March 2024 Reading Update

This update is later than usual thanks to a wonderful, relaxing vacation that gave me lots of reading time by the pool and the beach! I had such a fun reading month. It is interesting to note that I didn’t read any nonfiction this month. This month I read:

• Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga [audiobook] – This is a sweet middle grades story of family and love and perseverance and bravery. Jude and her family live in Syria and her older brother is determined to fight for people’s rights, despite the danger. As it becomes more dangerous Jude and her mother are sent to visit/ live with her uncle in America. There we see Jude in ESL classes in school, trying to make friends, and learning a new culture, all while missing her friends and the family they left back in Syria.
• Chang-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – I heard Katie from Currently Reading talk about this months ago and though I knew it would be a dark and heavy read, I wanted to read it. In this fictionaly dystopian world, prisoners are offered the opoprtunity to join the Chang Gang program. This is a televised system where prisoners fight each other to the death, with the hope that if you live through enough matches, you will ultimately be freed – from prison. But most prisoners end up “low freed” or killed long before that hope is realized. In this middle of this horribly dark premise, the author weaves in facts and satire to point to the real horrors of our criminal justice system, and the disproportionate number of Black people who are incarcerated in America. We get to meed wild characters, follow the love story of two of the strongest women you could imagine, and see families torn apart and brought together by this sick world. It’s hard to say I enjoyed this, but I appreciated the incredible work of a gifted story teller to fictionalize the horrors of reality for many prisoners.
• The Women by Kristin Hannah – This is the fourth book I have read and LOVED by Kristin Hannah! I often say I don’t like historical fiction, yet most of my 5 star reads are often beloved, bittersweet historical fiction stories, especially those with strong, powerful women protagonists. We meet Frankie as she signs up to serve as a nurse in Vietnam. We are with her through brutal work in country and a non-welcome home. Then we have to follow her return as she hears, over and over again, “there were no women in Vietnam”. As Frankie creates a new life, she also figures out how to tell the story of what the women in Vietnam truly did. This was beautiful! And now I can’t wait to visit Vietnam with my travel buddy Sue!
• Beartown by Fredrik Backman [audiobook] – Some of the former special guests of the Currently Reading podcast talked about this series with love and affection for the last few years! I waited until the hype died down, and I enjoyed this story. Beartown is a hockey town and the entire town’s hope is on the junior team becoming winnters and bringing glory to this small, cold town. Meanwhile, teenagers are being total teenagers and challenges ensue. This book was full of teens and adults behaving badly, then apologizing or lying or ignoring and moving on. I’m invested in the community and will continue reading the series.
• Dead Eleven by Jimmy Juliano- This was a silly, campy, creepy, fun, mixed media read! A woman disappears after visiting this small island and her brother is determined to figure out what happened to her. The island people have lots of secrets and it’s bizarre how everyone seems stuck in the 90’s… I don’t want to give any more away but this was part mystery, part horror, part science-fi/fantasy and an enjoyable read.
• The Power by Naomi Alderman- I’ve heard this author discussed on Currently Reading, so I made this book my first read over a long, relaxing vacation. The story takes place over many timelines and multiple narrators, all detailing the events that led up to a significant world re-order. As the world changes teenage girls have immense physical power, causing men to become scared for their lives, and unsure what the future holds when women are in charge. At first it feels a little like a joke and a gender bender play, where men are finally scared to walk alone at night, one of the many things women have been fearful of for centuries. But then people take power to the extreme and much damage is done to people and places. This is an interesting read on the psychology of people and power dynamics.
• Like a House on Fire by Lauren McBrayer- I recently heard this book described on a podcast and knew I wanted to read it. We meet Merit after she’s had her second child and decided to go back to work as an architect. She is hired by Jane, an older, confident, powerful woman who takes Merit under her wing. Merit and Jane have an instant connection and form a friendship both inside and outside of work. They support one another through life challenges and turmoil, all while Merit is trying to figure out what role Jane plays in her current life and a possible shift in her future life. I enjoyed this exploration of friendship and love and marriage and more.
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan- I love both of these authors separately and thought it would be interesting to read a book that they co-wrote. This is a YA romcom, full of silly teenage angst, mostly portrayed by two different narrators both named Will Grayson. Each boy is coming to terms with who they are, who they want to date, and how and what they share with their friends and family about their friends and their sexual orientation and more. This is a sweet and funny story about appreciating the people around you and the gifts friendship can bring you and being open to share with those you love.
• Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon – So happy to admit that I liked another historical fiction this month! I’ve owned this e-book for a long time, but finally got around to reading it. During this WWII saga, we follow the life of Helene, who goes by many names for many reasons. She is an independent woman who wants to help during war efforts, who wants to enjoy life to the fullest, and who works hard in every situation. This was based on a true person who was a significant support to the French and British war efforts, who saved lives and coded messages that made moves across nations. She was a war hero and cool chic!
• The Change by Kirsten Miller – This is my April book club book, which I was able to read early thanks to that vacation mentioned above. It was fun to read this so recently after reading The Power, since they both focus on the power of women. In this part-fantasy, part-mystery, part-magical realism story, we meet Nessa, Jo, and Harriett. Each woman is middle aged and facing significant changes in her life, and they come together to help solve a crime, and they end up doing so much more for each other. I appreciated reading a novel about strong, powerful women who can support themselves, who don’t care what others think, and who are going through a lot of what I’m currently living through. While it took me a little while to get into this story, I really enjoyed it and can’t wait for the book club discussion!
• Tom Lake by Ann Pachett- Believe it or not, but this is my first Ann Pachett novel. My mom loved her writing and I’ve always meant to read her before now, but this book was talked about so much when it recently came out that I just had to see what the hype was all about. This was a beautiful story, set in the early days of the pandemic, yet not at all about the pandemic. That just gave the opportunity for our narrator Lara to have all 3 of her daughters home with her at the same time, begging to hear the story of when their mother dated a famous movie star. As Lara tells the story, we flashback and forward through her life, understanding how she ended up where she is now. This was a moving story about family, love, acting, growing up, and Our Town.

