Book Juggling | Reading Update 3.21.22

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog!

How are you doing? Have you been drinking enough water? Have you been taking any medications you need to take? Have you been eating at least one big meal a day?

I'm asking these things because I have not been doing them and I want y'all to be doing better in your lives than I am at the moment. I know that all of my reading updates this year have been super depressing and short, but unfortunately that's what happens when you have Depression. I was seriously struggling at the beginning of the month. I'm much better now than I was a few weeks ago, but I've still got a long way to go to reach my sense of normal. 

Of course many things in my life suffered due to this episode: I wasn't really talking to my friends, family, or my partners; I could barely get out of bed most days and therefore wasn't eating, drinking, or maintaining my personal hygiene enough; and I had little to no interest in my hobbies or activities that usually bring me comfort and contentment, such as playing Pokémon or Minecraft, watching BookTube, and yes, reading. Before last week, I thought I'd be lucky if I finish three books this month. 

As it happens, I have indeed finished three books, plus a few volumes of Komi Can't Communicate. But the month isn't over yet, and I'm in the middle of three more books as of when I'm writing this. I'm not entirely confident that I'll finish one of them (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, I'm only a quarter of the way in and I haven't picked it up since the 3rd) but I have high hopes for the other two. Plus I went to my library for the first time this year and got a small stack, so I've got a few more books waiting to be read in the days to come. 

Currently I'm reading Off With Her Head by Eleanor Herman, which is a political analysis about women in power and how they are demonized, ridiculed, and made a mockery of due to their positions. It's very well written and it's making me appropriately angry. The feminine rage I feel while reading this book is honestly pretty cathartic. I'm also reading After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz, a book you might recall was one of my most anticipated releases for 2023. I'm absolutely loving it, and I'm planning to write a full review once I finish. 

On Thursday I'll be heading to California once again, this time for a memorial/celebration of life service that my old church is holding for my grandparents. Since my grandfather died back in 2020, we never got to have a proper service for him. Now that my grandma has joined him in Heaven, it seems like the perfect time to do so. 

I'm not sure how much reading I'll get done over the weekend, what with the service and then packing up their house and everything, but the drive is 7 1/2 hours long, so I imagine I'll get a good chunk of the way through whatever books I bring along with me.  

The (hopeful) plan is to finish both Off With Her Head and After Sappho before Thursday, which I do think is doable if I actually buckle down and read in the next two days, rather than spend my entire afternoon and evenings on YouTube. This way I'll have a clean slate for the trip. I planning to browse my library's audiobook collection and see what's available, so I can have something to listen to during the drive other than my dad's classic rock albums. (I have nothing against classic rock, but it's the only thing he listens to. So I'm pretty bored of it by now.)

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Anyway, that's all I have for today. Please remember to take care of yourselves, and I'll try my best to do the same. As I said before, I can feel myself rising out of this low point, so fingers crossed my next reading update has a much better mood.

Until next time!