Happy Friday Links

11-26-21

Hi readers,

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a great holiday yesterday, along with lots of yummy food. My daughter and I don’t care much for traditional holiday foods such as turkey, dressing, and all the trimmings. A few years ago, after she divorced, we started a new tradition of making and enjoying the foods we love as our new Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions. We all love (including the kids) tacos and enchiladas, so these are our holiday food traditions now. On the years that the kids are with their dad, my daughter and I treat ourselves to a holiday dinner out. We went to a Brazilian steakhouse yesterday and had yummy food and a festive time.

I’m spending time this weekend trying to get ahead on my upcoming newsletters and catching up on my reading. I’ve got some other posts coming up on a couple of the “series” newsletters that I’ve started, and a couple of new ideas are percolating in my mind. I’m determined to finish three books that I’ve started that I’m over halfway through so far.

Let’s get started with Friday’s links:

• Here is a BookRiot holiday gift listing with lots of bookish gifts that feature pets. A few of the gifts can be personalized to feature the gift receiver’s pet—what a neat way to combine their love of pets and books.

• I know a lot of you are loyal Trader Joe’s shoppers. Although it is not bookish-related, here is a list of gifts your friends and family would love to receive.

• A newsletter that I’ve followed for a few months now had a post about the author’s non-fiction book club that has been going on for years. There is a lot of good information here, and Mark shares his book club’s 2022 reading list. I’m looking forward to his reviews of the books they are reading in the coming year. And best of all, he stays away from controversial topics when he writes. That’s my kind of newsletter.

• I’ve read several articles on the reasons you should or should not quit reading books you are not enjoying, and here is another one to help convince you that life is too short to read a book that isn’t doing it for you.

• Are you interested in auditing your reading life? I think retrospection of why you read what you read can be helpful, and this article can help you do that. In the upcoming “2022 reading challenges” newsletter towards the end of December, I’ll share the best resource that I know of to “help you design a reading life that works for you and doesn’t stress you out,” as well as many different types of reading challenges for the new year.

Book publishing tends to slow down between Thanksgiving and Christmas as people are busy shopping and preparing for the holidays. Here are a couple of books publishing this week; I’ve read one and want to read the other:

• Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult - I’ve read most of Picoult’s books and was eagerly awaiting this one when I received the ARC from Net Galley. This is a book written during the pandemic about the pandemic, and I believe that your personal experience with the pandemic will have a lot to do with your feelings toward this book. That said, the book was o.k. for me, as good as any book about what we have been living through for the last almost two years, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed her previous books. I liked the characters, I just didn’t like the setting. I was surprised at the ways she took the storyline and that is classic Jodi Picoult. Maybe this was a book that I should have waited to read, giving wounds more time to heal.

• The Postmistress of Paris: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton - From Christina Baker Kline, author of The Orphan Train, “A complex, intriguing story that both highlights a little-known moment in the past and resonates powerfully in the present.” I’ve read a few of Clayton’s previous books and enjoyed most of them. Her earlier books are about friends, relationships and careers and all are set in the US. Her last few books have been historical fiction and are set in the WWII time frame. I haven’t read this one yet, but it has plenty of early great reviews and I’m on hold for it through one of my library cards. Hopefully, it will become available soon.

Here are a couple of bookish gift links sure to satisfy any book lover:

• Half the fun of buying a new phone or e-reader is choosing a case for it. Chicklit Designs offers cute book-inspired cases for all types of phones, iPad’s, Kindles, and more.

• I started reading on the Kindle app on my iPad many years ago and haven’t looked back since. A couple of years ago, I bought my first Kindle Paperwhite, and I love it. It’s small, fits in my purse, and goes anywhere with me that I think I will have a few minutes to read. Also, don’t spend the extra money to buy it “without ads”; the ad only shows on the lock screen, and it doesn’t affect the reading at all.

• For the book lover that loves calendars, here is a link with several bookish-related calendars. There are wall calendars, desk calendars, calendars printed on bookmarks, and even one that doubles as a reading journal.

• I’m a sucker for ornaments for a Christmas tree. This BookRiot article has links to several cute bookish-related tree ornaments.

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So tell me, are you a Black Friday shopper, or are you like me and try to stay away from all the stores and the crowds of people today? I do a lot of my shopping online, and because of all the supply chain problems we’ve heard about, I’ve tried to do it earlier than usual this year.

If you are fortunate and have a few days off for this holiday, enjoy. Take some time for yourself and your family and do something festive to make memories. Happy reading!

Some of the links in this newsletter may be affiliate links. That means that if you click through and purchase anything, I may earn a small commission. This costs you nothing and helps me feed my voracious reading habit, and for that, I thank you.