Books I Read in August

 

Another month has come and gone and once again it is time to share the books I have read for the month. August was a great month of reading as I frantically tried to finish off the last of my huge haul of books I borrowed before my mom arrived for her visit. I DID it!! Then I promptly started a book I own (on the 21st) that I finished on the last day of the month. Let me jump right in to share my thoughts about these wonderful books.

In light of her passing, it seems fitting to start with the Dolly Parton book even though I read it at the very beginning of the month. She did get the large display space as a way to honour her. This biography, "Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton" by Martha Ackmann was an excellent read, but I do MUCH prefer reading books written by Dolly personally. I learned even more about her though and continue to believe that I sadly underappreciated her and underestimated her for my entire life. I intend to change that from now on. She is a true role model if ever there was one. Though I am sad that she left this world, it has been heart warming to see her break the internet, change the social media algorithms, and make the streaming companies unite in sharing her movies. If you have never looked into her life I encourage you to do so.

"Bury Your Dead" by Louise Penny was read as part of the 52 Book Challenge Mystery Genre challenge. I started reading this wonderful series after recommendations from four different family members and friends so it is extra special that I can use them to complete my many reading challenges as well. This series is absolutely amazing. Louise Penny's character development is fantastic and I particularly loved that this book continued a story line from the previous book that I wasn't completely satisfied with.

"A Week in Winter" by Maeve Binchy was my last read for the month and was a book I own that I grabbed off the shelf once I finished all my library books. I wanted something that I knew I could set aside if I couldn't read once mom arrived. One of the things I love about Maeve Binchy books, especially her smaller ones, is that you can step away from them for a period of time if need be. Her choice in this book of each chapter being the "mini story" of each character within the overall storyline of the book was wonderful.

This brings me to the last three books I read this month which were all Moriarty books. My best friend got me hooked on Liane Moriarty books years ago. Then, for the main 2026 challenge of the 52 Book Challenge Book Club, two of the prompts were to choose a book written by related authors. Having never yet read a Nicola Moriarty book I decided that was the obvious choice. So, I read "Apples Never Fall" by Liane Moriarty and "The Fifth Letter" by Nicola Moriarty to fulfill the prompts for the challenge. Then as an extra bonus (and because my bestie highly recommended it) I read "Three Wishes" by Liane which was also wonderful. I have yet to read a Liane Moriarty book I have thoroughly enjoyed and now I have one of her sisters to enjoy too. There is a third sister who is ALSO an author but I will save her for sometime later. It has been an AMAZING month of reading.

Just to remind my readers, I'm sharing a collage of all the books I read aloud to the boys this month as well. But, as these have featured in my Weekly Review blog posts I will not write details here.

Finally, here are my end of month stats graphics that Storygraph generates for me. I really love this aspect of the program.

Term Three: Week Five ~ Preparation

First off, I had better tell my readers (though I think most already know) what is so special about the second half of this term. My mom/mum arrives this evening to spend a full month visiting with us!! It has been SEVEN years since she last was here and we are all very excited. So this week has been a week of preparation. The boys and I finished off any reading we had in progress and have found logical "pause places" for the Bible and The Book of Virtues. This is not to say we won't read those, just that we have stopped in a good place if we don't. Friday and Saturday (yesterday) we were all hands on deck for some deep cleaning and tidying around the house. All of my men put in tremendous effort and worked hard and I'm so thankful for their help. There will be no structured written work assigned or overseen by me. Munchkin has plans to continue working on his math independently, but otherwise school is finished for this term. We now switch to life learning and excursion learning.

I start this week with a couple of photos that were meant to be included last week but I forgot to retrieve them in time. In the giant London Plane tree next door we have discovered a Noisy Miner bird nest. I took the opportunity one evening to try photographing it with my DSLR camera. Now that the photos are downloaded on my computer and I can view them on the monitor, I am pleased with them. It is fun to watch the parents care for the nest through the day.

A progress photo of the Lego set as soon as we returned from church. This shows the work he completed on Saturday. He worked pretty consistently from 9am until about 6pm.

These are one of my favourite colours of the daisies that bloom at church.

By 6pm Sunday evening the Lego set was completely built. It took him a total of 24 hours (spread over four days) to complete. Then came the fun of determining where best to display the vehicle. After some careful thought it was decided it will live at the back of the coffee table for now. It is an impressive set and Monkey is really pleased with it.

Early Wednesday morning a flock of Bare Eyed Cockatoos perched (noisily) in the next door tree. They've been doing this most mornings lately so I decided to snap a quick photo. Later in the day both boys walked to the shopping centre with me and one of them spotted this lonely Lime bike helmet that had been thrown off the bridge we walk over.

As I mentioned, we finished off lots of books this week. We've paused our Julia Donaldson study as we wait for a couple other books to come from our libraries. The selections this week were wonderful. Favourites were the two Zog books, The Magic Paintbrush, and The Smeds and The Smoos. But really they were all wonderful. We also finished four non-fiction books. Two for each boy. Health and Body Systems (centre of the collage) were for Munchkin. I was thoroughly disappointed with the body systems book as it was poorly edited and full of errors. 537 Days of Winter and The Geography Book were for Monkey - though I read The Geography Book aloud to both of them. Monkey loved them both. We hadn't thought (during COVID) about the fact that there are always teams of people studying and working on the various stations in Antarctica. It was thrilling to learn how they handled the pandemic and how it ultimately affected them. The Geography Book was great also - just as all in this wonderful series are.

