normandy with an emotional post, stating that I would be giving myself some time away from these harder travel stories for a little while. I have a ritual about writing these types of posts which often means sitting with those dredged up feelings of overwhelming sadness at the incomprehensible loss of life all those years ago. After spending so much time back at the beaches, remembering all the mental anguish I had experienced walking freely and unhindered where so many fell, I needed to focus on the lighter sides of life for a while. Little did I know this would translate into almost an entire year off from blogging.

Well, it’s now been 16 months now since my Beaches blog went live so…I’d say it’s OK to finally return to that unfinished travelogue. That said, I will be easing into it with a little human interest story to start things off.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

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Finding Joy in Winter

There was something else, some current of joy that ran among the members of the family, unseen but lively as electricity.

Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn

I’ve always been told that January is a dark month. Not only literally due to the overall lack of sunlight but emotionally, all of us pushing through the deep, discouraging cold of Canadian winters to the promise of warmth and new hope in the Spring.

Now, I’ll admit, there have indeed been some hard winters in my life. Those depressingly cold and lonely months in the depths of the pandemic (yes, still not over, but there is finally light at the end of that particular tunnel), the winter I was trying to decide whether or not to leave my cushy office job for the hopefully-better-for-my-mental-health unknown, the winter I spent far away from my family and friends in Holland (OK, that one was not all bad).

Even in the easier winters, there have been dark times. It’s hard not to feel a bit depressed when the sun goes down before you’ve even broken free from your work day. Though I may be a self-professed night owl, I still need a good dose of vitamin D on the daily to keep myself sane. As one who finds inspiration staying up far later than is advisable for today’s get-up-and-go lifestyle, mornings are made even harder without the brilliant sun coaxing even the most tired of creatures (me) out of bed. I’ve never been a fan of waking up to more darkness. Is anyone?

However, even with all that said, I’ve got to say…This January (already half over!) has hardly been dark at all, despite the lack of daylight hours.

Don’t believe me? Read on for some things I’m finding myself grateful for this January – and maybe you’ll find something to be grateful for too.

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Reading Roundup: 2022

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Oscar Wilde

It appears my last Reading Roundup post was in January of 2022, which is unbelievable. Thankfully, that was not the last month I read anything…only the last month I posted about what I had been reading.

This post will be a bit different than those previous ones as I will be summing up the standout articles and blogs as well as all the books I read for an entire year! While I didn’t highlight many articles or blogs this past year, I did read 24 whole books…but I’ll spare you the detailed reviews on all 24 (at least in this post). Instead, I’ll list them by quill (star) rating and will hopefully get back to some book reviews eventually!

So, without further ado, here are the articles, blogs and books that made 2022 my best year for reading in a long long time.

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Resolving 2023

Embrace the glorious mess that you are

Elizabeth Gilbert

So, it’s 2023. It’s 2023! Where did 2022 go? Anyone else feeling a bit discombobulated on this, the first day of the new year?

It has been 11 months since I last posted something here. Eleven whole months. When I spoke that out loud to my husband this morning I could hardly believe it. And yet, here we are.

When I was trying to think of why I hadn’t sat down to write in so long (despite my usual New Year’s resolution to do so every single day…or, at least more often) it only took one quick glance to my left at the peacefully snoring little one there to remind me why.

I didn’t write much at all last year because, well, I wasn’t feeling up to it. Why, you might ask? Well…because most of my energy was necessarily taken up in the act of growing the newest member of our family. Eleanor Rita Roberta Gurski Savoie was born two weeks early on October 14th, 2022, coming swiftly into this world after a mere 5 hours of labour. Of course, we are over the moon (as is her big sister Aria) but as pregnancies are not easy for me, the worthy cause of giving her life was pretty much all I could handle for 10 months. Well, that and making sure her older sister also had all the food, sleep, fun and love she needs and deserves every single day.

But here I am, again. I will always return to writing, no matter what life throws at me. Writing is a part of me, a big part, and something I miss terribly when I’m not doing it. However, as a wise friend recently reminded me, there are seasons for everything in life and perhaps being a mother of two young ones is not the season in which I will do the most writing. And that is OK.

