April 18, 2025 by suzanne day by day

Friday Randomosity: Books and Cats and Summer Stuff

It’s Friday, Carla has the day off from school, and I slept in until SEVEN, which is amazing. My only plans for today involve a home improvement project with my dad (and Carla, hopefully; she is so far resisting the idea, but I think she will be interested once the impact driver makes an appearance) and meeting a friend for an evening adventure, so I am curled up in my office with a mug of tea and a few minutes to muse ramblingly (ramble musingly?) about this and that.

Why only a few minutes, you ask, when I just clearly laid out how empty of plans my day is? Well, I am in the middle of reading a novel that I cannot put down, and I can feel it pulling me even as I type. It’s a romance featuring a single mom in her mid-fifties and it’s funny and heartfelt and SO GOOD. Also, Carla will be awake eventually and I should probably do some parenting.

This reminds me that Carla and I have gotten into a good rhythm with audiobooks. WHY did it take me so long to figure out that we should listen to audiobooks in the car? We’re in the car together for at least an hour a day, which is a decent amount of time for book listening. The only “problem” with it is that I don’t get to hear Carla’s cheerful chirping in the morning. But… sometimes she is less chirpy anyway, and an audiobook is a good alternative to mother-daughter sniping. We’re listening to Just As Long As We’re Together (bookshop.org / amazon) right now, and oh, how I adore Judy Blume.

There is this scene where the girls are discussing a hunky ninth grader and one girl says he’s sexually experienced because he has hairy legs – and… what??? Is that a real myth of days past? I remember reading that as a kid and kind of accepting it at face value, but now that I am an adult, it strikes me as so odd and funny and gross. Of course, I had to stop the audiobook and explain to Carla – over embarrassed groans of I KNOW, Mom – that this is in no way accurate, you cannot judge a person’s sexual experience based on their appearance, and trying to do so would be weird and gross anyway. Judy Blume sure provides a lot of opportunities for Discussion. How long will it take for Carla to figure out that I am trojan horsing books to sneak in Important Conversations???

You know who else really knows how to write about children? E. L. Konigsburg. Before the Blume book, Carla and I listened to Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (bookshop.org / amazon) and it is so funny and such a perfect depiction of friendship. Carla doesn’t remember reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, (bookshop.org / amazon) so I have that on hold via Libby. Konigsburg has a bunch of other books I’ve never read before, too, so perhaps we will explore those as well.

Suz posted the other day about how she resolved a potentially fraught neighbor situation by going over and talking to her neighbor. (I fully realize that this does not always work, even if, in an ideal world, simply talking to our neighbors about our needs would solve all our problems.) So I thought of Suz last night when the kids next door were out playing a noisy game of basketball until eleven pm. In general, I adore kid noise. There is something both soothing and joyful about the sound of children shrieking and talking and even the thwock of ball on concrete and the thwang of ball against basketball rim have their own sort of pleasant rhythm. To an extent. And that extent, for me, is ten pm. However… it was not a school night. Carla was already asleep. My husband is at work today, but he is a night owl so wasn’t yet heading to bed. My internal monologue went something like:

Ugh. This is SO LOUD. And the basketball hoop is right outside my bedroom.

But it’s the first warm evening of the year, pretty much! And there’s no school tomorrow! And they are having so much fun!

What if I let this go tonight, and then they are out until midnight every night this summer?

Just chill out. They’ll go in eventually.

I could text their mom and say something cheerful about how fun it is to hear them playing, but maybe they could call it a night at ten?

You know your attempts at being breezy and cheerful often come across as strident and angry. What if you damage your relationship with the neighbor forever?

But she was so nice when we asked her to move the spotlight that was shining straight into our bedroom.

See? You’ve already used up your neighbor credits. Just put in some ear plugs. It’s not like you ever sleep anyway.

Maybe if they’re still out there at 10:30, I can just pop out the door and say, “Hey guys, can you head inside? We’re trying to sleep!”

OMG, don’t talk to the kids directly! Go through the mom! Go through the mom!

I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone about anything?

