Reading, Writing, and Me

The Last Thing He Told Me  by Laura Dave Overview: Hannah is a thirty-eight-year-old woodturner working in New York City when she meets Owen by chance. He's in town from San Francisco on a work trip, and they have an instant connection. In the two years that follow, Hannah struggles to find acceptance in his teenage daughter Bailey's life. Then, one day, Hannah gets an ominous note from Owen, and he disappears in a confusing cloud of questions. Going against law enforcement's recommendation, Hannah takes Bailey with her on a quest to answer the giant questions Owen has created and find him again. The answers they find are almost worse than the mystery. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 I like Hannah. She's genuinely trying her best at all times, even through very stressful situations. We learn about her background being abandoned by her parents and raised by her grandfather and her deep connection with her woodworking. This gives her depth and some guiding principles when her ne

This is always a monster of a post to write, and it's taken me multiple days to compile everything, but I officially have every random stat and figure about my reading that I could pull from my spreadsheet. I've been sharing my reading stats on the blog for years, and I've included much of that data in this post as well, but if you want to look back at last year's, you can do so here . This was a big reading year for me, and it was interesting to see how I stacked up against my early high school self who spent full days sitting there with a book. Whether you read 5 books or 400 books, if you picked up a book this year, that's a major win, and you should feel super proud of yourself! As you'll see, sometimes beating your reading goal doesn't come from a place of having a good year overall. So that's just my little caveat that reading is impacted by so many factors. The Major Stats This is definitely my biggest win of the post, and maybe the biggest win of

Ripe  by Sarah Rose Etter Overview: Cassie moved to San Fransisco for a tech job that was supposed to signify finally making it in the corporate world. She's left behind a contentious relationship with her mother and her emotional anchor in the form of her father on the East Coast. The job, San Fransisco, and her relationship with a chef who already has a girlfriend slowly drains her will to continue. Set vaguely around the dawn of COVID with a virus and terrible wildfires engulfing California, Cassie struggles to keep her head above water. Overall: 4.5 Characters: 5 Despite all the drama in the official book summary from illegal job activities to an unwanted pregnancy, this is a book is really a character study of Cassie, who could really be any young woman in any major city just trying to get by. We experience the world through Cassie's muted eyes as she struggles with intense depression, or as she calls it, the black hole. She goes through the paces of her soul sucking tech