How is your weekend shaping up? We’re expecting our first serious snowfall this weekend so we’re ready to get cold, and get cozy. I hope your weekend holds good things for you.
My favorite finds from around the web:
• A Jane Austen heroine’s New Year’s resolutions. “Ignore my mother’s marriage advice. Especially if it involves a not-so-distant relation or anyone in the clergy.”
• Lin-Manuel Miranda and friends purchase Drama Book Shop. “The new owners all frequented the bookstore at various points when they were seeking to build careers in the theater.”
• Woman transforms rotting tree in her yard into charming neighborhood library. “Not only does the tree library have an exterior light to illuminate the path to the glass door, there’s even a light inside to illuminate the book case.”
• 25 simple resolutions you can make to improve your city in 2019. “Linger in and enjoy good parks, places, and streets every day, not just during special events. Your very presence and engagement adds life, vitality, and safety to a place, and helps them be more enjoyable for everyone.”
Join me for Book School:
If you could use more tips and tricks like these to give your reading life a boost, these are the kinds of topics we’re covering in Book School, the new course I’m teaching in the MMD Book Club, where we’re learning to read better, together. We’ve never done a course like this before and I can’t wait to get started.
This regular weekly course lasts six weeks, beginning Wednesday, January 16. Our syllabus looks like this:
Week 1: Track your reading: why and how
Week 2: Assess what you read: 2 strategies that go beyond “I liked it”
Week 3: Pithy book talk: how to talk about books so readers sit up and listen
Week 4: Conquer your TBR: blocks and zones are your friends
Week 5: How to review anything: 3 questions to ask yourself
Week 6: How I vet books: deciding what to read next
We’ll meet Wednesdays at noon EST. If you can join us live—great! If you can’t, no worries—you can watch on your own schedule.
This course is part of the MMD Book Club, our group devoted to book club discussions, community, and classes. Every month we read one core pick together and meet to discuss it on video, sometimes with the author. We have a great bookish community online devoted to all book talk, all the time—things like our favorite indie bookstores, our New Year’s reading resolutions, or the books we’ve abandoned lately. And we go back to school with classes designed to equip you to get more out of your reading life.
We’d love for you to join us. This new Book School course, along with all our classes, is included with your Book Club membership. Click here to get more info or sign up now.
Favorite Instagram:
I had a lot of fun talking blogging, books, and writing with a local group this week. (Follow me on Instagram @annebogel.)
On the blog:
One year ago: Say what you mean to say. This was one of my top three favorite posts on the blog last year.
Two years ago: 13 books you’ll just HAVE to talk to someone about. “A book can make you turn inward—to reflect, contemplate, mull over. Or a book can make you turn outward—to run to all your reading friends, saying, Have you read this? Because I need to talk about it NOW!”
Three years ago: 3 things I’m not doing in 2016. “I’m not wasting my time doing things the hard way when I could spend a little money and make my life much easier.”
Four years ago: How I track the books I read: digital + physical. This has evolved over the years, but it’s something I’m going to chat about more in-depth during the new Book School series coming to the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. I shared all about it in yesterday’s post.
On the podcast:
One year ago: Episode 114: Missed book store connections (In which Jamie Golden returns!)
Two years ago: Episode 61: When the plot comes full circle…
Three years ago: Episode 1: Jamie Golden
Have a great weekend!
16 comments
That Jane post is brilliant. So funny!
Those clergymen are a heap of trouble. Avoid at all costs! (Sorry, this pastor’s wife couldn’t resist).
If we are already part of the MMD book club, do we still need to sign up? Thanks and looking forward to it!
No, you’re all set! It’s gonna be fun. 🙂
I’m trying to figure out how to track unfinished books. Would love to hear some suggestions in the Book School lesson on tracking.
You got it!
You had me at Jamie Golden! How can you not laugh out loud!?
Anne, I think you should post a link to your blog post-Say What You Mean every year…heck every month! I remember reading it last year and how moved that I was. I vowed to make that one of my 2018 intentions and think I did well but like anything, sometimes our best efforts slip away. It brought tears to my eyes again this morning while rereading it and once again, I am going to try valiantly. Thanks for the reminder.
Thank you for these kind words.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and friends purchase a book shop? Woman transforms rotting tree into a free little library? Both of these stories made my day – thank you! Happy Weekend!
I love the Free Tree Library! If I’d seen that as a child, I would have thought it was magical! What a clever and creative woman who thought of it.
That tree library is so charming! It totally made my Friday 🙂 I CANNOT believe the first episode of What Should I Read Next aired 3 years ago — WOW. I had never listened to podcasts before and had been following your Instagram account and saw the posts about the launch of the podcast — since then I have been a faithful listener of WSIRN as well as added a host of other podcasts to my feed. Thank you so much for all you do!
I can’t believe it either! Thanks so much for listening.
I live *maybe* 30 minutes from Coeur d’Alene, and we pass through it when we go up to Schweitzer to ski – I am definitely going to make a detour and check it out this weekend if we go up!
I’m so thrilled to read the 25 Resolutions You Can Make To Improve Your City in 2019! These are fabulous. We’ve made an intentional choice to make our home in what most would call an failing inner city, so these suggestions are very near and dear to my heart. Thank you for sharing this article! I will be doing the same.
I loved the 25 simple resolutions you can make to improve your city in 2019, too! I’ve got it bookmarked at the top of my browser as a reminder for the year – I’m excited to look at my city through this lens for 2019.