missuninvited

I set a goal to read 48 books this year (yes, yes, I was bitten by the Goodreads bug), and I'm currently on #23, which is Messenger by Lois Lowry. Surprise, surprise: Son is on my list to read next! Sitting down and reading the Giver quartet back-to-back has been a much different experience that it was reading them piecemeal, though I'm finding that the companion novels just really can't compare with the original The Giver, for reasons of both nostalgia and worldbuilding/pacing. After Son will be The Storyteller's Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal, and then it's up to the Library Hold List gods to see where I land next! I might have to trawl back through these replies for a few extra recommendations.

I've had She Likes the Beatles stuck in my head for DAYS now. There are worse things, I suppose!

I hope I'm not crashing the Mouseykins/Ennoshima party here - I am just desperate for a thread that hasn't been abandoned since 2019. I started out doing a boatload of jigsaw puzzles when quarantine began, but I'm finding that I don't really have the space or the long-term concentration it takes to really sit down and do a puzzle properly. My attention is so scattered and divided that smaller tasks - reading online, playing Neo, goofing around and organizing and purging my closet, etc. are all much easier and lower-brainpower activities. I feel like I just cannot get my brain to work at 100% capacity anymore!! I used to love cooking, grocery shopping, etc. - now they're just "have to"s that take too much time without enough creative freedom. I feel for the kiddos staying up way too late just to get some peace/quiet/privacy, because that has definitely been me as well. 11:00 PM - 3:00 am is my Me Time, but I do tend to regret it a bit when morning comes all too quickly after my head hits the pillow. That got way too negative and whiny! Ah!! Back to something fun: I've started a new goal of getting 3,000 unique items in my SDB - only 863 left to go. Whew. Emptying out my real closet and filling up my fake one. What a glamorous life I live. Thanks for letting me share ♥