Shala K. Howell's Blog, page 10

Wordless Wednesday: School’s out!

Well, that’s a wrap for this school year. Congratulations to every member of the Class of 2020, wherever you may be.

[image error]Congratulations, graduates! (Photo: Shala Howell)

Welcome to summer, y’all.

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Puzzle Review: The Love Stamp Puzzle from White Mountain Puzzles

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but puzzles aren’t just for passing time during the holidays anymore. The demand for puzzles has gotten so high lately that puzzles are getting ridiculously hard to find, and often shockingly expensive.

Check any manufacturer’s website, and you’ll find most of their puzzles listed as Out of Stock (eg., White Mountain Puzzles, Springbok, Ravensburger). Puzzles I’d normally expect to pay $15-20 for are retailing for $50+ on Amazon. Even the U.S. Postal Store, not the first place I’d think of to look for puzzles, has sold out. It’s insane.

I was lucky enough to snag one of the Love Stamp puzzles from the U.S. Postal Store before they sold out last month, and it finally came last week.

Product Review: The Love Stamp Puzzle by White Mountain Puzzles



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Genre: 1000 piece jigsaw
puzzlePublisher: White Mountain
PuzzlesSize: 20 in. x 27 in.Designer: Lois B. SuttonSource: U.S. Postal Store
(Purchase)PGR:



Stamp puzzles are ridiculously fun

Normally, when I work a puzzle I spend some time sorting the pieces by type and color first into a series of sorting trays, like this set from Bits & Pieces. Edge pieces go into one tray regardless of pattern or color, and I sort the middle pieces by pattern or color into the others.

I really hate doing this, but since it makes the rest of the puzzle so much nicer to solve, especially when more than one person wants to work on it, I go ahead and do it anyway.

In this puzzle, though, each stamp was so distinctive that sorting the puzzle would mean essentially solving it before I’d even started piecing it together. So I didn’t bother. I just worked the puzzle a few stamps at a time right out of the box.

I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing it was to work a puzzle this way. It was like eating cake for dinner.

[image error]Love Stamp puzzle in progress. (Photo: Shala Howell)

White Mountain Puzzles are some of my favorite puzzles to work anyway, because the pieces themselves are thick and smoothly cut. If two pieces are meant to go together, they slot together easily. There’s no ambiguity, as there can be with other less-well made brands. If you have to force the piece at all, it’s not a match. This puzzle was no exception.

There were a few downsides to this puzzle, but to be fair, only one of them is actually the puzzle’s fault.

First, because I hadn’t sorted the pieces, when The Thirteen-Year-Old showed up to help, I couldn’t simply hand her a sorting tray and let her get to work like I usually do. Instead, I had to hand her the box and wait while she identified pieces for her target stamp. She did not enjoy hunting through the 750+ remaining pieces for the 30 or so she needed for her chosen stamp, so wandered off after about 10 minutes, never to return. That was a shame.

Second, when I took the puzzle apart, I noticed that if I wasn’t extremely careful, some of the front paper would peel off the backing. I don’t remember that being a problem with other White Mountain Puzzles, but it was definitely an issue with this one.

Finally, I had so much fun working the puzzle, I spent more time on it this week than I normally would, so this 1000-piece puzzle didn’t take as long as I’d like.

Overall, though, I had a great time working this puzzle and would absolutely do another stamp-themed puzzle (maybe even this one) again.

[image error]All done. (Photo: Shala Howell)



Where to find puzzles now that they seem to be a scarce resource

Sadly, the U.S. Post Office seems to have sold out of their puzzles, and at the time I prepared this post the Postal Store no longer had a listing for the Love Stamp puzzle at all. White Mountain Puzzles also lists the Love Stamp puzzle as being out of stock. However, Amazon has a large number of other stamp-based puzzles available for you to try.

In general, if you’re having a hard time sourcing puzzles from your usual spots, you might try Bits & Pieces or your local independent book store. Bookstores often stock puzzles, even if they don’t list them on their website. You may need to call them to find out if they carry puzzles, and if they have one available you might enjoy. I expect your local bookseller will be happy to help you out if they can.

