I read more than just the three Stephen King book club picks?! Woohoo!

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Wow, Summer is gone and it is Fall! I can’t believe how fast time goes these days.

Well, as much as I would be worried about the lack of a Big Summer Adventure (road trip or travel of some kind), this summer was full and beautiful. I have a heart an camera full of memories.

Here’s some of the highlights:

We started the summer off with a Sawyer date! We did a sleepover and played at the library and outside and then ended the day with frozen yogurt. We had our Azzie date the next month with the local bat flyout; she loved it! In August we celebrated birthdays for our sister-in-law’s boys—10 and 1!

We played our way through a campaign board game called Sleeping Gods: Distant skies with a couple of friends. (Spoiler alert: we beat it at the end of September!) It was so much fun!

The cats are cemented into their new feeding routine—3x a day and they eat separately. It was journey, but we figure it out.

Still walking my dog friend, Mina, on Monday mornings before I head down the hill to hang out with the family. I hang out in the backyard with her for 30-45 mins and then get in some work on my novel.

In July, Ant and I celebrated our 11-year anniversary paddleboarding in Tahoe the Friday before and then dinner at Club Car the night of. At the end of the month, we did a Voylerwoodfam photo shoot.

The daycare’s first summer camp was tiring, but we survived! Also, I watched so many Olympic events—gosh, what an experience! My favorites are still the triathlons and races and road races (cycling). We did watch more soccer than we ever have, and I caught a few volleyball games too. I ended up writing times of events down in my planner in case I’d be able to watch live. One of my favorite summer activities this year.

Mid-August, Ant started a YouTube channel called Cat Strats. He’s been wanting to record himself playing through video games for years now and we’ve talked about me watching some of them and recording my reactions. So, we jumped in and started with Dark Souls 1! We’re eight episodes in and it’s been fun so far.

Lots of dinners with friends and family, all while staying home, staying local. It was beautiful and good and fun.

I ended up reading way more than normal. Usually, the big Stephen King book takes me all summer long and I only end up reading three or four books, but this summer I love 11/22/63 so much that I read it before the second scheduled book club discussion and was able to read so many other types of books! It was a good season for reading 🙂

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I read 9 books this season. Here they are in the order I read them:

• Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
• You Like it Darker by Stephen King
• The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King
• Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on audio, Narrated by Jim Dale
• West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge
• Summer Sweethearts: A Contemporary Romance Collection, Edited by Katie Fitzgerald and Rachel Lawrence
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Of the 9:

• Completed: 9
• Still Reading: N/A
• Did Not Finish (DNF): N/A

Books by the numbers:

• Owned: 4
• Library Books: 5
• Borrowed elsewhere: N/A
• Books published in 2023/2024: 3
• Ant’s Shelves: 2
• Rereads: 0
• eBooks: 1
• Audio: 1
• ARCs: 0

By Readership and Genre:

• Fiction: 8
• Non-fiction: 1
• Contemporary: 1-ish
• Anthologies: 1
• Poetry:
• Fantasy: 2
• YA: 1
• MG: 1
• Thriller:
• Writing:
• Memoir/Biography: 1

My favorites of the season:

• You Like it Darker and 11/22/63,
• I actually really enjoyed all of them, with the exception of Salem’s Lot. Eleanor & Park wasn’t my favorite, but I’m glad I read it.

Spoiler warning: There will be some spoilers! Read at our own caution. I

P.S. It’s on my to-do list to learn figure out the fancy WordPress thing where I can hide spoilers. Until then, you’ve been warned 🙂

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16/30 // Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Initial thoughts:

• I really liked Chapter 3 “THE LOT (1)”  where Stephen King writes from the town’s perspective and goes through different towns peoples’ activities at different hours of the same day.
• This book is gonna be SCARY, like IT, but maybe even more so.
• Though, I’m more curious than ever about the classic Dracula novel.

And the first book of Stepehen King Summer (SKS) has been read! I’m not a fan of vampires and this one was creepy. Also, the prologue of the book starts at the end of the events of the book, and when Chapter 1 started I was unsure for a bit if the two characters from the prologue were making their return to the town or if we were going back in time to recount the events. (It’s the second one.)