Favorite Books

Fiction: The Women

Nonfiction: N/A

February 2024 Reading Update

I love a good reading month! Having pneumonia this month gave me a lot of time when I had to be home resting, and once I felt slightly better I was able to read a lot. This month I read:

• Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi – My work friend Lisa loaned me this book (and the next two in the series). At first, I thought she was crazy but it was so fantasy/dystopian/ YA drama-filled with insanity, but then I became invested in the characters and the storyline. We meet Juliette, who has this awful (or maybe good?) power to hurt people with her touch. She is trapped in an awful institution because of her powers. Then Adventure ensues and Juliette has to decide who she can trust and how to use her powers to help or hurt.
• Paper Names by Susie Luo – I chose this from Book of the Month sometime last year and knew I would like it when I was in the right mood. This is a literary fiction book centered around a Chinese-American family. We follow this family across generations, immigration, and race and class-related experiences with White Americans, all while considering how parents show love to children, how parents work to make the next generation more successful, and how we treat people who we know or perceive are different than us. This was a beautiful, bittersweet story full of rich, flawed humans living the best life they can with what they have.
• Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder- I heard this mentioned on the Currently Readng podcast by a sometimes host, Mary, whose father passed away this past year. Knowing she enjoyed reading this in her early grief made me think I might appreciate it. Even though I lost my mom 12.5 years ago, I can still cry about how much I miss her, and I can still hate being anywhere near social media or a card store near Mother’s Day. This was a beautiful graphic novel memoir about a young woman whose mother died of cancer when she was 19. I loved her honesty as she hits on the awkward ways people talk or don’t talk about death and cancer, and how quickly they all disappear when we still want to talk about our lost parent. She shares elements of the Jewish faither (my mom LOVED the tradition of sitting shiva when someone dies) and I appreciated learning about those elements (leaving a rock on a grave as a part of you). This gave me a good cry.
• One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall – I LOVED this fast-paced, propulsive mystery! I don’t want to give anything away with specifics, but this story follows Cole, his wife Mel, and some important side characters trying to ensure people understand the seriousness of violence against women.
• The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Changes by Michelle MiJung Kim [audiobook] – I heard the author speak at the SDCOE Equity Conference last month and loved the title of her book. I appreciated that she shares her stories as a queer immigrant Korean-American activist. She goes deep into the realities of the white supremacy air we all breathe every day, and how to begin to get out of our own fog. I appreciate her perspective and the ideas she shared.
• The Plea by Steve Cavanagh – Now that I’m into the Eddie Flynn series, I love it! Eddie is a former hustler turned lawyer who keeps getting himself into impossible situations. With a lot of sneaky tricks and last-minute saves, and a lot of blood and fighting, he manages to escape the worst of it all, while saving his estranged wife and daughter.
• Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent – I loved Unraveling Oliver by Nugent and once I heard about this one on the Currently Reading podcast, I knew I would love it too! Sally Diamond is introduced to us after she burns her recently deceased father’s body in their home incinierator, because he had told her “Just put me out with the trash when I die”. Sally takes everything literally because of her deficiency. As we get to know Sally, we learn of her history, with her adoptive family, and her family or origin. There is a lot of darkness and evil mixed in with found family who surround Sally as an adult and who help her become whole. I LOVED this story!
• Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton – My friend Shera, who is a psychologist, asked me if I wanted to read this book with her, so we did a buddy read long-distance. This is a sad history of the Crownsville State Hospital, which was an insane asylum built for and by Black men in the 1800’s. The long history details what I’ve read in other accounts – that Black men were forced into indentured servitutde, and often put into the hospital instead of jail or support, whether or not there was a mental health need. The author, who has family members who suffer from mental health illnesses, tracked down as many former patients and staff members as possible, to get to the facts about how brutal and underfunded life was in Crownsville. The details were awful to read about, especially knowing that the state did some of it on purpose, drawing clear racial lines between support offered to white hospitals. Families are still scarred from what happened here. There was lessa bout the actual mental health aspects that I was hoping for, but my friend and I still had some interesting discussions about the book as we read.
• Family Family by Laurie Frankel – This has been my favorite book of 2024 so far by far! I LOVED this book, just as I loved the other two Frankel books I’ve read. She has such a gifted way of weaving detailed stories about complex characters who are so real, making hard-to-discuss topics relateable. In this story, we meet Fig and her twin Jack in the present timeline, and we meet their mother India starting in high school in a separate timeline. The story is about adoption, and how adoption is a beautiful and wonderful choice for people, and how accurate and true representation matters. This was delightful and heartwarming and I wish I could have the experience of reading this again for the first time; it was that good! During our book club, there were some adoptive mothers who had a very different view of this book. It certainly made for an interesting discussion.
• Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir – I have heard the Currently Reading podcast discuss this Icelandic author for awhile and I finally got the first book in the series from my library. Thora is a lawyer who is asked to support a German family whose son was murdered. While the police have a suspect in custody, the family doesn’t believe they have caught the right killer and they want Thora, as a local, to help. With no investigative experience, Thorsa partners with Matthew, a family friend, to uncover the seedy and depraved world of the deceased and his graduate school friends. This was dark and messy but propulsive and intriguing.
• The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy – This was a quick read, and a fast-paced thriller. We meet the May Mothers, a group of women who all had babies in May. By July they are ready for a girls’ night out, only one of their baby’s goes missing and everyone becomes a suspect. This was a look at new motherhood, stress, depression, working mothers, and more. I enjoyed the story.
• West with Giraffees by Lynda Rutledge – A work colleague loaned me this book, knowing I have loved my African advantures. I LOVED this sweet, beautiful story! This is based on the true story of the female San Diego Zoo owner hiring a man to bring two giraffees to San Diego after they survive an ocean hurricane. We follow Jones and the Okie orphan he picks us as a driver, Woody, from NYC all the way across the country, taking care of two giraffees in 1938. This was a hapy adventure with lots of twists and turns!

Favorite Books of the Month

Fiction: Family Family, West with Giraffees and Strange Sally Diamond

Nonfiction: Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

AASA National Conference on Education

Next week I will be attending the AASA National Conference on Education in my home town of San Diego. I was asked to blog about my conference experience throughout the process. My pre conference excitement blog is up and available here and all of the bloggers’ experiences will be posted on the AASA website throughout the conference. This is a new challenge for me. I use my blogging for reflection, but I don’t usually post in real time as I am attending a conference. I look forward to pushing myself in this new way and I look forward to some new professional inspiration. Please folllow along on my journey!

Updated to include all of the posts I did for AASA:

• Culturally Responsive School Leadership Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Leadership Behaviors

January 2024 Reading Update

New year, same readerly life! I started off 2024 with some incredible reads! I’ve also decided to be generous with my four and five star ratings, because these records are really just for me. If I loved a book while reading it, or if I can’t stop thinking about the story or the characters after I’ve done, or if it impacts me at all, then it’s getting a good rating. This month I read:

• Banyan Moon by Thao Thai – I received this beautiful book as a Christmas gift from my lovely cousin (thanks JJ!). This was a gorgeous story about three generations of Vietnamese women, alternating between each of their storylines. We meet Minh, the grandmother, and learn of her life in Vietnam. Minh’s dauther, Huong, is living in Florida as we learn her back story. Ann, the granddauther, we meet when she must return to Florida upon her grandmother’s death. There, she and her mother grapple with the house full of their memories, their tense relationships, and everything unsaid between them. I loved these women and the challenges they have overcome.
• Yellowface by R. F. Kuang – Thanks to my cousin for this book as well! I had heard of this a lot last year, but hadn’t picked it up yet. I read this is one day – it was a propulsive thriller that I could not put down. What we know is that when the young, talented, Chinese American writer Athena dies unexpectedly, her friend June steals her work and publishes it as her own. What follows is a look into the dark side of the publishing industry, a look at white supremacy, cultural appropriation, and bias, and a look at what individuals will do to succeed. This was a beautifully written, dark story.
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – This book was so popular last year I saw it everywhere! I thought it sounded interesting, but had heard mixed reviews so I waited a long time before I picked it up. I found it delightful! Sam and Sadie are life-long friends who develop video games together, with the producing support of their friend Marx. Along the way, we learn about living with disabilities, living as a mixed race person in America, living through grief, different kinds of love and how people express or don’t express love, and so much more. I thought this was a beautiful journey and I loved the characters!
• Clean Air by Sarah Blake – When I first hear the premise of this book described on the Currently Reading podcast, I knew I would love it! In this dystopian, cli-fi thriller, the setting is the future after all of the pollen has made the air unsafe to breathe. Characters are beyong just wearing masks, and are living in safe bubbles of purified air. We meet Izabel and her family right as a serial killer appears, the first of it’s kind since The Turning of the air. Izabel gets involved in the search for the killer and this a fast-paced thriller until the end!
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann [audiobook] – I heard about this true crime look into history a lot last year, and was interested to read about the beginning of the FBI. I listened to this, and I would not recommend the audiobook, as this is a dry book full of literally hundreds of different names. While the writing was dry, the story was fascinating. The Osage tribe of Oklahoma were the richest people around in the 1900’s when oil struck. The history of this tribe is beyond depressing, and is truly a systemic killing of a large group of people all for money and power. I learned so much about the fact that these rich Indigenous people were required to have a White man serve as their overseer of their finances. This practice led to white men systematically finding ways to murder people in order to transdfer their finances and land to themselves. There were brutal crimes, poisoning, and hidden webs of deception, where is where the birth of the FBI came in. I’m glad I know more about this reign of terror and this awful aspect of history.
• High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley – Thank you to Andree for loaning me this incredible book! I loved reading this, as it was a learning experience with each new story. This journalist takes us through the study of conflict, mediation, breaking down barriers and walls, and how to get beyond conflict. The examples were so specific and different, from a local city council election to a gang member in an inner city to a rebel in Columbia. The final chapter outlined an exchange program where a group of liberal Jews from New York City met with a group of conservative correctional officers from Michigan. They stayed in each others’ houses, discussed hard topics, and the main goal was to be curious, but not to change peoples’ minds. I could literally feel my heart beat accelerating as I read that chapter, imagining how I would feel to have those conversations. So many of these examples demonstrated the critical importance of listening to people, truly listening to their stories, their concerns, and their wishes, without trying to impact an outcome. One of my favorite quotes stuck out because it included my word of 2024: “One of the burdens of high conflict is that it doesn’t allow for delight, for these little moments of joy. Curiosity is a prerequisite to delight. And it’s impossible to feel curious in the Tar Pits (high conflict)”. I highly recommend to book to all humans wanting to have better interactions with other humans.