Alternatively, you might reach out to friends who also like to work puzzles and see if they might be interested in a puzzle swap. I wish I could take credit for this quietly brilliant plan, but it comes to me by way of my sister-in-law, who texted me last week to set up our first swap.

What about you?

Do you have any good tips for finding puzzles? Have you picked up any new (or refreshed any old) hobbies while sheltering-in-place?

Related Links:

More Book Reviews on Caterpickles U.S. Postal Store, which in addition to having stamps and mailing supplies, has a fun assortment of postal-themed gifts year-roundWhite Mountain Puzzles, manufacturer of the Love Stamp PuzzleBits and Pieces

Wordless Wednesday: Mood this week

Here in California, kids are given a taste of summer over the long Memorial Day weekend, then are expected to show up for two more weeks of school. I have always found these last two weeks to be the hardest weeks of the entire year. Even though everything else about this spring’s school setup has been different, this clawing-our-way-to-the-end-of-the-school-year feeling remains the same.

[image error]Are we done yet? (Photo: Shala Howell)

I hope you and yours are still doing as well as can be expected.

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More of what I’ve been reading while we #stayathome

Today marks 11 (!) weeks since we began sheltering-in-place. The local public health commissioners in Santa Clara continue to open things a bit more slowly than the state overall, and wait two weeks in-between loosening to see what effect, if any, the easing up had on COVID-19 spread. Masks are becoming a more frequent sight on the streets as well, so I’m continuing my mask training. Until I build a mask tolerance high enough to wander about in public, I’ve continued to spend most of my time tucked away at home, writing, baking, cleaning, knitting, and of course, reading.

Here are two of the books that have kept me company these past few weeks.

Dance of Thieves by Mary Pearson







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Genre: Young Adult FantasyPublisher: Henry Holt & CompanyYear Published: 2018Format: HardbackSource: LibraryPGR:



Book Summary: Dance of Thieves

“A formidable outlaw family that claims to be the first among nations.

“A son destined to lead, thrust suddenly into power.

“Three fierce young women of the Rahtan, the queen’s premier guard.

“A legendary street thief leading a mission, determined to prove herself.

“A dark secret that is a threat to the entire continent.

“When outlaw leader meets reformed thief, a cat-and-mouse game of false moves ensues, bringing them intimately together in a battle that may cost them their lives―and their hearts.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

This book turns out to be the first of a planned second trilogy set in the world of Mary E. Pearson’s Remnant Chronicles. I haven’t yet read the first trilogy set in Remnant, but that wasn’t a problem. There were plenty of references to past history, but the book itself works as a stand-alone entry point to Remnant.

So far, the characters in this series have rich emotional lives that keep me invested, while the stakes of the story itself feel delightfully heist-like. I do love a good heist story. I look forward to reading more in this series.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton



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Genre: Adult MysteryPublisher: Sourcebooks LandmarkYear Published: 2018Format: PrintSource: PurchasePGR:



Book Summary: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“Gosford Park” meets “Groundhog Day” by way of Agatha Christie – the most inventive story you’ll read this year.

“Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed… again.

“It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.

“But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

“The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath…”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

I picked this book up on a whim on a trip to Target in the Before Times. The premise was intriguing (“Gosford Park” meets “Groundhog Day” meets Agatha Christie = a book absolutely tailored to my interests). Although I started reading it before I even left the store, I stopped reading after only a few pages. I could tell it was one of those books I would need to pay close attention to, and in the Before Times, I had places to go that were very good at distracting me.

In the end, I’m glad I saved it for quarantine, because while the book is technically a murder mystery, it’s leavened with time-travel, and spiced with a dash of Knives Out-style gamesmanship and a healthy dollop of psychological thriller.

The plotting is extremely intricate, as you might expect from that description. The main character is tossed into seven different bodies over the course of seven days, but those seven days don’t happen sequentially in the narrative.

