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Categories: Books

August Reading Wrap-Up

Books Read

1) The Hellion’s Waltz by Olivia Waite (★★☆☆☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sapphic romance that just never really got going for me.

2) The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (★★★★★ – print, owned, Amazon) – A beautiful story-in-verse about a teenager who is trying to find her place in the world.

3) Book Lovers by Emily Henry (★★★★★ – print, owned, indie bookshop) – A very buzzy romance that lived up to the hype for me.

4) The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – A sweet story about found family, friendship, and love.

5) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (★★★☆☆ – print, library) – Maya Angelou’s memoir about the early years of her life; beautifully written, but a little hard to get into at times.

6) Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon (★★★★★ – e-book, Libby) – A wonderful romance that takes place in a newsroom. The characters were just delightful!

7) To the Brink by Cindy Gerard (★★★★☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – One of my favorite romantic suspense books that I reread for the third time, and finished in under 24 hours.

8) Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado (★★★☆☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sweet YA romance involving a fat protagonist that had excellent representation but the story wasn’t executed as well as I wanted.

9) The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – A really fun romance involving a Hollywood starlet and the fake romance she has with a famous playboy.

10) Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Book of the Month) – Such a great thriller involving some paranormal elements and a very creepy old house.

11) Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert (★★★★☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sweet romance involving an autistic man who is running a B&B and needs a chef, and the girl who answers his ad and turns his life upside down.

12) The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Thriftbooks) – An excellent primer on purity culture. It’s a bit dated (written in 2009), but most of what is discussed in the book still holds true.

Book Challenges

1) Book Club – Our book club book this month was All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle, a book that I read earlier this year! I always love when I can “skip” the book club book, feels like cheating! We had a range of opinions on this book: I gave it 5 stars and loved it wholeheartedly, but we had a few people who gave it 3 stars and weren’t as sold on the book as I was.

2) Unread Shelf Project: The prompt for August was “a book chosen by your friends or family” and I turned to Instagram for this prompt, selecting four books off my shelf and running a poll on Stories. The overwhelming winner was Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton. I read a little over 100 pages and then abandoned it because I just cannot deal with backstabbing female characters or anorexia subplots. No thank you!

3) Goodreads Challenge: I knocked four books off my Goodreads Challenge this month! Two I read and two I abandoned. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti were good books that I’m glad I finally got around to reading. I abandoned Missoula by Jon Krakeur because I just don’t know if I’ll ever be in the mood to read about a rape case (it’s certainly not in this weird emotional space I’ve been in lately). I also abandoned The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord, which was more of a “wrong time” kind of book. I’m keeping it on my Goodreads TBR and hoping there will be a time in the future where I can read this book (the plot involves a teenage girl’s mom having a cancer recurrence and I started this book during a week where I learned of four people dealing with loved ones dying from cancer, and I just could not.)

Book Stats

  • # of books read: 12
  • # of pages read: 4,010 pages
  • Genre breakdown: Romance (42%), Nonfiction (17%), Fiction (17%), YA (17%), and Mystery/Thriller (7%)
  • Format breakdown: e-book (42%), print (42%), and audiobook (17%)
  • Fastest read: To the Brink (1 day)
  • Slowest read: The Authenticity Project/The View Was Exhausting (14 days)
  • Star average: 4.0
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 50%
  • Abandoned books: 4 (Tiny Pretty Things, The Anthropocene Reviewed, The Names They Gave Us, and The Spanish Love Deception)
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 4 books behind schedule.

Superlatives of August

  • Favorite book of the month: Book Lovers by Emily Henry
  • Least favorite book of the month: The Hellion’s Waltz by Olivia Waite
  • A popular book I didn’t love: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • A popular book that totally lived up to the hype: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
  • The book that I was most surprised to love: Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Soloman

What was the best book you read last month?

Categories: Books

What I’m Reading (8.1.22)

Good morning, friends! I had a lovely weekend that included finally celebrating my mom’s birthday, snuggling Eleni, and taking myself to Starbucks to read my book. It was exactly the weekend I needed. There is a lot happening this week, and I’m feeling ready to tackle it all.