• First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston – I usually love the Book of the Month mystery/ thriller picks and this was no exception. I enjoyed this fast-paced mystery that felt almost propulsive enought to be considered a thriller. We meet Evie, living a perfect life with her boyfriend. But then we quickly learn that Evie is an alias for a woman who works for an unknown secret man who assigns her jobs that require new identities and bad deeds. As Evie’s life unravels, we are there on the roller coaster with her. This was fun and full of questionable characters!
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride – This is the January book for my Secret Stuff Book Club with Laura Tremaine. I read two of McBride’s past books and appreciate his literary style and the way he creates rich, flawed characters. In this story we meet a group of Jewish people and a group of African American people who live in the same area of town. Chonda is a beloved member of the neighborhood, as she runs the local grocery store and never keeps track of what people owe her. She is the bridge between the two cultures, building community around her store. We meet lots of oher important and side characters along the way, and follow a few misadventures as they fight for equality and basic human rights. This is a story about community and found family.
• Better the Blood by Michael Bennett – I heard Elizabeth Barnhill recommend this book on Currently Reading and knew I would love it. This is a crime mystery that takes place in Auckland, New Zealnad (on my travel bucket list!), and is at the heart of the trauma from colonization. The Māori people lost their land, their homes, their dignity, through colonization, and some are determined to get it back. Our main character Hana is both a Māori and a policewoman, struggling with both identities, when the murders begin. As she works to solve the case, she is confronted with her own past and the past of her people. This was a gripping, propulsive thriller that touched on the real history of New Zealand (thought a fictionalized version), and I LOVED it!
• The Defense Eddie Flynn #1 by Steve Cavanagh – Last year I read the fourth book in this series, because I heard it could stand alone. I loved it, and decided I wanted to go back to the beginning of the series and get to know the lawyer Eddie Flynn from his origin story. This was a fast-paced legal thriller that involved the Russian Mob, a lot of threats of violence, and some slick law work. I LOVED it!
• Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano – After I read Hello Beautiful by this author last year, I knew I wanted to read more by her. This book was beautifully heartbreaking and yet sweet and soulful and hard to read and simply gorgeous. I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed diving into the life of Edward. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but if you like a bittersweet literary journey, take this one! [Edward’s mother, father and brother die in a plane crash where he, at age 12, is the lone survivor. He is taken in by his aunt and uncle. The next door neighbor, Shay, becomes his friend and lifelong through years of depression and grief and love.
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger – For about a year I’ve been hearing about William Kent Krueger’s books and I finally got this one from my library. What a beautiful, heartbreaking, bittersweet tale. We are in small town Minnesota in 1961, a summer full of deaths. With each new death, Frank and his younger brother Jack follow a mysterial trail to figure out what is going on, surrounded by adults drowning in their own problems and unaware of all that the kids are seeing and hearing in this sad summer. I loved this reading experience.
• The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCoulloug [audiobook] – I decided to read this book because I am traveling to Panama in March. I thought, because it’s nonfiction, that I would enjoy the audiobook. What I appreciated was how much I learned about what it took to build the Panama Canal, how France started it and how the US took over the process after a serious conflict, and how many thousands of lives (of mostly BIPOC men) were lost due to dangerous conditions, malaria, yellow fever, and more. What I didn’t appreciate as much was the extensive details that were provided for EVERYTHING. I would have enjoyed an abridged version, but this was basically a history class all about the canal. I am looking forward to seeing it in person later this year.

