Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to, and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in the comments
What I’ve Been Reading
I finished the Longmire book and I probably won’t read another one of those for a while, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was heavy. Heavy and dense and somewhat, no, a lot depressing. The writing is outstanding. Very detailed, very well done and I fell for the characters hard, but I fell too hard because it hurt too much to see Sheriff Longmire hurt. I won’t say I’ll never read one again but I am going to take a long break from those books, to cleanse my pallet, so to speak.
For lighter fare, I picked up The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenback by Bethany Turner again, forgetting I’d never finished it. I got distracted from it when I was reading a book to review for Christy Distler. I also have a Becky Wade book in the Kindle I need to read and a book by Chris Martin that has intrigued me. And for comfort reading, I have downloaded another “The Cat Who . . .” book.
I finished A Long Time Comin’ by Robin W. Pearson a bit ago, but forgot to put the review here on the blog so this past week I shared that here and on my Instagram.
What’s Been Occurring
WordPress is driving me nuts with this block thing. I have been using it for a while now but it doesn’t work well in the mobile version on my phone, which I usually only use when I want to fix an error in a post. When I got to make the change the app freezes and often kicks me out or I’ll type a sentence and it won’t show up in the block for several seconds or even minutes so it looks like I didn’t type anything. Now, on the laptop version the entire screen is filled with my post instead of a small part like it was before which is distracting for me because I feel like I’m typing on a never-ending page. I just wish they would stop making changes and leave things the way they were. It’s extremely annoying and making me consider jumping to another platform. The one reason I don’t is that I have met more people on WordPress through the reader than I have on any other platform. I’m not willing to give up that community feel, which is the main reason I blog in the first place.
As I’m writing this post I am trying to italicize, bold, or link, and the pop-up thing that is supposed to do that isn’t showing up when I highlight. I also can’t use Grammarly with the new blocks and that means I have a lot more typos and missing commas (more about my comma problems below). You know what, WordPress, sometimes it is better just to keep things the way they are. For now, they are letting us switch to the old editor but I believe I read that is going to be fazed out soon.
We started homeschooling this week by easing into it. My son and I are both getting used to his new curriculum, which includes a Literature curriculum that could double as his history curriculum and his history curriculum, which could be used for writing and English and Bible all at the same time. We didn’t start Science yet and he’s only reviewing Math at this point. We will be doing some grammar this year but I prefer he learn grammar while he works on his writing instead of lessons on nominative nouns, whatever that is. Honestly, I don’t remember ever getting this detailed with grammar when I was in school and definitely not in eighth grade so we will save that for ninth and tenth. I guess I don’t get the whole idea of teaching all these terms for different parts of speech. When I write I don’t sit and ask myself if I used the right possessive noun (which I had never heard of before now) or prepositional phrase. I just write.
One thing I really need to work on is commas so I can see the purpose of learning where to put a comma. Other than that, I feel like some aspects of grammar are taught in school so students can show college professors they know it but in the real world, it really isn’t going to matter that much. Right now some grammar Nazi is ripping apart every word I’ve written and thinking, “Yeah, well, you definitely need some grammar lessons so I hope your kid gets some.”
Grammar Nazis drive me nuts because they focus so much on grammar, spelling, and punctuation they completely dismiss a person’s intent and who a person really is. I know a person like this and she judges people based on their grammar. Good at grammar? You’re worth her time. Awful at it? You are beneath her. It’s a shame because she’s missing out on some really awesome people with that snobby attitude.
What do you mean I overthink? No, I don’t. Do I?
What I’m Watching
We started watching Kobra Kai (the Karate Kid spin-off show that was first on YouTube and now on Netflix) as a family since I had watched it when I first came out, but apparently, I blocked out part of it because we stumbled into some really inappropriate material for even the almost 14-year old. We are going to decide if we will watch the rest of it together or not. Probably not. My husband and I will watch it alone because it is well done but *prude alert* some of the sex references really aren’t necessary in my
opinion.
I watched the movie Finding Your Feet by myself because no one in my family would have liked this movie about an older, high-society British woman who finds out her husband has been having an affair and moves in with her poorer, less refined sister while she tries to get her feet back under her. The less-refined sister (Bif) reminded me of my former neighbor, but in a good way because she was a lot more fun than her uptight sister (Sandra). In Sandra’s defense, she was thrown for quite a loop when her husband of 40 some years was caught in a 5-year affair with her best friend. My
favorite quote from the movie: “You know, it’s one thing to be afraid of dying, Sandra, but it’s another thing to be afraid of living.” Good advice for many of us these days, I’d say.
What I’m Writing
On the blog this week I shared:
Faithfully Thinking: Press Into Him
Extra Fiction Thursday: Quarantined Chapters 6 and 7
Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter, Chapter 23 Part 1
Special Fiction Saturday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 23 Part II
Photos of the Week
Boondock Ramblings 
I really dislike the block thing on WordPress!! It doesn’t work well at all and I end up wasting so much time trying to get my posts to look ‘normal’ they way they used to look. Why can’t they just leave stuff alone for those of us who don’t use our blogs for making money? Like you, if it wasn’t for all the people I follow on WP, I’d be tempted to go somewhere else but then I think there would be changes no matter where you blog…ACK! It just comes down to I don’t like having to waste my time trying to learn something new that doesn’t really work for me. Rant over. On a happier note, I love your photos!
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Hahaha! Your rant was right on. I agreed with all of it. And yes, there seem to be changes no matter where a person blogs but I think WordPress should just leave the old editor for people who prefer that and provide the upgraded one for people who want to use the blocks. I like some of the block features but when they don’t work right then your stuck not being able to write anything. Maybe they will be able to work out the bugs and we will all get used to it eventually. I don’t know. But then we will get used to it and they will change it again!!!
