Book mail—I think its arrival in my mailbox today was impeccable timing. Whatever happens with the US election, I want to focus on my own agency in creating a meaningful life as much as I can. 🌈🌟🦄

Book mail from ThriftBooks. I‘ve read this before but didn‘t have a physical copy so now I do, yay! This is still my favorite of the Wayward Children Series books. ☠️🖤

Really enjoyed rereading this delightfully weird gem that makes me feel so seen. 💜 And I felt even more weirdly seen when I realized I now live in a small town that fits this description pretty accurately. 😳

I chose the tagged book as my free reading reward from ThriftBooks. Although I love a brand new book, there‘s also something special about getting a book that has passed through many way stations before reaching me. This copy has spent time at a library in Illinois and a Goodwill store, and now it has traveled to Texas from Georgia and will sit on my shelf. Since it‘s a new favorite of mine, I plan on keeping this around for a long time.😊

I‘m ready to start my new reading year off right with a great #bookhaul from the Elgin (TX) Public Library. The tagged book was a surprise find on their shelves, and I‘m really excited to read it! #librarybookhaul 🥳

Discovered that the Elgin Public Library, my new library home base, has yet another book I donated on display. Yay! 😊 It feels so good to know my previously owned books have a new home and a second chance at life, just like me as I‘m settling into my new home. ❤️

Made a trek to my new local(ish) library (next town over from my new hometown) and was so pleased to see one of the books I‘d donated on display in their Novel Additions section! I have always loved this cover and it‘s gratifying to know other readers can now enjoy it—well, if they don‘t mind crying a lot. 🥹

Finally enjoying some lovely porch time with my new patio furniture, cinnamon tea, and the tagged book (which I‘ve meaning to finish forever).

Putting down bookish roots in my new locale. Got a library membership and checked out my first book today at Elgin Public Library, where they still hand-stamp the due date. 😍📖💙 This definitely makes me feel a bit more local, even though it‘s the next town over from my neighborhood. And there‘s something about having a hefty novel to read that helps me settle into a new house. ☕️

TFW you slide in at the very last minute of the eleventh hour. 😅 Made it to my branch library 3 minutes before closing time and managed to return my loans and check out the tagged book, a hold pickup. Whew! Feeling lucky. 🍀

Always. 😻😻😻

Yes. Tell it like it is, in plain language! Oof. The last bullet on this page kills me the most: “She was there and she did it but we didn‘t write it down in the important books these things must always be written in, so later we decided a man must have done it first.” And there‘s another page of egregious omissions BS after this one. 🤦🏻‍♀️ So glad herstory books like these exist now! Geez.

My unexpected #librarybookhaul today. The tagged book is a hold pickup (thanks @ThePageantHam and @Eyelit for the rec!), and the other two are surprise finds from the new release shelf. I always love to start a long weekend with a new #bookhaul. This is going to be even more fun than I anticipated! 🤩

I plan to enjoy some cozy reading before I go to bed on this below-freezing night. In the meantime, here are some fiction books I really enjoyed reading this fall. It‘s quite a variety of titles, but what they all have in common are MCs who love fiercely and persist in the very human struggle to belong. Standouts for me are Babel by R. F. Kuang and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, both devastating knockouts!🔸#fallreads2022

This is a lovely thought. 🥰📚

My first hardcover #librarybookhaul in six years! 🥹After my free membership was revoked due to my ETJ resident status, I tried getting by with cheap ebooks, gift cards, and Little Free Library finds. A digital only nonresident library card also helped, but I still spent way too much money on book buying every year. Access to hardcover books makes the extra nonresident fee worth it, I grudgingly admit. Gotta support my book nerd habit after all!

