September, when you’re a stay at home mom, is an easy going month. It’s when the weather cools to the point that you spend every waking moment outdoors soaking up sunshine in a relaxed state. It’s when you read and collect your thoughts and make plans for your “school year” while all the other moms are scrambling. It’s always my favorite part.
But I’m not a stay at home mom for September this year. So I’m scrambling with the rest of y’all. Instead of basking in the stay at home mom/professional writer glory that I’ve enjoyed (don’t get me wrong, it’s work, but it’s my favorite kind of work… so I’m saving that discussion for another post), I’m back in the store full time AND keeping up my professional writer work AND homeschooling my kiddo. But at least homeschooling a preschooler involves mountainous amounts of play time and audio books. So while she buries herself in legos, I’m taking advantage of one last chance to make our family debt free and figure out our lives…
Of course, that simply means I’ve been posting less, not that I haven’t been reading. So here’s to September, all in one post.
It’s Abo
This is a fun history of clocks and time keeping. I enjoyed it quite a bit, after checking it out from the library, and read it fairly quickly. It’s a good one to add to the homeschooling reference books for a middle grade student, I think. Evers writes on the level of Dava Sobel in both content and vocabulary. Worth owning if you have kids.
The Secrets of Droon – Abbott
Between what we can find
This is not my typical reading cup of tea. But I read it because it had tea cups on the front cover. Ha! The marketing gives you a sense that the book will be a cozy one about friends partaking of scones and quiche while they solve their problems over southern tea – but the reality is that it’s about some pretty real and raw struggles of single moms in the ghetto of Dallas who can’t take time for tea if their life depended on it. Despite the conflict between the marketing and the story, I had a hard time putting the book down. Zepeda nailed my old neighborhood (which I didn’t know I’d be reading about until a chapter or so in, it was not included on the back jacket and had no bearing on me picking up the book in the first place). Oak Cliff, when I lived there, was exactly how she described it – and she did a lovely job of describing it by describing the people rather than the streets and buildings. Although I’m on the fence as to whether I should keep this book or donate it to the library, I am not on the fence about whether or not to read more of the author’s work in the future – I’d definitely read something by her again.
This is a short novel that I read in a series of lunch breaks at work. It’s one of those pieces you’re not sure whether it’s meant to be for teens or grown ups until you read the first chapter and then you’re sure – it’s for people. I will always house Gunn in the adult literature section, if I have a say, but I would certainly hand her work to high school students as well. She reminds me of Frascoise Sagan in the Bonjour Tristesse sense, except there’s far more true sadness in Rain than Sagan ever touched on.
I’ve officially begun a kick. I want to write at least one western under the name of one of my characters from my Bookshop Hotel series, but to do that I decided I must actually read a few. I grew up watching westerns with my dad, most of which were based on books, but I hadn’t actually picked up a western to read until I read The Quick and the Dead last month. I have to say, I’m kind of in love and hope to read at least one western a month till the day I die. They’re so calming and quick, and I find the men that star in them familiar and pleasant to be around.
Transcendental Wild Oats – Louisa May Alcott
Anyone who loves Louisa May Alcott or the transcendentalist movement, will find this an interesting read. It was originally published in 1873 as a bit of satire to illustrate Bronson Alcott’s utopian dream commune (that quickly failed). I can’t help but snicker at descriptions like the one for Miss Jane Gage who “was a stout lady of mature years, sentimental, amiable, and lazy. She wrote verses copiously, and had vague yearnings and grasping after the unknown, which led her to believe herself fitted for a higher sphere than any she had yet adorned.” How many times have you found yourself face to face with a Jane Gage in your life? Daily! Haha. Daily.