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I know what you mean about the new WP thing. Why couldn’t they just leave it alone? It didn’t make anything better. It actually takes me longer to write a post now than before.
We did Fix It Grammar last year and that was actually fun. But I don’t understand learning half of those terms. I’ve always heard that the English language is the hardest language to learn.
Love your photos! The sunflowers are so pretty!
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I want to try Fix it Grammar this year. I’m buying some of our curriculum in shifts. We did an intensive grammar course last year so I’m not worried about doing one this first semester anyhow. I don’t remember having a set grammar class when I was in eighth grade anyhow. I’m sure we had some lessons in English class but not an entire course. I am making him take a writing course this year which he is oh so thrilled about. Ha. Ha.
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Lol! My daughter is taking a writing course this year, too. She wasn’t too thrilled but now she’s really in to it. I’m glad because she’s really good at making up descriptive stories. I was actually surprised! Hopefully your son starts loving it. 🙂
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My son is very imaginative but I’m starting with essays which is much less thrilling to him. We did a few essays last year and sometimes he got a little too creative with his essays. I told him it wasn’t appropriate to write things like “dude, listen to this …” in an essay. 🙄
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It sounds like everyone hates the new editor. Some have even emailed WordPress about it and only been told, basically, get used to it. Not very nice, if you ask me, so I count myself lucky that, so far, I’ve slipped through the cracks and am continuing to enjoy the Classic Editor. Hopefully, I didn’t just jinx myself just to awaken tomorrow to the horrible new editor!
Grammar was almost literally drilled into me during most of my elementary and middle school years, but I loved it so much I didn’t care. When I went to a new school for eighth grade, I was really confused to have a single English class that taught literature and grammar instead of separating them into two different classes. I wouldn’t go so far as calling myself a Grammar Nazi, but I will correct lone mistakes if I know the person well. It does bother me if I bought a book only to find the pages filled with mistakes unless it’s clear it’s an important stylistic part of the book. Is it important to know the proper terms for every part of speech? Well, maybe if you want to be a trivia contestant. Otherwise a basic understanding of how it all works together will get most people through life relatively unscathed. That said, my son is in First Grade and has a grammar workbook they’ll be starting on at some point. Should be…interesting, considering they’re still learning how to spell common words.
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I think that basic grammar is important, of course, but I just question the need to label every single word in a sentence as a grammatical “rule” or something. I don’t know. I just think 70 some detailed lessons in one book is a bit overkill, but we will still do the lessons as a review, of course. I am not a big fan of big grammar errors, of course, but sometimes I know peopleeither write them by accident or simply didn’t know “the rule” so I accept the intent instead.
And from what I was told by technical support today, everyone will be using it soon, whether they want to or not.
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I remember when I was in college and we found some really interesting restrictions for what we could and couldn’t bring on campus. It turned out someone had actually tried it at one point, hence why it was mentioned. I wonder if students having to learn grammar a certain way evolved from something like that. I wonder what a world without grammar being taught was like. I suppose then we’d have our answer. And now it’s just habit, though it probably is a very important thing most students will forget soon enough. Though with the way people tend to talk in text messages these days, maybe we’ll direly need the grammar rules so we don’t end up back at the grunting of the caveman days.
That sounds like the typical response I’ve been hearing. I really don’t look forward to that day.
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From what I read grammar was invented to try to make sure people wrote and sounded like “the upper crust” so to speak. I truly believe basic grammar is important – nouns, adjectives, verbs, where to place commas, certain writing rules, etc. But when we have about 15 different names for those different parts of speech I feel like some nerd just sat there one day trying to make themselves look smart and made a lot of his garbage up. I mean, when I write I don’t ask myself If I used the right “nominative noun.” I don’t care what a nominative noun is. If it sounds good to me then I write it. I have a feeling the preceding sentence is why we need grammar lessons, and why my school should have focused on it more, but… you get my point. Lol!
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Someone clearly had too much time on their hands. I suppose there might be a time when someone needs to know all the little details and it’s impossible to know which child will grow up to need it, but at least it’s easily forgettable. It’s probably just useful to students learning the proper way of writing things so they can tease out what their sentences need and don’t need and then writing properly hopefully becomes second nature, but, considering the students my husband has worked with on their writing, I think I’m too optimistic.
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You’re probably right about being too optimistic. Either way I will be teaching him basics but I’m just not sure how far to take it/ I’m going to write a post at some point about how detailed his current grammar book is on all this.
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Can’t go wrong with the basics! I don’t remember much beyond nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. so he’s probably doing a lot better than I am. I imagine for most people all the specifics are just too much and will likely be forgotten in a year.
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On my blog, on WordPress, I’ve never done any update and do far so good. I hope I don’t get sucked into changing it! Change is hard!!!!
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I changed to try it out but support just told me they are going to make everyone change soon.
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Dang. I hate having to learn new technology!!!
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Gorgeous photos!! I am going to comment on your post working backwards… lol. Your black and white animal menagerie – I love them. Your dog is so darn cute I want to squish him with hugs.
That quote is awesome actually. I might write that down and hang it somewhere to read when I need to.
I am glad to hear that your week started well with school!! I can’t imagine how different it is to have an older child and younger one lol. Totally different learning there. I learned all the grammar in school, then received a double dose in my four years of Latin. However, it didn’t stick around forever and now I just write and don’t follow any rules. I am a grammar rebel.
I loved the television show Longmire, but I have never read the books. I might have to rewatch it honestly, I loved it so much. The characters were amazing. I think I will hold off on the books though, if they are intense. I am not ready for that right now!
I saw your email, sorry I haven’t answered! I am using block editor, and have been for a while. Is that the new one? I am so confused. I also can’t edit on my phone at all, ever. It is super frustrating.
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