I suspect I missed a ton of clues while I was figuring out the mechanics of the plot, and that as a result, I’d probably enjoy this book even more on a second read-through. Hence the five-coffee cup rating. This book is excellent company in a pandemic, and I will definitely be reading it again.

Reminder: My Pandemic Guest Rating Scale

: Great Guest! I would absolutely read more books by this author during the pandemic. I might even reread this one.

: Good Guest. I enjoyed our time together and would look for more books from this writer, even if I don’t read this particular one again.

: Meh. The book was fine, and I don’t regret reading it, but I may not look for more from this author right now. Maybe after the pandemic.

: Would Not Invite Again. The book itself was good enough to finish, but I wouldn’t read more from this author.

: So Many Regrets. If I am doing this right, I’ll never use this ranking, because it basically means I forced myself to power through a book I didn’t enjoy.

As a reminder, you can see everything I’ve read so far (and its preliminary Pandemic Guest Rating), on my Read in quarantine Twitter thread or my Goodreads page.

Number of books remaining on my Currently Reading list: 42, up from 39.

I’ve been struggling with finishing things again, and am slipping back into the habit of starting more books than I can finish in a week. We started watching a classic spy movie a few weeks ago (The Spy Who Came In From the Cold), which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read John Le Carre for a while, so I started reading Call for the Dead.

Then my current audiobook ran out, and I needed a replacement. I started listening to What’s Bred in the Bone by Robinson Davies because its audiobook was readily available from my local library, only to discover that while I liked the story, I hated the narrator. Fortunately, we had a copy of What’s Bred in the Bone on our shelves at home already, so I returned the audiobook and started reading it in print. That left me without an audiobook to keep me company while walking, cleaning, and knitting, so I started listening to The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu).

Just like that, my Currently Reading list had swelled to 42.

Related Links

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)More book reviews on Caterpickles

Wordless Wednesday: Flowering bushes

I spotted these flowering bushes on a walk through my neighborhood last April.

[image error]Photo: Shala Howell.

I hope you and yours are still doing as well as can be expected.

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Wordless Wednesday: Roses

If roses are in bloom, you know I’m going to post pictures of them.

[image error]Photo: Shala Howell.



[image error]Photo: Shala Howell

I hope you and yours are still doing as well as can be expected.

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Book Review: Glass Houses by Louise Penny

We are in Week 9 of sheltering-in-place, and I finally feel settled enough to implement a routine that involves spending some time doing creative writing every week. I think finally having the emotional bandwidth to risk writing poorly on a regular basis somewhere other than on my blog or in my journal is an excellent sign. Maybe one day soon I’ll even have enough emotional reserve to indulge my curiosity by exploring some random question in an obnoxiously in-depth manner.

I hope that you also find yourself in a more comfortable place, if not now, then soon.

I didn’t post last week, but I have been reading. I’ve only reviewed one book in this post, though, because the review is on the longer side.

Glass Houses by Louise Penny



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Genre: Adult MysteryPublisher: Minotaur BooksYear Published: 2017Format: AudiobookSource: LibraryPGR:



Book Summary: Glass Houses

“When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines one cold November day, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. Then wary. Through rain and sleet, the figure stands unmoving, staring ahead.

“From the moment the creature’s shadow falls over the village, Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Quebec, suspects it has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing. What can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized.

“But when the figure vanishes overnight and a body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to discover if a debt has been paid or levied.

“Months later, on a steamy July day, as the trial for the accused begins in Montréal, Chief Superintendent Gamache continues to struggle with actions he set in motion that bitter November from which there is no going back. More than the accused is on trial. Gamache’s own conscience is standing in judgment.

“In her latest utterly gripping book, number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny shatters the conventions of the crime novel to explore what Gandhi called the court of conscience. A court that supersedes all others.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

Published in 2017, the central question of Glass Houses is one that hits me hard as an US reader in 2020. It’s couched in the war against drugs, but must be a question that law enforcement and intelligence officers struggle with every day. Basically, how much of an increase in crime/corruption is it ok to tolerate in the interest of waiting until you can make the sort of final strike that takes the entire criminal organization down?