I had a bomb out in Wordle this week - so back to rebuilding my streak. But overall I'm happy given that I was distracted with the upcoming visit and all the plans that go with it.

From this coming week my blogging may pause. I will still take photos (many more than usual I'm sure) but due to a vastly different schedule I may have to pause the actual production of the blog until late September when we return to our regularly scheduled life program.

Term Three: Week Four ~ A Return to Normal

This week saw a return to our "normal schedule" with hubby arriving home Monday evening. He had a lovely time visiting with his mum and celebrating her birthday with her, AND it was wonderful to have him home with us again. 

A bit of gardening this week. Hubby brought home three little plants and they needed to be potted straight away. I believe the two little shoots in the top photo are orchids. I'm thankful there is rain in the forecast as I want all these plants to grow well.

We had a touch of rain on Wednesday, complete with a faint rainbow. It was actually a double rainbow but the top bow was too faint to pick up in a photo.

Thursday was the second exciting day of the week (next to Monday and hubby's return). A GIANT package arrived in the mail for Monkey and it was the Star Wars Lego set you see in the left photo. This is a set that Monkey wanted SO desperately that Monster agreed to buy it for him as his Christmas and birthday gifts for the next FIVE years! The left photo doesn't give a good size reference at all but Monkey requested I NOT share the photo of him holding the box. However, I can tell you that there are 5374 pieces to the set and the box weighs 11kg (22lbs). The photo on the right shows the chaos that has been my lounge room this week. Essentially this is a photo of Monkey (upper left corner) beginning the mammoth project of reading through the directions before he started building. But BEFORE this package arrived, Monkey and Munchkin had started sorting through a HUGE bag of gifted Lego (blue bag on the floor) looking for pieces for a particular set they want to build. It means they can sort and build and listen while I read.

We wrapped up all our reading for the week on Thursday. There are two collages again this week. The top collage displays the Julia Donaldson books we read this week. Our (well mine anyway) two favourites are displayed in the middle with the others in no particular order. Two of the books gave some non-fiction information at the end of the story and they were "The Woolly Bear Caterpillar" and "Jonty Gentoo". Monkey particularly liked the caterpillar book and it even included a little non-fiction book that was fastened to the inside cover with information and photographs (rather than illustrations) of all the different caterpillars discussed in the book. The second collage display were the two books I read with Munchkin this week. One book for history (WWI) and one book for science. Now we take a break from reading aloud as we have something special happening during the second half of this term.

Friday was a solo library trip for me. I ran a couple errands besides just the libraries so no photos of my trip. Just my usual book haul photos which you will notice are MUCH smaller than normal. In the left photo we have three books I returned and reborrowed as Monkey wasn't finished with them. I also borrowed a few more Julia Donaldson books and some Premiere's Reading Challenge books for Munchkin. I only picked up two books for my own independent reading as it will take a bit of a hit in September as well with our special event. So the photo on the right is my library bookshelf in my bedroom with only a very few books.

While I was enjoying my solo library trip the boys were enjoying an excursion with their youth group friends. We left the house together but split up mid trip. Monkey was in charge of sharing some photos of their day. They went to a special, limited time only, underground playground but he forgot to take photos in there because they were too busy. These are a couple of snaps he took outside.

There were BBQs in the playground and their friends brought sausages, bread, and various sauces so they could cook and eat lunch while they were there. Then they were treated to ice cream for dessert. This was Monkey's. It was watermelon flavoured apparently. 

The scary (you couldn't see the bottom apparently) and rickety (it was broken so didn't move) travelator they had to walk down to enter the playground. The photo above this one is of some of the artwork on the wall. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves though they did say the playground equipment was better suited for younger children. They also didn't have any swimming clothes with them so couldn't enjoy the sauna or the water feature that was part of the playground as well. 

But all in all, it was a good day out for them. We left the house just before 10am and they arrived home about 4:30pm. They are excited that there are plans in Term 4 for other such excursions.

Photo Credit for above five photos: Monkey

This exciting week would not be complete without Lego progress photos! This photo was taken Friday evening (just after 5pm) to show the progress Monkey made on Thursday. He resumed work on it as SOON as he returned from the city. He worked on it for about four hours Friday night.

 Work started again first thing Saturday morning. He and hubby had to get up at 8am to run an errand so when they returned at 9am he immediately started building again. This photo was taken at 9:22am to show his progress from Friday night. Stay tuned for further progress shots in my next blog post.

My Duolingo "achievement" for the week and two walks. One to the shopping centre and then my library walking on Friday.

A mixed Wordle week for me. I hit a new personal best streak of 41 days before bombing out. So now I start again. Two bombs in one week is not great, but I will keep going and see how long it takes me to beat this new streak.