Welcome to Good Book Season
Imagine this — You’ve been asked to teach a wellness workshop this weekend on a college campus for educators and graduate students. You’ve decided you’re going to talk about growth mindset and how powerful it can be for building personal wellness practices. You’re excited and a little nervous.
You wake up early on Sunday morning feeling far too jittery. (Thanks a lot, Blanche.) You read over your slides, make some tweaks to your notes, and you feel better. But as you start driving to the campus, the jitters resurface. You need something to calm you down, but what you don’t need is a distraction. You need focus and calm, and maybe a little strength. You have just the thing — a good book called Braiding Sweetgrass that you’ve been dabbling in for a few months now.
The story lands just right, picking back up at just the right lesson for this moment. You arrive feeling centered, focused, and incredibly grateful for the opportunity and the day ahead. You teach your workshop and come away feeling encouraged, inspired, and so thankful you were able to give a little of yourself, but also like you learned far more than you taught (as you usually do when you teach these sorts of things).
The experience leaves you spent, and you spend the rest of your weekend hours reading lazily on the back porch. It’s summer, after all, and so many new books are hitting the shelves right now, so many used book shops flooded with good book arrivals from folks cleaning out and donating (unfathomable as it is to give away books, I LOVE those people).
You have plenty of good books in your TBR pile to choose from. You start reading and can’t stop. The weekdays begin, and you keep reading every spare moment you get. Pretty quickly, you realize something — this is your “good book season”.
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That’s where I’ve been this past week, my friend, so good books are taking over my five little things for this week.
I hope you love them ⤵
A good book I just finished. . .
Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish is technically a middle-grade novel, but if it’s going to be required reading for anyone, I believe it should be required reading for people in their midlife season. It’s a beautiful story about friendship, loss, and learning how to be yourself in the world. I’m definitely adding it to my growing list of favorite middle-grade novels (link here).
A new novel I’m reading on audio. . .
I met writer and author Kevin Wilson at a writing workshop last year (which you may remember from this blog post) and instantly decided I’ll read anything and everything he publishes from now on. So when I saw his new release Run for the Hills hit the shelves last week, I couldn’t buy it fast enough. The audio version is narrated by the amazing Marin Ireland, who has narrated several of his other titles, and it’s gorgeous.
A memoir I’m reading in hardback. . .
Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart is both outstanding and heartbreaking. It’s the story of a young woman losing her mother and building a memorial to her in written form, something that resonates with me so deeply. The writing is stellar, and the stories are mouth-wateringly gorgeous. Highly recommend this one.
Books I’m letting go of . . .
I’m letting go of books I don’t want to finish — most recently, I’m letting go right in the middle of We Can Do Hard Things, Notes on Infinity, and sadly, Malibu Rising, all in the span of a couple of weeks. Whether they’re repetitive, have tired, predictable plots, or just don’t fit my current season, I’m reshelving them, removing the audio files from my device, and not looking back. I may come back. I may not. Either way, it feels good to let go and open up space for other good books right now.
Something I’m hanging onto. . .
I’m hanging onto this moment. Just this one, right here. Whatever it has for me. Trying not to think too much about anything else, just this, just now — a practice I’m learning from a little book I keep in my purse called The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh.
Up next for “good book season”. . .
I have a thrifted copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ready and waiting at the top of my TBR pile. I adored the movie and have been aching to read the book for ages now.
Wherever you are this weekend, whatever’s going on in your heart and taking up space in your mind, I’m sending you love for your own “good book season”, too.
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Happy reading,
Celeste
