January Roundup! Plus, Midlife Crisis Bingo Is Done Even If The Midlife Crisis Continues

 

(Happy Groundhog Day tomorrow. For $14.99, you could acquire this special sign. Yay, rodents!)

January was a rough month for me. The endlessness of COVID and its reach into my life – with remote work and school, the ongoing should I/shouldn’t I about travel and recreation, and general worry – have been exhausting. Mostly, though, I have been flattened by the larger conversation about how we (won’t) take care of each other and our communities.

 

Also, it turns out that we Americans are pretty gung-ho about banning books right now, which is spirit-crushing. I’m not sure how we developed a new comfort with broadly restricting information and having limits on our access to ideas, but all of our alarm bells should be ringing. This isn’t just an isolated occurrence happening in “other places.” Just the other day, I was reading an article on the Book Riot site, and I was needled by the name of a middle school principal with a book removal agenda. I searched through my email, and sure enough, she was my student once upon a time. I take it she wasn’t excited by our class discussion about education as the practice of freedom? Fortunately, Viet Thanh Nguyen (the author of The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016) provided some balm with his recent New York Times editorial about the role that reading “inappropriate” things has played in his life. 

 

Clearly, I was distracted last month, and that made me an antsy reader. Do you also have a problem with checking your phone while reading? I need to get that under control. I started and stopped several novels, but in the end, I grumpily finished six books:

 

Of these, I probably enjoyed A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature the most. It’s a collection of essays about the interactions between humans and nature, and ultimately about unlikely beauty. And it's funny! It turns out that I really need funny these days.

 

But most importantly, I finished my 2021 Leaning Stack of Books Midlife Crisis Bingo Card. Woo! I took the full month extension to make my way through those final two squares, so hooray to me for meeting my own deadline:

 

 

This month I will be discussing my Bingo-ing and what I’ve learned through this midlife crisis. I hope you join me! You can see the category descriptions here and generate your own card here. Please share how far you got into the process or why your midlife crisis prevented you from reading or even why you hate Bingo. Remember – it’s ok if you just did one square or one row. It’s also ok if you read nothing. But if you did finish your card, let me know. One lucky reader is going to get a free book!

 

I will leave you with the opportunity to watch Chunk the Groundhog’s compilation video. Chunk and his furry family eat vegetables at a picnic table. Sound up for maximum enjoyment! Or actually, better yet, put down your phone and read your book.