April is one of my favorite reading months because it’s National Poetry Month. It’s also National Jazz Appreciation Month, and while the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival is postponed until the fall this year, I am going to be reading through some old standards via keyboard. So we’re taking liberties with what goes on the “reading” list this month.
Joy Selections:
Art in its various forms is a big part of my life, and I’m exploring the joy in that this month.
This list will seem long. No, I haven’t joined four more book clubs. It’s just because Follow the Reader is doing choose-your-own-adventure poetry this month, and my perpetual adventure is that, when left to my own devices, I can’t pick just one collection.
I’m quite excited about this month’s reading – so much so that I have already started every book on the following list. Some of them I have finished, with some I’m a few chapters in, and others I’ve just read the first few pages. So that’s the kind of reading month it’s going to be – very little structure, picking up whatever I am most intrigued with at the moment. Rampant, abundance anarchy.
Which is pretty appropriate for a month where my book with joy in the title (and the supplemental I have chosen to accompany it – not sure when I decided to do that but we’re going with it) is about the joy of reading children’s literature as an adult. This concept has my cosign already, as I am experiencing the delight of tucking into the Percy Jackson series that my friend Maggie is reading her son.
Here are the books I have started for the month of March:
I don’t typically write in books, but I will tab the heck out of them.
So, as expected, I didn’t finish all 35 books from my February TBR. I finished 14 of them, though, which is still more than I usually read in a month. I guess when there’s winter weather chaos where you can’t do much else but read by flashlight while the lights are off, counting on the body heat you built up rearranging furniture when the electricity was on, finishing books is something that will happen. Not quite the process I had in mind at the beginning of the month and not the way I would have preferred to go about it, but here we are.
I didn’t receive any guesses via email, but I want to honor the intention to raise money for Denton Bail Fund. So I’m taking the money I would have spent on a book for someone and donating it to help those who are retained even though they haven’t been convicted of any crime but just don’t have the money to post bail.
My favorite book I read in February was Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. The audiobook is fantastic – highly recommend listening to it. I also was delighted by Untamed and Spark Joy. Not only were they both charming and entertaining, but the former served as a much-needed reminder to pay attention to my restlessness and continue to seek out what I’m to be doing with my life, and the latter was the inspiration for the aforementioned furniture moving (because once you KonMari your clothes, why not reorganize the whole room so that it sparks more joy?). Cocaine Blues introduced me to a new (to me) series that I love (as well as a new TV show). I also enjoyed the first three of Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. Lots of good reading this month.
March TBR coming up in a few days, and the joy selections focus on the joy of reading. What are you reading this month?
This is nowhere near the whole stack – just the ones that were on the unshelved/library cart. Also, this month has a lot of ebook and audiobook selections.
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:
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:
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:
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!
Not pictured – all the audiobooks I’m listening to because of my current inability to sit still
I meant to post my TBR list on the first weekend of January, but it sort of got away from me. Beyond what we’re reading in my various book clubs, my January selections are typically a mixture of seize-the-day-and-world books accompanied by a little comfort reading, and this January is no exception. This year, of course, I have the extra category of at least one book with joy in the title (although if my growing list is any indication, it will likely be more than one a month).
Joy
This month’s selections are three books by Jennifer McCartney – The Joy of Being Online all the F*cking Time, The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place, and The Joy of Doing Just Enough. They’re quick reads – I’ve already finished the first two listed – and they’re perfect for the month when I am both excited and overwhelmed by my goals. Although they are meant to be humorous parodies of self-help books, their message provides the bit of balance I didn’t know I needed. Yes, have goals but also maybe calm down a little bit because the messy living room and the fact that I check my phone at least twice an hour? Not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes I need to hear that.
Book Clubs
How Not To Die Alone (or, as this title was deemed too harsh to do well in the UK, Something To Live For) by Richard Roper. I love this book. These are the kinds of characters I love/want to write, and the story was quirky and endearing.
The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi – Just started listening to this one, and I expect to love it. The description is right up my alley, and the writing thus far is gorgeous.
It Chooses You by Miranda July – I was gifted a copy by my friend Sarah, and I am really happy to have the hard copy of this one. The visual effect is a big part of the story.
The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey – I know almost nothing about this one, but Jenny Lawson picked it, so I know it’s going to be weird and wonderful.
Black Futures by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham – the first selection in Roxane Gay’s new book club called The Audacity.
Personal Selections
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – One of my favorite New Year’s Day traditions is re-reading this little treasure. I get something different out of it every year.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez – Our Follow the Reader book club had a choose-your-own-adventure selections for December, and I was reminded that I meant to read this last year, so I’m starting it now.
If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet? by Cynthia Heimel – My friend Brenda has a little free library at her house, and when this showed up, she messaged me to see if I wanted her to put it aside for me after she finished reading it. Of course I did. What a great title!
Untamed by Glennon Doyle – I’m twenty pages in, and I’m already feeling a little more feral. I like it so much!
Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes – This book changed a lot of things for me a couple of years ago and put a lot of things in motion that caused me to seek out communities that have played a big part in keeping me alive this year. The audiobook is fueling so much gratitude.
Night Cycles by Elizabeth Wilder – I’ve taken one of her poetry classes, and I love this collection. I was going to save it for Lent, but it’s pretty fitting for this political climate, too.
“May your coming year be filled with magic and reams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.” Neil Gaiman
Every year, I write this quote on the first notes page of my new planner. When I read through my 2020 planner, it made me cry, not only because of some of the things I missed but also because of how much of this sweet wish actually came true. It wasn’t at all in the ways I expected, but I guess that’s part of the surprise.
In Joy the Baker’s “Let It Be Sunday” post last week, she talked about goal setting as making deposits on your dreams. I love that perspective. Each year during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I reflect on the last twelve months and tweak the goals that need a little nudge to get me closer to who and where I want to be. As I mentioned yesterday, I reflect and adjust throughout the year, but this is the time that I always have some days off work to really dig in.
Here are my goals for 2021:
Read 120 books. Third time’s the charm? I don’t know what will happen this year, but I know that I’m more myself when I’m reading regularly. As long as the focus to do so remain constant, ten books a month is a pretty reasonable pace for me, and when I have a little extra time off, I read even more (thus the 13 I read in November and the 15 in December). The theme for this year’s reading is community. I’m in three local book clubs that meet live every month, another one that discusses primarily through a Facebook group (Fantastic Strangelings), and a new one that Roxane Gay is leading. A friend at work is also organizing some of us to participate in the Pop Sugar challenge. I love talking about books with fellow lit lovers.
My current career plans are to retire from UNT when I’m eligible in nine and a half years and then embark on my second (third? fourth? Who’s keeping track, really?) career as a full-time writer. To this end, I will need to have established a strong second income already, which I have already begun working on. I wrote 250,000 words in freelance articles in 2020, and for 2021, I want to push to finish 300,000 words. This means an average of 6,000 words a week, which is a lot but also reasonably doable.
One thing I have become acutely aware of this past year is how the spaces in my home are technically functional but not really inviting. I want to fix that this year, and I have weekly goals for doing so mapped out. Even if I’m the only one who enjoys them, I am reason enough to make them as cozy as possible.
You know what would also be great dream to realize? Becoming a better/more confident artist. I mean, I’ll perform anyway, but I would like it to take less intense and sudden practice, particularly when I’m performing with other artists who regularly put in the time to be prepared for such things. The first ten years I played piano, my mom made me practice an hour a day to justify the lessons she was paying for. It was not always convenient or easy, but it sure was handy to be able to sub in with little to no warning when someone needed me to. At the height of the time I was performing regularly, I danced 10-15 hours a week (and my legs were phenomenal). I also was more aware of how food affected my body and paid more attention to strength so that I didn’t get injured. I have so many writing projects started, and I want people to be able to read them in their entirety at some point. So I have a lot I want to accomplish. I don’t expect myself to carve out an extra 25 hours a week right now, but I can build toward more consistency. To this end, I am putting aside an hour on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights as well as two hours each Saturday, to give myself time to make personal art practice a specific, regular part of my schedule. For January, I’m going to practice each of the three genres (writing, dance, piano) at least three times a week, and I’ll expand/adapt once I am consistently doing that. My hope is that by the end of the year, I’m closer to the 25-hour mark than the 5-hour one.
Pursue joy. Joy is my word of the year, and as you may have been noticing in the 31 days series (which we’re just shamelessly going to continue until it’s done, ignoring the fact that the 31 original days for which it was intended have passed), I have a lot to say about it already. You can expect a few updates a month, and I’m going to be reading at least one book a month with joy in the title. The first one I started with the blog series was Surprised by Joy (which I expect to finish within the week). January has three selections by the same author – Jennifer McCartney’s The Joy of Being Online All the F*cking Time, The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place, and The Joy of Doing Just Enough. In a month where everything else is certain to be pretty intense, I expect these books will bring a little levity.
Do you make resolutions? If not, do you have goals you’re working toward? I’d love to hear about them!
“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
I recently wrote a blog piece for my copywriting/SEO job on finding joy, and a lot of the research I found when doing so indicates that having something to look forward to is a big part of joy. That makes sense. I’m all for being in the moment, but if you are already feeling low on joy or happiness, focusing on the here and now may not be super helpful.
I’m also re-reading Surprised by Joy (this month’s “book with ‘joy’ in the title” selection), and C.S. Lewis wrote about his experiences of joy as exhilarating, fleeting moments where he felt an intense longing for something. For example, just the idea of autumn or another favorite time of the year can spur you to hope. Even if the time is far away, the anticipation can jolt you into a temporary state of euphoria.
