When I finally finish All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot today, it will be my 11th book of the year. I started the series last January and have continued to make my way through it slowly while reading a few other books. I had a couple of other books I had planned to read during my “birthday month,” which starts June 1. I am turning 50 on June 9 and while in previous years, I had celebrated my birthday for a weekend, then a week, then a month, I think this year at half a century, the month-long celebration is, or at least might be, well deserved. However, I think now that I’m going to continue reading Herriot’s series that ends with The Lord God Made Them All and Every Living Thing, starting this coming long Memorial Day Weekend for me and continuing throughout June and probably July.
Next Sunday, I’ll do my “normal” Pushing Forward Back post to wrap up the end of the month and look ahead to the next month. In addition to continuing through the Herriot series during my birthday month, I also have planned a wine trip with my wife and am going to have a giveaway here on the blog (more details to come on my birthday). Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you missed my last post, visit it here: What We’re Watching Wednesday | The Short Season Shows, Part 1, if you’d like. I’ll leave you with a little chill music from Guido, my chill friend from the Netherlands, what I listened to as I wrote this post:
What about you? Any big plans for the coming weekend for those of you in the States who have off Memorial Day? Any big plans for you regardless of where you are for the summer (or the winter, depending on the hemisphere you’re reading this from)?Any good books included in those plans?
This post is part of The Sunday Salon. Visit Readerbuzz or go to the group’s Facebook page to find out more information about the group or to join.
The books I read for April 2019, the special breakfasts I had, the “stuff” we got rid of during our town’s Spring Cleanup Week, the movie we watched (Bumblebee) that was a pleasant surprise in a franchise we despise.
April started out with car and doctors’ appointments back-to-back for both me and my wife and then her 49th birthday the first Saturday. We didn’t go to my usual breakfast place for brunch in a neighboring town, but went to a restaurant in our town, with my parents, sister, nephew, and niece surprising my wife there. The food was very good and the company too. Later in the day, we got together with neighbors to play 500 Rummy, with my wife appropriately winning in her first ever win with the neighbors, who are hardcore cardplayers.
Then the month went a little haywire for the next two weeks as I was, and still am, dealing with a badly bruised left knee. After some miscommunication (some admittedly caused by me) and bad customer service experiences at our local health center, I am getting the knee addressed. An X-ray was negative for broken bones, I was given a two week dose of prednisone, and this past week I had an initial assessment at physical therapy. Based on that evaluation, minor injury and probably not anything torn, I was given exercises to do at home and then check in with my primary in six weeks unless it gets worse before then.
The third weekend was a long weekend for me as I took Good Friday off, ostensibly to go to a Good Friday service, but in reality I didn’t. I stayed home and finished Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor, which I had been reading for Lent, and started All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot that I plan on finishing this weekend. Then last Saturday, my plan was to continue my impromptu Easter Triduum Readathon, but I didn’t read at all as the weather, which was supposed to be rainy all or most of the day, took a turn to being nice.
I literally got out of town, went to breakfast at my aforementioned usual breakfast place in a neighboring town, happened upon an Earth Day event in the town’s park, and then came home to put mulch on the side of a driveway we share with a neighbor, much of my energy thanks to the prednisone I was taking. Also thanks to the energy, I ended the month doing a little extra cleaning around the house, including organizing a book shelf.
Books I want to read or reread over the next few months.
May begins with our buying a new lawnmower and then my first mow of the season, which I usually dread, but might dread (and hate) less (slightly less) than normal now with the new mower. Winter is finally over and spring is here – at least in reality. In fake world, winter is still going until at least mid-May with the final season of Game of Thrones, which we are watching and enjoying so far.
Otherwise mid-May should be uneventful for us, leaving me time to adjusting new daily routines that I’ve been attempting to develop in light of my wife and I “giving up” Facebook in March. Since last fall when I started using a CPAP machine, my daily routines already have been changing. Thanks to actually getting rest, I usually now get up earlier than I did, meaning I have more time to do more things than I did before. Those things include reading and walking, especially as my knee improves.
May ends with a three-day holiday weekend, and even though I work on the Tuesday after it, the library where I work is closed that day for staff to work on a few projects we couldn’t otherwise. So basically it will be a four-day break from patrons, which although their presence obviously means job security, it is nice for an introvert like myself to be able to have a chance to breathe without all the extra people…
How was your month of April? Read any good books, seen any good movies and/or TV shows, listened to any good music? What was the highlight of your month? What are you looking forward to in May? Share in the comments.
This post is part of The Sunday Salon, that was created in 2007 to spark conversations about books and book-ish things. It now can be found each weekend at the blog Readerbuzz, where you also can post a link to your blog.