I have three wonderful books to share with you today, and all three got a solid 4 stars from me. Let’s review:

How to Not Die Alone by Logan Ury (★★★★☆)

I talked about this book in Friday’s Currently post, so suffice it to say that I loved it. I wasn’t expecting much from it, mainly because I’ve been very apathetic about dating for a long, long time. Some people look at dating as a way to meet new people, but that’s not how I’ve approached dating. For me, I’m either so excited about the person I’m seeing that I can’t eat or sleep or think about anything else… or I’m going on boring dates and making up excuses for why I can’t extend the date. This book really made me excited about the prospect of dating, though, and how to treat it like a fun way to meet people or, at the very least, learn more about myself and what I want out of my future partner. I’m planning on writing a follow-up post about the lessons I learned and how I want to implement them in my own dating life, so stay tuned for that. I do want to mention, though, that this book was very heteronormative (which, to be fair to the author, she addresses in the beginning of the book, stating that most dating research focuses on straight couples) and doesn’t really discuss what it’s like to date as a person of color or as a fat person. As a fat person, my experiences with dating are so, so different from other people (no, I’m not getting hundreds of matches every day; I’m lucky if I get 1 or 2), and I wish that could have been explored but, as the author is a traditionally beautiful, thin person, I know that’s not something she has experience with. Maybe I’ll just have to write that book about how to date as a fat person, who knows?!

Yours to Keep by Lauren Layne (★★★★☆)

Yours to Keep was a sweet contemporary romance. At just over 200 pages, it was a fast read; sometimes shorter romances feel like they’re missing something (backstory or relationship development, things like that), but this one felt perfectly paced. I’m glad that the author kept it short and sweet because it delivered the perfect impact this way! In this romance, Carter Ramsey has returned to his hometown for his 10-year high school reunion. He’s a pro baseball player who is dealing with an injury that has the potential to ruin his career so he’s going through a lot right now and could consider consulting with a personal injury lawyer. Contact professionals from sites like https://ravidandassociates.com/.  Since he plans to be in town for a couple months, he rents a house next door to Olive, who is none other than his former lab partner from high school science. Olive and Carter strike up a friendship that turns into a whole lot more as they spend most of their time together (Olive’s working on the plans for the high school reunion and recruits Carter to help her). I just adored Olive and want to be friends with her. She was so much fun to read about, mostly because she’s so very different from me (tall, loud, friendly, open-hearted) and I feel like she would be such a wonderful friend to have in my corner. I loved the love story between Carter and Olive, and the grand gestures from both parties at the end of the novel felt true and right, not over the top. A solid romance!

Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley (★★★★☆)

This novel was so lovely! I was a little bit bored in the beginning and contemplated abandoning it, but decided to give it a few more chapters and I’m so glad I did because it was an excellent read. This novel follows Jubilee who has an incredibly rare allergy: she can’t touch or be touched by people. This allergy has caused her to retreat from the world and become a recluse, but when she has to get a job to survive, she finds one at a library. It’s there that she meets Eric, a man who is trying to keep everything together between working a stressful job and parenting his adopted son who is still reeling from the sudden, unexpected loss of his parents (Eric’s best friends). A chance meeting leads Jubilee and Eric, two people whose lives look nothing like they wanted them to, to open their hearts and explore what could happen if they trusted themselves. It was a super sweet novel and I really loved Jubilee’s character arc. She was someone who was so easy to love and root for, and I enjoyed every minute I spent with her. I thought the ending wrapped up a little too neatly, but other than that, it was a fantastic read.

What I’m Reading This Week

  • The Hellion’s Waltz by Olivia Waite (e-book) – This is another short romance (under 200 pages!), so I’m likely going to finish it today or tomorrow. So far, I’m enjoying it!
  • The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (print) – I’m looking forward to diving into this novel that gets rave reviews. I’ll start it once I finish The Hellion’s Waltz.
  • Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer (audio) – Second time’s the charm? The last time I planned to read this book, I was going through a mental health crisis and many of you recommended that I set it down for the time being. It was good advice! I’m going to start it this week, and if I’m still not feeling up to reading about such a hard subject matter, to my “abandoned” list it will go.

What are you reading?

Categories: Books

May Reading Wrap-Up

Books Read

  • Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz (★★☆☆☆ – print, library) – a historical thriller about a woman in the 1800s who wants to be a doctor
  • Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – a YA thriller about kids at a boarding school in Vermont who are trying to solve a decades-old mystery
  • Yours in Scandal by Lauren Layne (★★★★☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – a fun romance about the mayor of NYC falling in love with his opponent’s daughter
  • The Maid by Nita Prose (★★★★★ – print, owned, Book of the Month) – a truly heartwarming story that is part-thriller and part-character study
  • All the Feels by Olivia Dade (★★★★☆ – e-book, Libby) – a sweet romance about a TV star falling in love with his handler
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Tombolo Books) – an impactful slim book that compiles two long letters: one to Baldwin’s nephew and one to America
  • Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad (★★★★★ – audiobook, Libby) – a beautifully written memoir about a woman who gets an aggressive form of leukemia at 22 and the road trip she takes after finishing treatment
  • Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (★★★☆☆ – #ownvoices, print, owned, Book of the Month) – a fictionalized retelling of a court case that involved poor women of color being sterilized against their will
  • Cream and Punishment by Susannah Nix (★★★★☆- e-book, owned, Amazon) – a contemporary romance novel involving the trope of “second chance romance” that was exactly what I needed
  • Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Thriftbooks) – a fictionalized retelling of the Hindenburg disaster that left 35 people dead and what may have happened to cause the explosion

Book Challenges

  • Book Club – Our May pick for book club was Anatomy: A Love Story, but we didn’t get to discuss it this month since a bunch of people were feeling under the weather on the day we were supposed to meet. The friend who recommended it gave it 5 stars but most of us gave it 3 or fewer stars, so it was going to be a spicy book club!
  • Unread Shelf Project – In May, the prompt was to read the shortest book on my shelves, so I picked up The Fire Next Time, which is just 102 pages. I’m really glad I finally picked up this book! I bought it at my favorite local indie bookstore last year because I knew I wanted to have this book on my shelves.
  • Goodreads Challenge: I only read one book off my Goodreads Challenge list (wherein I’m reading all of the books added to my Goodreads TBR before 2018), which was Flight of Dreams. It was such a good book and I can’t believe I waited so long to read it!

Book Stats

  • # of books read: 10
  • # of pages read: 3,226 pages
  • Genre breakdown: Fiction (40%), Romance (20%), Nonfiction (20%), YA (10%), and Mystery/Thriller (10%)
  • Format breakdown: print (50%), e-book (30%), and audiobook (20%)
  • Fastest read: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (3 days)
  • Slowest read: Truly Devious, All the Feels, and Between Two Kingdoms (9 days)
  • Star average: 3.8 (down .5 from last month, oof!)
  • % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 30%
  • Abandoned books: 4 (Feel the Heat by Kate Meader, Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma, Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey, and Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong)
  • Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 4 books behind schedule. Eeks!

Superlatives of May

  • Favorite book of May: The Maid by Nita Prose
  • Favorite romance of May: All the Feels by Olivia Dade
  • The book that will stick with me for a long, long time: Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
  • The book I thought I would like more than I did: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
  • The book that had me googling the most to learn more about the facts presented in the book: Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon

What was the best book you read in May?

Categories: About Me

Ask Stephany Anything: The Finale (For Now)

Happy Wednesday, friends! I hope this week is treating you well. I’m returning to my Ask Stephany Anything series for my final set of questions. My answers to the questions posed by these two blog friends were very wordy so I decided to give them their own post! Let’s dive in:

Suzanne asks…

As a former copywriter, I am curious about your job. How did you get into it? What are the best and worst parts about it? Was there something else you always thought you’d do for your career? 

I got my job as a content writer for my current company after over a year of job hunting. I was working as a marketing assistant at a direct marketing company and hated it. There was never enough work for me to do and the job wasn’t challenging at all. I wanted to stay in marketing, but something that was focused more on the writing side of things than the analytical side (which is what my job at my old company had evolved into). I knew I had the writing chops to work as a copywriter, so I searched for copywriting/content marketing jobs and went through a rigorous process to get the job I have now, including writing three different writing samples. It was all worth it!

The best part of my job is that every day is different. Some days I’m writing all day, other days I’m in meetings, and other days I’m editing or publishing content to websites. Another thing that I really like about my job is that I’m not micromanaged. As long as I get my work done, my bosses don’t care about the order in which I get things done. They aren’t constantly checking in with me about this or that task. (This was a significant departure from my old job!) And it’s fun to learn new things! I have learned so much about so many different topics: replacement windows, roofing, house siding, gutter systems, foundation repair, cancer types and treatment, Covid testing, heart conditions, etc. I can now debate the merits between shingle and metal roofs as well as discuss all the different types of Covid tests and when to get which one. For someone who loves to learn, this is a great job to do it in.

