Music Monday - Dead Poet Society "Running in Circles"

A new discovery for me. Loving this more pop-rock sound.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Life Right Now #15

As I look outside my window: Clear and bright. Thankfully the temperatures have decreased slightly…

Right now I am: Deciding what to make for brunch. I think this is my weekly line.

Thinking and pondering: How do I efficiently pack the van? The retreat boxes number 8, plus all the cold groceries, my two personal bags, and various small bits. And then I need to fit in my three passengers’ stuff.

On my bedside table: Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez, Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer - Except for the ebook (Annie Bot), I’m taking books from my Unread Shelf to the retreat.

On my tv this week: J and I have just been working through our currently airing shows - Welcome to Wrexham and Clarkson’s Farm.

Listening to: After finishing my audiobook last week, I switched back to podcasts. Specifically I listened to S8 of the Revolutions podcast focused on the Second French Republic. That was a short season with only eight episodes. I might just start S9 today…

On the menu for this week:

• Monday - Spinach Potato Sausage Soup

• Tuesday - Fish from Freezer

• Wednesday - Leftovers

• Thursday - Sunday - Gone on retreat

On my to do list: All the little (and not so little) tasks to prep for leaving town on Thursday. I have a few little errands (dropping library books, grabbing my beverage from the store) and the big task of grocery shopping. Beyond the actual retreat tasks, I do have some random house things I want to take care of.

Happening this week:

• Monday - Swimming Lessons for kids; Pool afternoon with friends

• Tuesday - Swimming Lessons for kids

• Wednesday - Swimming Lessons for kids; Retreat grocery shopping

• Thursday - Swimming Lessons for kids; Coop; Leaving for Retreat!

What I am creating: Mostly still piles.

My simple pleasures: A quiet moment, a walk in nature, finishing a book

Looking around the house: Meh. The big pile will be gone on Thursday. Otherwise things are decent around here.

From the camera: Pretty bit of purple on our nature walk

Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon by Matt Dinniman

Title: Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon

Author: Matt Dinniman

Publisher: Dandy House 2019

Genre: Horror LitRPG

Pages: 660

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

It had seemed like a dream offer. Paint a mural. $15,000. How could Duke not jump at the chance?

But it came with a catch, as these things often do. He had to first see what his client wanted him to paint.

A private server. A digital playground. An alliance of the world’s most sadistic, most depraved minds. A place to bring their prey, to hone their skills.

Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon. Survival horror. One of the most brutal, most terrifying full-immersion games ever made. A place where fantasy characters such as elves and dwarves clash with technology, where giant monsters roam the hills, entrusted with protecting the gates of heaven from the demons who would tear it all down.

A game where one plays the last of the battlefield surgeons: a healer tasked with keeping the behemoths alive at all costs.

But on this server, they don’t care about the game. That’s not why they’re here. They’ve come because of the game’s most unique feature: Full pain. Realistic anatomy. The ability to bring their victims well beyond the body’s normal breaking point. And most importantly, the ability to bring them back and do it all over again.

Trapped in a bloody, merciless nightmare, Duke only has one goal. To survive. And in order to survive, he must play the game. He must win the game. And to do that, he must become the most cruel, most ruthless monster of them all.

After reading and really enjoying the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, J wanted me to read Dinniman’s earlier stand-alone work. This one wasn’t quite as much of a win or me. The style is very much classic LitRPG. There’s a lot of telling but not showing. The paragraphs are full of long blocks of exposition describing the action, but often it drags down the narration. As to the story itself, this one is very brutal. It is much more horror than the Carl series. The body horror and gore factor is very very high. I would not recommend this one to many people. Only one or two scenes actually made me a little squeamish. But it definitely it full of gore. While I did enjoy this book, Duke is not Carl and there’s definitely many differences between those characters. I learned so much about Carl just from the first book. Duke is much more of a mystery even by the end of the book.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Poison by Sarah Pinborough

Title: Poison (Tales from the Kingdom #1)

Author: Sarah Pinborough

Publisher: Titan Books 2013

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 181

Rating: 2/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Fairy Tale - Snow White; Library Love

Meet handsome prince, the jealous queen, and the beautiful girl as you’ve never seen them before . . . Sarah Pinborough’s charming, provocative, and adult spin on Snow White will captivate fans of the classic fairy tale all over again.

Poison is the first of Sarah Pinborough’s three sexy, contemporary retellings of classic fairy tales featuring the heroes and villains we all love.

Such a disappointment! I love a good fairy tale retelling and this was not it. The book tries to make a more risqué Snow White story, but ends up getting confused about what it wants to be. At times, we get a very immature story of a young girl (who’s incredibly annoying I might add). At other times, we get a story of a misunderstood woman rebelling against the bounds of society. And at other times, we get a spicy romance. None of it quite works together for a cohesive narrator. I have incredibly disappointed and left with so many questions. Given my feelings with this volume, I will not be attempting to get those answers in the rest of the series.