Favorite Books of the Month

Fiction: Ordinary Grace, Dear Edward, Better the Blood, Banyan Moon, The Defense & Clean Air were all 5 STAR books for me!

Nonfiction: High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out

A Year of Reading: 2023

At the end of the year (or the beginning of the new one!), I like to look back on my reading as a whole instead of just by month. Thanks to the Currently Reading podcast patreon, I have been tracking my reading in an incredible spreadsheet for the last two years and it produces some fancy charts and graphs to tell the story of what I read this year. I read over 37,000 pages this year! While it’s not just about a number at the end of the year, it is fun to see how much I have read, and how my reading life has grown over the last few years.

• 2023: 113
• 2022: 127
• 2021:146
• 2020: 71
• 2019: 89
• 2018: 55
• 2017: 59
• 2016: 69
• 2015: 44

My 2023 STATS

• 72% fiction and 28% nonfiction (which was 3% more nonfiction than last year!)
• 30% in print, 43% digital, 27% audiobook (which was more digital and audio than last year!)
• 3042 published in 2023 and 65% were backlist
• 37% Own Voices (as authors and/or protagonists, which was sadly the same as last year)
• My Genres: I’m only surprised that Historical Fiction is as large as it is.

I’m proud to have read books by authors from countries other than the US, UK and Canada (my top countries for sure), including unpictured countries: Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, Peru, and Uganda. I also track who recommended books to me, and I can see which recommenders point me towards books I will LOVE!

2023 was another great reading year for me. My biggest challenge is that I keep adding to my To Be Read list faster than I can read books, which says a lot considering how fast I can read! I’ve already made a plan to chip away at that TBR list by putting hold requests in to my library for a few great mysteries that I can’t wait to read. I also have some Christmas books calling my name, a year of Book Club reads with Laura Tremaine, and I never know what new book which appear to me next. Cheers to a new year of reading great books in 2024!

December 2023 Reading Update

It seems anti-climatic to post what I read in December at this point, but this is a record for me. This month I read:

• Happiness Falls by Angie Kim – I read and loved Miracle Creek by this author, and was excited to read her newest book after I heard Laura Tremaine talk about it on 10 Things to Tell You. This was such a great read and so propulsive! The story begins with a father gone missing. Mia, the only daughter, narrates the story. She introduces us to her twin brother John, their younger brother Eugene, who has both Autism and Angelman’s Disorder, which leaves him unable to communicate with his family, and their mother. As we get to know the family, the mystery of what happened to their father becomes more intriguing and more concerning. This was a beautiful tale about family, communication, language, people who speak more than one language, and people who communicate using different methods than we are used to. I LOVED this story!
• The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende [audiobook] – Allende writes beautiful stories, with descriptive, vivid language. This sad and yet hopeful story starts in Vienna in 1938, as young Samuel’s Jewish family deals with the Nazi takeover of Vienna. Then we flashforward to meet Anita, a young girl who fled El Salvador with her mother in 2019 to come to America, where they were separated at the border. We learn more about both Samuel and Anita as we live through their troubles with them. This was sad, a heartbreaking reminder of horrible atrocities done to humans in our past. It was also beautifully poignant and sweet, full of other rich characters and hope.
• XOXO Cody: An Opinionated Homosexual’s Guide to Self Love, Relationships, and Tactful Pettiness by Cody Rigsby [audiobook] – I have only had a Peloton since April, but I love Cody Rigsby’s classes. He is funny, goofy, sarcastic, and such a good time! His book is just like him – full of fun stories about him and his life, mixed with serious elements of a challenging childhood, and details of his rise to Peloton fame, his time on Dancing with the Stars, and his dating excapades. This was a delightful audiobook!
• Blood Sisters by Vanessa Lillie – This was a fast-paced thriller that kept me interested and by the end I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough! We meet Syd just as she is forced to return to her hometown in Oklahoma, in Cherokee land, to help with a missing persons case. Then we learn that her sister is also missing. As Syd battles the demons that chased her away from town, she is forced to reckon with her past and her family, all while fighting for the lives and rights of Indigenous people, and all of the LGBTQIA+ girls who go missing without anyone caring all over. This is a sad and compelling tale based too much on facts from our history.
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson – I have heard a few podcasts discuss this book, as a funny mystery, and thought it would be a light read for the end of the year. It was light and it was silly-funny, but not my favorite kind of writing.The entire Cunningham family reunites for a family reunion just as one of the crew gets out of jail (for murder). As more people die during their icy reunion, we learn the deatils of the family’s crimes and misdemeanors in silly ways. The book is very meta, with the narrator talking to the reader throughout the book, and listing off rules of a mystery in a joking way. It was a little too silly for me, with too many flawed characters that I didn’t care enough about.
• Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer – I received this book for Christmas from my cousin (Thanks JJ!). She had read it and it was a perfect vacation read. We meet CC in two timelines: her childhood growing up in a tumultuous family in Florida, and as she is newly married to a very wealthy man from a wealthy family in Connecticut. CC struggles to find herself in both timelines, and we meet her family and learn their sad stories along the way. This was a beautifully written story about some sad topics.
• Criminal Mischief (Stone Barrington #60) by Stuart Woods – I only have a few more Stuart Woods books left to read (he passed away recently), so I am reading them sparingly. I used this as a palete cleanser after a darker book, while on vacation. This is an easy read, because the main characters, Stone and Dino, have been with me for 60 books now! In this story, Stone is chasing a pyramid scheme con artist around the world, flying his jet from NY to Hawaii to the Middle East and back, helping the FBI chase down this criminal.
• Cold People by Tom Rob Smith – This felt like one of my cli-fi books, even though it doesn’t really fit this category; it’s more a sci-fi mystery. In this, all people of the world must get to Antarctica in a short period of time. From there, so much happens to the world. I don’t want to spoil anything, but this is an interesting study in human evolution, creativity, and what matters for a good life. I really enjoyed it!

Favorite Books of the Month

Fiction–> Happiness Falls

Nonfiction–> XOXO Cody: An Opinionated Homosexual’s Guide to Self Love, Relationships, and Tactful Pettiness

My Word of 2024

HAPPY NEW YEAR! For the last nine years I have spent every December reflecting on the year that was and looking ahead to the year to come. Instead of setting resolutions I choose a focus word, a word that I want to drive my personal and professional life. I never know where my word will come from – sometimes it presents itself to me right away and other times I have to do a lot of journaling and reflecting and I’m still hesitant about the word at the beginning of a year. I love to look back on my past words, remembering the graphic I designed to represent the year, and how I embodied these words.

