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The Sunday Post is a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, tell you what I’m reading, and share news. It’s hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Readerbuzz, and Book Date.

The Sunday Post #299

On The Blog Last Week

• On Tuesday, I talked about the books I'm (hopefully) going to read this spring.

On The Blog This Week

• On Tuesday, there's a book haul.

In My Reading Life

Last week, I finished Let's Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale. This book is exactly what it says on the cover. It's a self-help book for how to talk about awkward topics. It's divided into 5 sections: "Death," "Sex," "Money," "Family," and "Identity." I learned the most from the "Money" section because I've never had to share a bank account with another person. I've never thought about what would happen if my future husband's spending habits were vastly different from my own. I don't know if I'll ever get married and share a bank account, but now I know about the conversations that need to happen before money is merged.

The "Family" section is the most relatable for me. My family is a freakin' disaster. The book put words to problems I've only thought about abstractly. I'm not ready to storm through a family member's front door and have an unpleasant conversation, but the book made me feel less alone. Other people have the exact same problems as me! Yay!

(Amusing side note: There's a story in the "Family" chapter about a woman who's trying to reconnect with her stepfather. Whenever she goes to his house, he turns off Fox News because he knows it gets on her nerves. What is this wizardry? 

My parents are hardcore Fox News addicts. It's on their TV 24 hours a day. I couldn't even get a break from it on my birthday! The sound is kept at a volume that will make your brain hemorrhage. Asking them to lower the volume is pointless because I'm "a snowflake who can't handle the truth."

I'm deducting stars from my rating of the book because it failed to teach me magic. You can't casually mention turning off Fox News and get my hopes up like that!)

Anyway, back to the point: I think this book would be a great gift for a recent high school or college graduate. It would prepare them for problems they might encounter later in life. Since I'm old, I didn't learn a ton from it. I've already floundered my way through difficult conversations and learned from experience. I wish I had this book 10 or 15 years ago. It would have been very helpful.

Then I read The Animals At Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey. This was my most-anticipated release of 2020. I finally found a used copy I could afford and read it immediately. I was not disappointed. If you love gothic books or Victorian sensation novels, then you need to read this one! It's got the vibes of a classic, but it's written in modern times and set during WWII. It follows two women. One works for a museum and is in charge of repairing taxidermy animals. The other is the sheltered heiress of Lockwood Manor. Their paths cross when the museum collection is moved to Lockwood Manor to protect it from German bombs.

This novel has everything you'd expect from a Victorian sensation classic: unexpected deaths, madness, forbidden romance, plot twists, untrustworthy servants, arrogant men, ghosts, bad weather, a creepy atmosphere, frustratingly slow pacing. It's a mash-up of all the greatest hits.

Actually, this book is like a museum for other books. As you wander through it, you see bits of Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Woman In White, etc. If you're familiar with those classics, then the plot twists in Lockwood Manor are predictable, but I had enough fun spotting the similarities that I didn't care.

I did care that the author switches between two first-person perspectives. The voices of the two characters are so similar that I sometimes forgot whose point-of-view I was reading. This isn't a book you can put down in the middle of a chapter. You won't remember whose head you're in when you pick it up again.

That's my only complaint. I really like this one! It's atmospheric and creative.

Next, I read Beauty In The Broken Places: A Memoir Of Love, Faith, And Resilience by Allison Pataki. I discovered that I'm not the target audience for this book. I picked it up because I'm interested in medical nonfiction, and this one sounded fascinating.

While the author was pregnant, she decided to visit Hawaii with her husband. Shortly after their plane took off, her husband asked if his eye looked weird. Then he lost consciousness. The plane made an emergency landing, and doctors discovered that her husband had suffered a rare type of stroke. Her memoir is about the challenge of going through pregnancy and taking care of a newborn while also helping her husband recover.

The author says (several times) that she writes to help herself make sense of her life. I think that's my problem with the book. This story is for the author and not for random strangers. The chapters remind me of Facebook updates that are written to let family members know what's going on. The writing style is bland. Most of the "characters" are just names with no personality attached. The memoir is a straightforward retelling of events without much insight or analysis. The events are terrifying, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to learn from reading about them.

For example, at the time of the stroke, the author's husband was a medical student. He comes from a family of doctors. The author's father is a former governor of New York. When her husband had the stroke, her father was campaigning to become president of the United States. She talks about her celebrity friends and the properties her family owns. She's obviously not hurting for money or support. She was able to get her husband the best medical care and spend months sitting by his bedside and helping with his rehab.

I'm glad he recovered, but her story is not reality for the majority of Americans. Since she doesn't examine the world outside of herself, I'm not sure how other people's experience with the medical system would differ from hers. What if you have a 9-5 office job and are now the sole provider for your family? What if your insurance sucks and won't pay for months of living at a rehab center?

By the end of this book, I felt like I'd crashed a family reunion for a family I'd never met. I was listening to their stories and wondering what I was doing there. I'm not the target audience for this book, which is fine. Not every book is for every reader.

Right now, I'm reading Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers. This book has been sitting on my shelf for years because it's scary. It's fantasy, and it's thick. I don't always have the best luck with massive fantasy books. So far, it's about a teenage girl who has been blessed by Death. She's living at a convent and working as an assassin. Kind of weird, but I'm enjoying it.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. Hunting for 4-leaf clovers with Baby Brooklyn. My town "hid" cardboard clovers for kids to find. If you find a clover, you take a selfie with it and are entered to win prizes. We only found 1 because 3-year-olds don't have the patience to wander all over creation in search of cardboard clovers.
2. It was my birthday on Friday. Cake and burritos happened.
3. I got a sports watch for my birthday last year. It informed me that I've walked and run a total of 966.6 miles in the past year. It also informed me that I'm still chubby.
4. I've been applying for jobs. One of them finally contacted me and said that my application made it through their first round of screenings. I've submitted the paperwork for round 2. I have no idea how many rounds it takes to get this job.
5. For some reason, YouTube thought I needed to see this Old English translation of the song "Pumped Up Kicks." I like the Old English version better than the Modern English version. I guess morbid songs about school shootings just sounded cooler in 1066 A.D.

I Want Friends For My Birthday

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Take care of yourselves and be kind to each other. See you around the blogosphere!