Tales from the Kingdom

• #1 Poison

• #2 Charm

• #3 Beauty

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Title: The Ministry of Time

Author: Kaliane Bradley

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2024

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 352

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; 52 Book Club - Buddy Read

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

I grabbed this one from Book of the Month and immediately some of the Nerdy Bookish Friends decided to do a buddy read this past week. Perfect timing! I dove in with a summary that I had heard on a book podcast. And I must say that the the first half of the book did not align with the summary I had heard. (And honestly I was glad of that because I wasn’t a fan of the summary.) For most of the book I was very interested in this time travel mystery. Who exactly are some of the more shadowy characters? What is the ultimate goal of the program? We know that the narrator is not currently in touch with the expats, but what exactly happened there? I had so many questions and really enjoyed the slow pace of the mystery. Unfortunately, the last few chapters took down my rating. The reveals were fast and furious without a lot of explanation. Some of my biggest questions were never answered. It felt like the author was trying to confuse us instead of explaining. And I really disliked the very last two pages. Thankfully we had a great buddy read in the group.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Horror Hotel by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

Title: Horror Hotel (Horror Hotel #1)

Author: Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

Publisher: Underlined 2022

Genre: YA Horror

Pages: 224

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love

When the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang—Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki—visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark, they expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings. Spooky enough to attract subscribers—and ultimately harmless.

But when they stumble upon something unexpected in the former room of a gruesome serial killer, they quickly realize that they’re in over their heads.

Sometimes, it’s the dead who need our help—and the living we should fear.

I spied this on a library featured shelf and immediately snatched it. I was hoping of a creepy fun ghost adventure. And that’s exactly what I got! We dive right into the adventure with a group of ghost hunters with a YouTube channel. Of course I had to keep in mind that this is a young adult novel. There were a few times when I got very annoyed by the character’s reactions to things, but then remembered that they are teenagers. This was much like the R.L. Stine novels of my early teen years. The plot was fast moving. The creepy scenes wee sufficiently creepy. I finished this one in two days and enjoyed the time. I am definitely going to read the sequel.

Horror Hotel

• #1 Horror Hotel

• #2 Cursed Cruise

Next up on the TBR pile:

Currently #9

Reading: I’m slowly making my way through Blood by Jen Gunter. Just like one of her previous books, The Vagina Bible, I am learning so much! A must read.

Watching: We’ve made it to S3 of Welcome to Wrexham. Of course we are loving it.

Listening: I finally finished my giant audiobook, so I’ve switched back to the giant backlog of Hello from the Magic Tavern podcast episodes. Maybe in five years I will have caught up…

Making: So many piles hanging out! I’m a little over a week from the Bookish Retreat and that pile has grown dramatically. I also have homeschool piles, random school piles, coop piles, and random things all around.

Feeling: The temperature has dramatically increased this week and I am sweaty. I’m just living in a sweaty state.

Planning: I have most of the retreat tasks done, so I’ve turned to some of the more fun tasks. One of those is choosing my retreat TBR.

Loving: I got a new delivery of puzzles from Galison and they are really helping my mental health. My meditation is sitting down and puzzling for a few minutes. So good.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Homeschool W32-34: We Made It!

What We Studied

We finally made it through our regular year of curriculum. We never really stop schooling, but we have finished with this year’s big curriculum pieces. For the next few months, we will be engaging in a lighter schoolwork load with small units and lots of activities.

Making caves at coop

Literature and Poetry

Arthur finished his current read aloud and started the next one. Our next read aloud is turning out to a great one. We are very into the mystery.

• Hidden Figures for Young Readers by Margot Lee Shetterly

• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Quentin finished his read aloud. We are moving onto a variety of stories and shorter books.

• Sing a Song of Seasons

• Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

• Dragons Love Tacos 2 by Adam Rubin

• Zoey and Sassafras: Wishypoof and Hiccups by Asia Citro

• Encyclopedia Brown by Donald Sobel

Math

Arthur finally finished Singapore 5B. We will be doing a lot of math review throughout the summer.

• Singapore Common Core 5B

Quentin has moved onto math review and will continue solidifying those skills.

Social Studies

Arthur finished his study of U.S. History with a few weeks covering the 1970s to the early 2000s.

• DK American History

• We were There Too! Young People in US History

• Words that Build a Nation

• Heart and Soul

• Nat Geo Our Country’s Presidents

• An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

• A Different Mirror for Young People

• This is Our Land: A History of American Immigration

• DK Timelines of Everything

• DK History

• Map Skills for Today G4

Quentin has already finished his history curriculum. We’ll be focusing on some geography skills for a summer units. We got started this past week.

• Map Skills for Today G1

Science

Arthur finished up Volume 2 of The Story of Science. We have really enjoyed this book series so much. Cannot wait to get the last volume come August.

