Sunday Post – 5/05/2024

May 5, 2024 Sunday Post 14

The Sunday Post is hosted by the wonderful Kimberly, the Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, recap the past week, take a look ahead, and showcase our new treasures—I mean books!

This week I’m also participating in The Sunday Salon hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz, and Stacking the Shelves hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality.

The Past Week

In real life: My wrist and thumb are still sore, and I don’t have a lot of strength in my right hand, but it’s making progress in terms of mobility. That means I have been able to make a little headway on the house. I’m working on decluttering my study; it’s going slowly but it already looks a little better.

We had a second contractor come yesterday to look at the deck, and liked his proposal. Hopefully we’ll get an estimate from him this week.

The tree guy is coming mid-week to take out some trees (some dead, some on their way to it) and trim back some branches of other trees that are impinging on the house. Sadly, we will lose the branches where the birds perch in view of the windows, but we have to protect the house. Some of these are tall, fast-growing trees with a tendency to have entire branches die and fall off. One big branch took out the windshield of one of our cars about 15 years ago, and we have had a few near misses in the last few years. Once the deck is rebuilt, I want to put up a birdfeeder again, and maybe another one in the front, outside my study window.

Writing accountability: My minimum goal is an achievable 250 words every day (fiction or other creative writing; book reviews don’t count.) Keeping the goal low is working really well; I can write 250 words in under an hour (and usually in less than half an hour), so I know I can squeeze it in. In the past week: I wrote 7 days this week, all on the first draft of a fanfic I’m working on. Word count for the week: 4,217 words (my goal was 1,750 for the week.) I am using 4theWords to gamify my writing sprints. I finished the April Camp NaNoWriMo having more than doubled my goal of 7,500 words: I wrote 18672 words in the month of April!

Recent Posts

Looking Ahead

  • Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree (audiobook review)
  • Happy Mother’s Day! Sunday Post – 5/12/2024

What I’ve Been Reading/Watching

Reading: I continued reading The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton (ARC) and NaNoWriMo Inspirations by Dave Farland. I started reading Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke. Funny thing about that one — I saw it as a “read-now” digital review copy on Edelweiss, and thought it was a new release. I remembered seeing it elsewhere recently and thinking I’d like to read it (because 60-year-old fantasy chosen-one heroine, y’all!) So on an impulse, I downloaded it from Edelweiss. Turns out, I had already bought it on sale at Amazon at the beginning of the month! Oops.

This weekend, I started A Deceptive Composition, the 12th Lady Darby mystery by Anna Lee Huber, which I will be buddy-reading with Sophia Rose, who reviews at Books of My Heart and elsewhere. And I started The Magic of Four by Celia Lake.

Listening to: I finished Bookshops & Bonedust and loved it! (Review coming soon.) In podcasts, I finished up season 9 of the Writing Excuses podcast.

Watching: Poor Mr. Bookwyrm had to work late a lot of this past week, so I finally got back to watching A Discovery of Witches, Season 2. We did manage to watch episodes 2 and 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, Season 5. And we squeezed in several of the monologues from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, although we are still more than a week behind at this point.

Playing: Some of the NYT word games, mostly Wordle, Connections, and the Spelling Bee. The NYT is beta-testing a new game called Strands, which I like. I also played Pokémon Go occasionally.

Added to the Hoard

For Review or Consideration

Many thanks to Berkley for A Deceptive Composition, and Michem Publishing for Becoming Crone.

Purchased or Free (Kindle, print, or audio)

Kindle: The Midnight Village; Spellbound at Pemberly; The Three Dahlias; The Magic of Four; The Enigma of Room 622

(Click title for Goodreads page or my review.)

Stay kind and hopeful… and may your books bring you joy this week!

Related Posts

14 Responses to “Sunday Post – 5/05/2024”

  2. sjhigbee

    I am so pleased that you have got your hand back! I am also beginning a major declutter throughout the house. And yes… given the severity of storms and high winds we are all getting these days, being mindful of trees near the house has to become the norm. I love the look of all your books – have a great week, Lark.

  3. aimee can read

    So glad your hand’s healing nicely! We’re also waiting to get contractors’ estimates for our own home renovation, so that’s cool that we’re both anticipating the same things right now. 😊 Have an awesome week! <3

  6. Rachel @Waves of Fiction

    It’s a bummer to lose trees and expensive to take them out, but yes it’s more important to protect your house! I’m sure once it’s all done and you get the birdfeeders set up again you’ll get the birds back. I love bird watching! I’m looking forward to the new Lady Darby installment! Hope you and Sophia enjoy your read-along!
    Rachel @Waves of Fiction recently posted…Sunday Post #249My Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      Thank you, Anne! I need to keep doing the exercises they suggested for my hand. Hopefully I won’t need to do in-office PT as well. And I hope our projects go well… and that I can find a handyman/woman to do some inside work, too. Plus we have a lot to do to get ready to have the new flooring put in. Good luck with your house maintenance stuff, too!

  8. Jan

    Looks like some good books on the way to your reading shelf. I love bookshop and bonedust. Discovery of witches was an amazing book series and show and so glad we get a new book soon. Have a great reading week

  9. Kenn @ Novelistic Pages

    I’m excited to see your thoughts on Bookshops & Bonedust! I read Legends & Lattes last year, but I haven’t had a chance to pick up this one yet! 4theWords looks so fun! I definitely will have to check it out since I have been falling short on my writing goals lately.

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      If you would like, I can send you my referral code. If you sign up for a subscription, I think the referral code gives you a bonus of “crystals” – the currency you use to actually buy months of subscription (as well as some in-game items if you want to.) Just let me know if you want the code.