If you choose to use your resources to strike at the top instead of tinkering at the edges with a series of smaller arrests, what toll does that take on you as you watch the citizens you are sworn to protect suffer while you wait for the right time to act?

How do you know if/when you’ve tolerated too much? And when the costs become even greater than you feared, do you stick with the plan or jump early and risk doing all of that work, tolerating all of that added pain and corruption, for nothing?

In Glass Houses, we see Gamache wrestle with each of these questions, and are given an intimate portrait of the toll it takes on him, his lieutenants, the various government officials roped into this scheme either with or without their explicit consent, and the villagers of Three Pines. There is a fair amount of mental philosophizing about the pros and cons of all of this, but I found it fascinating.

Before I go, a word about format

If you haven’t listened to one of Louise Penny’s books as an audiobook yet, but have a convenient way to do so without incurring an unaffordable expense, I highly recommend that you treat yourself to one of the three narrated by Robert Bathurst (#11-13). Robert Bathurst is a relatively new narrator for the series (the first 10 were narrated by Ralph Cosham), and while Cosham was fine, I like Bathurst much better.

When done well, listening to an audiobook is like treating yourself to a private theatrical performance, and in my opinion, Bathurst has a broader emotional range than Cosham. Both Cosham and Bathurst capture the darker aspects of the narrative, namely the pain/anger/angst in the murderer, the villagers, the victim, Gamache, and his officers. But Bathurst has better comedic timing, and does a better job drawing out the humor in the villagers and their interpersonal relationships without making them appear ridiculous. It turns out that the dialogue between the residents of Three Pines can be laugh out loud funny, and not just the comfortable rudeness of people who know each other all too well.

After listening to Bathurst’s interpretation of Glass Houses, I gained a much deeper appreciation of the role Ruth in particular plays in these novels. How much of that is the story Penny wrote and how much the way Bathurst interpreted it is a little hard to sort out, but Bathurst’s interpretation of Ruth definitely helped.

Finally, if you do decide to listen to Glass Houses as an audiobook, I highly recommend that you stick around for the Author’s Note (read by Louise Penny herself), and for the conversation between Penny and Robert Bathurst at the end of the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed both.

Reminder: My Pandemic Guest Scale

: Great Guest! I would absolutely read more books by this author during the pandemic. I might even reread this one.

: Good Guest. I enjoyed our time together and would look for more books from this writer, even if I don’t read this particular one again.

: Meh. The book was fine, and I don’t regret reading it, but I may not look for more from this author right now. Maybe after the pandemic.

: Would Not Invite Again. The book itself was good enough to finish, but I wouldn’t read more from this author.

: So Many Regrets. If I am doing this right, I’ll never use this ranking, because it basically means I forced myself to power through a book I didn’t enjoy.

As a reminder, although I’m only reviewing a subset of the books here, you can see everything I’ve read so far (and its preliminary Pandemic Guest Rating), on my Read in quarantine Twitter thread or my Goodreads page.

Number of books remaining on my own Currently Reading list: Holding steady at 39.

Related Links

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)What I’ve been reading while we #stayathome (Caterpickles)More book reviews on Caterpickles

Wordless Wednesday: Flowers

Wordless Wednesdays in spring cry out for photos of spring flowers. I took these pictures on a walk in Sausalito, California a couple of years ago.

[image error]Photo: Shala Howell.

I hope you and yours are still doing as well as can be expected.

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What I’ve been reading while we #stayathome

Today marks 7 weeks since we began sheltering-in-place. Although some of the restrictions on our daily life have been lifted — landscaping and construction are allowed now, for example — we non-essential workers are still asked to remain at home as much as possible. And of course, schools remain closed and we’re still not allowed to socialize with anyone we don’t actually live with.

With all the extra cooking, cleaning, and educating sheltering-in-place entails, I find I haven’t had much left in the well when it comes to writing. Fortunately, my reading skills remain intact. This would be so much harder to endure if I lost the ability to read.

