M. Suzanne Terry

So listen. I got really excited about being three books ahead of schedule on my Goodreads challenge and super happy about the 24in48 marathon this coming weekend and…I kinda overplanned. I fully admit that it is HIGHLY unlikely that I will finish all the books listed below but I do not care because I want to read them all RIGHT NOW and will probably start them all this month anyway because what even is an attention span.

I’m just going to list them this month because to list AND talk about them would be a little tl;dr even for me. So here we go. At least I’ve divided them up into categories for you.

Books I’ve started and will continue to read/finish this month:

• Surprised By Joy by C. S. Lewis
• The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey
• Black Futures by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
• If you Can’t Live Without Me Why Aren’t You Dead Yet? By Cynthia Heimel
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle
• Night Cycles by Elizabeth Wilder

Whew. I told you I have no attention span. Definitely about 20-150 pages into each one of these so far. And we press on.

After my joy selections from last month were of the “ok, Type A, calm down and maybe sit still occasionally” variety, and I am not good at following that advice but I am super great at overcompensating by going the exact opposite direction, my restless soul has gone into super cleaning mode. I’m not complaining, but it seems like a good month for these three:

• Spark Joy by Marie Kondo
• The Joy of Less by Francine Jay
• The Joy of Missing Out by Tanya Dalton

I also find joy in revisiting things that I’ve read before or series that connect me to people. So I’m dabbling in a little:

• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (my friend Maggie is reading through the series with her son)
• The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
• The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Book club selections for the month:

• Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal (just finished this last night and SO GOOD – get the audiobook if you can)
• All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny (read recently but worth the revisit)
• Borderlands Curanderos by Jennifer Seman
• So Far From God by Ana Castillo
• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
• The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Recommendations from friends or continuing reading from an author or timely re-read or just because I grabbed it from the library because it sounded interesting and now I only have it for 21(ish) days:

• The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
• Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Growing Season by Sarah Frey
• Loving My Actual Life by Alexandra Kuykendall
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

And why not finish it off with some poetry?

• Blues: For All the Changes by Nikki Giovanni
• The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
• Hum by Jamaal May
• Good Woman by Lucille Clifton
• The End of the Alphabet by Claudia Rankine
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
• You Don’t Have To Go To Mars for Love by Yona Harvey

It’s only…35 books. In a month.

This goal is so ridiculous, I’m making a guessing game out of it. For every $5 you give to Denton Bail Fund, you get one guess about how many I’ll *actually* finish from February 1-February 28. I’ll send the person whose guess is the closest (or the person whose name I draw out of a hat, if there’s a tie) the book of their choice from this list. Because of who I am as a person, some game rules:

1. To qualify as an entry, you must email coffeesnob@gmail.com:

• Screenshot of your donation confirmation to Denton Bail Fund with date and amount showing
• Which of the 35 titles you would like to receive if you win
• Your mailing address (I will not sell your information – just use it this one time to mail you your book if you win)
• Your guess(es) – one per $5 donated, whole numbers from 2-35 (I’ve already finished 2 – don’t guess lower than that) – about how many books I will finish between February 1 and February 28.

2. Donations made to DBF must be dated between 12:01 a.m., January 1, 2021 (because yes, I reward being already on this) and 11:59 p.m., February 10, 2021, to count toward an entry.

3. Deadline for receiving email entries is February 11, 2021, at 5:30 p.m., CST.

4. I will send a confirmation email when I get your entry. If you do not get a confirmation from me, you have not successfully entered.

All other things being equal, I will have a final total posted by March 5 and will place the order for the winner’s book by March 10, 2021.

Okay, so I’m going to go read now. I have so many choices! This is the best month!