A Weekend Reading Log

The last time I did a journal-type blog post, I was recovering from surgery and was so bored that I decided to document my weekend of reading & notion setup. Whenever I reread that post or other chatty posts on my old blog, it's like looking at a snapshot of my life.

In my August wrap-up, I mentioned that I'm embracing different ways of documenting my life on this blog. In another post, I mentioned that I miss the old posts I used to write and want to bring them back. This reading log is the result of that.

Although this is a "reading log", I am going to document other things as well like how I'm feeling, what I'm doing during the day, and any random thoughts.

So, grab a warm drink and experience a weekend with me 🍵

day 1, friday

I woke up at 9 am, surprised that I slept through the night without too much discomfort. I've been pretty ill this entire week, and it seems to evolve as the days go by instead of reducing. The fluctuating fever that I've had since Tuesday is the most concerning but thankfully, the worst of it was on Tuesday and it has been mild since then.

It's not convenient to fall sick on a Monday because it means that I have to recover while working or have to use up my sick leaves. However, I'd rather fall sick and recover before my vacation next week. Oh, I really hope I'm alright by then because it wouldn't be a truly relaxing beach trip if I am sick.

All I've been doing this week is resting and reading. It's only the 6th of September today and I've already read 8 books so far. This is more than how much I read in the entire month of August! So when I say that I've been doing nothing but rest and read, I'm saying that literally.

The idea to write this post came to me last night when I was on the couch, after finishing another book, thinking about how I should write a blog post soon. I'm a little ahead in the schedule as I already have two book reviews ready to be published. But one spot was remaining to be filled.

Considering my health and energy levels, a thorough post is out of the question. I could wait until I'm better but it would mean blogging during my vacation or messing up my posting schedule. I could switch the dates to post one of the book reviews earlier and keep the open spot for later in the month too but... I am bored.

It's been days of doing nothing but lying on the bed or the couch, covered in blankets, reading, drinking warm fluids, and checking my temperature every few hours. Sure, I worked a couple of days but I'm still pretty bored in my free time.

When I finished another book last night and the only thing to do next was pick up the sequel, I realized just how boring my days were. I thought of blogging which led to thinking about what I could write that's low-energy and remembered how I used to do chatty life posts on my old blog. It was an easy leap from that to a reading log since I'm reading so much.

From what I remember, these posts used to be easy to write and finish. Hopefully, that's still the case. My writing style has changed a lot in the last few years which might make this post drab, but I won't know until I try.

I won't lie, I'm struggling a bit right now to suddenly switch to writing casually without overthinking but I'm sure it'll get easier the more I write. That's how it always is. You just gotta keep doing something for it to get easier, it won't be smooth sailing from the start.

So, here I am, typing on a keyboard at 10:13 am. I am still in my bed because it's the warmest here and I'm drinking warm milk with vanilla-flavoured something that my mom bought for herself and is trying to get me to like it.

The room is a mess like it usually is when I'm sick with all the signs indicating that the occupant is sick. There are blankets everywhere, medicines on the table, and chargers on a small table near the bed for easy access because I have only one plug point next to the bed and have to choose what to charge.

My work starts at 11 am so I should finish this section soon and get to some reading. I'm currently reading Release Me by J. L. Seegars.

It's technically the 3rd book in the New Haven series but it feels like the 5th because the author has done a weird thing by splitting the 2nd book into 3 parts. Considering that 2 of those 3 parts were almost 500 pages, I think it should have been a series on its own instead of #2.1, #2.2, and #2.3. But I guess the author wanted all these books to be tied together since they're in the same setting and the characters make cameos in other books.

I don't remember why I decided to read this series this week, it is lost in a fever fog. I read Restore Me and Revive Me: Part One for the first time in 2022. I loved Restore Me and wrote a whole review on it as well.

At the time, only Revive Me: Part One was out and while I knew that I should wait until part 3 so that I don't get caught in suspense, I still read the book. I forgot pretty much everything from it in the last 2 years but I remember wanting the sequel ASAP.

I checked out the series and found that all the sequels are out and even 2 more installments about different couples are out. The latest release was at the end of August. Since I have nothing better to do, I decided to read the entire series, starting from book 1. I started a Kindle Unlimited subscription again, downloaded the books, and settled down to read them all.

Restore Me was just as good as I remembered it being. Revive Me: Part One was sooo boring, though. I was surprised! According to my Storygraph, I rated Restore Me 4 stars and Revive Me: Part One 5 stars. The former stayed at 4 but the latter dropped to 3.5 now.

I had to push through to read the other two parts and was disappointed by them. I almost dropped the series entirely but I was intrigued by the main lead of Release Me so I kept going.

So far, the book is okay. I like Nadia. She has a very bad history and is running away from something. She's in New Haven to start a new life and stay hidden. She's currently yelling at Sebastian because she misunderstood something but her misunderstanding is valid considering the context and her history.

Sebastian was not what I thought he'd be. He's much softer and nicer in contrast to how he's viewed by others. Despite having a ton of businesses that he would have inherited, he went on his way and built a new conglomerate instead. Considering that, I didn't think he'd have a good relationship with his family. But I was wrong. There was a dinner scene with his family which caught me off guard and made me wonder why he went on his own in the first place. Maybe I'll find out soon.

I'm 16% into the book and my Kindle's battery is at 45%. The latter is important because I forgot to turn on airplane mode after downloading this series and the battery reduced like crazy before I realized it. I had to finish Revive Me: Part Three while keeping the Kindle plugged in. When I'm working, I'm going to keep the Kindle on charge so that I don't have to worry about it running out of battery again soon.

Wow, it's 10:48 am. I have to work soon. Looks like I'm going to read while having breakfast for 10 minutes.

Fridays nowadays seem to be consisting of only meetings. I work a ton from Monday to Thursday so I try to work leisurely on Friday, which was my idea today as well. It was fine for a while but I forgot that my calendar was full from 2:30 pm.

I quickly had lunch before the meetings began, read during the rest of my "lunch break", and got into meetings. There was only one 30-minute break between the meetings which I spent reading. The meetings ended at 6 pm.

Did I do anything productive at work today? Doesn't feel like it. I'm a software engineer but I spend probably 10% of my work hours coding and 90% of it in meetings, telling others how to do things, and analysing the work that needs to be done for something.

I should have taken a nap in the break between meetings. They tired me out and now my fever has climbed up again. This fever isn't letting me go! It has been 4 days! I'm annoyed. I'll make sure to schedule in naps in the next two days. I'm not a napper usually so it doesn't occur to me that I should take naps when I'm unwell. Big mistake. We learn something new every time.

After the last meeting, I took a quick 20-minute nap until my mom woke me up with tea. Sometimes, I'm annoyed by the lack of freedom I have because I live with my mom but otherwise I really appreciate how she takes care of me. It has taken us years to get to a stage where she doesn't critique every little thing I do and I don't rebel against it all but we have finally reached at a good point in our relationship.

Don't get me wrong, she still told me at least 10 different habits of mine which could have made me sick earlier this week and makes me feel as if I don't care for my health at all. But I just listen to it and calmly tell her why I think I fell sick instead, we agree that both of us might be right, and we move on.

Earlier this week, I asked mom to open a medicine bottle because I couldn't and she couldn't as well, so she asked for a knife to cut the seal. I kept watch and immediately scolded her for holding the knife towards her instead of away. She changed position and I went to blow my nose.

Within a minute, I heard a small scream and I knewwwwwwww that she cut herself. Thankfully it was a shallow cut on the other hand and didn't bleed. I scolded her for 10 minutes about how she knew better and why does she do things that she would scold me for. She agreed that she was being foolish. I took the bottle and found another way to open it. It honestly wasn't that hard, just needed some extra push. My annoyance at her foolishishness gave me the energy.

My point with the above random story is that I'm happy we interact like adults and take turns scolding each other for doing foolish things instead of me always getting a lecture. It took almost the entire lockdown of fighting and arguing and having headaches to reach this point, but at least we're finally here. I wonder if our relationship would have ever turned out this way if the pandemic had not occurred.