I’m glad I read this during summer book club with an accompanying discussion. Everyone’s insights and comments are the best! (I also leave the Patreon group at the end of August and it was good to see everyone again.) I was reminded that this was Stephen King’s second book, and they just keep getting better and better—which they do because I’ve read others. Other points mentioned:

• The descriptions of Maine that Stephen King includes in his stories.
• How the writer always seems to be the hero. There are so many novels where writers are the main characters. Laura Tremaine, the host, said something along the lines of, “He wants the writer to be the hero and he writes it that way.” Which is also ringing in my brain as I just finished the first story in his newest anthology, You Like It Darker, and one of the main characters is an author.

This wasn’t my favorite in the line-up of King’s books, but I’m glad I read it. I rated it a star lower than IT and The Stand. I wasn’t as invested in ’Salem’s Lot characters. If you’re unsure of Stephen King and want to try his books, Anthony and I recommend Dolres Clairborne, Carrie, The Green Mile, and maybe Cujo (unless you’ve been traumatized by dogs).

Content courtesies: There is a scene with child abuse that was very hard to read. There’s also the beginning of an intimate scene around the middle of the book and there’s violence (human and vampire). The vampires themselves are sexualized.

Buy the Book | Meet the Author | Stephen King Checklist | 2024 film released on HBO

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17/30 // You Like it Darker by Stephen King

Bonus Favorite Line: “Great thanks to you, dear readers, for allowing me to in habit your imaginations and your nerve-endings. You like it darker? Fine. So do I, and that makes me your soul brother.”

Nothing made me want to meet Stephen King more than this Afterword. He just seems like a funny, down-to-earth guy. Like, “Holy cow, it’s the Stephen King” and also like, “Hey SK, what’s up?” haha

You Like It Darker is Stephen King’s newest book, published in May 2024, an anthology of 12 short stories, some of which King started way early in his writing journey and never finished until now. I read this as part of Stephen King Summer. I’ve been participating for three years and it’s the fourth year of the group. This is the newest book we’ve ever read (even in the first year). Just having finished SK’s second book he had ever written, this was the reason the host, Laura Tremaine picked it.

It’s a fantastic collection! The only other short story collection I’ve read is Four Past Midnight in November/December 2021, which I enjoyed overall, but I loved this one and it was the consensus at the book club discussion in early July.

Here are my rankings/ratings of the stories. If multiple stories share the same star rating, then I’ve placed them in order of my favorites:

• “The Fifth Step” – 5
• “Finn” – 5
• “The Turbulence Expert” – 5
• “Laurie” – 5
• “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” – 5
• “Rattlesnakes” – 5
• “The Answer Man” – 5
• “Two Talented Bastids” – 4
• “The Dreamers” – 3
• “Red Screen” – 3-4
• “On Slide Inn Road” – 3
• “Willie the Weirdo” – 2

A lot more of these stories seemed to be set in Florida or somewhere other than the state of Maine, which was interesting since the majority of what I’ve read so far are set in his seemingly favorite state of Maine.

This anthology has been added to my to-buy list. Also, the cover is so cool!

The Screen Rant article I linked below does have spoilers, so read at your own risk if you haven’t read the anthology yet.

Content courtesies: Some of these stories are about child loss and loss of spouse, traumatic death retellings, and fighting our own demons in the unique way of Stephen King.

Buy the Book | Stephen King Summer | Screen Rant Article

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18/30 // The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

I finished this book way back in mid-July and today (mid-September) looking for a quote, I still almost teared up reading this part.

I loved this book! As with The Dead Romantics, there are chapter titles and the writing is beautiful. The main character, Clementine, also lives in New York and works as a senior publicist for Strauss & Adder. She’s just inherited her late aunt’s supposedly magical apartment and is in the process of moving in when the story starts. Clementine has never experienced the magic for herself until a man from seven years in the past shows up one night.

There were a couple of unexpected turns that I loved! And an endearing moment toward the end that caused me to burst into happy tears.

I’m adding this book to my to-buy list as well. I might read it again sooner rather than later because I love all books with chapter titles, and I want a better understanding of how authors summarize a chapter in a handful of works.

Content courtesies: I don’t read Contemporary Romance novels often enough to know levels of spice, but there are one to two sex scenes in this novel that aren’t closed door. There is also the f-word in here a handful of times.

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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19/30 // 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Wow. I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did. It usually takes me the entire allotted time to read the chonky picks for Stephen King Summer, not this time! I blew threw this tome and finished it completely before the second book club discussion.

This book is about Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in small town Maine in 2011. He reads an essay about from an adult English student of his, Harry, who is also a janitor at the same school. The contents of this essay and the owner of Al’s Diner, Al, are essentially the reason Jake goes back in time to see if changing events completely messes with the butterfly effect.

