LINKS:
TikTok in middle school (NYT gift link courtesy of Jo Piazza’s substack). I wanted to cry reading this. I continue to feel like social media in middle school is like talking a forest walk on a dry day while smoking and carrying a can of kerosene and just hoping things work out for the best.
Great Books of the 21st Century — I’ve read 10 (NYT gift link courtesy of my dad)! Notably this is the LOWEST total of my college BFFs. I suspect some of you are also wayyyy higher (what can I say . . . neither my personal development faves nor Elin Hilderbrand-esque novels made the list).
LOVED: Americanah, The Great Believers, Station Eleven, Middlesex
REALLY LIKED: Never Let Me Go, An American Marriage, Bel Canto
LIKED OKAY: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Nickel and Dimed
MEH: My Brilliant Friend (sorry!!! I feel kind of basic admitting this but . . . not a fave!)
LIFE NOTES
A+C are in Monday-through-Friday sleepaway camp! G is basking in the glow of faux-only-childhood (“fauxnly” childhood? heh). I did drop off and it was rather hectic, as it was last year — I didn’t even get to say goodbye to A! (By the time I helped set up C’s bed, her group was off and running.)
Our summer is too short and seems to be going too quickly and I’m not thrilled about it. But here we are! This camp situation lasts approximately 3 weeks with some interruptions for wisdom teeth surgery round #2 and some other little things, and then we head on vac and then it’s OVER. GAH.
I had to fire up the ol’ activity spreadsheet (really a table in Apple Notes, though it should be a real spreadsheet because the real estate on my phone screen on a Notes page is too limited) already because we already have soccer and gymnastics practice schedules set, and as of this morning, dance. I am proud to say I snagged the ballet / jazz / hip hop classes my kids wanted because it was kind of a digital melée (links did not work immediately but then started working at unpredictable intervals!), but I emerged victorious.
We have an activity that ends at 8:45 PM* EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY come fall (and these activities are August-to-May endeavors). Despite being tired last night, I was lying awake in my bed thinking of how my Ideal Week will need to change a lot come August. I am most worried about fitting in enough SLEEP for all of us! As is my usual custom I will probably figure that out on the plane on the way back from our trip and will try not to stress about it now.
*aka the time of night when I would like to be already in bed reading, skincare on, melatonin flooding its receptors.
37 Comments
8:45 is late!!! My kids are a little younger but we’re heading this direction. Does your nanny stay later now that the kids activities end so late? What kind of childcare/home management schedule supports this? I was thinking of 12-7 for the school year but am worried that in a year or 2 the activities are going to be even later. Gah!
I am not entirely sure yet! It will probably be her later some nights and not others. Hoping to have a soccer carpool too! Generally we do not need any morning childcare (we do drop off) so that helps!
We are all done with morning childcare for the first time this year so a whole world has opened up! Thanks – lots to think about. It’s hard where we are to find someone willing to work past 6 but I need to keep looking!
I also found My Brilliant Friend very meh. I just could not get into it, and was definitely surprised to see it make number one!
Same! I just didn’t get the appeal.
8:45! I am anxiously waiting for the calendars and such to come out (not to rush summer, but one needs information to plan!), and I’m really really hoping this year doesn’t involve driving after 8:30 pm on the regular.
yeah, it’s late – and both kids! (soccer and gymnastics practices both end at that time). I was particularly surprised w C’s age group -he’s going into 5th grade and some of the kids on his team are 4th / still 9 years old!
Im trying to be in bed by 8pm so I have no idea how I would manage activities that ended that late! Thanks for sharing the NYT book link. I hadn’t heard of the majority of them, and I’m a little surprised Giovanni’s Room didn’t make the list given how much BookTok raved about it last year. I mostly agree about the Elena Ferrante book… I think it resonated with me more bc my husband’s parents grew up in that culture (except in northern Italy which they would insist wasn’t as bad!). I really did like Demon Cooperhead — if you haven’t read it, you should!
I definitely want to read that! Also Pachinko from that list.
Yes! Pachinko was excellent! Also depressing… at least I found it to be, but really really good.
I have read 27 of the books on that list and I have to say that many of them were not hits for me. I find that award winning books often are not a fit for me and when I was MBF was #1 I gave the list major side eye because I loathed that book. I was surprised Homegoing didn’t make the list. That is one of my best books from this century that I have read. There were some hits on that list, though, like The Great Believers.
