June was not a great month for reading for me, but I did start with an excellent book. I fell in love with it when I opened the cover and it looked like golden dust flecks were blowing across the page. Then I fell out of love when it didn’t start at all like I would have expected. Eventually, however, it won me back over. Surviving the Dust Bowl followed by migrating to California to pick crops. Who could ask for anything more? Two thumbs up. By the same author as The Nightingale, my other best book of the year - this one is not quite as stressful. Still stressful. Be ye warned.
I read this to all three kids. I’d read it to the boys before. A classic. I found it strange that Stuart is supposed to be a natural born member of the Little family who just happens to be the size of a mouse and looks like a mouse but isn’t a mouse. What? And at the end, he meets a girl his size who does not look like a mouse and they go on a date but his canoe he fixed up for the date got smashed so he’s too upset to go on the date so he just wanders off, hoping to someday run into a bird he once knew back home. What a weird ending. Didn’t even remember that part. I feel like E. B. White must have been running out of time there at the end, and maybe wasn’t doing his best work.
Ooh, I got this from my classroom and it was great! It ended up with the people working at migrant picking in California in approximately the same time period as The Four Winds. What a coincidence! Recommend. Hate to say it, but much more worth reading than old Su-tart (as Josiah called Stuart Little the entire time we read the book).
Got this from my classroom. Ignore the dorky cover, it was actually worth reading. (I think every handout I ever got in Youth Group had clip art by the same artist. Ha!) I read this on the way to the beach. Now the question is, can I remember even one of his tips for making teaching fun?
Got these Reminisce books out of my classroom, too. Jenn says they’re from Grandma and Randy’s house. If you’re not familiar, Reminisce is/was a magazine typically found at your grandparents’ houses filled with reminisces of readers from the olden days. Very pleasant to look at while visiting the elderly. Also, these compilation books were very pleasant to read while sitting about a beach house. The Great Depression one was my fave. What is even wrong with me? Went alone nicely with my unintentional Dust Bowl theme for the month.
I read hundreds of pages of Outlander and then fizzled out, so this one doesn’t count. I was enjoying it there for a while. Then got repetitive. We are fleeing from a very bad guy. But what do you know, we keep running into each other. Can’t recommend.
So there you have it. Only 6 books this month. That does bring me up to 49 though, so reaching my goal of 50 books for the year is looking promising!
In other goal-y news, I walked at least 10,000 steps on 19 days. New record for me. (Beat May by a day.)
Also I got rid of 280 items, bringing us to 636 items for the year. 1,000 by 2022 shouldn’t be too difficult at this rate.
Oh, Facebook. I was doing so well. Then I was doing so poorly. I love looking at my sleep score on my Fitbit every morning and I definitely see a negative trend when I’m breaking my Facebook avoidance rules!
Still rolling along on the Duolingo. I’ve started listening to the local Spanish-speaking radio station when I drive around town, and that has been rather amusing. I even heard the words “pantalones largo” one day (long pants), one of Chris’s main vocabulary words left over from college Spanish class.
So June. Could have searched out some better books, but otherwise, a good month. Now we went to the beach at the end of June, beginning of July, and boy did things fall apart (Chinua Achebe), but you’ll just have to hide and watch for a couple more weeks for a full report on that. Adios, amigos!