Stephen King jumps right into the story. We don’t spend pages and pages of time with Jake or the town he lives in or the people he works with. The slow walkabout town doesn’t make an appearance until Jake (now going by George Amberson) shows up in Jodie, Texas. This is where Jake/George settles for a year or so until the event in November of 1963. And even then, it’s not the same as even getting to know the town members in ’Salem’s Lot.

In our book club discussion (last Tuesday of July) on Parts 1-3, the host Laura Tremaine, mentioned that after this SK seemed to publish a lot of crime novels and maybe his style is changing. I did notice a similarity to Fairy Tale. When Jake first accesses the past—always 11:58am on September 9^th, 1958—he walks down invisible stairs just like CHARLIE walks down the spiral stairs into the other world.

SK Curious but don’t know where to start: If it weren’t so long (1,089 pages including the Afterword), I’d say this is the SK novel to start with if you’re worried about horror and being scared. But if you’re hesitant, start with Dolores Claiborne. Or one of his anthologies.

Fun fact, Stephen King mentions in the Afterword in that he was going to dedicate this book to the late Jack Finney, who King calls “one of America’s great fantasists and storytellers”, and he also loves Finney’s time travel novel Time and Again. Anyway, he was going to dedicate this novel to Jack Finney, but then Zelda joined the King family as the newest granddaughter and she “gets the nod”.

There is also a mini series on streaming platforms. The majority of book club attendees didn’t like it, but once Ant reads it I may add it to our to-watch list.

Content Courtesies: Sex is discussed. Language, bullying, and violence in at least three scenes throughout the book.

Buy the Book

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20/30 // Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives by Mary Laura Philpott

9/20/2024: As I catch up on this post and write about this book, I’m sitting in the Local Café, Meadow Vista’s local coffee shop. I found this book last February in their little library cabinet 🙂

One reader review I read stated that she hadn’t wanted to be invited into someone else’s anxiety spirals—totally fair point. For me, reading about anxiety helped me identify that I have anxiety—albeit, over several years of self-doubt and wonderings to only finally be acknowledged during that weird year of 2020.

A long time ago I realized through Sarah Dessen’s Contemporary YA novels, that writers have the power, the magic, the skill, the words for human emotions and thoughts. I mean, that feels obvious, but when I was in high school and still wandering through my own first-ever Contemporary YA draft, it felt like a revelation.

And now, as a 33-year-old woman—wife, writer, friend, aunt, sister, daycare teacher, Enneagram 6, introvert, creative, conservative, Christian, lover of nature and traveling and South Dakota and agriculture and theater and zoos and all the things that make me me—to read someone else’s capture of anxiety…it was beautiful. I laughed, I cried, I said, “Oh wow” more times than I can remember because I related so much to a thought or way Laura captured a feeling, a sentiment, because I related so much to how one thought flowed into the next thing into the next thing into the next thing, often circling back to the original start of the essay. It’s always…nice? Comforting? To read something, breathe a sigh of relief, and say, “Thank God it’s not just me.”

This memoir was a beautiful reminder of life and love and just being there for my humans. It was a humbling reminder for me that heaven is my home and that this world is broken and I can only do the best I can with what I have, and to trust God for all the rest that I struggle with and don’t like and am mad at.

The memoir is all one cohesive story, starting from the point that Laura’s son has a seizure, and it is all under the theme of how can we (can we?) love people enough to keep them safe? Which speaks to every fiber of my being. (Spoiler alert, Erler, we cannot.)

My favorite essays/chapters, in no particular order are:

• “Seriously”
• “To the Woman Screaming on the Quad”
• “The Swing”
• “The Great Misfortune of Ordinary Sadness”
• “Face Hunger”
• “In Memory of Turtles Lost”

Content Courtesies: Anxiety, seizures/medical things, aging, sadness.

Buy the Book | Meet the Author

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21/30 // Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter #1) on audio CD Written by J.K. Rowling, Narrated by Jim Audio

This is the first time I’ve ever listened to Book 1 on audio! I put it on hold  at the library for a friend (later than I meant to) who was making the long drive from California to Washington to visit her sister. When it was ready for pickup, I decided to check it out and listen to it myself. I listened to Chamber of Secrets years ago when I was working at Adult Day Experiences and commuting from home while living with my parents, but this was a first-time listen for Sorcerer’s Stone.

