So, last week I was schedule to cat sit for some friends as they made a trip to Arizona for Spring Training. This is a lovely time for me as they have a beautiful house in Seaside Oregon which is cozy in the winter no matter how bad the weather gets.

Unfortunately, one of my friend's health meant the trip was no longer possible. And they asked if I'd like to replace him on the trip instead of catsitting! So I got to spend almost a week in sunny Phoenix, going to baseball games and eating delicious food, lounging in the comfortable house they had rented, and hanging out with a good friend. Wow, what a boon, especially as the weather back home included snow, hail, and misery. I mean, holing up in a lovely house with adorable house and exploring the joys of DoorDash would have been fine, but this was spectacular!

Right before we left I had gone on a tour of the Seattle Chocolate Factory, where they mentioned that they had an arrangement with Alaskan airlines so there was always a supply of chocolate on the planes. On the flight to Arizona I was told that these goodies were only for Fancy People up front, but on the ride home a friendly flight attendant checked the back and gave me a delicious JCoco bar. What a great treat!

We got home and after a bit of excitement on the way home (we were rear ended on the freeway, but there we no injuries thanks to some excellent driving) I was ready to settle in to my pre-birthday celebration. My kids made me a cake, I went to my triple book club where we all gave the founders a wedding present (they met at the first meeting), and I celebrated my trip around the sun with a dinner at a nice restaurant, some amazing gifts from friends near and far (a Funco! a bookmark! a t-shirt!). And some whiskey, but I bought that for myself.

Sorry, no pictures. Not that much reading either (I didn't finish the book club books) but I have no regrets!

I'm still at 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm down to 25 physical books checked out, although I don't have many picture books left so that's not as good as it looks. And it doesn't count the digital books.

I will be posting at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters as well as the kidlit version at Unleashing Readers.

Completed

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)

The Olympian Affair (The Cinder Spires, #2)

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula Le Guin. Audio. For Scintillation book club. This was a really interesting reread. All I remembered from reading this as a young adult was the emotional sense of being trapped and seeing doom circling around, which I once again experienced. We talked about the roles of the scientist and the protagonist as different aspects of relating to reality, the taoist principles behind the themes, how gender roles and race relations have aged and changed, and what we think happened in the edge cases. I really like this thoughtful book club even if I can't always keep up with the books.

Hild, Nicola Griffith. Foolscap pick. Another great discussion of a deep and powerful book. We looked at how it works as genre vs history, and compared it a bit to Spear, and talked about the deep connection to nature and the sense and how this we weaved into the power of the protagonist, and also how it's an amazing depiction of a super smart character.

The Wild Robot, Peter Brown. For elementary book club - 4th grade. A fun pick, and apparently well timed, as a I just saw a preview for a movie. We talked about robots we have now and how far Roz is from them, we talked about family and loss, and about robotic gender.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling. Elementary book club - 5th grade. This was fun because of the different levels of familiarity -- we had a few kids who hadn't finished the book, others who had seem the movie, some who had finished their first round, and other kids who had practically memorized the text. So we talked about what made it fun, and then I challenged them to think about the book from other points of view, and they decided that the first chapter example of abandoning Harry on the doorstep was perhaps child endangerment.

Bigfoot Crossing, Gail Anderson-Dargatz. I liked the relationship between the older brother and his preschool sister, and how that was reflected in the Bigfoots they encounter, and how the kids realize the danger of adults finding out their secrets. A fun adventure.

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The Olympian Affair, Jim Butcher. For my Tuesday gaming book club. Smoother than his son's writing, but more predictable.

The Affair, Lee Child. For my Tuesday gaming book club. Reacher is very competent. Perhaps not a stickler for the law. Like, he definitely considers himself above it; who really needs a judicial branch when Reacher is there to do it all?

Final Acts, ed by Martin Edwards. Moving through the E's in the Renton Library fiction section. I liked the old-timey detective stories bound together by some connection to a stage performance. I would have hated to live in that time of servants and dressing for dinner but I do enjoy watching detectives navigate the upper reaches of society there.

After Atlas, Emma Newman. This was a good book to have read, although I didn't enjoy it for big stretches. Newman makes demands of the reader that sometimes I whine about, and her idea of a happy ending is definitely a case of "it could have been worse." But we had a good discussion and looked at the picture of future humanity and how it worked with the detective plot and the childhood stuff intersecting. I'm glad I have such different book clubs to entertain me.

Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes DuMez. I'm not sure the Christ I've heard about in church and read about in the Bible really believed in "hitting them first and really hard" as a philosophy, but apparently many evangelicals disagree with me there. This book taught me alot about where the religious right in America is coming from and explains a lot that confused me about their theology and assumptions. I feel like maybe we need different names for these branches of Christianity because they have drifted rather far apart. And also as a woman I'm very nervous about their plans for my social and political rights and responsiblities.

Started

Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher, #11)

The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)

Definitely a normal amount (two weeks worth).

No Place Like Home, James Bird. Cybils finalist.

The Wild Robot, Peter Brown. Elementary school book club pick.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling. Elementary school book club pick.

Bigfoot Crossing, Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Cybils nominee.

The Affair, Lee Child. For Tuesday book club, following on The Olympian AFFAIR

After Atlas, Emma Newman. For Book Club.

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Final Acts, ed by Martin Edwards. My next Reading My Library Quest book, downtown Renton Library edition.

Bad Luck and Trouble, Lee Child. More Reacher! This is the one Season 2 of the Amazon series is based on.

The Shadow of the Gods, John Gwynne. This is the Sword & Laser pick, which I was meant to be reading during my quiet vacation of cat-sitting. Oops!

Picture Books & Short Stories

Rubio and the Three Osos, Susan Middleton Elya. I'm proud to say that my Spanish was up to the task! Also, there's a glossary in the back and there's only one or two Spanish words per page. I appreciated Goldilocks' redemption arc.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 3 Volume 1

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 5 Volume 8

The Outskirter's Secret (The Steerswoman, #2)

The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey & Maturin, #16)

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Abandoning my reread of Part 3 now since the new one just dropped. I'll get back to it, don't worry!

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 5 Volume 8, Miya Kazuki. I'm trying to savor this but it's a perfect vacation book. Myne is my hero.

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. I keep thinking it's done, but then there's another spurt. I'm on the last episode!

Outskirter's Secret, Rosemary Kirstein. Learning the Outskirter culture with Rowan is delightful.

Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. So far I like it! I think I always felt that portraying Harrow as a super-mastermind didn't work for me, so having her be rather simple is more fun and believable. I managed to read a bit of this in Arizona.

Devil's Cub, Georgette Heyer. For Torches and Pitchforks club, free topic: Red Flags in Relationships. This is actually a fun way to see how the romantic ideas of "he's terrible to everyone but he'll be good for ME" and "only I know how to manage this dangerous man-child" make for good books but would be terrible in real life.

The Wine Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brien. Didn't touch it.

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

Dragon's Breath (The Tales of the Frog Princess, #2)

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (Postmillennial Pop, 13)

YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture).

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker.

The Writer's Stance: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines, Dorothy U. Seyler. (no picture). More poetry.

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle.

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. On to the Hermione issue, which starts with some look at fandom's race issues and the author's use of fiction in fanfiction.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. I fell behind during my vacation.

Reading Challenges

Cybils 2023: Working on middle grade fiction.
Early Cybils: Nothing.
Reading My Library. I got a new one from Renton; working on music at Renton Highlands.
Looking at Tacoma's Monster challenge for this year.

Future Plans

I'm putting this at the end because it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure. Actually, I've started listing all the bookclubs I'm in, so I hope some actually happens.

I am reading: