September was a bit of a mess. I had quite a few doctor’s appointments, including my annual scans to check for cancer recurrence. I’m always anxious when it is time for the scans, but I was a little more nervous than usual because I’ve been experiencing some worsening shortness of breath for the last few months. They did some other tests, and it turns out that my remaining lung is just struggling with asthma. So, I’m on some new medicine and remain cancer free, which is great news.

The second half of the month was dominated by my wife’s contract negotiation with her employer, which was such a frustrating process. For a while, we thought she might not be working after the end of September, which would mean losing our health insurance. It was all annoying and somewhat worrying, but my diligent savings the last few years meant we’d be okay either way for quite a while. In the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement on terms to renew her contract, but she has a year to find something else before they eliminate her position, which is a much better outcome than we’d expected.

All this to say, the anxiety derailed my reading plans a bit. It was still a solid month, though. I just didn’t make as much progress on my remaining annual goals as I’d have liked.

I’m honestly not quite sure where this month went. Looking back on it, there doesn’t seem to be any events that stand out as super significant. It has just all been a bit of a blur. I guess that is a good thing considering how awful June turned out to be. I’ll take the improvement of things returning to humdrum normal. lol. It wasn’t a ‘meh’ month when it came to reading, though. I finished tons of great books! Read on to find out more about them and how I’m progressing on my yearly goals.

June was a rough month. I managed to get food poisoning that had me vomiting and nauseous for days. Then we had severe weather roll through town and knock out the electricity and internet for days, which was not pleasant with temps approaching 100F. I don’t know how people survived before air conditioning because I just couldn’t do it. The only bright side was my Kindle being fully charged before the outage. So, I could read at night without straining my eyes. Well. Enough of my complaining. Let’s get to the books!

May was an awesome month for me. I went on vacation for the first time in forever. My wife and I traveled to Massachusetts and visited Boston, Salem, and Plymouth. I’d never been to New England before, and it was a great experience. I’d definitely love to go back because there was so much to do, and we didn’t have enough time to get to it all. I loved the Museum of Fine Arts so much, and we spent almost an entire day there. Other highlights included visiting Harvard, the Boston Public Library (I could seriously live in there), the U.S.S. Constitution, the Mayflower replica, and the house of the seven gables. Of course, I had to visit some bookstores too. I shopped at Brattle Book Shop and The Harvard Book Store, which was so much fun. I bought so many books there and at all the gift shops that I almost had to buy more luggage to get them home. So, this month’s book haul, which I’ll get posted eventually, was my largest ever. Now that we’re on the topic of books, let’s get on with wrapping up my reading month. It was a bit less than usual because of everything else going on, but I still read plenty of great books.

April has been a pretty great month. There were tons of awesome new book releases, and I managed to complete everything for the Magical Readathon. The weather is finally a bit nicer, and everything in my neighborhood is in bloom, which is really beautiful. I spent a small fortune on landscaping this month, and now our flower beds look so much better. I know this is going to make me sound old, but I’m also excited we have a new grocery store close to my house. lol. It opened up right across from my neighborhood, and I love the convenience of being able to go right down the street to pick up what I need. Those are pretty much the major highlights. So, let’s jump into my reading progress for April.

What happened to March? I’m honestly not even sure what I did with the month other than participate in Trope-ical Readathon. lol. That being said, I did read a record (for me) number of books. So, I guess it was a good month…

February flew by. I was sick with COVID for half of it, including my birthday. It was definitely a bummer, but I’m grateful to be feeling much better now and getting back into the swing of things. On the bright side, all the time laid up gave me plenty of time to read. So, the month wasn’t a total loss.

January has been an absolute whirlwind. Between my parents’ six eye surgeries, several vet visits, and ending the month being sick with COVID, it is a wonder I got any reading done at all. I was super motivated this month, though, and read a lot of great stuff. I participated in my first buddy reads this month and had so much fun with it. All in all, it has been a pretty good month despite ending it being sick.