István isn't unlike George from The Book of George in the way that he relies on women to shape his life for him, although István is much less whiny than George despite experiencing more actual hardships. He's not a bad guy, he just seems to float along, avoiding any real introspection or connection, sublimating his emotions into sexual expression. The novel is kind of depressing. It will be interesting to see if I remember it in 6 months.

I've been having a lot of trouble with the way this book is written (so. many. words.) so I picked up the abridged audiobook on Libby, with Estes telling some of the stories and explaining some of the concepts, and I found it much more accessible. I think sometimes storytelling and writing are two very different things. Figured I'd mention the audiobook in case others are having trouble with the book as I was. #womenwhorunwiththewolves

My October TBR for #Bookspin, #HauntedSelf, and #CasttheDie (first 13 with the tagged as my Lucky Book), plus several alternates since I have so many newer titles on my TBR and those are sometimes difficult to acquire in a timely manner without breaking the budget. (And because I was too excited about spooky reading to stop at 20.)

And here's Camille, making sure I'm doing it right.

@thearomaofbooks @puddlejumper

Hello, again, #ScreamTeam! Here's another challenge for you to keep in mind as you're putting together your #HauntedShelf TBR.

If you read any of the Team Lead Favorites/Favourites (from any team), you can stack an additional 15 points each on top of any other points you've earned for reading that book!

It will quickly become apparent that my spooky story love language is “haunted houses,“ and my choices reflect this. :-)

#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii
1. Sharing horror films with my teen.
2. Tiny, perfect lizard.
3. Sunsets.
4. Silo dressing up in a towel on the way to the vet.
5. Silo with his pupils dilated, coming down from sedation. Hopefully we'll finally have an effective treatment for his tummy troubles soon!

I alluded to this in a previous post, but the most lasting traditions in my family center around bedtime routines. We've tried a lot of things, but this one has stuck the longest. Since my younger kid was 2 or 3, we've been doing a bedtime routine we call "gratefuls, sorries, and intends" in which we go around and each list one thing from the day for which we're grateful, one thing for which we're sorry, and one thing we intend for the next day.⬇️

"When someone has a strong opinion about something, it usually says more about *them* than whatever or whomever the opinion happens to be about. This is especially true when it comes to resentment and hatred of other people."

My family has been reading one entry from this book each day as part of our bedtime routine (my youngest is 16, and we still make a point of touching base at bedtime). Some are meh; others really hit the mark.

First #haikuhive in a while, inspired by a true story*

reverse carding, noun:
When the flu shot guy guesses
you might need high-dose.

*that happened to my spouse. Who is 50. For the record, I was there, too, and was not offered the high-dose vaccine. Which is a relief because I'm younger than my spouse.

Alright, #ScreamTeam...here's your pre-game #HauntedShelf challenge, should you choose to accept it!

25 points for posting your October TBR
25 points for posting an October book rec
10 points for sharing the sign-up link or post

The sign-up link: https://forms.gle/wmcY27wyx6awp3EfA

You're tracking your own points, but I'd love to be tagged on your posts!

Wait a second...are sprayed edges a result of the "spines in" bookshelf trend? I have just these two with sprayed edges, and I've been trying to figure out why/how the trend started (without googling it, because where's the fun in that?).

"...seeming to know him, or at least to recognise his face, from where or from when they would surely recall if only they could concentrate hard enough. But they couldn't. No one can, in this world that Godley wrought. Something keeps getting in the way, keeps turning their thoughts aside, keeps blunting them, or absorbing them altogether, and soon something else comes along to engage their ever-waning attention."

I read this too late for the book club meeting for which it was selected, and although I can't claim to understand it, I did enjoy it. I think Banville is saying something about the nature of truth, creation of reality, the author/story relationship, and perhaps the short attention spans and anti-intellectualism of our times. A lot of it is over my head, but I like how he portrays the characters.

53% into this one, and I keep zoning out. Maybe The Dark Tower series just isn't my thing. Or maybe it's just the wrong time for it for me. 🤷‍♀️

Welcome, tagged Littens, to team #ScreamTeam for #HauntedShelf

I'm your team lead for this adventure, here to answer questions, post information and challenges, and cheer you on!

I'll tag all team members in every team-related post, but because notifications can be funny, you might choose to follow me for the month (you can always unfollow me in November. 🙂).

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's haunted reads!