• Story of Science Vol. 2: Newton at the Center by Joy Hakim

Quentin is covering a variety of science packets and review. We’ll be engaging in some nature science throughout the summer before starting our next year’s science curriculum.

Coolest picture of a water drop and Quentin from the Luminarium

STEAM Coop

We finished our spring semester with a study of bats and caves for Quentin and conservation for Arthur. This is going to be a very strange year. The coop is transitioning to warm months only and will begin the summer session in early June. We’ll continue to meet until early October and then break until the next April. Arthur will be attending a new academic coop October through March to take the place of the enrichment coop.

Arthur’s Math, ELA, and Science

Quentin’s ELA

Art/Music/Crafts/Cooking/Documentary

Documentaries are going to be sprinkled throughout our summer sessions. The past few weeks, we covered a few including a doc about the First Man on the Moon,

• DK Music and How it Works

• DK The Arts

• DK Art and How It Works

• Modern Art Adventures by Maja Pitamic and Jill Laidlaw

• 13 American Artists Children Should Know

• A Child's Introduction to Art

• Women in Art by Rachel Ignotofsky

• Iconic Composers by Nicholas Csicsko & Emi Ferguson

• 13 Art Movements Children Should Know

• 13 Artists Children Should Know

• 13 Modern Artists Children Should Know

• The Story of Paintings by Mick Manning & Brita Granström

• Why is Art Full of Naked People? by Susie Hodge

Field Day silliness!

Field Trip

We had our last two coop field trips for the year. We visited the Wildlife Safari to explore the Ice Age Animals exhibit. And we had a great picnic with friends seeing all the animals. It was a great outing. We also revisited a local Urban Farm. The farmer taught the kids about specific plants in her garden and care of the various crops. We really enjoyed our time at her farm.

Arthur’s ELA and Geography

Quentin’s ELA

High

We had a wonderful Coop Field Day acting as an end cap to our year. Our field day is all about organized game play instead of competition. Quentin won the award for Best Neck Hula Hooper. Arthur won the award for Best Duck Walk (Limbo). It was a very tiring day, but amazing.

Low

The weather has caused a few schedule interruptions. Oh well.

Next Week - We will be continuing our schooling with summer units and a higher workload.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Music Monday - Nothing More "If It Doesn't Hurt"

And some new music for Nothing More. Apparently it’s the season for new music!

Next up on the TBR pile:

Life Right Now #14

As I look outside my window: The big storm has rolled through this morning. I think the sun is now trying to come back out and shine.

Right now I am: Prepping to make brunch, per usual.

On my bedside table: Ghost Station by SA Barnes; Cursed Cruise by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren - Guess I’m in a horror mood this week.

On my tv this week: Along with some news videos, we finished another season of Clarkson’s Farm. Now we’re ready to dive into the currently airing season.

Listening to: I am so close to finishing my epic audiobook. Hopefully I can slot in a few hours over the week to get it done.

On the menu for this week:

• Monday - Bacon Cheese Peach Paninis

• Tuesday - Leftovers

• Wednesday - Lemon Ginger Turmeric Chicken and Rice

• Thursday - Sausage, Spinach, and Potato Soup

• Friday - Pizza Night

• Saturday - Orecchiette with Sausage and Sun-dried Tomatoes

• Sunday - Swahili Fish with Coconut Broth

On my to do list: Prepping for coop (I’m teaching on Thursday), prepping for the retreat (just a few small tasks to finish up), prepping for summer activities, prepping for next year’s homeschool curriculum. I’m big into planning and organizing this coming week.

Happening this week:

• Monday - Zoo Day (It’s member appreciation week)

• Tuesday - Strawberry Picking

• Wednesday - Bounce U open session; Kid dentist appointments

• Thursday - Coop (starting summer session)

• Friday - Walk at Fontenelle Forest

• Saturday - Home Day

• Sunday - Breakfast Club

What I am creating: Mostly all the lists

My simple pleasures: Muffins (any flavor), checking off tasks (love to actually make that check mark), listening to the rain

Looking around the house: Things are getting cluttered and messy. Thankfully the huge pile in my breakfast nook will be gone in two weeks. Hoping that helps me feel calmer about the house.

From the camera: Okapi!

June 2024 Life Goals

Let’s check in on May’s goals and my progress.

• Read 18 Books ✓

• Pause All Library Holds (Except Book Club Selections) - Another fail, but I’m getting better at this.

• Solidify Coop Summer Plan ✓

• Solidify Academic Coop Plan - Working on this

• Finish Retreat Tasks ✓

• Finish Homeschool Supply Cleanout ✓

June Goals:

• Read 18 Books

• Pause All Library Holds (Except Book Club Selections) - Third time’s the charm, right?

• Schedule a Academic Coop Planning Meeting

• Plan our Indiana Trip for late July, early August

Next up on the TBR pile: