Bookish Resolutions - Month 1 Update

In January, I set some goals for the year and now it's time to see how I did for the first month. The challenge is called Bookish Resolutions, and it's hosted by Laura @ trips down imagination road and Michelle @ Because Reading. I didn't set my goals until midway through the month, and I must admit that I did not do well in this first month. But it sounds like this may be considered a bit of a practice month!

Here are my goals and my progress for January:

Reading Goals

Read 60 books by the end of the year ~ I've read 4 books so far. 4x12 is only 48...
Read 5 books that I already own as of today (1/17) ~ 0
Read every book chosen for my book club this year ~ so far on track
Commit to reading no more than 2 review books per month ~ I read two in January

Blogging Goals

Write a weekly reading recap every week ~ I missed last week but hit all the others
Write at least one review each week ~ I missed one week
Visit and comment on 5 blogs per week ~ not doing well on this one at all
Send out Book Club Picks newsletter every month ~ sent January's on time

Personal Goals

Fit in three workouts per week ~ not yet but I did work out on Monday...
Drink 64 ounces of water per day ~ I think I'm doing okay with this one
Get 7500 steps in at least 5 days per week ~ nope

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Banned Books Week: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

This is the end of Banned Books Week and unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to write about banned books this year. But I did want to include at least one post about it, so today I wanted to share one of the book series that it seems most people are surprised to find on the list: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park.

According to Wikipedia:
The Junie B. Jones series came in at #71 on the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books from 2000-2009. Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar. This is an interesting example of a banned book. Many times there are serious, controversial topics featured in books that are challenged. Things like homosexuality, drugs, vulgar language, etc. You can actually understand why people may not want their children to read those books, and why they may challenge their inclusion in school libra…

April Reading Review

Where exactly did April go? I swear it was just the middle of March and now it's May. Once again, I'm going to provide a quick review of each of the books I read last month. For the last two weeks of the month, I participated in the Spring Into Horror Readathon hosted by Michelle at Seasons of Reading. The only rule was that you had to read at least one book that was horror, thriller, etc. I read one book that qualified. With the exception of the first book in my list, the books I mention below were read during the readathon

My book club's May selection was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I had started reading this nonfiction book about the author's work representing men, women and children who were on death row in March but finished the book in April. This is an eye-opening story that everyone at my book club discussion agreed should be required reading for law schools and police officers and even legislators who are making the laws related to judgements. I learned to…

Getting back to blogging

It seems that blogging has dropped to the bottom of my list for the past year, and was pretty low for the year or two prior to that. I love to read, and am continuing to do so, but as my regular readers know I haven't been around much. My last blog post was almost a year ago!!

There are many things that have taken me away from blogging. Work has been much more challenging and interesting these past few years, but that means I really don't want to get back on the computer when I get home at night - or on the weekends.

Family life has been more busy with kids having multiple activities in the evenings, leaving little time to just hang out and write about the books that I read.

I will admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, which means way too much time spent scrolling through my newsfeed instead of doing something more productive. This is one of the things I'm working on and hoping that this will free up some time for getting back to the blog.

Overall, life is good. Work is …

My Book Retreat

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