2022 Books List

Time to get up my books list from 2022. One of my major projects this year was to read at least one Newbery winner or honor books each month. This was inspired by the fact that 2022 was the 100 year anniversary of the award. I had intended to do more of a wide span across that 100 years, but I read many of the older books either by myself or with the family as a kid. So in the end, I read more of the books that have won more recently, because I fell mostly out-of-touch with children's lit as an adult, so I'm not super familiar with winners from the past 15 years or so. 

Moving on Up

Furniture shopping for the house with Mom and Dad.

This year has been pretty eventful due to buying a new home. It wasn't something I really saw on the table thanks to the very high housing market, but my parents proposed going in on a house together that they would live in part-time. So I started my search in January of this year. I started out just going to a few open houses to see what was available. There wasn't a lot on the market at the time, and more of it I couldn't really get to because I didn't have a realtor. Mom and Dad were working on financing the house with lenders, who were supposedly going to set me up with a realtor, but that didn't really pan out. Eventually, I just requested a realtor through Zillow, which was a much easier process. They set me up with Tylene Ama, who ended up being a real help to us. I believe she was still pretty new to the business, which concerned me at first, but I think was an advantage in the end. It gave her more enthusiasm for the work and allowed her to provide better service than some uber-experienced veteran. It was also fun because she achieved some milestones through our time together, like she graduated a training program while I was working with her.

2021 Books List

Been waiting too long to get my books list up, so here it is for 2021. I won't discuss every book, but will highlight a few groups to talk about. The ones that I don't mention are those that were good, but didn't stick out in any meaningful way. They simply didn't merit any special censure or distinction from the rest.

Going (Back) Up to the Mountain of the Lord

One of the blessings of COVID is the opportunity to appreciate anew the things I've taken for granted for far too long. On Saturday, I was able to have another of those moments when I returned to the temple for the first time since March 12, 2020, which was only a couple of days before all temples were closed for COVID. This 16 months is the longest I have gone without visiting the temple since I was endowed. I've been feeling the lack of temple attendance through the whole time, but I didn't realize how significant that lack in my life was until I went back.

2020 Books List

 

Seems like I'm getting the past year's book list up later and later every year. At any rate, here it is.

2020 Coronavirus Blessings

 Though there have been hardships in 2020, overall I would say it's been a good year for me. There were so many blessings I'm truly grateful for. Some of them were small, but others were of great significance. Just having a stable job I didn't lose during the shutdown is a blessing many Americans didn't have! Living here in Utah has also been a huge blessing because our freedoms were curtailed a lot less than most other places around not just the country, but likely the world as well. Being here meant that I could more or less live my normal life with a handful of exceptions.

2020 Coronavirus Crap

 

A socially distant walk with Amy April 2, 2020, complete with a social distance stick!

2020 will go down in history as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In my experience, it's led to some unprecedented times. That all started with lockdown back in mid-March. Abruptly, pretty much everything was cancelled. Seriously, over one weekend, the world changed. Schools shut down, the temples closed, and church was cancelled indefinitely. Everyone was encouraged to stay home as much as possible. There have definitely been parts of the pandemic era which have sucked, but I feel like I've weathered it better than many, since I'm pretty introverted naturally.