Sunday Bookends: A lot of snow, some cozy reading and watching, and some more snow

January 25, 2026January 25, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 28 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

As I am starting this post on Saturday night, we had temps — er – temp of 5. In the morning snow is supposed to start and when it all ends Monday night, we are supposed to have close to 18 inches of snow.

I really hope we don’t get as much as they say, though, because the high temp is supposed to be 15 degrees, which I think means this will be a very heavy, wet snow. We live in a rural area so that could mean power outages. We have a woodstove that could keep us warm downstairs but we would have to worry about our pipes freezing since we do not have a generator. I believe that’s something we will need to invest in at some point soon. Our neighbors have generators, which I think they purchased after a tornado hit here on our street about six years ago, wiping out power for several days.

I’m sure many of you, if you are in the Northern and Middle U.S. are facing a similar situation as us. Stay safe out there, everyone.

Since we are going to be snowed in, I have been planning how to get through it all without worrying too much. I plan to watch movies, read books, and sip tea or cocoa.

To keep themselves occupied, Little Miss has been video chatting with her friend and The Boy has been chatting with his friend and playing video games. The Husband has been cleaning the house (he’s much better at that than I am) and reading and doing a little work for the newspaper he is at the editor at.

He expects to be snowed in Monday and will work from home. As long as we have power that is.

Erin (www.crackercrumblife.com) and I held our Crafternoon Zoom call yesterday and it was very nice to chat with people from all over the world. We chat while we craft and if you are interested in taking part, please let me or Erin know. It is just a relaxed time to chat, make new friends, and forget about our troubles. We keep conversations as free of politics or hard stuff as much as we can.

UPDATE:

It is 12:24 P.M. as I am finishing up this post and it is about 10 degrees out (-12 C) and we have about six inches of snow on the ground. The snow is supposed to stop sometime tonight and we are expected to have up to 18 inches of snow when it is all done.

What I/We’ve Been Reading

Just Finished

I didn’t finish anything this weekend.

In Progress

I’ve been reading Miss Read’s Village Diary by Miss Read, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (a reread), and just started Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I’m enjoying all three. Miss Read’s books are such easygoing, relaxing reads.

Up Soon

I hope to finish Miss Read this week so I can add The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham to my reading line up.

I read the first few pages about a month ago and it intrigued me.

Cat from Cat’s Wire needs to let me know if it is good or not. *wink*

After that I plan to start the February Agatha Christie Read for the Agatha Christie challenge, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.

What The Family is Reading

Little Miss and I started The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy. We’ve also been listening to Winnie The Pooh on Audible.

The Husband is reading….

What I/We’ve Been Watching

I loved this YouTube video about how to read more classic books.

And this video about how to cut back on buying books you never read.

I watched After The Thin Man, the second movie in The Thin Man series, yesterday, and earlier in the week I watched episode two of season six of All Creatures Great And Small.

Today I hope to watch another old movie, probably a James Cagney, for my Winter of Cagney.

I’ve had to change my schedule of Cagney movies again because I have found yet another movie that is not streaming anywhere and can’t be found for very cheap on DVD. Two movies now, Man of a Thousand Faces and Angels With Dirty Faces, are going to have to be taken off my list as I figure out how to watch them in the future.

The Husband says these movies are most likely no longer in print and have not been licensed for streaming, hence my challenge in finding them. Man of A Thousand Faces costs $40 most places and is mainly on BluRay and Angels With Dirty Faces (a movie with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart) is on DVD but $19.95. I will probably set the aside for another time and slide two Cagney movies that I can find streaming into my list instead.

What I’ve Been Writing

Last week on the blog I shared:

What I/We’ve Been Listening To

David Phelps with Laura Osnes singing a song from The Phantom of the Opera.

Photos From Last Week

Some Housekeeping

Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.

Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

If you would like to support my writing (and add to the fund for my daughter’s online art/science classes), you can do so here.

Top Ten Bookish and Writing Goals for 2026: More classics, Christie, non-fiction books, and finishing the cozy mystery I’m writing

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 27 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

One. Read at least one Agatha Christie a month

I should be able to manage this one since I am in a Christie reading challenge for 2026. I tried it last year and failed but I think I’ll do better this year.

I read The Secret of Chimneys for January and already have the book for February — Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.

I will be reading An Autobiography by Agatha Christie for the challenge as well, which will actually cross off another of my goals down below.

Two. Read at least three classic books this year

I want to read at least two classics this year, and I hope one of them will be The Count of Monte Cristo.

I will be reading Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien as well.

Other classic book goals for me this year are to read at least one book by a Bronte sister, finish Mansfield Park (despite the gag factor I have with it), and a re-read of Tom Sawyer, which I haven’t read since I was maybe 11.

To get through these classics I will be using advice that a booktuber I just found gave on his channel and that I mention more in detail below. Keep reading if you want to find out what that advice is.

Three. Read at least two autobiographies

I already have a couple I want to read — Maureen O’Hara, Myrna Loy, and Paul Newman’s, but then I heard that James Cagney’s is very good, so I am looking for that one on Thriftbooks.

Four. Read at least two non-fiction books

I hope to read at least one C.S. Lewis book, Mere Christianity, and as for another non-fiction, I’m not sure yet. Feel free to recommend a good one in my comments.