I have off work tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. I took tomorrow as a vacation day, am not working a Saturday this week, and the library is closed Sunday for Easter. As a result, I am planning my own Easter Triduum Readathon starting tonight and running through Sunday. Tonight, I plan on finishing Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor, which I have been reading for Lent; tomorrow and probably Saturday too, I want to read All Things Wise and Wonderful, the third part (in the U.S.) of the All Creatures Great and Small series by James Herriot; Sunday, I am keeping it light with Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion by Neil Gaiman.
Tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., I am going to be offline and plan on going to a Good Friday service. I will be reading on a Kindle and am going to be listening to a few playlists of Holy Week music that I found and downloaded to my phone on Google Play Music, but I am not going to be on the Internet for those 12 hours.
Why I can do this is because my wife and I don’t have children, by choice, and aren’t able to go visit family this weekend. She works midnight shift all weekend and she and I both saw my side of the family on her birthday earlier in the month. I also don’t want to be going much of anywhere as I will be taking a new medication, prednisone, only for a 13-day stint, as I am starting physical therapy on Wednesday for a sore knee. I don’t know how it will affect me, although I have been given the litany of what could happen.
The litany includes the helpful advice of “BEFORE USING THIS MEDICINE…TELL YOUR DOCTOR: If you have a herpes infection of the eye. TELL YOUR DOCTOR: If have any of these health problems: A fungal infection or malaria infection in the brain.” Maybe it’s just me, but I think I would telling my doctor anyway if I had an infection IN THE BRAIN!
So both you and I are not too traumatized (only slightly traumatized, in other words, with that last thought hanging out in the back of our brains) I’ll leave you with something hopefully slightly less traumatic in keeping with the season :
Update Sunday morning, 4/21/19, 6:46 AM EDT: I didn’t make the Good Friday service, but did finish Leaving Church and started All Things Wise and Wonderful. Saturday’s plans went sideways, but in a good way as the weather was nicer than expected and the prednisone that I started Thursday morning kicked in and gave me extra energy. Highlights can be found on my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/stillunfinished/. This morning, I am listening to music right now and will be reading Sunday Salon posts (and other blog posts from the past week) before reading more from All Things Wise and Wonderful. I probably won’t get to Don’t Panic today. I probably will dip into The Desert Fathers, the bookmail that I received recently from Deb Nance, the leader of The Sunday Salon. Click through to her blog to see her latest post and link up to the Salon, if you like, with your own post from today or earlier in the week. No Easter service for me because…well…Easter flowers. Sad but true.
If you celebrate Easter, how are you spending your Easter Weekend? If you’re not, what are your plans for this weekend anyway? Do they involve reading? And if they don’t, I’m totally judging you. 😉
Sarah Sammis of the blog Puss Reboots answered the often-asked question: “What are you reading this weekend?” with the fact that she doesn’t. Instead, she spends time with family, binges TV, and paints, she said. My own circumstance is a little different in that my wife and I have no children (by choice), she works a 12-hour shift Saturday (8 p.m.) into Sunday (8 a.m.) and then Sunday (8 p.m.) into Monday (8 p.m.) — which means she is sleeping for much of the day both days of a weekend, and I’m not an artist. So my own weekends usually but not always go like thism
If I’m not working at the library on a Saturday, usually once or twice a month, then I spend part of that day running errands and maybe some reading later in the day. Yesterday was different, though, as it was my wife’s birthday and I spent all day with her as she has a couple of days off from work. Growing up, I was taught and conditioned that Sundays are a day of rest. As an adult, I still try to adhere to that conditioning, because while my job isn’t as stressful as countless others, I deal with people a lot throughout the week and as an introvert, I need a day to rest. That rest includes, but is not limited to, reading.
I start my Sundays with reading and commenting on Sunday Salon posts, of which Sarah’s posts was one for this week, while listening to Guido’s Lounge Cafe on Mixcloud.
Then in the afternoon, if I’m not going to watch a NASCAR with my neighbor Mike in his ManCave, I read a book. For example, this afternoon I plan to start All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot.
For Lent, I am reading Leaving Church: A Memoir by Barbara Brown Taylor, which I will read later this morning as part of my morning devotions, part of my everyday reading routine. I also plan to continue reading “Like This or Die: The Decline of Criticism in the Age of The Algorithm” by Christian Lorentzen from the April 1, 2019 edition of Harper’s Magazine, which was offered free via Amazon Prime Reading this past week. From what I’ve read so far, it might good for other book bloggers, especially those who do or continue to review books regularly, to read.
So that’s what I’m reading this weekend or what I plan to read anyway. What about you? What are you reading this weekend? Or are you reading this weekend? If not, what are you up to and what are you reading during the week?
Still an unfinished person... 