“The arrival of Daughter #1 was my own firsthand experience of the newborn brain at work… It was rapidly clear that I had produced a tiny but extremely loud transmitting device, programmed to continuously signal some kind of deficit associated with her digestive system and/or the state of her nether regions, or just to offer a spontaneous demonstration of her sound-generating capacity. Her timer was set for maximum activity during… 👇🏻

Well, that‘s disappointing. I was looking forward to this book blasting apart the binary but I guess that impression was wrong. It‘s 2019! You can use “they”! 😡

“If, for example, being male means that you have much greater experience of constructing things or manipulating complex 3-D representations (such as playing with LEGO), it is very likely that this will be shown in your brain. Brains reflect the lives they have lived, not just the sex of their owners.”

I basically want to quote this whole introduction so far. NEUROPLASTICITY. IT‘S A THING.

A solid pick, though the ending seemed to go on for too long and left me a little puzzled. I loved the way Fridlund kept up the suspense and eeriness without making me feel stressed or led on, despite the fact that the main event is pretty much revealed on the first page (it reminded me of The Secret History in that way). I feel like I understood most of Madeline but there was something that just never quite clicked for me.

I wish I could read this faster! I really want to know what happens! I‘m sometimes confused by how the timeline skips around, but the author is doing a good job keeping up a sense of dread without making me impatient.

I love that too! What I don‘t love is this creepy teacher dude. What‘s up with him?

I was right. Not my cup of tea.

I was going to give it 50 pages, but I opened page 35, read two sentences, and mentally went “oh my god I DON‘T CARE.” 😐

I‘ve never read a Louise Penny book before. Didn‘t sound like my cup of tea. But my friend says there‘s a character in this book whose entire job is to follow people around silently while dressed as the Grim Reaper. I, too, love dressing up, walking, and not talking to people, so I‘m hoping to pick up some career tips.

Also pictured: my breakfast sandwich on a homemade sourdough bagel (the others in the batch have holes). #booknbreakfast

I knew this book would be mostly composed of connected short stories, but I‘m disappointed that though all the characters are connected, it didn‘t come together into a complete narrative for me. It primarily felt like a group of interesting and beautifully-written character studies without a lot of depth and with a lot of missing endings. The “magic” mentioned into the beginning didn‘t really come to anything, to my disappointment.

🎃 Yes!
♎️ Not really
🔮 It‘s been a while…
🤷🏻‍♀️ No
🌠 Of course, whether it‘s Mercury retrograde or not!
📚 Heck yes
🌱 Depends on the problem, and the friend!

#basicwitchswap

Gandalf is here on a trial basis, to see if he and Ophelia can learn to get along. But I‘m pretty sure he and my husband will not be parted even if Ophelia hates him forever. #catsoflitsy #notbookrelated #exceptforthename

There are almost three times as many holds on the regular edition, and fewer than twice the number of copies! I don‘t mind reading large print but it does feel like a bit of a cheat to cut in line 😆

1. Tagged
2. Can‘t I have pumpkin spice flavor with maple for sweetener?
3. “Weiwei didn‘t stop, but kept going until he reached, at last, the place where the Oracle dwelt.”
#weekendreads

Color: pink
Tarot card: The Moon and the Three of Cups
Crystal: fluorite and moonstone
Witchy book: The Mists of Avalon
Herb: lavender
Candy: dark chocolate
Essential oil: lavender

#basicwitchswap

Second book in a row with both magic and advanced technology? I‘m not mad about it.

I loved this book! It‘s hard to go wrong when you start with a six-year-old girl speaking to birds and discovering that she is a witch, though I was a little skeptical when the next chapter was about a boy who desperately wanted to see a rocket launch. But this book is all about science and magic being two parts of one whole, and it‘s about massive world-changing events and creations while being focused tightly on these two people.

#bookhaul – combined choices of me and my dad! Not pictured: two board books for my kid 😄

1. Herbal and floral scents—lavender, rosemary, rose! And I can‘t leave out pumpkin spice in a fall swap 😉
2. Popcorn and dark chocolate
3. Potion bottles
4. I‘m super excited to take my toddler trick-or-treating this year! Dressing up might be my truly favorite part.
#basicwitchswap

☕️I prefer tea—but a nice light-roast whole-bean coffee for my husband to make cold brew is also lovely!
📙Fiction
🌓There are two sides to every witch.
😺Cats
📒Tarot
📚Story
🔮Crystals
🍁West for the element of water, the suit of cups, and the season of autumn

#basicwitchswap

“You know… no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you‘re not. But if you‘re clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.”

