🦆📙 birding for books?!

seven on Sunday

Dear Bookish Friend,

It’s been a beautiful weather week and I’ve been taking advantage of it! We have officially been successful at attracting birds to our yard (I think mostly thanks to the water fountain and bird bath), so I’m feeling pretty accomplished this week.

What has you feeling accomplished this week?

01 - my classic for the summer

I’m doing it, you guys, I’m finally reading my first Thomas Hardy! This past week I read Joanna Davidson Politano’s most recent release, The Life She Forgot, and it has a really cool mention of Thomas Hardy and some quotes from Far from the Madding Crowd, and since I’ve been amassing quite the Hardy collection without reading any of them, I figured it was about time!

My plan was to approach this book like I always do with my Dickens at the beginning of the year, just read a chapter a day, and then I found out the book was serialized which means the chapters are the perfect length for doing so!

02 - stop and smell the lilacs

One thing I love to do each spring is to find a lilac bush and just inhale deeply for a few minutes. Growing up we had huge lilac bushes on our farm and the smell just takes me back and gives me all the summer is coming vibes. I happened across two separate lilac bushes this week and had to stop and give them both a good sniff.

What flower do you enjoy the smell of?

03 - birding for books

When the birds started returning after winter I told my big kids that I would buy them a book for every seven unique birds they saw/heard. They just needed to keep track of the birds, write down when and where they saw them and look up an interesting fact for each of them. Well, my oldest has already got three books and is close to earning her next! Her choices (in order) were: Eat Drink & Be Merry, Spies, Lies, & Alibis, and The Looking-Glass Illusion.

I am assuming her collection of birds (and therefore the book purchases) will slow down as she sees/hears the same birds and can’t collect new ones, but I’m having fun having an excuse to purchase books for her as a reward for learning about birds.

My thirteen-year-old hasn’t taken me up on my offer yet, we’ll see if that changes at some point this summer.

Did you notice that one of those titles has an Oxford comma and the other doesn’t? Are you pro-Oxford comma or against? I’m one of the rare few and I’m kind of on the fence. I honestly alternate between using it and not, I feel like sometimes I visually want it there and other times I don’t.

04 - project hail mary

Jared and I watched Project Hail Mary with the oldest two kids this week, I quite enjoyed it! I feel like they stuck to the book pretty well. And what I love even more is the fact that it motivated my thirteen-year-old to pick up the book the next morning. He’s my poster child for ADHD kid, so while he enjoys stories he tends to lean towards audiobooks so he can do something at the same time, but there was something super satisfying watching him just get immersed in a physical book.

05 - nailing down my old people hobbies

Before we moved I had a very large, very healthy colony of composting worms, but knowing we were going to be moving to a place with an unfinished yard I didn’t really want to transport them. Well, now that our yard is “done” (but always a work in progress) and the garden is in, it was time for me to get on Facebook marketplace and get a new colony. I now have 125 red wrigglers in a bin that I’m hoping to built up over the next year so I can add some of their rich dirt to our garden next spring.

I’ve decided to nail down and embrace my old people hobbies. Some of which I’m embracing now, some of which I’m waiting a few years for, but I’ve decided that gardening is one of them, I don’t have much space for it, but I’m using the space that I have.

06 - a sweet little free library find

Jared and I were on a bike ride this week and came across a little free library where we found The Will of the Many. It’s not often that I come across a book that I’ve been wanting to read so you better believe I snatched that book up!

Have you read it yet? Did you enjoy it? I was excited about it until a few months ago when Jared read it and he’s guessing I probably won’t like it. He’s really good at knowing my reading tastes but I’m still going to give it a try!

07 - homeschool prep

I’m knee deep in proofing books and prepping for our next homeschool year, I always enjoy this time, but even more so since we became more literature focused. I will be posting a video on my homeschool channel tomorrow sharing all the books my tenth grader read in school this last year and it was more than I was expecting!

I just wish I had four hours a day to devote to reading like my kids! Can I be homeschooled too?

bonus - book deals

There are some great physical and ebook deals right now (some books I’ve read, the others are on my TBR):

• ESV Journaling Bible - I love the ESV and I love a journaling Bible, it’s a great combo!

• Theo of Golden - a favorite so far this year.

• The Paper Magician - I’ve enjoyed some other books by this author.

• Once Upon a Broken Heart - this is my favorite Stephanie Garber I’ve read yet.

• Project Hail Mary - if you haven’t read it yet, now’s the time!

• The Bible Recap - a great Bible reading plan with daily summaries!

• Epic Hikes of the World - well, doesn’t this just look amazing?!

• The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings - these are the faux leather editions I have the books in, they are small, but they are so cool.

Editing to add in a couple more deals!

• Lethal Kings - the hardcover is on sale and this book is a favorite of mine!

• One Little Lie - I really enjoyed this book!

• Against All Odds - this one is currently free!

What have you been enjoying or been inspired by lately?

Chantel (who wishes she actually could Read All Day)

DISCOUNT CORNER
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