The last few books and my favourite book of the year

I think I ended up reading around 50 books this year, which is probably average for me. I thought I would have read way more since we were on lockdown for so much of the year, but it turns out that I can't read as much when I'm super duper stressed. 

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Loved it so much. Now I need to go read Homegoing also. The main character is a grad student researching mice brains, which I just loved. All of it. 

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. Oh man. This one is still with me. It was a little hard to read just as it will always be hard to read about slavery. I loved how part of the story happened in Nova Scotia. I need to learn so much more about how "free" black people lived in Nova Scotia. Also the author is Canadian, which is just cool. 

French Exit by Patrick DeWitt. This one was so quick and easy to read. I liked that it was light and cute and also a teeny bit dark. Also loved the cover artwork. 

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini. I was so wrapped up in this book for a couple days. It's hard to read. I have never really understood much about the details of the Afghanistan war, and this book helped me understand things a tiny bit more. But really this was a love story about a woman and her husband's second wife's kids. Love love love. 

After thinking about all the books I have read this year, there is no question which one I loved the most. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins blew my mind. I still think about if all the time. My mom read it after me, and she still brings it up sometimes. 

And there is one book I read twice this year. I never ever read books more than once. I have a friend who just loves to dive back into a book she has read multiple times. I could never do that. But Pema Chodron's When things fall apart is just so great to read anytime, and for sure when things are feeling kinda hard. The first time I read it, I highlighted sentences that were so true for me that I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of them before. The second time I read it, I had totally different sentences to highlight. If I had to distill the book into a couple lines, I would say that it's about finding the thing you dread the most and walking straight into it. Except that you don't have to go looking for hard stuff in life. You can sit patiently and wait and the hard stuff will come, and when it does, face it and lean into it. 

So this concludes my book reviews for the year, and I promise I will be back next year with lots more books.  

A weekend on PEI

We usually see Jon's parents every few months, and even though we saw them over the summer for a few days, we were eager to see them again before Christmas. My mother-in-law turned 80 last month, and for the last few years we have talked about renting a hall and having a big open house type party for her birthday. She has lived on PEI since she was in her late twenties, and knows tons of people! Anyway, of course the big party wasn't happening, but we still wanted to see her. We got really lucky and were able to come the week before the border closed. 

(birthday cake time)

We had such a nice little visit. We stayed in a little Airbnb 5 minutes from my mother-in-law's house, and right on the water. Two highlights: we went to Jon's childhood home where his dad still lives. The house has never been upgraded (save for necessary things) since Jon was a kid, so it was really cool to see. I hadn't been there since Jon and I were dating and we stayed there for a few nights. I liked showing the boys a different kind of house. And Jon showed me tons of old pictures and newspaper articles and yearbooks. And we had a look at the old poster from Jon's modelling days. 

The second highlight for me was going for a walk all by myself through the downtown. It was a rainy afternoon and no one wanted to go with me, so I just walked around, popping in to different stores here and there. I think working in a little alone time on a family vacation is so awesome.