As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from May.

Mad Mabel (Sally Hepworth): 5 stars for characters. 3 stars for plot. She played up the big twist so much that I figured it out 24% of the way through the book. But even as a twistless mystery, the story moves at a good clip, and I think this would make a great beach read.

Look What You Made Me Do (John Lanchester): This was bonkers in the best possible way. The twists were amazing – I only saw one coming – and there was so much to mentally chew over in this story. It would make the perfect book club book because you immediately want to talk about it afterwards. I am still thinking about this book weeks later.

Dissection of a Murder (Jo Murray): I liked the first 3/4ths very much. The last 1/4th less so. It got a little far-fetched, and it didn’t feel like a twist but more like a random change. With mysteries, you should be able to look back and see everything you missed. The book will be on AppleTV soon (the second season of Presumed Innocent), and I could see it being a better show than book.

London Falling (Patrick Radden Keefe): Keefe is an incredible storyteller, and this is a very sad and very intriguing story. It felt like jigsaw pieces snapping together, which was both upsetting because you know the picture the puzzle will reveal (the death happens in the first page or two), but also provided structure for understanding how a lie can grow larger than you can imagine when you utter the first words.

What did you read last month?

When I started this blog, I assumed I could keep it going for a few months. I would consider it a major win if I got to two years of semi-regular posting.

By the time I got to the fifth year, I started to wonder if I could keep this thing going all the way to ten years. Ten years! A decade! How many projects reach a decade?

But now it is 20 years. 20 years, five times per week, I write something. It isn’t usually profound. Sometimes the posts are super brief. I don’t always remember a story when I look back on past posts. And many other times, we’ve used my blog to remember when something occurred. It is like a time capsule that I keep adding to over the years; a nest where I can figuratively curl up in a cozy space created out of words.

I have thought about stopping. A lot. I don’t have a date anymore in my brain where I’ll stop writing in this space; I’ve stopped thinking about the end. I may reach 25 years or 30 years. Who really knows?

Because isn’t that the point? That we can never know what the future will be? All I know is that when I started this blog, I was writing a book about infertility, and my twins were giving up their bottles. And now that book is massively out of date, and the twins are in college. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Blogging has changed. And yet, if you’re reading this, you’re still here. And I’m still here. Thank you.

I am enormously proud of what I’ve created. And at the same time, all I have done is convince myself that it would be a good idea to sit down and get into the spirit to write by writing a blog post. I don’t always post what I write. It doesn’t always come easily. My only advice is not to think too deeply about it. If you sit down and do it, you too will one day have 20 years of blog posts.

I am grateful to everyone who has read any part of this journey. Thank you for being here. For letting me know you’ve seen my words. For letting me know that I’m not alone out here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

After the bags had been taken to the dump and the boxes were lined up for Goodwill; after the bins were labeled so I’d never have to open them again if I didn’t want and the things we are passing along to others were neatly packaged up in the laundry room, waiting delivery; after the play room had been tidied and combed over for items worth discarding, Josh and I sat down on the sofa and surveyed the room while the twins played upstairs. Despite containing four walls covered in books — thousands upon thousands of books — as well as sporting equipment and a few random toys, the basement looked empty. Part of my brain looked at it as pristine, a space waiting for something to happen. The other part of my brain looked at it as deflated, void of all those early years — the climby toys and the bouncey ball pit, the ride-on toys and rockers. It looked like a place where something once happened instead of a place that was waiting to become something new.

Read the whole post here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

I came to pick up that weight recently when I had cause to go down into the storage room to find an old toy. First of all, the storage room is unusable once again. There are too many boxes and there’s nowhere to shift them around. I managed to move a few into the laundry room and sift through some boxes, but I realized two things. (1) I had saved much more than I needed to save. There were a lot of things in those boxes that I would never use again such as random stuffed animals or puzzles that annoyed the crap out of me the first time around. (2) Having my hands in those boxes was so emotionally painful that I felt like I was underwater the entire time I was down there. I couldn’t breathe normally.

Read the whole post here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

Last Wednesday night, I was cutting the ChickieNob’s nails before her bath, and I cut her thumb nail too deeply. A dot of blood welled up, and she first started to cry and then changed her mind and looked away from it. She asked her questions as I quickly cut the rest of the nails before I took care of it, trying to keep ahead of the blood which was threatening to run down her thumb. How did I know that the blood was going to stop? And did I think this was a big cut? And have I ever bled before?

Everyone bleeds at some point. Who can even remember all the cuts that seemed important at the time?

Read the whole post here.