Speaking of pandemic, my state has declared a dengue epidemic apparently. Fun. We are also having a very nasty strain of viral fever going around. I'm still not sure if contracted viral fever from the hundreds of people I was around the previous week or if this is purely due to exhaustion or both.

One of my friends slept for 3 days (with breaks only to eat) to recover from viral fever recently. I was shook at the time but I'm thinking that I should have done the same instead of reading and working from home. But no, my workaholic tendencies* will not allow me to lounge and rest for a few days. Look at me, as if working and reading aren't enough, I'm here writing a super long blog post to keep up with the schedule.

I know that I'm a workaholic and always try to be productive. I try to curb myself setting boundaries at work and making sure to take time off. However, I still work extra hours every week and do more than a person should. I've gotten better at realizing when I need to take breaks but it occurs too late sometimes.

That's what happened on Monday. I took a sick day off on Monday to make sure to rest before I fall sick and I ended up falling sick that afternoon. I still think that I fell sick due to doing too much (like playing intense badminton for 90 minutes on Monday morning because "I am on leave anyway") but a part of it might be the germs going around. Me making progress on my reading challenge is not worth pushing myself to burn out and I really need to learn to take breaks earlier.

Speaking of reading, lets actually talk about some reading. I can't believe that I rambled so long about random things when the title of this post is called "reading log." I apologize.

In between my meetings today, I finished Reclaim Me by J. L. Seegars. I finished it pretty fast because I skimmed and skipped all the smut—which was a lot of it. I described Revive Me: Part Three as 95% pining, 5% plot and this book was a milder version of that.

Right from when Sebastian meets Nadia, he pines over her. He does everything for her. He spends all his money to make her happy and comfortable and near him. Some decisions would have been questionable if he hadn't been so considerate. I liked that instead of protecting her secretively all the time, he asked for her consent to dig into her abuser and told her updates whenever he got them.

However, overall, the book wasn't much. It had potential but it was very similar to a bunch of romance books that I read a few years back with tortured women and extra-rich men.

Remember me wondering about why he went his own way to establish a business? There was no answer for that. When a person makes such a monumental decision, it says a lot about their character and circumstances. The rest of their actions should match. But it didn't make sense in this book!

He had a great relationship with his family. He loved his father. So why break out? He was clearly a family man. It made no sense. When you start thinking about the motivations of characters' actions, the book starts to fall apart. It becomes obvious that it is a plot-driven book.

We read about what amazing things they did off-page but on-page, we only see pining and sex. There wasn't even any depth to Nadia! Her trauma was her only thing. There was nothing showing her making specific decisions because of her experiences, learning to lean or people, or healing.

So yeah, I'm disappointed. I wonder if Restore Me (book 1) was the only good book in the series. We'll find out because I'm going to read the last book now. Should I read it? Maybe not considering the last 4 books (I will count all 3 parts of book 2 individually, thank you very much) were a disappointment. But I got a Kindle Unlimited subscription for this and only the last book remains. I might as well finish it.

day 2, saturday

Instead of starting the next book immediately after writing the above, I took another nap. It wasn't a good nap, unfortunately. I woke up to a bunch of work pings and had to open my work laptop to help on a couple of different things.

I've learnt that after working for a certain period of time, people come to you for help far more than you ask anyone for it yourself. Now that I've been in my company for 4.5 years, I'm one of the oldies. I know a lot of the history and am often reached out to information and help. Nowadays, if there's something that I don't know (talking about things that can't be googled), it's quite likely that no one else does either. The other day, one of colleagues exclaimed, "how do you not know this?" when I got help from someone else (who joined with me and hence, is one of the oldies too).

Anyway. After that, I had dinner and sat with my mom for a bit before going to bed. The idea was to rest, rest, and properly rest this weekend so that I'm fully recovered by tomorrow. When I whined about how my fever isn't going away, my friends pointed out that I wasn't taking strong enough medication and scolded me for doing a reading sprint instead of resting.

So, today, I tried resting. I genuinely tried. And I kinda failed. Before getting into that, it's Ganesh Chaturthi today! Happy Ganesh Chaturthi! In case you don't know what it is, it's a Hindu festival celebrating the god Ganesha's birthday.

