Tag: history

What I Read: July 2023

Family snapshot outside the Kirtland temple

July has been a good break month. My kids have gone to several fun camps, we’ve celebrated some holidays and family gatherings, and I’ve taken time to rest and recharge (and read lots of nonfiction, apparently, as you’ll see from my reviews below). Near the end of July, we took off on the big trip of the summer which I like to call the Church History Mega Road Trip. We drove from Utah to New York and back, over 5000 miles in total. It was my first time visiting Palmyra and Kirtland, and my kids’ first time at any of the sights. We’re back now and were thrown straight into back-to-school prep, so I’m glad I got in some restful days early.

As for writing, I did finish one short piece of creative nonfiction that I sent in to Exponent II for their fall issue. I also sent in a couple of class proposals to some local writing conferences. In general, I’ve been less productive than I wish I had been, but I’m trying to accept that I have the opposite cycle from many writers: where most people have less work in the summer, as a mom I actually have more work in the summer than during the school year. It’s always difficult to be happy in the season that you’re in, but I’m trying.

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What I Read – January 2022 & 5×5 Challenge

close up shot of a person reading a book
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

New year, new reading challenge! This year, I’m trying out the 5×5 Challenge (via the Scholé Sisters homeschooling community). The premise is to pick 5 categories or topics you want to read about more in-depth this year, then select 5 books for each category over the course of the year. It comes out to about 2 books a month. I’m hoping this will be a way to balance my need for structured reading with the ability to still pick up random books from the library (or more realistically, the new Brandon Sanderson novel).

My five categories for 2022 are:

  1. Old Testament Context – Our church’s Come Follow Me curriculum this year is on the Old Testament. In addition to reading a new translation, I want to get some background on how to get your head around the Old Testament. Some of these will be LDS-specific and some more generally Christian or even Jewish (I hope to pick up Robert Alter’s Psalm translation.)
  2. Mormon Lit Backlist – Filling in some works by Mormon authors that have been on my TBR pile for a while that I need to get to.
  3. Stoicism – It’s been a rough year for me coping with the new political environment in Utah (really, several years and the whole country would also work here). I’m hoping that reading about stoicism will give me some tools to both act according to my conscience while not drowning in anxiety and anger.
  4. Reading the Hugos – Working my way backwards through the novel winners that I haven’t read yet.
  5. Books Becoming Movies – Because I like to have read the book first, plus my other categories are so serious that I felt like I deserved a break.

Now on to the reviews!

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