The worst part of my job is that it can get monotonous at times. Even though every day is different, we work on a monthly schedule so sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day when I have to just repeat everything I did last month. More writing, more editing, more posting. It can also get very stressful, especially towards the end of the month when everything is due.

I don’t think I ever really thought about what I wanted from my career, honestly. It just wasn’t something I thought about much growing up. Well, that’s not strictly true. I definitely thought I wanted to be a veterinarian because I loved animals so much. However, I took one college-level Anatomy & Physiology course and quickly realized that a science major was not in the cards for me.

Originally, I thought I’d go into teaching because it seemed like the most obvious path for someone like me. But teaching isn’t one of my skill sets, which became quickly apparent when I was doing my teaching internships. After that, I switched my major to communications to do something that was more writing-focused and decided to seek out marketing jobs. I didn’t exactly know what in marketing I wanted to do, but that industry seemed the most interesting to me.

Anne asks…

Were you exclusively a “dog person” before getting Eloise and Lila?

We didn’t have cats in my family growing up. My grandma was allergic to them, and we were more of a dog family than anything else. My mom grew up with dogs, and I’ve had a dog in my life since I was 10. I was never someone who didn’t like cats, but I did believe in the very wrong assumption that cats are aloof jerks and dogs have way more personality.

It was during the last few years of Dutch’s life that I decided my next pet would be a cat. Those years were incredibly difficult from a caretaking perspective. He needed frequent bathroom breaks (every 3 hours) and he didn’t settle down at night very easily, which could be frustrating and very tiring. I spent many hours trying to help him get comfortable enough to sleep at night. (Eventually, he went on medication to help with his nighttime anxiety.) At the time, I was working in Tampa five days a week. It was a 40-minute round-trip drive to come home at midday to take him out. (My mom, bless her, helped out with these walks, usually 3-4 times a week.) I also had to come immediately home after work to take him out. I was happy to do it, of course, and I wouldn’t wish those years away for anything. But it was very exhausting, especially doing it all alone. My next pet would need to be much easier to care for and able to be alone for long periods. (Of course, this is way before I knew my work life would be changing drastically and I’d be home all day every day!)

Then, the more I thought about having a cat, the more excited I became! I have always loved cats; I just never had a chance to bond with one. But if I was at a friend’s house and they had a cat, I was always enamored with it. I’m equal opportunity when it comes to animals!

And now I have my girls. Eloise and Lila are not aloof jerks with no personality! They have oodles of personality (like all cats do!) and are the sweetest, snuggliest, most special babies. I love them so much!

Anne also asked…

What sparked your deep love of reading and writing? You are such a literary-minded soul, and I always love to know if it was a teacher, or a parent, or a friend, who helped make books/writing such a passion for those who love them. 

I have always been naturally inclined towards reading. I was the kid who loved the language arts/reading part of school way more than the math/science. My mom was probably the person who made me a reader, though, as she was always reading and took me to the library every single Saturday when I was a kid so that I could pick out books. I would always check out the maximum number of books I was allowed to check out (at the time, it was 12) and voraciously read them throughout the week. I think it helped that my mom encouraged my love for reading and never made me feel like I should be doing something else with my time. (I mean, I was also a nerdy student who would do my homework the moment I got home, so she never had to worry about that with me, haha.) Books are a source of comfort for me, and there’s never been a drop-off reading period in my life. I know many people read less and less in high school and college, but that never happened to me. I’ve always kept reading as my #1 hobby.

What career did you want to have growing up?

Categories: Recurring Series

A Weekend in Pictures

I woke up from my nap on Friday to this sweet face right next to me. What a doll! She often interrupts my sleeping to beg for pets (often by poking me with a claw right on my face), but I can’t even be mad at her. She’s too cute!

After my nap, I took a trip to Target. I needed to get a gift for Olive for her birthday as well as one for Mikaela who just had a birthday. I couldn’t help stopping by the books section, but I didn’t buy anything. I was good!

Once home from my Target expedition, I took a hot bubble bath that was so relaxing. The rest of my night was fairly low-key—I Facetimed with my mom, watched a few episodes of Brooklyn 99, wrote Saturday’s blog post, and read my books.

My busy Saturday began with a long walk around my apartment complex. It was a brisk 61 degrees when I woke up, and the walk felt really good. I listened to the latest episode of Office Ladies during my walk. I don’t *love* this podcast (the deep dives on random subjects are kinda ridiculous), but all of the behind-the-scenes info about life on the set of a TV show are super interesting. It’s amazing how much work goes into even a one-second scene!