One of my favourite cartoons when I was young depicted Ganesha's birthday. It's a wild story because Shiva accidentally cuts off Ganesha's head and replaces it with an elephant's head to bring him back to life. In hindsight, seeing that animated could have been unsettling for kids but a great job was done and I loved it.

The streets are usually lit with tons of lights, especially in places where there are statues of the god. During this time, there are a ton of HUGE Ganesha statues kept near temples and some are carted through the streets with a band. As I type this, I can hear drumbeats and shouts of "morya!" indicating that there's a procession passing by nearby with a statue. All the statues are usually decked out. At the end of the festival, the statues are submerged in oceans or rivers so that the clay disintegrates and we say goodbye to Ganesha until next year.

We usually buy a small statue of the god to celebrate at home. Mom went to the nearby street shops that are always filled with different variants and got a simple mud one. We like simple mud ones without any paint because they disintegrate in water well and quickly (we have to stand and watch till it's fully done to properly say goodbye and we can't stand for hours lol). We tried an elaborately painted one once and it didn't disintegrate well, even after several hours. Mom felt like we hadn't said goodbye or done things properly for the god that year so we've always bought simple mud ones since then.

Mom made the regular Chaturthi food this morning as well—kozhukattai (aka modak) (a small sweet dumpling), adhirasam (sweet made of jaggery), vadai (vada), and paisam (a sweet porridge). I don't know the English names, these are the Tamizh ones. Kozhukattai is specifically made during this festival because it is said that Ganesha loves them.

As mom is diabetic and I don't like sweets, she makes the sweets with very little sugar and jaggery. It's barely sweet just for the sake of it haha.

There's a bunch of festivities that we do for today, including dressing up in traditional wear. Unfortunately, I couldn't do much other than help my mom on the sidelines because I was still sick this morning. I rested in bed until mom finished the pooja and gave me the food to eat. Then I took medicine and went back to bed until 1 pm or so.

I was supposed to go back to sleep after showering and having lunch but I thought let's read for just a bit and that turned into the entire afternoon. Remember how I said I should nap in the afternoons but I'm not used to it? Today was another failed nap day. I did not nap at all. I wasn't even remotely sleepy.

It meant that I finished Reclaim Me in almost 1 sitting. And boy, my reactions to this were volleying back and forth the entire time. I did not know whether I'd talk positively or negatively about it until the last page.

The book starts with the main couple—Rae and Hunter—having sex. When they're done, Rae mentions that her boyfriend (a different dude!!!) proposed to her right before she came to Hunter and she had said yes but removed the ring before seeing Hunter.

Y'all. I don't care how messed up someone's story is. If the person has the agency to leave their partner to pursue someone else, they should do that instead of cheating and letting their bodies make decisions! That beginning (which was the prologue btw) pissed me off.

The first chapter goes 14 weeks before that day to show us how the characters ended up there. There are also dual timelines because the couple's story technically begins 10+ years back and the present-day plot is their second chance.

The rest of the book was not bad, actually. Both characters come from messed up backgrounds due to which they have a lot of insecurities and doubts. Rae and Hunter made sound and mature decisions for most of the book. Most is the keyword.

What didn't show in the prologue but came through in the story was how the characters accepted that they made bad decisions, owned up to them, and took actions to not repeat them. I also liked how Rae realized that Hunter put in the work to heal and grow and she needed to do the same before fully committing to him.

Overall, not bad. Could have been better and definitely should have started better, but not bad.

With that book read, I'm done with the series! I don't know if the author is planning on writing more books. I'm not going to find out. Restore Me is the only book that will stay with me, the rest will likely be forgotten within a year.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I may pick up a paperback because I'm tired of looking at my Kindle. I could pick up War & Peace but I'm not in the mood for it. I'll probably pick up one of the fantasy books on my shelf. I actually need to buy some new books soon. I didn't plan well this time.

I usually have a few new books of mine and a few borrowed books from friends making up 7-10 unread books. When I met my reader friends last week, I returned the books I had borrowed from them and forgot to ask them for new ones because I was so busy with other things. I thought I had enough from my collection but I blew through 4 books easily in the first few days of being sick.

