June/July Update

Hey, remember when I said, “I’ll be back in June?” My blissful, full of end-of-school-May me was apparently really confident about that too, as one would gather from the accompanying smiley face. And then I completely forgot that June was ending until it was over and decided I would just combine the months... and now here it is on July 31^st at 9p and I just thought to myself, “SHOOT I HAVE TO BLOG RIGHT NOW.” So here I am. I have very little to report, except that my shiny end-of-school-May self also thought she was going to have plenty of time to read all the books and then this smart cookie decided that doing summer school would be boring and she should just get two part time jobs instead. Oh, and then I moved.

Since June 1^st, I have read three books: Things Fall Apart, The Violent Bear It Away and Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse. These were all depressing. The first two in a good, thought-provoking way, and the last in a this-was-supposed-to-be-relatable-but-you-make-terrible-life-choices type of way.

I have also listened to four audiobooks: Still Alice, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Carol and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Still Alice was lovely (and depressing – anyone else notice a theme??). Mindy Kaling’s was hilarious, as expected. The last two were re-reads – can you call it that if you read it the first time and listened to it the second? It’s definitely quite a different experience, I think. As in, I noticed more in Carol this time, since I read really fast and the audiobook forces me to go slower. And, even though I’ve seen all the HP movies, it was still surprising to hear all of the narration and dialogue in British accents…

Part of me is a little disappointed in my summer progress. I gave up on reading more than 100 pages in Love in the Time of Cholera, and haven’t even tried to listen to an audiobook in at least a week. But mostly I’m trying to remember process over progress, and to enjoy the moments I do snatch away to get a few pages in. And I’m happy to have spent time doing other things, like catching up on all of the back issue of Christianity Today that I didn’t read all spring because I was reading YA, and doing crossword puzzles for the first time in a year.

And, I do think I am making slow but steady headway in Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, which has been on my list for a few years now, and The Voyage Out, which I downloaded on my phone because I miss reading Woolf. The good news is that I am enjoying both of these works quite a bit, just as I am enjoying the extra work I picked up.

And there’s still some summer left – not enough to re-read all of Harry Potter (seriously, did I think I was miracle woman?) – but I may be able to knock out a few more titles on my list.

We shall see.