Book Ritual Updates

I love my bookish rituals each month.

You already know that I look forward to spending my Audible.com audiobook credits each month.

Let me catch you up on the other bookish rituals.

I love choosing a Book of the Month Club title each month.  For a while there, I was choosing more than one.  However, it's fair to say there is a BOTM Club pile-up on my shelves so those days are over.  I've also found that these are buzzed-about books that are often part of one-day ebook sales and/or easy to reserve at the library.  I'm currently enjoying Startup -- I'm not a millennial, a tech gal, or a New Yorker/Brooklynite, but it's fun to read about the scene and to have sympathy for the book's old lady (36, ahem) who's juggling career, kids, debt, and marriage woes. 

I also peruse the Literary Guild selections each month.  Though there are often books on offer that I would enjoy reading, my choices are rarely among the three curated monthly selections.  Those tend to be books that don't appeal to me (AT ALL) and the discounts for additional books don't kick in unless you start with one of those three selections in your box.  Makes it easy to click "skip my monthly credits" at the beginning of each month.  The selections refresh on the 15th of the month so I always check back.  However, a few months ago, a book I was super excited about was a monthly selection.  I boxed up Jennifer Ryan's The Chilbury Ladies' Choir and Jane Harper's The Dry.  Although I am very close to my saturation point with WWII novels (not forever, just for a bit), I did like Ryan's story of community, family, romance, and friendship set in the wartime English countryside.  It's told through letters and journal entries -- all of which are way too long to be believable, but which tell a good story.  Haven't cracked the spine of The Dry yet.

I get my fix for free when I choose my Kindle First selection each month.  I've mentioned this perk before:  if you have Amazon Prime, you can choose one free Kindle First selection each month (a month before the book is published).  To be honest, I don't always read these books in a hurry (or ever), but there's nothing to be lost (except five minutes of my time) by choosing one.  Last month, I chose Laura McNeal's The Practice House (which sounds kind of creepy but also kind of good).  I surprised myself this month by selecting A Small Revolution by Jimin Han.