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 October.

Here One Moment (Liane Moriarty): This author can be a little hit or miss for me, but this book was a hit. I had feelings about the ending and actual explanation for the events, but I loved the ideas presented in the story and wanted to pick it up to follow everyone’s story. I highlighted a lot of wonderful passages. Fantastic pacing for a long book.

Pony Confidential (Christina Lynch): When I first heard about this book, I thought it sounded bonkers. I didn’t know how she would pull off the premise. Then, I won a copy in a Goodreads Giveaway, so I got to find out before the publication date. (It’s out now.) Happy to tell you that it’s a super super super fun book. You will love Pony, laugh, and not care when there are inconsistencies. This was a difficult book to get right, but she managed to not just get it right but knock it out of the park.

What did you read last month?

I bookmarked this article when I read it on Jane Friedman because I thought it was a great lesson for the kids as they work to secure research positions or internships and think ahead to careers and graduate school.

An author publishes her first book to great fanfare:

My agent sold international rights in eighteen countries. For a few glorious weeks, The Bookseller was on the New York Times bestseller list. Julia Roberts’s production company, Red Om, came calling, and I happily signed an option agreement.

External changes between the first and second books impacted that experience, and further changes between the second and third books led her on a completely different path. Nothing is a given; even the most successful-looking start may change course, and the most unsuccessful-looking start may work out fine.

She writes:

In the end, you have to just do the thing. Might work out, might not. But if you never try, you’ll never know.

Here’s to just doing the thing. I love this message and wish her a lot of success.

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

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I recently started a new notebook (why do I count my life in notebooks?), and I added a new section to the lists I copy over each time: A re-watching and re-reading list.

It’s not that I don’t know what I like to re-watch or re-read, but seeing it listed out feels like a place I can turn when I am feeling out of sorts and need to remember that there is art that makes me feel better. So the Magician’s trilogy is on there. Thursday Murder Club books. Horowitz and Hawthorne books. Eight Ramona Quimbys. (What? It makes me feel good.) One Day and Us by David Nicholls.

I don’t even need to re-read the whole book. I just need to spend an hour with the characters or setting.

What is on your re-read/re-watch list?

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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.

There’s a website called How Did You Find Me?, and it’s collecting the stories of how people ended up on the site. I found it because someone I know posted the link, and I clicked over to see it. But then there is the story of how I found that person. You can see how this can get interesting.

An explanation from the site:

How did you find yourself here? If you clicked on a Facebook link, what prompted you to click? If it was shared by a friend, how did you meet that friend? If you were searching Google, what were hoping to find? Why did you decide to check your email at the moment that you did?

I didn’t expect to like reading the path people took to reach the site as much as I did. I think it would be even more meaningful to hear how someone ended up on a certain blog in a community; e.g., how did you find A Little Pregnant and what got you to click over in the first place. I think A Little Pregnant may have been the first ALI blog I found. Unless my first was Getupgrrl’s. I can’t remember what came first by this point.

Still processing election feelings and don’t have a lot to say.

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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.

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And now the blogs…

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Barreness captures the quiet before the results. We now know how things turned out, and while her statement worked during election day, it’s working in the aftermath, too: “I feel too many feels, thinking too many thoughts.”

The Next 15000 Days received a compliment, which she recounts after a thoughtless comment from another person, and it sums up a life well-lived: “I would like to be like Klara. She doesn’t wait for anyone – she just does things and knows how to actively enjoy her free time.”

Lastly, Finding a Different Path celebrated her Halloween anniversary, and I love their tradition of filling their yard with fake tombstones — a new one every year. And we get to enjoy pictures from some of their other traditions. Seeing this post was a sweet moment in a hard week.

The roundup to the Roundup: Post-election quiet. 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 November 1 – 8) 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.