It’s been 42 degrees this week, so it has felt too hot to do anything! I made a very modest start on my new 1000 piece jigsaw and have spent the rest of the time in the pool with my toddler. As you can imagine, I’ve not exactly been blasting my way through my TBR under these conditions, but here’s a short update about what I did manage to read this week:
I’m now halfway through Runemarks by Joanne M. Harris and am finding it so much fun! The writing is funny, and story is entertaining and easy to get through. I plan to finish it this week before picking up The Way of Kings (Part 2) by Brandon Sanderson, which will complete another prompt for my TBR challenge.
Alongside all my reading of my TBR this year, I also love to read parenting books. I usually read them slowly but Good Inside by Dr Becky Kennedy was a Libby loan so I wanted to get through it at a reasonable pace before I had to send it back. This book is about being a calm, grounded parent, and is especially geared towards those of us who want to end the cycles of generational trauma.
Although I love Dr Becky’s instagram videos and podcasts, I found this book a too intense with saying “if you don’t do exactly as I say your kids will be messed up forever”. We are told that the stakes are sky-high and reminded of this every chapter or so. It’s tricky, because I do agree that the choices we make in the early years impact their development going forward but the way readers are hit over the head with this again and again felt a bit over-the-top.
There were some helpful examples and ideas of things to say in here. It’s worth the read but I think you could get a lot of the same information from a podcast episode or two. Or another book I read a few years ago, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry did a better job, in my opinion. I’m still a fan of Dr Becky though, and I think on the whole her ideas and overall message are both brilliant. My next parenting book is How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7 by Joanna Faber and Julie King, which I got for my birthday last month.
Alongside these two reads, I am continuing to make great progress with. my two slow reads: The Brothers Karamazov and The Count of Monte Cristo. Both are still on track to be 5-stars!
My husband has taken next week off work so that we can tackle some DIY. so I’m not sure it will be any more successful than this week in terms of reading! (On that note, he is almost finished with The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien, which I read back in June and really enjoyed.) Here’s hoping that I can finish Runemarks and make progress on my next read before this TBR challenge completely gets away from me!
Read While It Rains 