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Solidarity Sunday #14: Miscommunications

It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human

Edward Said, Orientalism

How many months are we into this pandemic? How many years? I’m honestly not sure at this point but I think it is roughly as old as my daughter so 2? Or just about? Years that is…

If you’re even remotely in the same headspace as me, it feels like the past 2 years (did I get that right…?) have been one never-ending screening of groundhog day.

With one main exception.

No, I’m not talking about the lack of Bill Murray’s dry sense of humour. I mean, I’m sure most of us have developed a similar outlook on life over the course of this constant strain on our psyches. I’m also sure that most of us have had the desire to run outside at some point yelling WHAT ABOUT BOB?! … er… ME?!

Oh, right, wrong Bill Murray movie.

But I digress

This little guy gets a bad rap. How is he responsible for winter’s length? Photo by Doug Brown on Pexels.com
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Reading Roundup: November 2021 – January 2022

I noticed years ago that when people (myself definitely included) are anxious they tend to busy themselves with irrelevant activities, because these distract from and therefore reduce their actual experience of anxiety. To stay perfectly still is to feel the fear at its maximum intensity, so instead you scuttle around doing things as though you are, in some mysterious way, short of time.

John Cleese, So, Anyway…

Yet again, something I read resonated in such a visceral way that it could only have possibly been written just for me…or so I felt!

Though, perhaps this quote doesn’t just speak to me. Perhaps, just maybe, so many of us have been feeling the need to keep as busy as possible (mostly on our phones) over the past two years in order to avoid as much as we can the pervasive anxiety brought on by living through a global pandemic.

I know my own pandemic experience is not everyone’s but I have definitely realized over the last month or so of reflection that while I likely have more time now than I would have in more normal circumstances (even if I only take into account our lack of social outings), it feels like I am constantly running out of it.

Yes, I know, parenting is busy and I have heard time and again from parents that they don’t know what they did with all their time before they had kids. And they’re not wrong, I definitely feel that. But the absence of playdates, activities, dinners with friends, appointments, etc. etc. etc. should, logically, mean that even with kids to look after…we have more free time, no? So why in heaven’s name does every day fly by at the speed of light and end with me thinking I’ve accomplished nothing?

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

I agree with Mr. Cleese. I likely feel this way because I’ve spent all day focusing on largely irrelevant tasks in order to distract myself from the overwhelming anxiety of making it through this pandemic with my health, sanity and relationships still intact. No wonder my phone is never out of sight… Homescapes, after all, manages to feel productive while being nothing of the sort. I mean, I am helping Austin renovate a house after all. Who cares if my real life house is a mess??

I’m not sure if this counts as irrelevant task or not, but I have been somehow keeping up with my rather intense pace of article and blog reading (though perhaps at the expense of my ability to get through books in a timely manner…) and thus, without further ado, I will share with you all of the wonderful bits of less-than-immediately-relevant information that I have stuffed in my brain in an effort to crowd out the anxiety.

Did this method work? … I’ll get back to you on that.

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Resolving 2022

The pandemic is like being a ghost – you see the world, remember being in it and wish you were in it again.”

George Saunders

Well, dear reader I’m back. How are you? How were your holidays?

Mine? They were…different. After finding out on December 23rd that we had been in contact with a positive case of Covid, and considering all three people in my household were sick, we ventured out on Christmas Eve for the glorious gift of having swabs stuck up our noses.

Now, I say that with some sarcasm but the ability to get tested was a gift indeed. We just didn’t know it at the time. Read on.

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Solidarity Sunday #13: A Very Covid Christmas

Nothing ever seems too bad, too hard or too sad when you’ve got a Christmas tree in the living room.

Nora Roberts

Well, here we are again, dear reader. Another Covid Christmas. Sigh. Didn’t we all hope and pray, to whatever Gods or Greater Powers seemed most accessible, that this would be over by now? And yet…here we are.

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