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 February.

Just Watch Me (Lior Torenberg): 4.5 rounded up. There is a great note on the acknowledgments page where the author admits they probably wouldn’t like the character Dell as a real person, and that is how I felt, too. They worked in the story, and I felt for them despite all of their terrible decisions and selfishness. It’s an addictive story, and I stayed up way too late trying to finish it. Excellent job.

My Husband’s Wife (Alice Feeney): Feeney can be hit or miss for me, and this one was a hit. This is one of those books where each twist makes you want to read another chapter, and you constantly have to rethink what you think you know. But there are also a bunch of plot holes that keep the whole story from knitting neatly together. Those “but wait… you said over here…” moments. But they are all holes that could have been patched. So let’s pretend they’re not there. If you like thrillers, you’ll probably like this one. It’s a good one.

Belgrave Road (Manish Chauhan): This story will stay with me for a long time. Mira and Tahliil made me think, and my heart hurt for each of them, even as they hurt other people’s hearts. There were many threads that I wish I could keep following and know where they led, but that is life. Sometimes the story ends and you don’t know.

Royal Spin (Omid Scobie and Robin Benway): Totally unrealistic and as enjoyable as The Royal We. I’m trying to think of something more profound to say, but that’s really my review in a nutshell. Sometimes you need to read a bit of solid, enjoyable fluff and this was solid, enjoyable fluff. Well done.

What did you read last month?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Peaklet is a game you play AND contribute to. Each day, you get an opinion or a factual question with many possible answers. For instance, what are the longest books in this list? And then there are maybe 12 – 20 choices. Your job is to rank the top five by size. So choose the five longest books, and then put them in order from longest to shortest of the long books.

After each guess, it tells you whether you chose a correct option in the correct place, a correct option in the wrong place, or an incorrect option. You get five tries to get the items in order.

BUT. After you play a round, you get a survey on some days. The answers to that survey become a future question. For instance, I ranked my top 5 favourite animals out of a list of 20ish animals, and days later, I got to guess what were collectively the top 5 animals.

Enjoy!

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, is back with a new game called Parseword. (Thank you, Austin, for the heads up!) It’s a single clue of a cryptic crossword, but a lot less frustration because hints abound. This game would be a great way to get good at cryptic crosswords because it helps you see the wordplay used to set up those clues.

Take your time moving through the robust tutorial. It removes all the frustration of getting into a new game. I like this game because you can start it, walk away, think about it, and come back. I’m not a fan of games with timers. I like to enjoy the experience and not rush through things.

Make sure you explore the “references” button in the top right corner if you get stuck.

Enjoy!

I need to make a note for myself for next year: my body has a hard time adjusting to whatever we call the time change last weekend. The beginning of daylight savings? The end? I am a little fuzzy on the details.

I’m fine in the fall. (Is that the end? The beginning?) I take my extra hour of sleep and run with it. But spring is a different story.

I am fine on Saturday into Sunday when we lose an hour. But I wake up ten or more times per night from Sunday into Monday. I wake up a handful of times from Monday into Tuesday. And I’m usually okay-ish by Wednesday. But those two days are brutal for sleep, regardless of what time I go to bed.

This makes no sense because I have an easier time handling time changes when we travel than I do the spring time change. It’s just one hour. How could my body possibly know the difference when there is a wide range of times that I go to sleep or wake up?

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As always, when it’s Friday the 13th, I say that it’s Friday the 13th. It’s Friday the 13th.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Snowflakes Bouquets” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about holding her tongue. When her nephew’s wife tells the story about a high-risk pregnancy in her family. She writes: “I don’t want to be the dark shadow, the voice of doom. And so often, these things DO turn out all right. Most people do get their ultimate happy ending. But I’m living proof that sometimes (more often than most people think or want to imagine) they don’t.” It is hard to hold that balance. Sending good thoughts to the whole family.

Lastly, on the same theme, All & Sundry talks about the questions that open the door to conversations you don’t necessarily want to have, and how those answers grow easier with time. She explains: “At first it felt too intimate somehow, like I was letting someone have a real good look at a fresh wound and having to be like, Oh no it’s fine! … Now it just feels like a fact of me, like having brown eyes and three tattoos and preferring whole milk to skim. Also I am divorced, and I live alone.” Go for the profound thoughts. Stay for the kitten stories.

The roundup to the Roundup: Daylight savings woes. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 6 – March 13) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

Josh and I have been struggling to remember the last movies we saw in a theater. We definitely saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood before the pandemic.

We saw Knives Out, and I thought we saw a second movie that weekend, but I didn’t write down what it was in my bullet journal. In December, we saw The Rise of Skywalker. Was that it? Did I end my long run of movie theater visits with those films?

We still go to live theater because it’s the only way to see live theater. But we’ve moved to watching movies at home.

It feels so strange to not be able to remember that last experience of seeing a film surrounded by strangers. To not know that was my last tub of movie theater popcorn. My final film out of the house.

We can remedy this and go out on a better note (or not go out at all). Josh suggested we see The Testament of Ann Lee, which looks amazing.

But then I saw that it would be released on streaming this week. And then I wanted to see The Drama, which I admittedly know nothing about but liked the trailer:

So we have to make a decision because I’d like to remember the last thing I see.

Have you been to a movie theater recently? And what did you see?