The first that came to mind was "Ring on the Sill" by Cowboy Junkies. Also "Beloved Wife" by Natalie Merchant, and "Both Hands" by Ani DiFranco, and "Jezebel" by 10,000 Maniacs. Although I pretty much cry through that entire 10,000 Maniacs album. @Chrissyreadit

We have a long history of choosing book-related movies for family movie night, but it used to be books like Babe.

I treated myself to an overstock Owlcrate Horror selection, a special edition of The Library at Hellebore, with beautiful sprayed edges and creepy cover under the dust cover. This one is definitely going on my October #bookspin list!

Not book related, but here's a blog post I wrote in response to recent events (or rather, in response to the responses I've seen to recent events): https://wp.me/pZZat-nV9

My teenage son says that the post is "sigma," if that happens to influence you one way or another.

#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii
1. A drive to LA (during which I had a fantastic conversation with my spouse) where I got to see the Walk of Fame and attend a social with lots of very supportive audiobook narrators (a few famous).
2. The full moon.
3. Tiny spider on my keyboard.
4. Thieving bird in the mall food court.
5. Princess dress on super sale! (Reader, I bought it.)

It was shades of duMaurier/Hitchcock at the mall food court today when this bird first stalked us while my friend was waiting for her pretzel order then followed us to our table where it bided its time until flying at my friend and attempting to steal her pretzel. The bird did not get the pretzel, but neither did my friend choose to continue eating. This is the bird perched on the back of my chair, moments before making its move.

I still had more to say about Rose Hackman's Emotional Labor, and I'm testing my family's patience by talking about it nonstop, so I blogged about it: https://imperfecthappiness.org/2025/09/10/emotional-labor-by-rose-hackman-and-my...

Photo doesn't relate to the post at all, I just was excited that a hummingbird finally sat still long enough for me to take its photo.

We do not care how persistent the mean little internal voice is---the one that tells us that our mistakes define us rather than our successes and so we're better off quitting. It is not our friend, and we're under no obligation to listen to it. (We're a little irritated, however, because we have been promised that perimenopause would be accompanied by a quieting of this critical voice, and so far, it's still quite persistent.)
#WDNCW @dabbe

This book came out in 2023, and it predicts the cultural push towards narrow, restrictive gender definitions that's come with the Project 2025 stuff. Rather than promoting extreme solutions, Hackman suggests that moving forward with an awareness of the lack of financial and cutural recognition for "feminized" labor performed by any gender would help build a stronger, more competitive US economy, and stronger communities. ⬇️

Listening to this audiobook is awesome, but it's also making me angry, which I then feel compelled to mask for my spouse and our son, creating more emotional labor for me.

(Just kidding...they think it's hilarious when I vent. Which involves its own sort of emotional labor.)

Photo: Hollywood Walk of Fame, which I wandered before an event in LA this weekend. Review: The Walk was kind of a letdown. But I did learn that Igor Stravinsky has a star.

This is an "it's not you, it's me" DNF. I just don't have the bandwidth to put in the effort on a translated classic right now. I feel mild FOMO, but not enough to change my mind.

This one took me a while to get through, but I enjoyed it in all its cringeyness. The adults are oblivious and self-absorbed, and the tension is really well done. There are so many points where things might have gone one way or another. #Roll100

I volunteer with a non-profit whose mission is to improve literacy by promoting a love of reading. I attended an online volunteer event today in which I learned two things: 1) Many children in the population we serve have never had a new book---until those we give out---due to the expense. 2) In the current political climate, many of the families we serve are afraid to leave their homes, and our programs provide families a safe place to gather. ⬇️

Well, this is quite an impressive trio of blurb-writers! Most of the book is dedicated to the definition and causes of a fear of success, and it's not really until the last chapter that Friedman gets to some of the (rather simple) solutions. Friedman is very Freudian in approach, but her book does give me some things to ponder, and not just the evolution of the self-help genre since the 1980s. A qualified pick.

I'm not really a dragon person (they're cool and all, I'm just not super into them). The premise behind this novel is interesting, but I found the number of times Lessa gets shaken by the man who supposedly loves her a little unsettling, which is perhaps par for the course in a novel first published in 1968. What else is F'lar supposed to do with such a willful and impudent woman? I don't think I'll read more from this series.

We do not care that you wanted to start your holiday weekend early so you preemptively locked all time sheets before the end of the work day. Those of us who work after your weekend started and couldn't log our time would very much like our full pay this pay period.

At least we don't rely on this one paycheck for basic expenses. Others might not be so fortunate.

