Bookgirl's Nightstand | When I'm not reading books, I'm making them.

Easter Greetings

iliana Nightstand April 4, 2021

Happy Easter friends. I hope you are having a lovely weekend. It’s been a rainy and cloudy one here but I kind of liked that. I actually had a long weekend because I took a vacation day on Friday so I’ve been able to relax a bit more and yesterday it was so nice to lounge around reading and drinking coffee.

We also made carrot oat muffins and they turned out quite good. And, as they are made with carrots and oats that means they are healthy right? Haha…

Oh and the big news is that yesterday I was looking through the Austin Public Library’s website for an ebook I wanted to check out for my book group (which I haven’t been to in a year but more about that in another post), and turns out my library card expired! I had to pay a very tiny fine I had and hopefully I’ll be able to renew my card in a few days.

I really miss going to the library but honestly I’m probably not going to go anytime soon. I would still like to have access to ebooks and audiobooks though. Not that I’ve been using these services in a while either but I want to make sure to have them available. Bookworm problems, right?Â Â I guess the only good thing about about being on a library break is that I’ve been focusing on my stacks.

And, now I’ll leave you with a lovely poem for the day:

“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; see us here
All simply in the springing of the year.”

A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost. Read it all here.

Enjoy your weekend and more book talk soon!

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National Poetry Month

iliana Nightstand April 1, 2021

Welcome April and welcome to National Poetry Month. I love celebrating poetry and this year it’s the 25th year of National Poetry Month. Isn’t that cool?

One of my reading challenges this year is the Poetry Reaching challenge hosted by SerenaÂ at Savvy Verse & Wit. I’m happy to report that I have read one book out of the three I plan to read. And, it also happened to be a new poet to me, Mexican poet Jaime Sabines.

His poetry collection, Poesia Amorosa, is very accessible and playful with the words and imagery. I think if you are hesitant to try poetry and feel like it’s hard to understand, it’s always helpful to start with a poet who writes about ordinary things.

The other thing I would recommend for anyone who doesn’t feel like they get poetry is to hear it out loud. I used to go to poetry slams and loved the enthusiasm and performance aspects of the readings.

As always, I recommend signing up for Poem-A-Day. And, if you prefer to listen to poetry, why not check out a podcast likeÂ Poetry Off the Shelf by Poetry Foundation?

You’re probably wondering which poetry collection I’ll be reading. I haven’t decided. I could pick up something by Mary Oliver or Billy Collins but I am really try to go out of my comfort zone. Or is it that I’m just trying to justify buying some new books? Ha… Anyway, let me know if you’re planning on celebrating National Poetry Month.

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Month in Review

iliana Nightstand March 31, 2021

I feel like this month was one of milestones. My husband and I have been working from home for a year. It’s been a year since we’ve seen any of our family or friends. But the great news is that we got our first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine this weekend! Arms were a bit sore but that was about it. Now we wait for the second dose.

Believe me, even once we are fully vaccinated we are still planning to wear our masks, stay in our bubble and just continue to practice CDC recommendations. We just now feel a bit more hopeful that one day we’ll get to see our loved ones and be able to go on trips.

Now let’s talk about the books! March was Women’s History month and in honor of that I read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I read this as a teen and to read it now was really special. I’ll try to do a little recap of this soon.

I also read Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell, The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda, The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner and The Jigsaw Man by Nadine Matheson (the last two I still need to recap).

Some of these books counted towards reading challenges and I did finish the Japanese Literature Challenge. One book but still, I can mark it as complete! I do enjoy a lot of Japanese literature and hope that I’ll have an opportunity to read at least another book this year. Thank you again, to Dolce Bellezza for hosting this challenge.

Speaking of reading challenges. I am making progress in all of my challenges. I think I’m most surprised by my progress on the Classics Reading challenge because I’ve read three of my goal of six classics for the year.

The long list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced earlier in the month. You can find it here. I’ve actually read one book from the list, Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi which unfortunately was not a winner for me. I do have a couple of the nominated books on my TBR stacks so maybe I’ll get a chance to read those before the short list is announced towards the end of April.

Looking forward to April of course we have National Poetry Month which is a great reminder to read more poetry.

Stay safe friends and hope you have a great reading month ahead. Let me know how March turned out for you and if you are participating in reading challenges, how are you doing on those?

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