100 Books: September Update

The baby! She sleeps not at all.  Okay, that's not true.  She has settled into a nap schedule, although she wakes up at 45 minutes and only Ben can get her back to sleep which sucks a few days a week.  She goes to bed OK (THANK GOD), but then when she wakes up, she only wants to come in bed with me, which is fine.  IT IS FINE.  I am resigning myself to it being fine because I wake up all stiff and groggy.  but we tried to get her to stay in her crib all night long, and it was sort of going ok (I was getting up like 6 times a night, but I was falling asleep really quickly.  But then she got sick and couldn't stay asleep for more than 45 minutes at a time.You will notice that half of the books I read this month are about baby sleep.  (And I think sleep training is not for us-- the crying!  The talk of babies crying till they puke!  No thank you.)

But me sitting in Dorothy's room with my iPad in the middle of the night has allowed me to waste all sorts of time on the internet, and I have read 100 books according to Goodreads!  (I am reading a book right now called Night Film on my iPad, and it is so goddamn terrifying that I can't actually read it, so lots of Facebook and Goodreads and Instagram time in the middle of the night).

I also found a book I read in July and filed on the wring shelf and forgot about:  What the Nanny Saw: it's a great read!

Okay, now September:

4. Note to Self by Alina Simone:  This book was adorable-- the story of a woman who fancies herself to be a late bloomer and gets caught up in a weird film world-- a very quick, fun read.

3.  The Happiest Baby in the Block: The New Way To Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer by Harvey Karp.  Meh.  Some good ideas and some weird ones.  And a really creepy discussion of vomiting babies left to cry.

2.  Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy by Kim West:  I think her methods would work for Dorothy if I was capable of follow-through in the middle of the night.  But I am not.  I did the Sleep Lady Shuffle for an hour last night and then Ben took over and the baby cried the whole time (with us in the room, patting and shushing her), and then I grabbed her and put her in bed and slept curled up around because I realized that even if she did go to sleep by some miracle, she would wake up again, and we'd have to repeat the whole process, so fuck it.

1.  The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days by Ian Frazier:  This book reminds me of a Ring Lardner story I used to love.  It's a little bit like that great David Sedaris story about the woman's Christmas card letter, too. The main character is a narrator whose life falls apart before her eyes-- so well written! Read this book as much for the craft as for the laughs.

I have high hopes for next month.  In addition to the horribly scary Night Film, the new Stephen King The Shining sequel Dr. Sleep is on the bookshelf in my room along with Jen Lancaster's Tao of Martha, a short story collection called Bobcat, and May We Be Forgiven.  Let's hear it for October!