Our House in the Middle of Our Street

  view from Abby Grind hike 2020 was not a great reading year for me. It wasn't terrible, but it was worse than the past number of years. I had focus issues, read a lot of books I didn't care for, and abandoned more books in this past year than I have in nearly my entire year combined. It was fairly frustrating, since all we had was time with the pandemic keeping us home and without many of our normal activities to look forward to.  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr  - I started 2020 with finishing this absolute symphony of a book. I still think about this book regularly, and am making plans to read everything he has ever written (which isn't much, to be honest, because he takes his time). This WWII story is clever, tragic, intriguing, and descriptive in the most beautiful way-I still think of the wall of snails he wrote about and it *still* can take my breath away. I could have ended this post with just this book. Stay the course-the first 150 pages can be quit

This is nearly 6 months after the fact, but better late than never. I wanted to write about our Cumberland vacation in July because I wanted to share this wonderful little town (and larger Comox Valley) with anyone interested in an outdoor-focused, local(ish) vacation.  We travel light, and expect most of our activities to be somewhat free (hiking, biking, swimming) with our money mostly going to a nicer Airbnb rental and a few treats/meals out in the week. We mostly make all our food, and that helps keep our costs low. This was a really affordable trip for our family of 4, and frankly, the majority of our money went to our lodging and the ferry ride (oof), our splurge was surf + boogie board, wetsuit rentals.  We found so many of these great spots from friends who had been in the area, or had previously lived within a 20 mile radius. Always ask a local!  With our large Europe trip cancelled because of Covid, I wanted to go to the Island because it would feel like we "went somewhe

  The Christmas book bin next to the tree As I'm finally getting down to the wire to create any last blog posts about book titles and whatever else, I'm realizing that although I felt I didn't read as much (and my Completed amount says so), I realize I did still manage to finish quite a bit of reading even though it was about 40 titles short compared to other years. I'm okay with that; 2020, the year of unmet expectations! The lost focus was real.  Did any of you experience the inability to read deeply this year? Or did you plunge into the hobby ever-deeper, reading more than you would in a normal year because there was so little to do outside our homes? I hope it was the latter!  The Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby -  This was probably the most interesting and important book I read all year. It's a look at the Christian church in America's complicity role in racism throughout American history. It. Was. Fascinating. Tisby is a Christian who presents the read