First, I've been reading and skimming lots more middle grade to keep up with my voracious reader firstborn. The younger siblings are also voracious readers but I already filled their book lists to the brim thanks to their brother so their reading lives require far less upkeep on my part.
Berlin Wall- I have been listening to The Berlin Letters as an audiobook and realized this is a subject I have always been fascinated by (primarily thanks to a movie on the Wetzels in elementary school and later a great picture book about them) and yet have not read much about. Last year I enjoyed A Night Divided, which is on my son's book list for next year, so with this week's library holds I decided to get a few middle grade nonfiction offerings on the subject both for my own interests and for his when he reads A Night Divided.
Codes and ciphers- I read and approved the first Book Scavenger book and the first Mysterious Benedict Society book so now my son is obsessed with codes! I will be reading the second book in both of those series soon but in the meantime he asked me to borrow a whole bunch of nonfiction library books on the subject. Good luck trying to enter this house without first solving a code/cipher.
Conjoined twins- I read Gifted Hands a few years ago and really liked it. I do hope to watch the documentary at some point but right now I am reading Take the Risk in my morning reading. This has led me down a rabbit trail researching lots of articles about conjoined twin separations stories and I just got a nonfiction grown up book from the library about the conjoined twins from Siam (the ones for whom the term Siamese twins was coined) who traveled with the circus. If you have followed here for any great length of time you might recall that the circus is one of those random subjects I am always excited to read about so I'm really looking forward to this one.
Dogs- This is what my girls usually request right now. One girl loves bear picture books and another loves pig chapter books but all three ask about various dog books pretty regularly. I read a ton of fiction and nonfiction chapter books on the subject these days.
Food scarcity- So many kids are hungry and when they do eat, it's nutrient-light junk. I'm so super passionate about this right now. π
Health- Always. This is so important for me, and for so many people my age (I swear it's more every year!). I recently read that the life expectancy for a female my age will be 84.9 years old and I thought, 'I just know I can beat that!' and then I swallowed a raw clove of garlic whole. I want to be able to take care of + support my family and community for as long as that is God's plan for me. I often hear that He has chosen our number of days in advance but what people don't think about is how we'll feel during those days. I want to feel vibrant and alert for as many of those days as possible!
Homemaking- I feel so joyful, grateful, and passionate about this subject again. Sometimes it's just so normalized for me that I appreciate it but don't think about it a ton, the all the sudden I'll become wildly passionate about it again.