Week of February 16, 2026

We spent the majority of the week on the west coast this week, and, although a change of scenery is always nice, it’s still good to be home. We missed our little man Frankie 🐾 and despite it being warmer than Pennsylvania, we seem to have brought the rain to southern California so we spent a lot of our time there indoors. We managed to dodge some of the raindrops and visit a winery or two on the central coast while we were there, which we always enjoy. But for the most part we relaxed indoors with my Mom.

Traveling to and from the west coast is a full day of travel each way but I never really mind it because, for me, that’s a full day to read without any guilt at all. Ross catches up on movies that he wouldn’t ordinarily watch, and I load up my Kindle and read, and I’ll often knock out two books during the trip across the country. So my numbers for the week were pretty high considering both the travel days plus the rainy weather we had during our visit out there.

Thanks for joining me this week! Let’s dive in!

1. Step In The Zone, by Blane Bellamy ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

2. The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

3. All the Battles We Surrender, by Michael Garry ⭐️⭐️.5

4. Until There Was You, by Kristan Higgins ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5. Pretty Broken Doll, by Bree Wiley ⭐️⭐️⭐️

6. Straight Dad, by Raleigh Ruebins ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

7. Two Tribes, by Fearne Hill ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I loved book #2 this week, The Book Club for Troublesome Women. It is without a doubt a call to arms for feminists everywhere which is absolutely not who I am as a human (believe it or not). I’m on the fringe of that for sure despite going to an all-female high school and being somewhat indoctrinated there in the “you can be whatever you want to be” school of thought. But what I wanted to be was a stay at home mother and raise my kids and I took that role seriously, and I happily found a husband who espoused those beliefs along with me. When I went to my 10th and 25th high school reunions, I was the oddball who didn’t have a notable career to go along with my kids and I decided that I no longer needed to go to those reunions - those people weren’t really my friends anyway. But this book followed 4 women in 1963 who were in various stages of their lives with motherhood and marriage and career, and I found their stories really wonderful. I loved the way the author wove their respective journeys, and it’s great to see how far we as women have come and yet how far we still have to go. For anyone younger than age 40, this book may read like science fiction, but certain facts that were realities of life then (like married women needing their husband to sign a paper for them to open a bank account in their own name) seem incomprehensible to us today. And thank goodness for that! But it wasn’t until 1974 that married women had the freedom to get a bank account without their husband’s “permission,” which is mind boggling. For me, 1974 is current history because I was 7 years old! But I digress. Anyway, I found this book really enjoyable, and if you are in a book club, this may be a great book club book to pick up, especially if you have a variety of ages in the group. Highly recommend.

That’s it for this week! As always, you can keep up with all of my reading on my Goodreads if you want to. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12921106-karen

Love, Karen