Oh. Right. Also, keep in mind that occasionally you allow Carla and her friends to play in the pool until pretty late at night.

Hmm. I guess that’s true. Not until ten, though!

Still. Better not rock the boat.

Anyway, they went in at eleven. I’m pretty sure the cut-off for noise stuff is ten, though… but I don’t want to rock the boat. Would you?

Speaking of summer, we have had a couple of nice summer-feeling days, and a couple of awful dropped-in-the-worst-humidity-of-summer-feeling days, and I am not excited for more of the latter. I get SO SWEATY. The older I get, the more I sweat; the more I sweat, the more painful rashes I develop (TMI alert: my underarms are a MESS right now), and I am not a fan. I’m doing a lot of googling about clinical strength antiperspirants, which is not so much my idea of fun reading. I’m also adding a lot of anti-chafing products to my various online shopping carts. If you are similarly afflicted, what are you go-tos?

The promise of warmer weather has enticed a variety of flying bugs to return. I’m all set with our mosquito repeller device (home depot / REI / amazon) for sitting outside, but I really wish there was a device I could wear while walking outdoors. Oh look! Thermacell has a portable repellant device (REI / thermacell / amazon) that I could try!

One thing that we are all excited about as summer approaches is the arrival of our cat. The breeder sent me some new photos of the kittens yesterday and they are so fuzzy and adorable I can hardly stand it. Between myself and Carla, the cute aggression is off the hook. We don’t know which kitten is ours yet; we are on a list and I think the people above us get priority to choose, or else the breeder assigns specific cats to people. They are all adorable so I am trying not to have a favorite.

(Not sure if I have spelled it out before, but we are getting a cat from a breeder; I acknowledge that this sounds kind of ridiculous yet here we are. I am allergic to cats, which means that I need A Special Cat that is less likely to be allergenic if I want to own one. The breed we are getting is Siberian, which supposedly has lower levels of the protein that triggers cat allergies. I hope you know that I would rescue ALL THE KITTENS at all the shelters if I could; I adore cats and would prefer to adopt one that needs rescuing, but alas.)

We are still debating cat names. My favorites (Craig, Stephen) have been rejected. Carla is now set on Leonardo, which I am not opposed to. My husband and I have latched onto Rick Steves, as a tribute to our favorite adorkable travel guide. I think Rick comes pleasingly close to Craig in terms of ridiculousness for a cat name, and Ricky is a great nickname. Plus I love the idea of envisioning a whole personality for our cat that involves khaki slacks, dad jokes, and a penchant for local beer, skipping the crowds, and drug policy reform.

Abrupt subject change: do I want an Oura ring? (best buy / amazon) Part of me thinks it would be cool to collect more data about the quality of my sleep and workouts. Part of me thinks it wouldn’t help or change anything. If you have an Oura ring, please tell me how it’s changed your life (or not).

Okay, Carla is awake and I want to snuggle her, exercise, and eat something before my dad arrives! See you on the flippety flop! (That means probably Monday.)

November 15, 2022 by suzanne day by day

Ask Me Anything Part 1: Books + Reading Questions

If you are new here, first of all, welcome!

Second of all, you may not be aware that I love to read. At the moment, I am in the middle of five books: The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup, The Wives by Taryn Fischer, The Art of Screen Time by Anya Kamenetz, Cultish by Amanda Montell, and Abel’s Island by William Steig.

(I also have a book blog, which I post at far too infrequently.)

While I am nowhere near as prolific a reader as many of the people reading this post, I tend to read around 75 books a year. Books are one of my favorite things, and one of my favorite topics. So I was delighted to get a few reading-specific questions when I first posted my Ask Me Anything form.

1) NGS asked, “What book do you recommend the most often?” and Stephany asked, “What books do you find yourself recommending over and over again?”

Book recommendations completely depend on who’s asking and what they’re looking for. One of my all-time favorite books – and the one that popped immediately into my head – is The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. I thought it was written so well, the prose was so tight, the style so unique, the emotion so vivid… It is an example, for me, of a perfect book. But I can also acknowledge that it probably won’t appeal to everyone! The person who recommended it to me, for instance, read it and said, “I see why you loved this so much.” But it wasn’t his favorite book, it didn’t rock his reading world in the same ways it did mine.