What I look for from books these days is a bit different than it was in the before times. Life in a pandemic is definitely too precious to waste reading books I don’t enjoy, so I am being utterly ruthless about setting aside books that don’t work for me for one reason or another. In that respect, telling you that a book is well-written is a complete waste of time. The mere fact that I finished it means the writer meant my standards for good story-telling.

Instead, I’ve decided to rank these books on whether they are good company during a pandemic.

Pandemic Guest Rating Scale:

: Great Guest! I would absolutely read more books by this author during the pandemic. I might even reread this one.

: Good Guest. I enjoyed our time together and would look for more books from this writer, even if I don’t read this particular one again.

: Meh. The book was fine, and I don’t regret reading it, but I may not look for more from this author right now. Maybe after the pandemic.

: Would Not Invite Again. The book itself was good enough to finish, but I wouldn’t read more from this author.

: So Many Regrets. If I am doing this right, I’ll never use this ranking, because it basically means I forced myself to power through a book I didn’t enjoy.

One last note before we plow ahead

I’ve read 17 books since quarantine started. It’s wildly impractical to tell you about all of them here, so I’m going to limit each post to five books from (hopefully) five different genres. I’ll keep posting reviews periodically until I run out of books.

Don’t want to wait for the posts?

See everything I’ve read so far (and its preliminary Pandemic Guest Rating), on my Read in quarantine Twitter thread or my Goodreads page.

Lord Sunday (Keys to the Kingdom #7) by Garth Nix







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Genre: Middle Grade FantasyPublisher: ScholasticYear Published: 2010Format: AudiobookSource: LibraryPGR:



Book Summary: Lord Sunday

“On the seventh day, there was a choice.

“The House is falling apart, and when it is destroyed, all existence will be destroyed with it, Arthur Penhaligon and his friends Leaf and Suzy are caught in the chaos, separated by events but drawn together in their fight to survive. They must use every power at their disposal – magical or practical – to defeat the enemies attacking them from all sides.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

By Book #7, the crisis in the series and the mechanisms through which the story will be told have become fairly clear. Something will happen either on Earth or within the House that requires Arthur, a middle schooler now grown unusually tall for his age, to fall out of time and into the House to confront a new and ever more deadly threat. Each of the Trustees of the House personifies a different deadly sin. For example, Mister Monday is consumed by sloth, Grim Tuesday by avarice, and Drowned Wednesday by gluttony.

As Arthur confronts each Trustee, the magic of the House begins to fail, throwing the House and by extension, the Earth, into chaos and war. To save his family (and the universe), Arthur must defeat Lord Sunday and claim the final key to the House.

Overall, this series has enough emotional resonance to keep me invested in the characters. And yet the events in the book are unreal enough that the story never required more emotional bandwidth than I could offer.

Note: The deadly threat in Mister Monday (Keys to the Kingdom #1) is a pandemic. This may not be the best series to start if you’re sensitive to things like that right now.

Verses for the Dead (Pendergast #18) by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child



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Genre: Adult Mystery/ThrillerPublisher: Grand Central PublishingYear Published: 2018Format: AudiobookSource: LibraryPGR:



Book Summary: Verses for the Dead

“After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI’s New York field office, Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famously rogue agent must now work with a partner.

“Pendergast and his new teammate, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to Miami Beach, where a rash of killings by a bloodthirsty psychopath is distinguished by a confounding M.O.: cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them–along with cryptic handwritten letters–at local gravestones, unconnected save for one bizarre detail: all belonged to women who committed suicide.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

There is something comforting about returning to a series with so many predictable plot elements. I know what I’m going to get with a Pendergast mystery down to the language in which the characters are going to be described and the relative gruesomeness of the murders, and that sort of familiarity is especially valuable to me right now.

I started reading these books back in the day when print was the only option. Over the years, I began reading them as ebooks. But lately, I’ve taken to simply checking the audiobooks out as they become available from my local library.

Although they had different narrators for the earlier books in the series, Rene Auberjonois has narrated every Pendergast audiobook I’ve listened to so far. At first, I didn’t care for his style. He was a little too snooty for my taste.

