Shannon Kay's Blog

I’m a seasonal planner, which means that I plan the upcoming season. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m planning based on the weather or the astronomical cycles. I am planning the seasons of my life and the year. This can include things like holidays, but also “back to school” and “summer vacation”.

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Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot was a funny and enjoyable fantasy romantic comedy with excellent fall vibes in a cozy small town, perfect for the Halloween season. 

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The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a great historical fantasy adventure. Amina Al-Sirafi is a middle-aged piratey sea captain who is persuaded out of retirement and away from her daughter. What she thinks will be a fact finding and rescue mission to recover the daughter of a former crewman turns into a full scale supernatural adventure. 

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I saw the Barbie movie today, and it was my first time in a movie theater since 2019. I laughed. I cried. I brought my Legally Blonde 2 Barbie. It was an amazing movie, and I loved it.

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Shortly after my birthday last month, I visited Half Off Books. I was excited to find a hardcover copy of Perfect Scoundrels, the second book in the Heist Society series. I love this series! I’m looking forward to Ally Carter’s adult book that’s coming out in August.

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Fourth Wing was a wild ride.  I enjoyed the dragon-centered fantasy adventure and the romance. The narrative style is a bit more crass and profane* than I prefer, but I was easily pulled in by the world, story, and characters. And, of course, the dragons! I think I hit the point of “can’t put it down” at about the 60% mark. I flew through it and preordered the sequel.

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After having the carpet installed on Friday, we were just waiting for the stuff from our bedroom that they packed out to be returned. This morning they brought the pod back and moved everything back in and assembled the furniture. 

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I finished The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry last night, and loved it. 

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Today is my 40th birthday. I’ve completed my thirties.

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Currently bouncing back and forth between two different books, one hardcover and one digital book. I like them both, but I keep getting interrupted when I sit down and open The Secret Book of Flora Lea. For that reason, I’m further along in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. 

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It’s time to select my Book of the Month Club pick for May. I’m excited because this will be my 12th box, and I want the tote bag! I’m also excited about having a full year of books stamped with their months. Next month is also my birthday month. I’m really interested in The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry. I wish that was a main pick!

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• Scan the genres
• Look at the covers and titles
• Read the descriptions and recommendations blurbs
• Look up books of interest on Goodreads and Storygraph
• Check the number of pages (I don’t want my hard cover to be too heavy)
• Check the Book of the Month Club Reddit group to see what other people are picking
• Read the sample excerpt in the Book of the Month app
• Don’t “vibe” with any of the sample excerpts so far? Start over.

For the last few days, I’ve been focused on choosing new paint and carpet for the bedroom. I knew that I wanted a light pink paint for the walls, so I picked a few colors that I liked and did test swatches on the walls in the room. The three colors that I sampled were Behr Pink Sea Salt, Behr Angelico, and Behr Stolen Kiss.  I painted swatches on every wall in the room to test the color. It’s amazing how the same color can look so different on walls in the same room! All three colors... [Read More]

I finally finished this graphic novel. I’d had to stop reading with less than 50 pages until the end and finally got the chance to sit down and finish it. This is the second graphic novel memoir that I’ve read. The other was George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy. 

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Back in February, we discovered wet carpet in our bedroom. The water was coming from a common wall in our condo. It took days to find the leak and stop the water, mainly because the plumbers needed to enter other units. They finally tracked down the leak and shut it off, but we were left with wet carpet and walls that were wet with some holes in them.

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I opened my RSS reeder to my newly formed folder of Personal Blog feeds and read a nice post on Zinzy’s website about her puppy meeting a cat. I noticed that she has a “reply by email” link. It was just a normal mailto link to her email address. I made a short reply by email and thought that was a pretty nice way to comment.

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