My favorite genre of books is mystery/thriller, and I think my top recommendations change with time. The Round House by Louise Erdrich was a beautiful, heartbreaking mystery that I absolutely adore. For a great mystery series, I don’t know that you can get any better than the Alphabet Mysteries by Sue Grafton, or the Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson, or Sophie Hannah’s Zailer and Waterhouse mysteries, or the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French, or maybe Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz series.

In thrillers, my favorites ebb and flow because there are so many fantastic novels being published every day. I adore A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne, because the writing quality is exquisite and the shape of the story is so unique and so well-fitted to the subject. The Push by Ashley Audrain had not only beautiful writing, but wonderful pacing. Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris was a heart-pounder with one of the worst villains I’ve ever encountered.

In historical fiction, of which I am admittedly not a connoisseur, I can’t imagine anything better than Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Although I did find Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone to be extremely engrossing, moving, and beautiful; it blends historical fiction with domestic suspense.

When it comes to romance, which is another genre I generally eschew, I find myself recommending The Royal We and its sequel, The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. One of my all-time favorite books is The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and that bridges speculative fiction and romance. Or, another all-time favorite, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss – which spans romance and literary fiction, and is one of the most beautiful, tender books I’ve ever read.

For literary fiction, the books that come to mind are The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagahira, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

We haven’t even touched on speculative fiction, or short stories, or non-fiction!

The horrible/wonderful truth of it is that there are SO MANY amazing books in the world, and none of us can ever read them all. But if you are looking for something specific, I probably have a recommendation for you.

2) NGS asked, “How do you fit in reading in your day?” If I read nothing else all day, I at least read before bed. One of the reasons I have multiple books going at a time is because I read via multiple methods. I usually have an audiobook, a print book (or several), and an ebook going all at once. When I dry my hair, which takes a good fifteen minutes, I read my Kindle. When I am in the car, or unloading groceries, or folding laundry, or going for a walk, I am listening to an audiobook. (Listening to audiobooks 100% counts as reading.) When I am waiting in the pickup line at school, or sitting outside one of Carla’s lessons or activities, I am reading. When I am eating lunch, I am reading. It adds up.

3) NGS asked, “Is Carla a big reader? What does she read?” Carla is what I might call a burgeoning reader. She has enjoyed audiobooks for years, especially everything by Beverly Clearly and Judy Blume. (I think she has listened to Socks about a hundred times.) Before around third grade, she didn’t have a whole lot of interest in reading books for herself outside of the Gerald and Piggie books by Mo Willems. But last year, she got really into a series called Bad Kitty, which she tore through… and then she found another series called Notebook of Doom, and we had to go to the library weekly until she’d finished every book.

Then, at the beginning of this year, I told her teacher that one of my goals for Carla is that she really love reading. Her teacher looked at me, very seriously, and said, “Oh, she will.” It seemed like mere days after fourth grade started that Carla had come home with a book – A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry – that she refused to put down. Suddenly, she was reading at meal times. She was rejecting my husband’s and my offers to read to her before bed in favor of reading to herself. She was gushing to me about the language style. She was dashing up to her room to get her book so she could take it to school. She was reading choice lines to me in the car. She was reading at recess.

It was like a switch had been flipped. Not only was she loving reading, but she was no longer intimidated by larger books with more words than pictures. She hasn’t found a book that has grabbed her quite like A Wolf Called Wander, but she is constantly in the middle of a book and she checks out huge piles of books from the library every time we go. It’s so gratifying to see her beginning to understand the magic of a really good book. (She is currently reading the newest Katharine Applegate book, Odder, which is a book in verse – a fact I did not know when I bought it for her. She is LOVING it.)

My husband and I still read to her every chance we get. He is currently reading her a book called The Name of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch, although I don’t think either of them loves it a whole lot. I am reading Abel’s Island to her, because it was one of my favorites as a kid. I have a whole stack of books from my childhood that I am “forcing” her to listen to; I usually read to her when she is eating dinner (which is almost always before my husband and I eat) and sometimes before bed.

