583rd Friday Blog Roundup

Bio Girl is my book twin; my identical book twin. We not only like and dislike the same books, but we discovered this week that we even start liking books in the exact same place.

I recently started reading Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On since my book twin liked it. And it was at a solid 9 out of 10. Very likable but I couldn’t understand why she was sooooo gaga about it. Could this be the novel that threw me out of sync with my book twin?

But then I got to the point in the book where it shot past the 10 ceiling firmly into 11 out of 10 territory. Oh my G-d, it’s so good. Suddenly I understood why she told me she reread it immediately after the first read. When I wrote her to let her know that my fears of our book twinness have been resolved, it turns out that she had the same reaction in the same place.

So good. And I love having a book twin.

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Speaking of books, the winners of the Life from Scratch and Measure of Love audio books:

Jessie
Illustr8d
Charlotte

Sent you the codes so let me know if you have any trouble with the download.

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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 in order 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.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Privilege, for Flint” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Deciding or Escaping” (Inconceivable!)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Two Adults, One Child has a wonderful post about looking closer at the years she misses from her youth.  Were they really as fun as they seem in retrospect?  Was she really that happy?  Is she forgetting about the loneliness or the fear?  It’s an important look back on the good, old days, appreciating them but also knowing that she will one day remember these years like she remembers those years.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about marking milestones but also how we stop celebrating things as we age.  She muses, “But most people get to relive, or improve on, the rituals and celebrations and milestones they experienced as a child with their own children as they grow up. Those of us without children don’t get to do that.”  It’s an interesting post about how celebrations change over time, while looking closely at what we mark and what we allow to pass without fanfare.

Res Cogitatae has a heart stopping post about her father’s accident that left him paralyzed and a look at whether the perfect life really exists.  She writes about people who led seemingly charmed lives in their twenties, “Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I don’t think I know anyone like that anymore. Life and the universe have slowly, inexorably, crept up on all of my friends. And we’ve all lost something or someone.”  And then she points out that none of us are immune to accidents, the ones that catapult us from the lucky side to the unlucky side in seconds.

Lastly, Twangypearl the Elastic Girl writes about having her adoption profile shown and ultimately passed over by a new mother.  She writes, “I went to see Room later that day, which may not have been the best choice given the circumstances, but I enjoyed it in a weep-freely-in-the-dark way.”  That image of her crying in the dark, really of all of us at one point or another crying in the dark, stuck with me since I read the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: My book twin and I fell in love with Carry On at the exact same time.  Audio book giveaway.  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 February 12th and 19th) 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.