#wdncw @dabbe

Although I enjoyed the Catalina Island setting, the overall story didn't quite do it for me. It doesn't seem to have the sense of immediacy and tension that I enjoy in other Connelly novels. It feels like Connelly was trying to pack too much into this story, and I felt a little jerked from place to place.

It seems a little bit wrong to describe a mystery in which children are murdered as "fun," however, I did find this story fun. I figured out 2/3 of the solution before the reveal, which is unusual for me, and I found the descriptions of the party games intriguing (although also a great way to spread illness (bobbing for apples) and a big fire risk (snap-dragon, which I kind of want to do anyway)). I also like the use of the word "sartorial."

I've published my August Bookends blog post in record time! (Along with some musings about my relationship to writing): https://imperfecthappiness.org/2025/09/01/bookends-august-2025/

#bookspin list for September!

@TheAromaofBooks

Completed #bookspinbingo for August. 12 books, 1 bingo.

@TheAromaofBooks

Camille's definition of success involves me lounging in such a way that I can pet her indefinitely, which is going well today so far. Even better, I refreshed the litterboxes today, so I am in her good graces for that bit of service, too.

Today, we toured the historic Marston House, and of course, I took photos of the library. It's perhaps not quite as romantic as the floor-to-ceiling shelves of other libraries, but I love that all of the books are reachable to 5'1"-tall me (not that we were allowed to touch them, but in my imagination, it was quite practical). I'm filing the idea away for my "someday" house.

After reading the first couple of chapters closely, I skimmed through until the last two chapters. The concepts and practice remind me strongly of Marion Woodman's Eye and "I" from her Addiction to Perfection and from the reflection practices in the Bullet Journal Writing for Being course, both of which I found to be more resonant to me, although this book's section "On Spiritual Smugness" was quite good. A qualified pick.

While out with friends this afternoon, I was reminded of the year my kids and I hiked the same hike each week for 52 weeks, and when I got home, I read through the posts I'd published about them on my blog. This post from Week 40 reminded me of what was going on in the world in 2016, and helped explain why I felt so connected to the tagged while reading it this week: http://imperfecthappiness.org/2016/07/09/weekly-walk-40/

Y'all...I have too many in-progress books. I either need to buckle down and finish at least three of these, or I need to DNF (or back-burner) a couple. (Not pictured is the latest Michael Connelly, which I started this morning on audiobook. I am incorrigible.)

This series of essays written during E.B. White's first four years full-time on his Maine farm in the years immediately before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor feels like a balm and a primer in how to balance attention to world affairs with pursuits that ground us in the daily world in which we spend most of our time. The essays are conversational and humble, and provide glimpses of the man who will become the author of Charlotte's Web.

I was recommending the tagged book to my 16-year-old son because he enjoys history, and I'm finding it a unique perspective on how to live one's everyday life as authoritarianism is spreading and fascist apologists are cropping up. He was on board until I told him the title, at which point he laughed heartily because, while he's quite an intellectual kid, he remains a 16-year-old boy.

We interrupt this Litsy feed to bring you a gratuitous brag on my college kid:

Their dad dropped them off at their new dorm room for junior year, and within about an hour of Dad's departure, I received this shelfie. It's gratifying to see evidence that we've instilled proper priorities in our offspring.

My chemistry-major elder child pointed out that, if this works like a chemical transformation, the more confusion you start with, the more clarity you'll end up with. I'm pretty darned confused, so this bodes well for me.

For #TuesdayTunes today, I'm enjoying Kelli Scarr's "Knowing is the Call" and the album it's from, Greater Mysteries, a welcome recommendation from @catiewithac

@TieDyeDude

How did it take me so long to read this book? I'm so glad that, when I finally did, it was the rest-of-the-world version and not the truncated US version; the point of the novel is much different if it ends when the US version (also the one Kubrick used for the movie) does. It's violent, yes, but after reading S.A. Cosby and Bret Easton Ellis, it feels almost quaint, and I love the cultural criticism and what Burgess does with language.

Camille says, "If you want to take my picture, just ask. The 'photos of bookmail' pretense is unnecessary."

The Booker Longlist titles that I can't get at the library arrived today. Now to sit still uninterrupted long enough to read them...

I accidentally went thematic when I checked out yet more library books I'm unlikely to get to before they're due back.

Playing catch-up with my blog posts. If you're interested in my longer-form musings and my reading wrap-up from May-July, here's the link: http://imperfecthappiness.org/2025/08/25/bookends-may-july-2025/

(Photo: vocal catbird on the shores of Lake Michigan, June 2025)

My overflowing basket of bookmarks and...what I'm using as a bookmark.