• 2023 –> GENTLE
• 2022 –> CONNECTION
• 2021 –> DARING
• 2020 –> GRACE
• 2019 –> SHINE
• 2018 –> POSSIBILITY
• 2017 –> CHALLENGE
• 2016 –> REJUVENATE
• 2015 –> MINDFULNESS

As I began to think about how I wanted to live in 2024 a few words came to mind: appreciation, gratitude, peace, hope, nourish, and tend. I know I want to tend to my wellbeing, nourish my health, my soul, my family, and my friendships, and I want to appreciate the daily joys. I want a return to mindfulness and connection, with a dose of gentle and shine thrown in! Taking in all of this, a word came to me via my four year old nephew. We were on a drive and he was telling me to just wait for a view that was coming around the corner, which he promised would be “delightful”. I loved hearing his little voice use such a beautiful word to describe the beauty of Maui, where he is lucky enough to live. He inspired my word of 2024… DELIGHT.

Do you have a word of the year, or a motto or even a resolution? If so, I’d love to hear it! I’m very much looking forward to finding the big and small details of life to DELIGHT in throughout 2024. Join me!

My Favorite Books of 2023

This is the time of year when everyone is publishing the “Best of 2023” lists. I like to share my favorite books of the year. They may not all make the best of lists, but they are what entertained me in 2023, whether they were published this year or were backlist books I finally got around to during the last twelve months.

If you read any of my monthly reading posts, you know that I read A LOT! With the volume I read, it is impossible to remember every book I read and it’s even more impossible to chose just one favorite. But last year I got smart and decided that in each monthly summary, I would name a favorite fiction and nonfiction book for that month. That still gave me over 25 books without counting all of December (20 fiction and 8 nonfiction), so I did some more narrowing based on which stories I can still picture vividly in my mind, or those that have stuck with me and made me keep thinking over time. This was a really hard task for me, because out of those 28 favorites, so many have stuck with me this year. I think this demonstrates that I continue to hone how I pick the books I choose to read, and I know what I like!

My favorite fiction books of the year include historical fiction, thriller, climate fiction, young adolescent, and speculative fiction, which is a good representation of my favorite subgenres. What I notice about this list is that almost all of these books have a strong female lead character.

FAVORITE FICTION

• The Attic Child by Lola Jaye (March)
• I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (May)
• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson (July)
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (July)
• Drowning by T.J. Newman (July)
• No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister (August)
• The First Ladies by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (August)
• Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (September)
• Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (September)
• Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (October)
• Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley (November)
• The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins (November)
• Happiness Falls by Angie Kim (December)

My favorite nonfictions include memoir, self help and an educational professional book, which cover the types of nonfiction I most typically read.

FAVORITE NONFICTION

• The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs by Laura Tremaine (March)
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (May)
• Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan (August)
• Spare by Prince Harry (November)

What about you?

What were your favorite books of the year?

What books are already on your TBR for next year?

Where do you get your book recommendations?

Blogging Trends of 2023

I began blogging in 2012, which seems like a million years ago! Through the last decade I have used this as a space to share my professional reflections, to share my learning, to dive deeper into book studies and topic areas, and of course to share my reading. I tend to write the most original posts in December and January, as those are times when we are slow down and reflect more on where we have been and where we are going. That is always fun, but at odds with my work calendar. When you work in schools, July seems like a much better time for reflecting because one school year is over and the next has yet to begin. But at that time I am usually very deep into planning for that next year and not slowing down. So I will relish this time and share what I noticed about the last calendar year in my real life and what I shared here on my blog.

Travel

As an avid traveler and an adventure and concert junkie, I love to think back on where I have traveled in the last year, many of which were on my countdowns to look ahead back in February.

