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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 #345

On The Blog Recently

• Reading Ideas For Spooky Season
• Year-End Reading Goals
• Best Books About Extreme Weather
• The End Of The Year Book Tag
• Best Portal Fantasy Novels

In My Reading Life

Have you ever felt "meh" about a book while you were reading it, but then you couldn't stop thinking about it when it was over? That's me with A Separate Peace by John Knowles. It keeps randomly popping into my head. It's happening so often that I'm tempted to buy my own copy of the book so I can reread it without having to sit on the library waitlist again.

A Separate Peace is set at a boys' boarding school in the early 1940s. The book doesn't have much action, but the characters are awesome. The author does an excellent job of capturing the insecurity of people's teenage years. This is the definition of a coming-of-age novel. The story stars a group of teenage frenemies who are growing up in an ultra-competitive environment. The school has high academic expectations and mandatory sports participation. How do you make friends and trust people in a world where everything is a competition, and everyone is a potential enemy?

WWII hangs over the plot like a storm cloud. The boys know they're being educated and trained to be soldiers, even if that's not what they want for themselves. Joining the military after high school is an unwritten rule.

Even though this book was first published in the 1950s, it's still relatable because it's about the difficulties of coping with disappointment. What if you never get the future you dream about? What if you can't live up to your own expectations? What if you make a mistake that can't be undone?

I understand why this novel is a modern classic. WWII may be over, but teenagers will always be full of doubt and insecurity.

Nonfiction November has begun! My first nonfiction read was Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife by Mary Roach. As you can probably tell from the title, it's about scientific studies that attempted to find evidence of an afterlife. Spoiler alert: none of them have been successful. The afterlife is very hard to prove with science.

Mary Roach has an engaging writing style, and she makes herself part of the story. She travels to India to interview people who claim to have been reincarnated; she takes classes on how to be psychic; she goes ghost hunting; and she examines preserved samples of "ectoplasm." Interspersed with her adventures are explanations of real scientific studies that searched for the soul. Mostly, this book is about the fascinating gap between what we believe and what we can prove.

Spook was first published in 2005, and it shows. I probably shouldn't criticize something for being old, but I badly want an updated version of this book! Technology has changed a ton since 2005. Are scientists still looking for the afterlife? What have we found with newer technology? Can we get an updated book with more pictures? We need more pictures of the stuff the author talks about!

This book is fun and quick to read, but it's also frustratingly outdated. I need to find a newer book about the same subject.

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy recently:

1. It snowed! First snow of autumn.
2. Who watched The Fall Of The House Of Usher on Netflix? I liked it. I've read everything Edgar Allan Poe published, so I loved all the Poe references. It's a gory TV show, though. Don't watch it if you can't stand blood and guts and piles of melted corpses.
3. Speaking of Netflix, I finally caught up on The Great British Bake Off. I don't know who I want to win yet. I have several favorites.
4. So much candy. Candy is the best part of Halloween.
5. I hope you had a great Halloween! Brooklyn was so hyper that I didn't get a good photo of her, but she had fun. Trick-Or-Treating quickly became a door-to-door dog petting expedition. Brooklyn would ring a doorbell, hear dogs bark, and shout "I love dogs! Can I pet your dogs?" She ended up petting 16 dogs and 1 cat.

Trick-Or-Treat! I Love Dogs!

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