8:45 is so late!! I think we would have to steer away from activities with that late of an end time until our kids were significantly older because we absolutely need to leave the house at 7 so our kids would not get enough sleep otherwise! But I think we are kind of an outlier in leaving the house so early and it’s due to our field of work. Elementary school starts around 8:15 and attendance is definitely very light in before care. But until we can leave our elementary kids at home and have them get on the bus by themselves (which feels far off!!) we will have this early bird schedule. Hopefully the activities are a short drive away!!
Gymnastics is under 10 min, soccer is more like 15 (but we now have friends on the team so carpool feels more likely!)
Thanks for sharing the NYT link! I read quite a bit and am always looking for books to add to my library hold list. I was surprised I’d only read 5 of the books on the list and really only wanted to read 7 others after scrolling through. I recognized the titles of a few more, but most of these I’d never heard of. I guess these just aren’t my types of books. My favorites were Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Station Eleven.
thanks for the reading recommendation Sarah as I’m loading up kindle for the upcoming trip. I want some light reading, in sync with the beach mood. 🙂
8:45pm finishing time sounds impossible for early risers are us…. what time will you get home then? can Josh do the pick up few days a week?
I’ll start thinking about new school year after the vacation, it will likely to be hectic as girls will be in two separate campus.
Josh does a ton of the late night sports pickups already and almost always will be able to at 8:45, so that is good. Just anticipate it will he hard to get into a rhythm with everyone coming and going but we will do our best!!!
oh forgot to mention that my brilliant friend did not hit with me, at all.
I have only read 13 of the “greatest books.” (Six of them overlap with you!) There are so many amazing books published each year, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to read them all.
I am a little stressed for you about the 8:45 activity. We did one last year — one day a week — and it was so hard. HOWEVER, my kid is the variety of kid who requires twelve hours of sleep a night still, plus the activity seemed to routinely get out 10-15 minutes late, AND we had a 30-minute drive to get home, all of which added to the stress for us. I am very hopeful for you that you find a good rhythm.
Should I be planning our school year already? I probably should. Ugh. I want summer to last forever.
I didn’t mean to but I had to – schedules were sent for these teams the kids committed to in May, and dance signups were this morning and many classes filled 3 minutes into the signup window! Gahhh!
I think the book list is so much a bout preference. I actually LOVED MY Brilliant Friend and read all 4 books in quick succession around the time the last one was published in English. I will say though that while I have read many of the authors on the list the books on the list are not always my favorite. I love Ann Patchett but Bel Canto is not my favorite of her books, I much prefer State of Wonder, the Dutch House and Commonwealth. I think Coleson Whitehead is a brilliant writer but I preferred Sag Harbor. I liked Trust but I was shocked it was on the list.
I also feel like magical realism has been having a real “moment” this century and I really don’t like it. It is not for me. It’s fine that others like it but I don’t it that is okay too. I am not going to waste the limited time I have to read trying to talk myself into liking it. Plus this is only the last 24 years and there are so many great books that were written before and there will be more great books.
However, we are all now having a bit of adebate about books and that list got us going, so that is a good thing I think…
P.S. The activities only get worse. My 16 yo often has soccer from 8:30-10 pm. I CANNOT wait for him to get his drivers license (next week finger’s crossed)!
I struggled to get through My Brilliant Friend (but did read the synopses for all the other books in the series!). I’ve only read 5 of the books on that list.
The NYT article about TikTok was just terrifying. I see an entire generation of educators burning out or quitting over working conditions. We have some friends who just recently finished their education degrees and are ALREADY considering stopping. Gah.
I’ve only read 7 from the list, but I object to the fact that three of the books were written by Elena Ferrante and Alice Munro had two. (There may have been more with duplicates, those were just the ones I noticed.)
It seems like if you’re only going to choose 100 books and there is a lot of subjectivity in the process (meaning, they aren’t strictly the ones that a majority of people voted for, or the ones that sold the most) then you should include 100 different authors.
Great point!!
I’m a night owl, and the idea of activities until 845 every night makes me feel exhausted. Maybe you have a PB&J night every week??
Or every day!! Haha, jk. A lot of nights 1 or 2/3 kids will be home … so dinner in shifts. We were already sort of doing that it will just be a bit more exaggerated.
I’m in agreement with you and most of your commenters about MBF — couldn’t even finish it! I think I’ve read 9 on the list, six of which overlap with yours.