Every time I read Harry Potter, it’s like coming home. And hearing the story was no different. The CDs weren’t in the best shape—it must be a well-loved item at the library, so I’m glad it didn’t make the trip to Washington. Because I’ve read the story 84594 times, I didn’t mind as much.

Jim Dale narrates it and is phenomenal! I want to listen to the Chamber of Secrets, which I own, but I have some podcasts episodes to catch up on first.

Buy the Audio CD | About the Author | About the Narrator

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22/30 // West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

Goodreads recommended this book to me: an historical fiction novel about the first giraffes at the San Diego Zoo in 1938? Yes please, Goodreads! And I was so happy to find it at the library.

It was a touching novel. An historical road trip of sorts told through the lens of an 17-year old orphan from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. Newspaper headlines and telegrams and postcards are scatter throughout the story between certain chapters and it really helped cement this in a time with no GPS and the ability to look up where to go on a cell phone.

Our local zoo used to host free Christmas Day entry with the donation of canned food. And it was pajama day. Ant and I went one year—gosh, this was like nine years ago—it was a blast! We were watching the giraffes from the beautiful viewing deck. and I asked Ant what he thought they felt like and this little boy in front of me exclaimed, “Like strawberries!”

We started going to our local zoo here in Sacramento pretty regularly in 2022. I fed Chifu (who, coincidentally, is back at the San Diego Zoo) when Ant and I went for my birthday in March that year, and I’ve got to meet them a few times on a handful of behind-the scenes tours. They really are incredible creatures.

Buy the Book | Meet the Author | The San Diego Zoo

Giraffe Conservation | The Historical Event

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23/30 // Summer Sweethearts by Edited by Katie Fitzgerald and Rachel Lawrence

Katie and Rachel are the Contemporary Writers of the Flash Fiction Magic community on Instagram, and they decided to put together this fun anthology of 13 Contemporary Romance stories. I’ve read a lot of these women’s flash fiction magic stories and Havok stories. Some of them don’t write Contemporary Romance, so it was fun to see them stretch their writing muscles.

I loved these stories! They were set at the beach, during the 4^th of July holiday, a Senior year costume party, at ice cream shops. They were so fun and delightful to read. You can get your hands on a copy by subscribing to one of the contributing authors’ email newsletters.

A few of my favorites:

• “Foiled Plans” by Emily Barnett
• “Of Love and Lederhosen” by Kelly Hellmuth
• “One Week with Wyatt” by Katie Fitzgerald
• “Blue Dragonfly” by Vanessa E. Howard
• “Sweet Dreams” by Elise Gilmore
• “Up in the Air” by H. L. Davis

Download the Book | Meet Editor Katie Fitzgerald | Meet Editor Rachel Lawrence

Flash Fiction Magic community on Instagram | Havok Publishing

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24/30 // Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

So I went on a binge at the library of Rainbow Rowell books due to a friend of mine going to a book signing in Nashville. She’s been on my to-read for a long time and I took it as the push I needed. I checked out three at once and decided to read them in the order they’d been published to help me decided which to read first.

I enjoyed Eleanor & Park. It’s sad but there’s a glimmer of hope throughout it and at the end. I loved that even though Park’s dad and him were at odds a lot during the novel, his dad was still supportive of the Park getting Eleanor to her uncle’s house. I loved that it was set in the 80s and the threads of music and comic books and pop culture references running through the book.

Content Courtesies: Vulgar names written and talked about and abuse hinted at throughout the novel

About the Author | Buy the Book

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What I’m looking forward to reading next season:

Apparently, the Throne of Glass series 🙂 thanks to my friend Brit for recommending this one!

Also, I plan on rereading The Scropio Races. I read it for the first time last November and I loved it. I was reminded about it this time last year in an author newsletter I subscribe to and that writer shared she’s reread it every November for a few years now. I loved reading it during the month it was set in, so I’m going to read it again and see what that’s like. Also, it’s muuuuch shorter than the Harry Potter series—way easier to reread.

I’ve also been eager to reread The Inheritance Cycle so I can read Murtagh, but it’s been 10 years since I read Inheritance, Book 4 in the series, so it’s time to read Books 1-4 again. However, I rarely read series back-to-back, and I’m getting all the Trhone of Glass books from the library right now. It’s very popular for a book series that was completed six years ago, so who knows what will be interspersed in there as I wait for holds to be ready.

Closing questions:

• How was your Summer?
• What was your favorite book you read?
• What are you looking forward to reading this Fall?

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See what else I’ve read this year:

• Spring 2024
• All the Books! post