30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: library love

Open book atop stacked books with text reading “30 Days of Bookish Gratitude” and “Reading, Writing, Books and Other Literary Things.”

How much do I love my local library system? This much.

Back in the day, I’d head on over to our local branch, which has a terrific children’s section, and spend hours there with the kids. Free meeting rooms, which saved me a bunch of time, hassle, and money when scheduling Girl Scout meetings.

Book clubs? I’ve restricted myself to the one, but you could fill your reading year with the number of book clubs the library system sponsors.

Then, they go and do this:

Prince library card

Y’all, a limited-edition Prince library card?

Don’t mind if I do. I wasn’t planning on turning in my old card anytime soon, but I couldn’t resist this upgrade. How do you make checking out books from the library even more fun? Add in a Prince library card, that’s how.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Writer Beware

Open book resting on stacked books with text reading “30 Days of Bookish Gratitude” and “Reading, Writing, Books and Other Literary Things.”

Today I’m grateful for Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware, still going strong after all these years. If you’re a writer and you’re not following the blog or checking it on a regular basis, I encourage you to do so now. (Yes, right now.)

Victoria has been covering the Anthropic class action lawsuit, all manner of scams (made more sophisticated with generative AI), magazine rights grabs, and publishers behaving badly.

There’s a lot of information out there on publishing these days, but finding good information? Well, that’s something to be grateful for.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Manuscript Time Blocks

Open book atop stacked books with text reading “30 Days of Bookish Gratitude” and “Reading, Writing, Books and Other Literary Things.”

I was using Manuscript Time Blocks before I had a name for them. Back when I was still commuting to work, I’d sneak away on my lunch break and into one of the many ponder havens* available (mini conference rooms).

There, I would write for 50 minutes or so, some lovely manuscript time in the middle of my day. And no matter how the writing went, I always felt better afterward.

One Manuscript Time Block complete!

I know some people are highly motivated by word count goals. Word count goals are great if you’re wired that way. But they’ve never worked for me. I have a hard drive full of stories to prove it.

Enter Becca Syme of the Better-Faster Academy. Becca defines a Manuscript Time Block as any 30-minute block used to write, revise, research, edit, and think about the manuscript.

This method has been a game-changer for me, especially now that I’m really trying to do this full-time writing thing. Writing is more than plonking down words on the page (or screen). I’ve always known that, but it’s nice to have a name for it.

*This is such a tech company thing.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: e-readers

Open book resting on stacked books beside text reading “30 Days of Bookish Gratitude” and “Reading, Writing, Books and Other Literary Things.”

Getting back to the digital today. Don’t get me wrong. I love print books. I have shelves full and stacks of print books, most of which I intend to keep.

Oh, but I love my e-reader. I’ve had one since 2009*, back when terrible OCR made digital versions dicey. I once bought a book where the lowercase letter a often showed up as @, as in l@ds. Yeah, that was hard to read.

Things are much better these days, and I appreciate being able to check out and buy ebooks whenever my heart desires. Also, for bigger books? These days, they’re much harder for me to hold, so if something is very long or has tiny print, I’m more often than not getting it in the digital format.

Maybe best of all? I can tuck my e-reader into my purse and venture out with a virtual stack of books. I always have something to read.

*The first book I bought for that e-reader? The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Emma M Lion

An open book on top of a stack of books with the text '30 Days of Bookish Gratitude' and phrases about reading and writing in a decorative font.

Building on yesterday’s post about books and book discovery, I am very grateful I stumbled upon The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. I’m not even sure how I stumbled across them, but once I did, she was everywhere.

My reading log shows I blazed through the series in April, only pausing to read The Serviceberry for my book club.

I love to read, and I’ve read so many amazing books this year; I don’t mean to play favorites, but it’s been a while since I’ve torn through a series like that. It really was the right series at the right time.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Booking Through Thursday

An open book with pages fanned out, resting on top of two stacked books, against a black background. The text reads '30 Days of Bookish Gratitude' followed by 'Reading • Writing • Books and Other Literary Things'.

Today, I’m grateful for Booking Through Thursday, both the original meme hosted by Deb and everyone who has been playing along for nearly a year now.

Whether you stop by every week, when the mood hits and time allows, or just once. I’m grateful to everyone for doing so. I’ve grown my blogging network, added to my TBR pile, and discovered books I otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

Thank you all for visiting and responding (even if it’s just in your head)!

Booking Through Thursday: point of view

Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.

This week’s prompt:

What’s your favorite (or preferred) point of view? First person? Third person, single narrator, multiple narrators? Does it depend on the genre and the book?

What’s your favorite (or preferred) point of view?

What’s your favorite (or preferred) point of view?

How to play:

  • On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
  • On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
  • Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.

Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.

P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Little Free Library

An open book on top of a stack of closed books with text '30 Days of Bookish Gratitude' and subtitle about reading, writing, and literary topics.

I’ve written about my love for Little Free Library before. (Hey, it was even a Booking Through Thursday prompt.)

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a Little Free Library steward, and the library was one of our pandemic projects. You can read about how it started and how it’s going. Truth be told, we really do need to refresh the paint, something we didn’t manage to do this year.

One of the things I love is the people I get to meet. There are the steward meetups, of course, and book-packing sessions. But I also get to know the people who visit my library.

There’s the woman with her therapy dog who stops by for children’s books. Families who take walks with their children, each carrying a book to exchange.

And, just the other day, a woman stopped by to drop off a book—but not just any old book. She told me her sister, a librarian, had died over the summer. And as a librarian, her sister had amassed a huge collection of books. To honor her sister and the books, the woman has been seeking out Little Free Libraries so these books can find a new home.

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell now resides in my Little Free Library. I’m telling you, it classes up the place.

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: pens and paper

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude

Going analog with the gratitude today.

Paper things I love (in no particular order):

  • Sustainable Earth sugar-cane wire-bound notebooks, especially the three-subject notebooks. In the notebook I’m using right now, I have a section for The Marigold Miracle, The Rose Rebellion, and a pristine, yet-to-be-used section for either book four or what I hope will be another bonus novella (tentatively The Dahlia Dilemma)
  • Pastel colored legal pads; currently, the purple one is part of my revision work.
  • Composition notebooks. I pick these up whenever they’re on sale (once everyone is back to school, you can get these for a song). I use these for my morning pages, planning, and German lessons.

Pens I love:

  • Uniball Vision Elite Rollerball Pens, bold, blue/black ink. Must be blue/black. Must be bold. I buy these in a twelve-pack and use them for longhand writing.
  • Uniball Vision Elite Rollerball Pens, micro, blue (or other colors), for editing. I like the finer tip on these for editing manuscript pages.

Clearly, I’m not giving up longhand writing any time soon. So, I know this is a blog, and we’re all on the internet right now, but does anyone else out there love their analog writing tools?

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude: Story Bundle

30 Days of Bookish Gratitude

I can’t tell you how many books I’ve acquired thanks to Story Bundle. (A lot; let’s just say a lot.)

If you’re taking on a writing challenge this month, you might want to check out the 2026 Novel Writing Tools Bundle, curated by Kevin J. Anderson.

Need something to read? Consider the 2026 Trilogies Bundle, curated by Lavie Tidhar. It has everything from science fiction to fantasy to horror, twenty-eight (!) trilogies in all.

Story Bundle is unique because payment is on a sliding scale. You can also opt to donate 10% to the bundle’s charitable cause. If nothing else, you might want to sign up for their newsletter list to hear about upcoming bundles.