Becca Freeman, who’s a podcaster (Bad on Paper) and author, is crowdsourcing her own version of the Top 100 Books list and I contributed to that one! Her audience skews very bookish but younger / more female than the contributors to the NYT list. Here’s the link in case anyone wants to contribute (it was a fun process deciding on my ten!) – https://open.substack.com/pub/beccafreeman/p/lets-crowdsource-a-list-of-the-top?r=7dw48&utm_medium=ios
I’ve read 2.5 of these (Station 11 is probably great but I started it in Feb 2020 and couldn’t finish because it felt too real). I have lots of thoughts on how romances, sci-fi, fantasy, or other genres don’t make lists like this. I’ll spare you the whole TED talk I could give on this topic, but it’s similar to how many felt when Barbie didn’t get key Oscar nods because it wasn’t a heavy drama.
Late activities are a no-go in our house. My kids need sleep and downtime, and so do the parents. Curious how you end up making it all work – would love to see you follow up with a plan 🙂
I’m sort of annoyed on your behalf that you have the emotional work for figuring this out. Couldn’t your husband come up with a late-night pickup solution?!
He actually does a ton of the actual later driving – much more than I do! And unlike me he doesn’t really seem to mind it too much. I may be (okay, I am!) more apt to think about it in advance but honestly we could not do these sports without him doing what he does.
I’ve read many of them, but didn’t enjoy all of the ones I’ve read.
In a funk now because fellowship start (Infectious Disease, which has a huge volume) is so busy and I’m so inefficient, and will I ever have spare time again? I did get the brilliant idea to make a mini folder with all the paperwork we were handed as well as basic cheat sheets on antibiotics and infections so I’m not running to a computer each time primary team asks me a question.
Or I just wanted to spend money on JetPens to make myself feel better
Thank you Daddy SHU for the gift link to that NYT list. I’d been wanting to spend some time with it. I’ve read 7 books on it and maybe I’d like to read 2 more Pachinko and something else. I don’t love the methodology of how they chose these but it’s got people talking about books so that makes me happy.
Good luck with the late nights – that is tough! Maybe some crockpot meals could help? I remember in that season of life my son doing homework in the car when traveling to and fro.
I feel so much better after seeing your post and the comments–I read a lot, and I’d only read 10 of the NYT books, and many of them I hadn’t even heard of! And I didn’t like My Brilliant Friend and did not read any of the other books in the series. Life’s too short to read books you don’t like just because someone says they’re “important.”
Best of luck with the fall schedule–I am in awe of what you all accomplish as a family 🙂
I totally agree Kathy. I’m an avid reader, and like SHU, I do love me some Elin Hilderbrand and decidedly not NYT worthy dramas, I was still shocked to find how many books I hadn’t read or heard of. I read 10 and like most others did not love My Brilliant Friend. It was sooo dark. I mean realistic, sure, but there could’ve been some light in there? The TV series was much more palatable for me. I’m so glad you can have Josh do those late pick ups. Seems totally fair given your circadian rhythms. My 9 yo has an intense activity schedule and her practices all end at 6:30 which is when I’d prefer to be eating dinner. So everything has to shift. This routine-obsessed mom will have to adjust. Sigh. Thank goodness for carpools!
I have read 60 which I know sounds really high but honestly I get so many of my recs from NYT end-of-year lists and such that I’m not surprised there’s tons of overlap. I also thought MBF was way overhyped and I was SHOCKED it got the #1 slot. I think the 10 you have read are some of the ones I’ve enjoyed most (other than MBF!). Other than Pachinko and Demon Copperhead, I also think you’d like the Goldfinch, On Beauty, and Olive Kitteridge.
Sarah, a big pain point I have as a working parent is how to supervise homework (or just ensure it gets done!) when the kids also have evening activities. Since I’m still working when my kids get home from school, I have just really not been successful at getting them to do their homework during this time (and I get that they need a break right after school anyway) and then with evening activities it feels like there is no time left. How do you manage this? My kids are A/C’s age.
Yes – this is going to be a challenge. Probably for A I’ll provide help if needed Monday and Weds (non gym days) and C the non soccer days and otherwise they can (or will have to) handle it. I don’t do a ton as it is but sometimes they ask for help with math especially
And, thank you for the book recs!!!
I like My Brilliant Friend but soooo many people didn’t- so you’re not alone!
Oof, that is going to be a hard schedule when school starts! I don’t get up as early as you, and I would still be a little cranky about being out and about that late on school nights. I’ll be interested to see how you work it out- I’m sure you’ll find a way!