I could talk about books and reading all day. (Which is why I started the book blog… but apparently I don’t have enough time/wherewithal to make it a daily habit. Sigh. Maybe someday.)

Are you a big reader? What are you reading now? What’s your favorite genre? What book do you find yourself recommending over and over?

(And if you have any questions for me, about reading or otherwise, feel free to fill out my Ask Me Anything form.)

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

May 19, 2017 by suzanne day by day

Kids’ Books That Have an Instructive Element

We have reached the stage of life where I am constantly searching for books that have some sort of teaching component.

Carla loves to read. And I find that reading a book about a topic and then discussing that topic and whatever lessons are inside it really help secure them in her brain.

But I am picky about the books.

The Berenstain Bears series is okay.

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We have Too Much TV and The Truth and both are all right. Not perfect – Papa Bear is (as many cartoon/children’s book fathers seem to be) kind of a dolt, who seems to have as much to work on as the cubs do. And that annoys me, for some reason. Not that parents in kids’ books shouldn’t be real and vulnerable and have their own struggles, but… I don’t know. There’s just something mildly irritating to me about how the Bear Family parents come across. They are SUPER CHEAP though, so that’s nice.

I love the Frances books.

We have A Birthday for Frances and Bread and Jam for Frances and we have checked out Bedtime for Frances from the library many, many times. They are not perfect either; I seem to recall that the father threatens to spank Frances in the bedtime story, and I am not a fan of that. But otherwise, I very much admire her parents’ calm, unflappable way of dealing with Frances’s antics. My biggest complaint about the Frances books, perhaps, is that there aren’t enough of them.

Last fall, we were getting some… feedback from Carla’s teachers that she may benefit from a refresher on listening and following directions. So I researched a bunch of books on the topic, looked them up at my local library (NOT IN THE SYSTEM AT ALL), and ordered a few highly-rated books from Amazon.

We read them each once.

(In case it’s not clear, I did not like ANY of them. I Just Want to Do It My Way would have been better titled “Staying on Task” or “Asking for Help” or something. And, in that book and in That Rule Doesn’t Apply to Me, I found the inconsistent rhyming and use of different fonts very irritating. Plus, they seemed to be geared toward a kid a bit older than Carla is. Which I guess isn’t the BOOK’S fault so much as mine. They are destined to be donated, I think. [To be fair, Why Should I Listen was okay. It showed multiple examples of a child not listening, and the consequences. And it also showed a few examples of how bad the child felt when others didn’t listen to him.])

Now, I am looking for books about talking to strangers and being polite and keeping your hands to yourself. I have a bunch in my Amazon cart, and I just need to order them. But what I keep wishing for is these books that I had as a kid.

At first, I couldn’t remember anything about them except that they covered a wide range of topics. But then I found them on Amazon! They belonged to a series by Joy Wilt Berry, and when I was a kid, the series was called “Let’s Talk About…” Looks like the originals came out in the early-to-mid 1980s. Of course, they are long out of print. (It seems like they got revised and republished a few times, as recently as 2000. But even those aren’t sold directly by Amazon.) (I haven’t looked for them anywhere else. YET.)

It makes me laugh to scroll through all the titles. If you take a look at the ones that I remember CLEARLY from my childhood, you may get a sense of what a delightful child I must have been.

I like to think I really absorbed the lessons of the books and have transformed into a polite, honest, non-greedy, hardworking, non-bossy person. But let’s be honest, I’m still not the neatest.

It’s comforting to think of my mother seeking out books in the same way I am now seeking books for my own daughter.

I suppose I can order used copies of some of them. I wonder if they hold up to my memory of them?

Anyway, I am wondering if YOU have any books of an instructive nature – about anything, really, from using good judgment to table manners to making friends to using an indoor voice and everything beyond – that you loved, as a child or as a parent.

In the meantime, I am going to go order some books from the Cheri J. Meiners Learning to Get Along series.