As I sit here writing this, it’s snowing in Pittsburgh. Again. Maybe it’s boring to comment on the weather but I, for one, am very much tired of winter and feel a real downshift in my mood whenever it comes knocking after a few warm days. 

We spent last weekend making the favors for our wedding, and it felt so good to create these concrete obejcts that will be a part of the day. I’m not great at visualizing things, so I couldn’t really picture what our wedding would look like until I had actual things to actually see. It was, therefore, quite soothing to put this all together. 

It was also a lot of work, but the fun, crafty kind! We filled over 100 bottles with colored M&Ms to serve as “potions” (health, magicka, and stamina, of course) and I soaked some paper in coffee to create parchment scrolls of mysterious purpose (gotta keep some surprises for those wedding guests who also read Your Book Friend). 

The wedding crafting took most of the weekend, but I also managed to treat myself to a nice self-care bath with a book, which was much needed given all the stress of last-minute details. I do have a few reading updates for you this week and can’t wait to hear what other people have been reading so I can get ideas for my honeymoon book sack! (People bring actual sacks of books on their honeymoons, right? That’s a thing?) 

(Full disclosure: Book links are Bookshop.org affliate links, which earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you, if you choose to purchase). 

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Recent Reads

I finished a whole book, friends! After someone’s review reminded me that Below Zero, the third installment in Ali Hazelwood’s STEMinist novella trio came out earlier this month, I grabbed the audiobook. These books have been a little underwhelming for me on the whole, but I still enjoy having a quick little story to spend some time with, and this really hit the spot with the amount of attention span I had available this weekend. 

I’ve been thinking about posting a review of the series as a whole but I don’t know if I have that much to say about them. For me, romance is all about the slow burn, and the compressed novella format and the choice to start with the physical stuff in flash forward scenes really took the steam out of these stories for me. They’re cute and I like the idea, but I wanted more time to develop the relationships and get to know the characters in order to feel invested. 

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Current Reads

A few years ago, I spent a long weekend in Salem with a magical group of women. Last week, one of them released a book! I dove in to Magical Self-Care: A 21 Day Expedition to Soul Field Guide pretty much as soon as it arrived and am enjoying the short reflective exercises each morning. The idea behind the book is that self-care shouldn’t be extra, but rather should be a natural part of our daily lives. Here’s hoping! 

For reasons I can’t explain, I continue to force myself through The Summer Job even though I am not really enjoying it very much. I think it’s because I’m so close to the end and want to know where things go, even if I have a good idea of where things are going. Ultimately I think the premise of someone lying about who she is and taking on a job that she’s massively unqualified for is just too stressful for me to enjoy, personally. I know it’s meant to be hilarious anctics but I’m honestly just biting my nails wait for when it all comes to a head because obviously it’s going to end oh so badly. 

I’m also listening to Susie Moore’s Stop Checking Your Likes: Shake Off The Need For Approval and Live An Incredible Life on audio, which is a sort of self-helpy title I heard about via emails from Susie herself. I have no idea anymore how I got on her email list, but I do often enjoy these emails so I thought I’d check out the book. There’ve been some nuggets of wisdom but so far the tone is a bit tough for me, since it feels in some ways quite geared towards the naturally extroverted among us (which is not me, at all). 

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Up Next & On to You

I have no idea what I’m going to read next! But I do know it’ll be from my TBR pile upstairs because that thing has become a monster. When we start packing for the honeymoon I plan to make a nice selection from those and probably download a few NetGalley ARCs so I have a good amount to choose from whilst lounging in the lodge where we’re staying.

That’s it for me this week, book friends! Now it’s your turn. What have you been reading lately, and how are you finding it? 

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