Listening to this book in quarantine however, I no longer mind the little extra touch of arrogance that creeps into his voice when he explains yet again that Pendergast is one of the few humans to have ever mastered the deep meditative art of Chongg Ran, taught to him in only a year by Tibetan monks. It turned what could have been an irritating repetitive description into an essential part of the Pendergast experience. The sheer campiness of it was oddly comforting. This, at least, remains the same.

The Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel #1) by Connie Willis



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Genre: Adult Sci-Fi/Time TravelPublisher: Bantam Spectra Year Published: 1992Format: ebookSource: Previously-owned copyPGR:



Book Summary: The Doomsday Book

“For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity’s history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin–barely of age herself–finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

Before COVID-19, this was a 5-coffee book for me. I’ve read it a few times over the years, and it has always been a reliably enjoyable time. Naturally, it was one of the first books I turned to when looking for a comfort read for my sheltering-in-place experience.

Sadly, it turns out that reading about a plague killing off every member of a household in a world that had no medical tools capable of defeating it was not a great choice for the early days of a pandemic sparked by a hitherto unknown illness to which the average person appears to have no immunity. The bits about how difficult and frantic a task contact tracing can be remain interesting, as were the snide comments in the modern half of the novel about how terrible Americans are at dealing responsibly with epidemics.

But the effect of the Black Death on the uninoculated back in the Middle Ages, and really, even just the effect of the new strain of flu introduced into the modern day population of Oxford hit just a little too close to home.

That said, I love Connie Willis and know I’ll read more from her one day. Just maybe not during the pandemic.

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym



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Genre: Cozy satirePublisher: Open Road Media (ebook edition)Year Published: First Published 1950Format: ebookSource: PurchasePGR:



Book Summary: Some Tame Gazelle

“Barbara Pym is a master at capturing the subtle mayhem that takes place in the apparent quiet of the English countryside. Fifty-something sisters Harriet and Belinda Bede live a comfortable, settled existence. Belinda, the quieter of the pair, has for years been secretly in love with the town’s pompous (and married) archdeacon, whose odd sermons leave members of his flock in muddled confusion. Harriet, meanwhile, a bubbly extrovert, fends off proposal after proposal of marriage. The arrival of Mr. Mold and Bishop Grote disturb the peace of the village and leave the sisters wondering if they’ll ever return to the order of their daily routines. Some Tame Gazelle, first published in Britain nearly 50 years ago, was the first of Pym’s nine novels.”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

Barbara Pym’s debut novel is filled with subtle mayhem and sly commentary on the mesh of relationships and romantic interests in a small English countryside village. In other words, it’s exactly what I needed after the peril of the Doomsday book. I can already tell Pym is going to become a frequent guest during this pandemic.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari



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Genre: Nonfiction/HistoryPublisher: HarperYear Published: 2015Format: PrintSource: PurchasePGR:



Book Summary: Sapiens

“From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be human.

“One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?”

From the book description on Goodreads

Pandemic Guest Rating:

Full disclosure — I’ve been reading Sapiens on and off for about 18 months. It’s taken me a while because although Sapiens is fascinating, if I read it for too long, I end up not liking humans all that much. We can be so short-sighted and are just plain bad at sharing. It’s a depressing view of humanity, and one I could only read in short doses even in the Before Times. It’s especially hard to take right now, which is why I’ve only given Sapiens a 2-coffee cup Pandemic Guest Rating here.

Note: If you visit my Goodreads page, you’ll see that I gave it four-stars there. The disparity is simply this: Timing. Sapiens both taught me a lot and challenged me to think differently about things I tend to overlook or take for granted. Those are features I normally like in a nonfiction book. But Sapiens doesn’t have the optimistic worldview I need in a pandemic read.

Number of books remaining on my own Currently Reading list: 39, down from 40 last week.

Related Links

Reading Goals 2020 (Caterpickles)More book reviews on Caterpickles

Wordless Wednesday: Canelo

Canelo, relaxing after doing a bit of light reading.

[image error]Photo: Michael Howell.

I hope you and yours are still doing as well as can be expected.

Related Links:

More Wordless Wednesdays on Caterpickles