Loving this book and this beach! Until my feet got sunburned 😭

“She‘d tried to make friends, because she‘d promised her mom (and witches kept their promises, she guessed)”

Really liking this so far!

OK, question. Does anything ever happen in this book other than Theo meeting up with a series of strange and interesting characters and going along with whatever they are doing?

If you loved last year‘s #witchpleaseswap and were, like me, hoping that someone else would take on the swap, your hopes have been fulfilled! Check out @sprainedbrain or @Meaw_catlady to sign up for the #basicwitchswap!

#littlefreelibrary find

“No disrespect to Maryland. I mean, they do have the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins, to say nothing of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.”

Gosh, thanks, Andy 🙄😂

This is a cute story with a heavy-handed allegory that didn‘t quite work for me. It bugged me that, while Aster could learn the girls‘ witchcraft by spying on their lessons, there didn‘t seem to be any way for an interested girl to learn shapeshifting. I didn‘t like the villain‘s motivation. And the grandmother could have spoken up earlier! I really liked the art, especially when depicting witchcraft, and the younger characters are delightful.

I‘ve never read a graphic novel with a family tree in the front before! This is off to a great start!

Read this book if you‘ve ever been a teenage girl, fierce and ready to be wild, knowing you are sharp.

Loving this so far!

As I expected, nothing new to me in this book (though one minor detail might have been new if I hadn‘t already read @shanaqui ‘s Goodreads review…), but it was a cute, funny, quick read!

I don‘t think I‘ll learn anything new from this book, though if I do, I‘ll be pleased. But I love Archie‘s comics, so when I saw this at the library I had to pick it up. So far it‘s making me giggle!

It feels wrong to describe this book as “fun” considering the dark, heavy subject matter it ultimately deals with, so I guess I won‘t. But I will describe it as lovely, moving, with a melancholy lightness. It draws on Australian Aboriginal storytelling and history for a tale about a terrible crime and a terrible vengeance. Plus ghosts!

“Maybe all hopeful thoughts were just someone who loved us, reaching out from another side.”

I need to take a break from the immensity that is The Goldfinch to catch up on some library books!

Book: The Silver Chair (Glimfeather!)
Movie: Labyrinth
Song: Hedwig‘s Theme
#manicmonday

My local indie bookstore is doing #bookstoresagainstborders so actually I had to go buy stuff.

I figured with the movie coming out, everyone will be talking about this book, so I‘d better go ahead and read it now.

I‘m not sure what made me pick up this book but I‘m not into it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Super cute, fun manga with more than a touch of melancholy. Yaichi is forced to confront his own homophobia, and that of the people around him, when the husband of his dead twin brother comes to visit. His daughter Kana is the best part of the book. I‘ll have to get volume 2 from the library soon!

I really enjoyed this book! It tells the story of a few men who made enormous strides in forensic medicine and toxicology. There is just enough detail to be fascinating and not enough to be confusing to me as a layperson, and it doesn‘t get too gruesome.

I finally made one of the recipes from this book in my Instant Pot. I got both as baby shower gifts, and the kid is fifteen months old… I made the risotto with asparagus and peas, not quite following the recipe, but it came out great. And so much faster than stovetop risotto! I‘ve also referred to this book for its useful charts on grain and bean cooking times.

I wasn‘t going to check out any books for myself. But then my hold came in. And then there was a Pride display… #libraryhaul

I don‘t usually like #kindledeals posts but I couldn‘t resist passing this one on. This book is absolutely a lifesaver for baby sleep! If you have a baby, are having a baby soon, or even just think you might want to have a baby someday, I encourage you to snap up this great deal!

Excuse me, Mr. Brown, your list of options is incomplete. What about matzah?! 😜

Watery tarts distribute swords, forming the basis of a system of government. #badsummary

Super cute YA romance! There were a couple of aspects that didn‘t quite pay off for me, but this is still a solid pick. Plus it‘s #ownvoices characters with South Asian heritage, which I haven‘t read much of.

Oh my gosh. This book is soooooo cute.

I loved this book… when I was just thinking about it and not actually reading it 😬 It has lots of ingredients that I love. Fascinating worldbuilding, a setting at an all-girls‘ religious boarding school with instruction in magic and martial arts, and a kickass, queer heroine. But I could just NOT get into the writing. The POV was a little bit all over the place and character decisions often came out of nowhere. By the end I didn‘t really care.