You're listening to the Girl Next Door Podcast. I'm Kelsey. And I'm Erica. We're two former

next door neighbors and good friends who love a good chat and a good laugh. We're inviting

you to come on in, have a drink, and stay a while. Hey friend. Hey friend. Today we're doing a reading

roundup and we'll plan to do these a few times this year.

We'll be chatting about the books we've been reading, our reading habits lately, and what our

kids have been reading. These reading roundups are going to take the place of our book club for

now since those episodes take a bit more effort to produce. Plus, this will give us the chance

to talk about a lot of books instead of

just one. Books and reading are some of our favorite things to talk about, so let's get into it.

I'll start with this. Reading is a necessary habit and form of self-care for us both, and I know for me

personally, the state of my current reading can be a reflection of how stressed I am or how well I'm

prioritizing myself. For example, I know we both went through reading slumps over the past year

as we've navigated pandemic life. So I'm curious to know what your reading habits are like lately.

I love this. That is so true of me as well. I will say that that is a benchmark for how I am

overall, like how much focus

I'm able to give to it, how much time I'm making for myself. That is kind of a, how many books

I'm reading is a direct correlation there. So I agree. Okay, so yes, I feel like it's going pretty good

now. I definitely, at the beginning of the pandemic, went through quite a slump where I just could not even focus on a book long enough to read anything and nothing felt like the right mood.

But I am back at it.

I did miss my goal of 52 books by like five books in 2020, which really bugged me, which I'm not even a huge,

you know, I'm not necessarily the most goal-driven person. But that one really bugged me that I missed

it by that much. So I really do think like, because to me, that's kind of a push goal. Normally I would

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