Hopefully, I'll have recovered fully by tomorrow so I can go to work on Monday. This is related because my work is on the same street as my regular bookstore (I know! I love it! I also hate it because I want to go to the bookstore all the time). If I'm feeling good on Monday, I'll take the read books to unhaul them and buy some new ones.

I'm actually feeling better now. My fever did not rise again in the evening like I had the last few days and my cold is better too. My temperature looks normal. I don't feel as tired and run down like the last few days. I will still take medicine and rest tomorrow, though.

Mom's best friends and her family came over in the evening. Ganesh Chaturthi is a social festival and people often invite friends to have a look at their decorated idol, provide sweets and exchange gifts. Mom didn't invite anyone because I wasn't well. However, her best friend came to town to see her son and daughter-in-law and called my mom asking if they could drop by. My mom said yes, obviously.

They're fun and chill people so I didn't worry about not being dressed up for the festival. We chatted and laughed for a good couple of hours. My mom's a lovely social person so she bloomed in a group. It was nice. They brought sugean (fried sweet dumplings whereas kozhukattai is steamed) (they call it boorelu in Telugu) which they made for today.

It made me really happy for my mom because she's kept in touch with her friend and they're close even after so many years. They met when they were in 8th grade! They were classmates! And now they're in their 60s and thriving and still making jokes about the antics they did in school. It's lovely to see. I can only hope that some of my friendships last that long as well.

Anywayy. It's 10:15 pm now. I just had another of the sugeans as a dessert snack. I won't be reading anymore today. I'm going to take my meds and go to bed. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

day 3, sunday

I did not read today. Instead, I watched 7 episodes of Love Next Door. As I'm writing this, another episode just released, which I will probably watch while having dinner in a bit.

Yes, I know, binge-watching is not a good form of rest. But I started watching it in the morning while having breakfast and I couldn't stop. I'm used to binge-watching Kdramas! Why are they so nice to binge?!

If I knew that Love Next Door is an ongoing drama, I wouldn't have started it. Unfortunately, I opened Netflix and saw it featured first with Jung Hae-in's face so I simply clicked on it without finding out anything about it. I like Jung Hae-in and there aren't enough of his dramas for me to watch (I don't like age gap romances so two of his best ones are out).

This drama is actually really good too. I like the characters and the plot. I love how the moms are a friend group since high school and have stayed close despite the years. I like how their kids are close friends because they're close. I like the two different "next door romance" plots. The main childhood-friends-to-lovers is so good.

So, yeah. I got sucked into it. Who wouldn't? (Probably someone with more sense who knows that they need to rest before going to office tomorrow.) (Clearly, I am not that someone.)

I don't mind that I didn't read anything today. After all, I've read enough for this entire month already. Even if I read nothing the rest of September, my wrap-up this time will have more books than the previous two wrap-ups did.

There's still some time left today but I definitely won't be reading. There's the new episode, of course. There's also an event at 10 pm on the Blog & Chill Discord channel. I lowkey forgot about it. Thankfully, I saw my reminder and sent a reminder to whoever marked that they're interested in the event.

During the first few events, I was always ready with a theme or a bunch of questions to drive the conversations. However, lately, I've been winging it. And it goes well enough because there's a certain set of regulars and we've become friends. So we end up chatting about life updates than talking about blogging and there's not much requirement for me to come up with a theme to talk about.

Although 7 people have rsvp'd to the event, not everyone might show up because it's entirely possible that people have important plans or something came up. If there are enough people, I'm thinking that we can play Skribbl.io. A few of us played it a few months back and it was really fun. Let's see.

I'll end this post here, though, since there's nothing else to log about the weekend.

let's chat

Although it wasn't a super happening weekend and I didn't end up reading a lot, I somehow managed to talk a lot haha. Thanks for hanging out with me! I hope you enjoyed reading about it and found it interesting.

How are you? How have you been? What did you read recently? Have you ever tried kozhukattais/modaks? Chat with me in the comments!