I test-drove a 2021 Mazda CX-5 on Saturday (my mom came with me), and man, was she a beauty. Both to look at and to drive. I have four other cars on my list that I want to test-drive and I’m not in any rush to buy, so I’m taking my time with this research assignment and only went to one dealership this weekend. I had a really good experience with the car salesman (shocking!) and he didn’t pressure me at all to make a decision. All in all, it was a pleasant experience and made me so excited to finally have a new car sometime in the near future.

I was so excited that I finally got the alert that this book was ready for me to pick up at the library! I’ve been on hold for over a month now, which is unusual for my library system. It’s a 2020 release and I usually never have trouble getting those books fairly quickly. It just means a lot of people are requesting it, which is a good thing since this is an important topic!

Saturday was Olive’s birthday party! If you remember, Olive is my dear friend Mikaela’s baby who had a rare and aggressive form of cancer (her chance of survival was 9%). Somehow, she made it through an incredibly risky surgery and countless rounds of chemo and has emerged victorious from her cancer treatment. She’s had a few scans since she finished treatment, and all of them have been clear. Even more astonishing is that her treatment didn’t stunt her development at all! Both physically and cognitively, she’s right where she should be. Isn’t that incredible?! Warrior baby, for sure.

Olive turns two on Wednesday, and we celebrated with a very fun birthday party for her. Myself, I enjoyed chit-chatting with my friends Amber and Lynn (we wore party hats and got tatted up, as shown in the picture above) and watching Olive destroy her cake. 🙂 It was such a joyous day!

Saturday evening was an eventful one! I wanted to do a load of laundry so I started the washer and went on my merry way. The way the water was filling the basin sounded different than usual, but I didn’t think much of it.

… Until my downstairs neighbor knocked on my door to tell me that water was leaking into her kitchen. Sure enough, when I looked at my own kitchen (my stackable washer/dryer is lodged into the space across from my fridge), there was an inch of water on the floor! I immediately shut off the washer (and discovered that no water was even flowing into the basin!) and called emergency maintenance.

What a mess! I live in a third-floor apartment and learned that water had not only leaked into the second-floor apartment below me but also into the first-floor apartment and the concrete outside. OOF. I felt terrible! I know it wasn’t my fault (I’ve never had an issue with my washer before!), but damn. There wasn’t much maintenance could do for me on Saturday night. Because of the way the kitchen is set up, they are going to need to first remove my fridge so that they can move out my washer/dryer to get into the space where it sits to figure out what’s causing the leak. So I’ll have maintenance in my apartment all day today—a day in which I have three meetings, argh!

I’m crossing my fingers and toes that they’ll just set me up with a new washer/dryer since the one I have now is super old and makes so much noise. I usually can’t run my dryer if I have meetings at work or I’m watching something on TV. I’ll even turn it off when if my mom Facetimes me while it’s running. Super annoying.

Once the mess of my leaking washer was solved (at least for that night), I ordered dinner and watched a few episodes of Brooklyn 99. I was in bed a little on the early side and read my books for a bit before calling it a night!

I woke up way before my alarm on Sunday. While I despise Daylight Saving Time (especially in the fall), it was nice to wake up around 7 feeling fully rested! I spent my extra hour curled up on the couch with a blanket, finishing up Ginny Moon.

Mikaela and I had a lovely Sunday morning writing date at Panera! I set my fantasy football lineup before writing my Sunday stream-of-consciousness blog post. We also spent a lot of time talking about the party yesterday and reflecting on what an incredible day it was. Mikaela said that Olive had a blast, and I was so happy to hear that!

The rest of my Sunday was spent at my mom’s, watching football and snuggling the dogs and sneaking in a few chapters of my book in between plays. I love these Sundays so much—it’s just a low-key afternoon with my mom, my brother, and my older nephew. I cherish this time!

Of course, there’s more football to watch when I get home from my mom’s! Ellie will sometimes sit on the edge of the couch and watch the game with me. It’s always so funny when she does that! I ate a late dinner while watching the game, and also put the finishing touches on this blog post.

And now it’s a new week and is shaping up to be a good one. I have plans with two different friends and work shouldn’t be too much of a killer (here’s hoping, at least).

How was your weekend?