And now, Summer Reads: Non-Fiction Edition. I read a mix of personal growth and memoirs, but the books that intrigued me the most were these three memoirs, flagged in the comments below. Not surprising, as memoirs are my favorite non-fiction category. It‘s fascinating and often moving to step into the shoes of someone else‘s different life experiences.🔸 #2022reads #summer2022reads

Welp I know I‘m a taaaad behind on sharing my Summer Reads, but better late than never! This summer felt extra long and hot 🥵 so I turned to engrossing fiction titles that took me far away to other worlds and experiences. Here are the novels and stories that helped me escape the heat (at least for a while!)🔸 #2022reads #summer2022reads

Feeling fancy! 💋 Enjoying a strawberry banana smoothie with the tagged book at the local Omni Hotel‘s coffee shop on my staycation. (Not actually staying at the hotel, but it feels luxurious to pretend I am. 😊)

I‘m so delighted that I got a skip-the-line loan from my library for this book! Been looking forward to it ever since A Psalm for the Wild-Built enchanted me, and it did not disappoint. After reading a lot of really heavy content lately, I found this story refreshingly effervescent and hopeful. It‘s also deeply thoughtful about humans‘ relationships with each other and with the natural world. Most of all: I 🖤 Dex and Mosscap!

And now for Spring Reads, Non-Fiction Edition! Here are some of the titles I especially resonated with—a potpourri of personal growth and memoir subjects. 🔸#2022reads #spring2022reads

Summer Solstice is just behind us, and it‘s time to share my Spring Reads! This spring has been a fairly even mixture of triumphs and challenges for me, so maybe that‘s why I felt drawn to fiction titles which all contain personal reckoning for the MCs. So here‘s a selection of the novels I most enjoyed (and/or wept over). And thanks to my super rad book club friends who recommended some of these excellent titles (credits below)!

When you want to play electric guitar like the rock star you imagine yourself as…and you end up with a tambourine. 😂

✨All the friendship feels!✨ 🥹💜💜💜

While I spent much of the winter diving head-first into SFF novels for a temporary escape, I also felt a deep need to work through all the heavy things I was experiencing, especially my grief and burnout. I highly recommend all the titles bookmarked in the comments, if and when you need help processing grief, loss, burnout, anxiety, or disorientation.🔸#2022reads #winterreads

This winter, ALL my fiction reads were fantasy and science fiction, my top two fave fiction genres. I felt a particular yearning to escape into them for a temporary respite from the ongoing real life challenges I‘ve been facing. I‘ll bookmark some of the SFF titles I read in the comments. Standout faves: The Broken Earth Trilogy and the tagged art book about the making of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.🔹#2022reads #winterreads

Look what came to my doorstep today. Sooo excited about diving into this! 🤩 I loved the original Dark Crystal movie as a kid (even though it terrified me), and I thoroughly enjoyed (while also being terrified) this Netflix prequel when it premiered. Giddy feels about revisiting this fascinating world. Let my armchair journey to Thra begin!🧝‍♀️💎

So very grateful that I‘m getting along much better with this year‘s (milder) Texas winter storm than last year‘s horrific catastrophe. Thankful for electricity, running water, plenty of food and warm clothes, and maintaining my cozy queen domain: curling up in my reading nook with a fascinating novel and my new micro plush blanket. 🙏🛋☕️📖

Love this dedication. It couldn‘t be more fitting for such an unapologetic story about being who you are no matter what. 💜

Four people who frequent the same coffee shop travel back in time to reconcile or reconnect with a loved one. Although nothing the time travelers say or do changes the future, each of them experiences a change of heart. Bittersweet and gently moving.🔸#decemberreads2021

This debut novel tells the compelling story of Korea‘s struggle for independence during the Japanese occupation. Through the decades (from early 20th c. to the 1960s), several characters lives‘ are unexpectedly woven together in a vivid tapestry rife with seams of heartbreak, fragility, loss, and betrayal. Beasts is an intriguing portrait of a tumultuous time in Korean history when the nation‘s very existence was at stake.🔸#decemberreads2021

This short novel about a woman who moves back in with her parents as her father faces the onset of Alzheimer‘s is an amazingly delightful hybrid of lighthearted and bittersweet, like a middle grade novel written for adults (💯 my jam!). The MC‘s sweet, humorous first-person POV reads like she never lost her childlike wonder and appreciation for every small thing she observes.🔸#decemberreads2021

This slim novel, written as a collection of vignettes, follows the story of two friends in 1960s Reykjavík, Iceland: an aspiring writer working as a waitress and a gay aspiring theater costume designer working as a sailor. Both struggle to be socially accepted as their true selves. I loved and hated the bittersweet ending.?#decemberreads2021

Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew, started writing a diary in March 1941, while living in an increasingly restricted Amsterdam, until she was voluntarily deported to Westerbork in 1942, where she wrote letters to friends. Hillesum‘s fierce optimism and unquenchable joy for the beauty of life in the midst of such adverse circumstances are astounding. I learned so much wisdom from this beautiful soul whose short life burned brightly.🔸#decemberreads2021

Summarizing these captivating books that I read at the end of 2021 is a challenge, but here goes!🔸#decemberreads2021

Going to be contemplating this for a while. I‘m not sure I completely agree, but it‘s one of those provocatively absolute reflections that prompts me to make my own reflection, and it‘s worthwhile for that alone.

