Last month I went on a bit of a reading spree. I knew I had a few weeks ahead of me to read what I wanted. I didn’t want to fritter it away feeling indecisive about what to read – I just wanted to get it done!

I pulled it off. In September, I read 15 books, 12 of them in print. I read a mix of adult, children’s and teen books, but I decided to focus on the critically acclaimed/generally buzzed-about 2018 KidLit titles I’d missed; otherwise, experience tells me, it will be 2019 and I will forget about them altogether. (Sorry 2017… and 2016… and 2015……)

My method for selecting what books to read ended up being a pretty fun part of my month – and effective, too.

First step, place way too many books on hold at once. My primary sources this time around were my Goodreads To-Read List, Heavy Medal’s discussion titles, and the multi-starred books from Jen J.’s hallowed spreadsheets.

Second step, choose 3-4 books as my “contenders.”

Third step, hold an audition for which book will get the honor of Being Read! Otherwise known as: read a little of each book.

Since I work in a Library Full of Books, I usually do this on my lunch break – it is really similar to my former Reading Lunch habit. Lunching in/near a library is probably not in everyone’s daily routine, but I do think there’s a benefit to putting a time limit on your task. If you have a luxurious child-free lifestyle and find yourself with an hour alone in a library or book story, you could hold an audition on the spot. If not, you could sit down at home with a few members of your latest library haul or your Unread Library and maybe set a timer: during naptime, over breakfast, before bed.

Fourth step, Read!

Why did this work for me? I can posit a few guesses. I tend to respond well to a finite set of tasks, even if they are arbitrary. My two-year-old and I have that in common. “First we find the letter E. Then we push our pants down. Then we pee on the potty. Then we eat some yogurt!” See what I did there? This is really the same concept. “First I pick some books, then I read a bit of each, then I choose my favorite, then I read it, then I pick some more books!” The reading becomes part of the process – a step on the path, not the end goal.

Additionally, I find the sense of competition to be a motivator, however manufactured; maybe the next book I read isn’t THE BEST BOOK EVER, but I can safely say it is the Best Book of a Small Sample Set!

Yes, I am one of those people who is not above fooling herself into any number of dubious beliefs or behaviors. I can, indeed, hide cookies from myself in my own kitchen. On a less self-deluded level, when presented with a few relatively similar options, I found myself better able to assess what kind of book I was going to feel most motivated to finish. I liked these two books of the four, but this one was shorter so it’s the winner. I just read two historical fiction books in a row, so this time I’ll choose a fantasy. All four of these books seem pretty good, but *this* one is due back to the library at the end of the week, so I’ll give it extra points.

Conveniently enough, I was often inspired to read the “runners-up,” as well. I chose to take a few notes during my auditions so I would remember what each book was about; when I was about to finish a book but didn’t have the time/inclination to hold another audition, I returned to my notes to choose my next read. A nice side effect: even if I never got around to reading all the books I auditioned, I at least learned a little about them during my brief reading and note-taking. There’s no way to read every great book that will ever be written – one of life’s greatest tragedies, in my perpetually self-motivated opinion – but staying well-informed about what’s being published for children and teens is part of my job and avocation. I’m always wondering how to engage with books I won’t have time to read in a way that feels productive and authentic rather than a consumer-y waste of time. This wasn’t too bad an option.

And last but not least, I found myself feeling more decisive about squeezing other “off-auditioned” books in between my more prescribed reads. Even though I was choosing to read all of these books, having a little process to follow made my auditioned books feel slightly more required. After every one or two “required” reads, I found myself feeling especially inspired to throw in an older YA title, an adult book, or something else to mix it up.

All of this added up to a fun month of reading that also felt productive, which beats starting and not finishing 10 random books around my house, having to return them unread, and generally rolling around in book ennui. I’m not sure how sustainable reading at this rate is, but it was at least a fun experiment with a beneficial side effect: I just happened to read 3 of the 10 titles longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Way more impressive than my usual zero.

I will leave you with this, my list of books in September after they “passed” an audition. They were all pretty good, and I’m pretty sure I would have read none if I hadn’t intentionally given them a chance to lure me in.

The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge

In October, I read twelve books. I probably should have read two more, since there are two unread books sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to read and review them by… oh… Friday… but alas, alack, it’s November now. Also, I’m a working mom of a toddler now, so there will just always be two unread, overdue books sitting on my coffee table. This is a way of life.

Yes, it is book review season yet again, so of the twelve books I read in October, eight of them were “assigned” reading. I don’t like to comment excessively online about books I’m professionally reviewing, especially before the reviews are published. But I’ll tell you that either I’m getting that much harder to please or this batch was just… not… good.

• I Never by Laura Hopper
• The Secret History of Us by Jessi Kirby
• Lucky Girl by Amanda Maciel
• The Beautiful Lost by Luanne Rice
• The Chaos of Standing Still by Jessica Brody
• Run Away With Me by Mila Gray
• The Inevitable Collision of Birdie and Bash by Candace Granger
• If There’s No Tomorrow by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Of the bunch, the only one I’d recommend generally would be The Chaos of Standing Still by Jessica Brody. It’s a two teens with emotional baggage (har-har) meet-cute while trapped in an airport story (trapped-cute?), but with a solid voice. I also really liked Brody’s A Week of Mondays; she isn’t writing  isn’t hefty, hard-hitting YA, but instead solidly constructed light-reading that is actually funny and not just trying to be. Which I think could be the definition of a pleasure-read.

• Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters by Erica Komisar
• After Birth by Elisa Albert
• Year of No Sugar by Eve O. Schwab
• The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

I listened to four audiobooks this month; three nonfiction “general listening” and one fiction – After Birth – that was my falling-asleep-in-bed book. I don’t listen to a lot of fiction audiobooks – I think because, increasingly, the kind of fiction I want to read is the kind I *really* want to pay attention to, which can be harder for audio. I often start a fiction audiobook, decide there’s something about the narrator or my particular state of mind or schedule that will keep me from fully paying attention, and then switch to nonfiction. But something did draw me in about this book, although it’s hard to say if I truly *liked* it. It had one of those narrators that inspires everyone on Goodreads to log in and write about how much they hate her. I don’t think I would choose to hang out with her (if she was an actual person WHICH SHE IS NOT), but I thought she was a kind of uncomfortable bizarre mix of being the singularly focused, attachment parent who annoys the hell out of everyone, but who also doesn’t like hanging out with her baby. And who writes about postpartum mothers in fiction? Nobody. It was pretty dark and sometimes off-putting, but I’m down.

Swinging wildly in the other direction, Erica Kosimar’s Being There was a nonfiction treatise on how wonderful and important early motherhood is. It’s generally attachment parenting theory stuff, but with a somewhat novel psychoanalytic rationale. Yes, it made me a little uncomfortable to be listening to a book that was insisting that mothers spend as much time as humanly possible at home with their under-three-year-olds while I was commuting to or working at my full-time job – or even while I was cooking food for my under-three-year-old in the other room. But I’m also not sure her arguments really stand up to much logical scrutiny. I was also struck by how little Kosimar has to say about toddlers and preschoolers. I was reading with a just over one-year-old at home, thinking I’d find advice for 2 of the 3 important years, but it was really 90% about under-ones. So I took from this what I found persuasive and left the rest. In particular, I’ve been trying to really focus on being present with my kiddo, or at least present-er: to keep my phone out of my hands, to stop trying to cram chores and errands and to-do’s into our time together, and to pay attention.

Then, two memoirs. Or rather, one “I did at a thing for a year!” blog-turned-book and one book by a memoir-ist about how to write memoir. In case you couldn’t tell, I liked the latter more than the former. I’ve never read Mary Karr’s memoirs (shame!) but I found The Art of Memoir to be very easy to listen to; I’d feel confident recommending it to both memoir-writers and memoir-readers… or at least literary memoir readers. Year of No Sugar was most certainly not a literary memoir. Not that I was assuming it was – I definitely checked it out looking for something light. A fluff memoir. I like these. But this one wasn’t even satisfying fluff. It was mostly a long reiteration of how freaky it is that Sugar is All Around Us, the quest to find the best sugar substitutes for baking, and just how hard it was to avoid sugar at this party or that potlock and how we just broke down cheated at this cookout. I was hoping for something more contemplative… and also something more about what they *actually* ate rather than what they didn’t. Also, there were a few weirdly judgmental passages about overweight people that were really hard to ignore.

As for the rest? I managed to squeeze in three non-required, in-the-flesh, pulp-and-ink books.

• The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin
• French Milk by Lucy Knisley
• Relish by Lucy Knisley

I talked a little bit about The Four Tendencies here. It was a quick, fun read, but I suspect it would only be fun if you are just weirdly into personality typing or are a tried and true Rubinette. And I am certainly both.

In October, I followed a whim and began to re-read Lucy Knisley’s graphic memoir oeuvre, chronologically. I read French Milk and Relish, the two foodie-ist of her books. I’ve been following her pregnancy and baby-related Instagram feed pretty religiously, since our kiddos are just the same age; she’s created some mini-comics there about life before and after being a parent that made me think about the themes of family and self-discovery that run through her other works. How fascinating to look at a so many small memoirs that capture a woman’s youngest adulthood – the years not often memoir-ized – and then to follow them into the transition of parenting! I’m calling this a little “side project” (sorry, Alice) and try to pick these up when I forget my required reading book somewhere. I thought I might finish Age of License in November, but my toddler hid it from me in the coffee table drawer for a few weeks. Way to wise up, Jessica. Way to wise up

It’s the end of September, and I just inadvertently listened to three memoirs by young women, back to back. Inadvertent, but not surprising. Memoirs by young women are kind of my audiobook bread and butter; with a first-person narrator telling me a story grounded in a reality similar to my own, these stories just go down easy.

The first, Running: A Love Story by Jen A. Miller. I’m not much of a runner these days, but when I do simultaneously find the time, energy, desire, lack-of-childcare-duties required to break a sweat, running remains my preferred form of exercise.

