Bluebird Books

One of my favorite podcasts does a monthly episode where the host and one of her friends discuss what they're reading, watching, listening to, and buying (RWLB). I love these episodes and thought it would be fun to do a blog-post version.  This will be a recurring series of posts, so look for it around the 25th of each month.  Reading I had to start with this category of course!  Right now, I'm almost done with the book The House of the Spirits . I am a Patreon supporter of the Novel Pairings podcast and they read this book with their Classics Club. I'm always a little behind but reading a book that's being discussed on a podcast makes the entire experience so much more enjoyable.  That being said...this is a hard book. It's dense. The chapters are long, the pages are full, and Allende's story-telling style, while completely stunning, can also be a bit much. I've been meaning to read something by Allende since my high school Spanish teacher waxed poetic ab

 Every book on writing will tell you the same thing: you should do it daily. Set a word count goal, a minute goal, a page goal, and then stick to it. Be strict about writing daily.  I suck at this. In seasons when my kids attended school...I'm talking IN-PERSON school...I could set up a daily schedule and pretty much stick to it. I would write early and then maybe even get in a little editing just before the buses started circling the cul-de-sac, bringing my children home in the afternoon.  i never realized how much i love that big, yellow bus Virtual learning was a challenge but I found a rocky rhythm that made writing *almost* daily possible. The kids' time in classes would overlap for a couple of hours and I would take advantage of that time to shower and/or write. I missed a day here and there, but we were living through a pandemic so I tried to cut myself some slack. There were even some weekends that I managed to sneak away to write at my desk or sit amid the chaos of fam