I don’t typically think of unfulfilled desires or unrealized experiences as things that produce pleasant feelings. Most of my loneliness, after all, stems from the absence of experiences that I really want to be a part of my everyday life. At the same time, however, with the help of whatever scraps of hope I am able to scrounge together in the moment, joy can still show up. When I think of the characteristics I particularly love in a partner – and especially when I meet someone new who embodies a lot of those characteristics – there is that jolt. The familiar memory of loving someone combined with the anticipation of the possibility of feeling that way again? That feeling is pure magic.
This is the sneaky good thing about joy that may just be my favorite part. It doesn’t just show up in the middle of a particular difficulty. It shows up, in part, specifically because of it. Joy will tailor itself to you.
I think that whenever I’m feeling particularly joyless, I’m going to focus on something I’m looking forward to or indulge my daydreams about how great it would be to have certain hopes come true. I want to learn to anticipate and thus invite joy to surprise me by sneaking up alongside the sorrows.
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” – Madeleine L’Engle
I hope it’s no surprise by this point that I love to read. I easily spend 10-15 hours a week doing so. People often ask how I manage to read so many books. That’s how. There’s no trick. Just time.
Well, ok. There are a couple of tricks. I listen to audiobooks when I’m driving or when I’m doing something with my hands that doesn’t require a lot of concentration, such as knitting or folding laundry. I didn’t used to like audiobooks, but this year, I have really embraced them. I didn’t really enjoy being read to before, but now I find it soothing. I also read poetry quite a bit, and while I read poems more slowly than prose, the volumes tend to be shorter with fewer words on the page, so technically I finish these books more quickly.
I make a lofty goal to read a certain number of books every year, and while I rarely reach that particular number, just having it in mind inspires me to read more each year than I did the year before. So far this year, I’ve read 81 books (that I’ve remembered to track on Goodreads), so I would need to read 39 this month to reach my goal of 120. Not likely. But with three mostly free weekends and two weeks off from my full-time job, I should be able to top my final total from last year (103) if I try.
Books are more than an escape. They open me up to new ideas and possibilities, which is particularly useful when my world is feeling small. They serve as warning, camaraderie, challenge, solidarity, empathy, and fun. They spark interest in obscure topics and show me the kind of writer I want (or sometimes don’t want) to be. They give me a peek into others’ lives and ways so that my view of the world doesn’t have to be limited to my own little corner of it.
They bring me joy.
Starting this month and through 2021, I am going to add at least one book a month to my TBR pile that has the word “joy” in the title. A book does not have to have the word in the title to be about chasing joy, of course, but this gives me a place to start. My first selection is a re-read of C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. It’s been a decade (maybe two?) since I first read it, so it will be interesting to see how my perspective has changed. I remember loving it.
The tree is officially up and plugged in. And that’s it. No decorations yet. Just twinkly lights. Happy.
Our small group on Monday night talks about the lesson for the next Sunday, so my appetite for Advent has been whetted. Although Advent is one of my favorite seasons, December is not usually my favorite month. It’s usually too busy. That is not the case this year, though. Events are either canceled or virtual, and I think most people have (more than usual) an attitude of just making it through to the other side.
Students have already started leaving for break, since UNT classes are going completely online for the rest of the semester. They’re welcome to stay here, but they also have the option to go home and stay with their families for the holiday season, and many have chosen to do so. Can’t say that I blame them.
This December, I have a little more time. Rather than add extra things to it (with the exception of a blog series – more on that next week), though, I’m going to focus on savoring things I enjoy.
Cozy mysteries (just re-read Publishable by Death by A. C. F. Bookens this weekend, and it was just as much fun the second time around).
The above-mentioned twinkly lights. Just staring into them. Also candlelight is nice. More sparkly-lit rooms, please.
Soups and toasted sandwiches.
Baked goods of just about any kind. Sweet, savory – I love (most of) them all.
Part of the “currently reading” pile that isn’t strictly current
I often say that I read four or five books at a time, and that’s true. I usually have at least one fiction, one nonfiction, one audiobook, one ebook, and one book that falls into the category of “light reading” for when all the others I’m reading are too intense for my current mood (a common occurrence with me as I often choose things that lean a little heavy).
I also have a lot of books I’ve started and not finished. I eventually do finish them, but sometimes it literally takes years. So this month, I’m going to go back through my trusty Goodreads list that says I’m currently reading 40+ books (lol no) and try to finish the ones I still care about finishing and let the ones I don’t go.
The priority for my monthly reading agenda is always what I’m reading for book clubs:
The Wives by Tarryn Fisher (finished) Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations About Race by Bevery Daniel Tatum, PhD How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
I usually finish book club selections, but not always. Some months are really slow reading months for me.
Several books due back at the library soon (many part of that started-but-not-quite-finished Goodreads list):
When We Left Cuba by Chanel Cleeton The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey
So…suffice it to say I’m not going to run out of books to choose from.
What are you reading, or what have you read lately that you recommend?