When you casually turn your bookmark over with the turn of the page it was resting on and realize that it has a quote on the back. Which you (meaning me) didn‘t notice for over a week. (I‘m blaming it on burnout brain. 🤪)

Couldn‘t resist starting this new read tonight with an almond milk steamer in my fave holiday mug. Honestly it‘s been tough for me to get into a holiday mood this year, as I‘m feeling so shell-shocked and burned out from 2021. But a brand new hardcover and Jack Skellington‘s winsome grin are helping a bit. 🎄🎁

This is my very first book from the Page 1 Books subscription that I splurged on for my birthday. Kudos to Page 1: they managed to find a title I haven‘t heard of, and at the same time they‘ve checked a lot of my like boxes: historical Asian fiction by an Asian woman author. I‘m so excited to read this new release, and I‘m very much looking forward to a new year full of surprise books coming my way! 🤩📚#pageonebooks

Alongside Crying in H Mart, I‘ve anticipated this new release all year, and I am so grateful Kat Chow had the courage to tell her own story of losing and grieving her mother. I appreciate Chow‘s vulnerability in sharing her family‘s struggles to talk about their grief, to honor her mother in the ways she would have wanted, and to invoke her mother‘s unique sense of humor when they needed to find light in dark places.🔸#novemberreads2021

I share a few specific commonalities with Michelle Zauner: we‘re both mixed race Americans with first-generation Asian immigrant mothers, and both of us have felt the fear not only of losing our mothers but of losing our ties to their home countries. Zauner‘s memoir about losing her mother to cancer and making her mother‘s heritage her own is excruciating and relatable. I‘m so grateful she had the courage to tell this story.🔸#novemberreads2021

I absolutely loved this tender novel about discovering what matters most in life—after death—and realizing that we never truly lose our loved ones who have gone. Reading it felt like having a thick, warm blanket wrapped around me while I cried…and laughed.🔸#novemberreads2021

I got to meet Amanda Palmer several years ago when she came to Book People, played songs on her ukulele, and gave everyone in the book signing line who wanted one a hug, including me. This year I listened to the audiobook for the first time, which feels like a heart to heart talk with Palmer. It brought me back to that night when I experienced her brave, open-hearted vulnerability, which opened my own heart a little wider.🔸#novemberreads2021

In November, I still felt like I needed more grief support, so my reads were pretty heavy. But I highly recommend them all, if and when you need to process grief in good, compassionate company.🔸#novemberreads2021

I picked up this YA story collection for some witchy stories as a change of pace. As with most anthologies, I liked some stories more than others, but overall this was a fun and (to borrow a friend‘s term) fempowering read.🔸#octoberreads2021

So glad I got to listen to the excellent audiobook version of Cassie‘s continuing ghost hunting adventures, this time in New Orleans.🔸#octoberreads2021

This lovely book documents the 2015 reunion of longtime friends The Dalai Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu and their hopeful, compassionate conversations about the nature of joy and how to practice inviting joy into our lives even when circumstances are difficult.🔸#octoberreads2021

This time I couldn‘t get the audiobook version from the library, but I still enjoyed the second book of Cassie‘s adventures, which take her and her paranormal documentarian parents (and her ghost bestie Jacob) to Paris.🔸#octoberreads2021

Set in the author‘s home state of Texas, this is the story of asexual Lipan Apache teen Elatsoe, whose best friend is a ghost dog, using her paranormal abilities to solve the murder of her cousin before his vengeful spirit causes irreversible destruction.🔸#octoberreads2021

Rec‘d by one of my book club friends (thanks @Soubhiville 🙂). I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook version of this story about 12yo Cassie, whose best friend is a ghost boy and whose parents are filming a documentary about paranormal folklore and history in Edinburgh.🔸#octoberreads2021