Miller’s memoir is a story of a New Jersey girl growing up and making her way in the professional world while also accidentally becoming a casual marathoner-type-person. Oh, and having like, five or six really awful relationships with men. So, Running: A Love Story, emphasis on Love Story, except not really Love, necessarily. Also a side-dish of problematic drinking. I left the book thinking, “man, I am glad I have the same mostly boring-but-in-a-good-way boyfriend/spouse that I had when I was 19” and also thinking “man, I am glad that I drink a lot less than I did in my mid-twenties” and also thinking “maybe I should become a casual marathoner-type-person? Or at least sign up for that 5k that is held on my exact running route every year that is happening at the end of October.”

Sometimes on Sunday mornings, my boring-spouse and I take our toddler to the park and let him run around and try to climb to slide while I do a .68 mile loop and feel totally accomplished an awesome. Clearly ready for a 5k.

The next: Kelly Corrigan’s Lift. It’s a little essay/memoir-y type book with stories about being a mother, written as a letter to her children. I’d never read anything by Corrigan before and I liked her tone. It reminded me a little of Anne Lamott or Catherine Newman.

However, I went to Goodreads afterwards and was surprised to see so many 1 or 2 star reviews. Most of the reviews said, “Jeez louise, this book was so short! Like a pamphlet! Wtf!” Verbatim. Me? I said “A two-part audiobook??! Awwwwwww yeah. I’ll actually finish it!”

So that’s the difference between me and the rest of the world of readers right now.

Most recently, I listened to Jessica Valenti’s Sex Object. This is not a memoir for everyone, for sure. It’s frank. It’s a little graphic. But it’s also honest and unflinching; the most shocking part is just how average Valenti’s collection of vaguely horrifying experiences seem. From familial abuse to street harassment and assault to date rape and online attacks – as I read, I was thinking that most of the women I know could gather up their own similar experiences and write their own version of this book. And that’s the world we live in, I guess? What is wrong with humanity.

(But did I mention it’s short? Short books are the best books!)

It’s the last day of August of my thirty-second year, and I have found myself re-reading Phyllis Reynold’s Naylor’s Alice series. I began about a month ago. I was looking for a Couch Book. You know, the kind of book that you are happy to open up and read, but is also easy to dip in and out of without losing too much momentum. And it’s not The Book you are reading, because The Book could possibly be in your purse or bag or who knows where because it’s The Book and you have to read it. A Couch Book stays by the couch.

(Aside: if you have a toddler in the home, “by the couch” may be interpreted as “under the couch,” “inexplicably in the coffee table drawer” or “in the very bottom of a toy box.”)

Anyway. I started reading The Agony of Alice and it turned out to be a great couch book. I’ve read it many since 1995, so it’s an exceptionally familiar re-read. Like reuniting with the old gang. There’s guileless, often filter-less Alice bumbling her way through middle school. Older brother Lester with the purportedly sexy mustache and cadre of girlfriends. Her archetypal best friends – beautiful but prudish Elizabeth and troubled, flagrant Pamela. The chapters are episodic, each one a little story unto itself, but I flipped from one chapter to the next without much effort.

What’s best? They are all about 120 pages of easy reading. I’d pick up one in the morning before work, read on the train and while walking through Boston Common. Such slim, lightweight paperbacks! Easy to transport, to hold in one hand while trying not to run straight into fellow distracted pedestrians who are looking at their cell phones. Read on the train ride home, maybe squeeze a chapter in on the couch and oh, look at that, the book is almost done, I might as well finish it off. And in the morning: the pleasure of a fresh new book for a fresh new day.

(An Aside of Ice and Fire: You may have noticed that Alice graduated from Couch Book to The Book. Couch Book is now, FINALLY, A Dance with Dragons. Also a great Couch Book because heck if I’m lugging 1000 pages around town with me. But I’m hoping to finish by the end of September, when book review season will be upon me. I’m only about 400 pages in, so wish me luck.)

Back to Alice. I’m 11 books in, and I’m noticing these later installments are not quite as sweet and speedy as the earlier titles. I’m reading Alice on the Outside right now. It’s 176 pages instead of 120, and I think this one mark’s Alice’s official entrance into The YA Novel. Alice final learns about the finer points of sex from a knowledgeable cousin – not quite the detailed mechanics, but important but adult-y messages about preferences, pleasure, and expectations. Of course she parrots this information back to her eager audience of Pamela and Elizabeth. Then, her school decides to embark on a “Consciousness Raising Week” where an imposed caste system based on hair color proves that even well-meaning white kids don’t understand the pervasiveness of “prejudice” (or, more accurately I think, systemic and subconscious racial discrimination?) Oh, and of course – her first gay friend. I don’t remember if this book’s teetering stack of Contemporary Problems is an anomaly to the series, but I do remember at some point the books started regularly featuring more Issues along with the more entertaining and engaging Plot.

Ah well. Maybe this will mark and end to this little re-read-a-thon. Book Review Season does rapidly approach, when most of my The Books become Review Books. I’m also reading quickly to the end of my personal Alice paperback collection – a break to recharge, and perhaps start scouring used bookstores for out of print Alice single paperbacks, because heck if you ever catch me reading three books published in one binding under a new title. Can you even imagine? Give me the original singles with awful, 2000’s covers or give me death.