• NYC – My friend Lauren and I travelled to NYC to see Joey McIntyre (and his surprise guests, all members of our beloved band New Kids On the Block) perform at Carnegie Hall. We also got to visit with my aunt Ellen and cousin Kate and see A Beautiful Noise, the wonderful Neil Diamond Broadway show!
• Kansas City – Lauren is my concert buddy and this time we went to see Bruce Springsteen and to check off two new states: Missouri and Kansas
• Monterrey, CA – I went to NorCal for a work conference and then got to enjoy the weekend touring Monterrey and Carmel with my cousins Mark and Courtney
• ** I finally got COVID-19 in March of 2023, after this work and fun trip, during a very busy time at work.
• Maui, Hawaii – My cousin JJ and her family currently live in Maui and I have vowed to travel there twice a year as long as I have a very generous family willing to give me their guest room! This trip led to a 10-day social media detox that I really needed.
• Livermore, CA – My cousin Mark turned 50 and had a great party that ended up being a family reunion for us, which was an unexpected surprise in 2023! I even made the cousin group recreate a photo from the 1980’s – no one was pleased but me!
• Chicago, IL – Lauren and I went to the first ever BlockCon, an NKOTB conference and got to tour a little of Chicago afterwards. I love the river architecture tour so much!
• Montana – My travel friend Sue and I met up in Bozeman, MT to see Yellowstone and then Whitefish and Glacier National Park, which was one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited in the continental USA!
• Las Vegas – As my nephews get older, we go longer in between trips. We managed a weekend together this summer!
• Iowa – Lauren and I love to use NKOTB concerts as a way to visit the states we haven’t seen yet, so we went to the Iowa State Fair this summer!
• Santa Fe, NM – While I’ve been to NM, I had never been to Santa Fe. I stole my Vegas friend away from her family for a girls’ weekend, the first we’ve had away from one of our homes ever, and the first since she had her boys!
• San Francisco, CA –> Las Vegas – I headed north for a work conference and then turned that into a weekend concert adventure. I was so excited to see U2 perform at The Sphere – amazing show!
• Maui – Mele Kalikimaka! I’m spending Christmas in Hawaii with my family there!

Next year has some new countries and lots more concerts already on the countdown!

Blog Posts

My most read blog posts (aside from my monthly reading blogs) are some of my oldest posts:

• What if
• Working through the messy middle
• What is it about sunsets?
• A Gratitude Circle
• Reflecting on my Carbon Footprint

In addition to my monthly reading roundups, I published 14 posts, including a few in my new series Explorations in Instructional Leadership.

Blog Readers & Where They Live

The top countries where my blog readers live (outside of the US):

• Phillipines
• Canada
• Malaysia
• India
• Australia
• United Kingdom

Reflections

One of the biggest changes this year was that Twitter, now X, stopped connecting to WordPress, which is where I write this blog. When I publish a new blog, I am no longer able to share it directly to multiple places at once, included X. That is frustrating because I often connected with other educators there, through blog posts.

I recently heard a podcaster, who used to blog regularly, share that “blogging is dead”. From her perspective, blogging died out when she and her friends and colleagues stopped blogging. But as an educational leader, I continue to see and seek out blogs being written today by other leaders. In fact, after writing about why I blog last year, I was asked by AASA magazine to turn that into an article about the benefits of blogging for school leaders. Blogging is not dead! My blogging ebbs and flows based on my free time, my creativity, and the time I dedicate to writing. I look forward to more blogging adventures in 2024.

Climate Fiction Books

Over the last year I have found a new micro-genre of books that I LOVE: Cli-Fi or Climate Fiction. In all of the Cli-Fi books I have read, the author creates a dystopian fictional world in the future based on our very real climate change problems happening now. Whether it’s fires or floods or fog, something caused by humans stops the world as we know it, and humans have to find ways to survive in a new world. I’ve been trying to figure out why I enjoy such dark books. What I appreciate in each story is that the best and the worst of humanity come out, but that good people often rise to the occasion and save the world (however they can). What scares me in each book is how these far-fetched storylines are not-so-far away.

Climate change is real and our entire society is going to have to fight it together to avoid the fates of these Cli-Fi stories. I can recycle, compost, conserve water and energy, and drive my hybrid car, but I alone cannot make the changes needed. No one person can make significant changes. We need corporations and businesses and governments to make global changes. I have nothing new to say on this subject. My end-of-year reflective self is just making a connection between sustainability work and the green schools series I’ve written and a new favorite micro-genre.

Previous post(s) in this green schools series:

• Sustainability Education
• Reflecting on my carbon footprint
• Solar in Schools
• Green Teams
• Green CA Schools and Community College Summit 2020
• Trailblazers for Whole School Sustainability 
• Earth Day 2022

Cli-fi books I’ve enjoyed:

• The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins
• Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling 
• The Light Pirate by
• Aurora by David Koepp
• Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang
• We are Unprepared by Meg Little Reily
• The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger
• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
• Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari (This is a nonfiction book that randomly closes with a serious call to action about climate change)
• Clean Air by Sarah Blake
• After the Flood by Kassandra Montag
• The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Source: https://grist.org/climate/with-the-world-on-fire-climate-fiction-no-longer-looks-like-fantasy/