Mid-year Status Report

Dear Jenny,

After five strong years of writing this blog, we hit 2016 and... well, it hit us instead. But it's June now (well, it's July tomorrow... eep) so maybe it's time to see if we can get this train back on the track?

I thought maybe a little "status report" would light a fire under my butt (at the very least, it's a good little To Do list.) Even though I have only reported on one. single. book. this year, I have actually read four more! Just need to write about them.

Five Children and It —We both read this and discussed it way back in April (!) Did you take the notes? I can barely remember this book now. It was super charming, right? (Also... did we know it was made into a movie?)

Wolf in White Van — Man. I burned through this book a couple of months ago and did not take many notes. This will be a tough one to write. I think there's a slowly unfolding secret and, for the life of me, I cannot remember what the "big reveal" ends up being. I might have to semi re-read this book. Have you read it?

Lincoln on Leadership — This one was a slog... it was given to me while I was a manager, then finished (slooowly) when I was no longer working. But I learned a lot about Lincoln and I was pleased to discover that it seems like he was as great as I had always thought he was. So that was nice.

Women in Clothes — You gave me this book a few years ago and I cannot begin to tell you how much I LOVED it. Love, love, LOVE. I finished it this week and every morning, I am sad to re-discover that I am done with it. I put about a million tags on it, so that's going to be a long post/rave. Or I'm just going to have to say "This is great!" and hand it over for you to read. We'll see.

So... that's 5 books total that I have read out of 12. We're just wrapping up the 6th month of the year, so reading wise, I'm only one book behind. But yeah... there's the writing part. Time to get on that.

aaand... Book Exchange!

In other random bookish news, the book exchange in our front yard is going strong -- it's fun to see new books show up and old books go every day. I sort of feel compelled to start leaving notes with the books I put out (a "Why I recommend this book" note) but I'm sure that's over-thinking, so I have resisted.

This thing might also be... a little dangerous. I mean... new books are showing up on our front lawn every day.  I'm going to have to implement a strict "I must leave a book if I take a book" policy. Otherwise, my TBR list is going to get out of control. And I can barely keep up with the 12 I've picked for this year!!

In conclusion: It's July.
Soooo... Tomorrow is July 1and Beloved is on deck for us to read together. You ready?

love,
kelly