Five. Read more Christian Fiction books

I did not read a ton of Christian Fiction books in 2025. Not for any bad reason. I just didn’t seem to find a ton that interested me last year. I was also more interested in mysteries. I have a few lined up for this year, though, including:

Finding Lady Enderly by Joanna Davison Politano, Stories That Bind Us by Susie Finkbeiner, A Desperate Hope by Elizabeth Camden, and Long Way Gone by Charles Martin.

A lot of Christian Fiction is very intense.

Do any of my blog readers know of Christian Fiction that is less intense? Rom-coms, I know, but those are hit or miss for me.

Mystery and thriller books in Christian Fiction seem to be all overdramatic and formulaic and not a simple, fun mystery like Agatha Christie or the Golden Age crime writers, which is why I don’t often read Christian Mystery.

Six. Weed out books I’m not reading or probably won’t to straighten shelves

My shelves are overflowing with books I grabbed at used book sales and will probably never read. I need to weed them out and make more room on our bookshelves. As the vlogger I watched this morning said, we buy new books because we get an endorphin hit at the idea of what the story will hold but then when that endorphin hit wears off, we just end up leaving the books piling up and not reading them.

Seven. Find another place in the house for another bookcase

This brings me to seven — we need more bookcases, even if I weed some of the books out. I really want another one for our bedroom since we are currently using an old coffee table and piling them up there. A bookcase would look better there, and it would be easier to find the books we want to read if we had a bookcase. Right now, most of those books are The Husbands, but to find one, he has to shift through the stacks. I’m not sure how we would get a bookcase up the stairs, but I suppose we could get one that can be assembled after we buy it.

And a few writing goals:

Eight. Finishing Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School and start a planned Christmas cozy mystery

I watched a video this morning from a booktuber who was sharing about how to read more books instead of buying them and never reading them. One thing he said was to set aside a certain time for reading, and while reading, don’t think about all the other things you need to do. Instead, tell yourself, “I am reading for one hour, and I can do those other things later,” and then immerse yourself in the story. Focus on the words and the use of them and the play of them. Don’t think about the end goal of finishing the book, but instead think about the words as you read them and really be mindful of what you are reading.

While I want that goal in reading, I also want it in writing this year.

I want to set aside an hour or two a day and just write and enjoy the act of writing instead of constantly being focused on the need to finish this book and add it to the series. I think that’s what has been holding me up. I haven’t been having fun with writing — I have been looking at the end and how far I am from it instead of taking one step at a time and focusing on the path in front of me. I’ve been so focused on the thought, “I need to get this done” that it has become a chore rather than a joy.

So, I will be enjoying creating scenes and scenarios for Gladwynn and her friends more and looking at how far I am behind in word count etc. less.

At least books one, two, and three are out there for the world to read.

Nine. Figure out a way to finish my small town contemporary romance series, The Spencer Valley Chronicles

I am very behind on this one. I released my last Spencer Valley Chronicles book, Shores of Mercy, in 2022. I really need to wrap up the series and how I want to do that is to write a final book with Alex Stone, Molly Tanner’s love interest, as the main character. He has some demons he needs to tackle, mainly from his broken relationship with his verbally and emotionally abusive father.

The one problem is that I don’t write contemporary romance or any romance anymore. I would have to rewrite a lot of the series because I don’t really enjoy looking back at it and seeing my writing at that time.

Ten. Figure out how to advertise my books (without breaking the bank) and sell more of them

This one will be an ongoing process. Right now, my free ways of advertising my books are here on my blog and various social media accounts. It gets tedious to plug the books all the time, though, and I prefer to have fun posting bookish memes and reels and talking about old movies or books.

I’m horrible at self-promoting. Even doing it in this post is making me feel icky.

Still, I write the stories so I should have people read them, and it’s fun when they do and let me know they like them.

I don’t have deep pockets for paid advertising, but I hope to find a few ways to do that this year.

So…..these are some of my bookish and writing goals for 2026. What are some of yours?

If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.

On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.

I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.

If you would like to support my writing (and add to the fund for my daughter’s online art/science classes), you can do so here.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Calming my nerves is an everyday challenge but reading, worship music helps.

January 18, 2026 / Lisa R. Howeler / 14 Comments

Latey I’ve become even more diligent about calming my nervous system and one way I am doing that is by choosing when I see or hear national or international news.

Previously, if I logged into my Chrome app on my phone headlines popped up at me and I was hit full in the face with some horrible headline about some horrible thing going on in the world.

Two days ago I found a way to change the home screen so there are no news headlines slamming me in my face first thing. I didn’t know I could do that before but it has been so helpful. Now all that pops up are sites I visit the most and none of those are news sites.

If I do visit news sites, I am trying to do it briefly on my laptop and for only about two minutes.

I have also been trying to read more and watch TV less. If I watch TV it is usually All Creatures Great or Small, an old detective show, or old movies.

I listen to light, older/classic books and even childrens’ books (like Winnie the Pooh) while doing dishes or housework.

Worship music a few times a week has been a must lately but I have not always been doing that like I should.

I feel much calmer when I listen to worship music at some point during my day but the earlier the better because then the song is stuck in my head throughout the day and I can sing it when I feel stressed.

I have a couple of devotionals in my kindle I want to start but I also want to get some hard copies of devotionals so I can underline and write in the margins.

This past week was fairly calm with me visiting my parents a couple of times to visit and help clean up and with doing school with Little Miss. Our most productive school day was Thursday because we discussed the end of the Civil War and other historical subjects.

The other days of the week we focused on math, trying to figure out what book we want to read next for Literature, and Little Miss attended the four classes and two clubs she has online.