Weekly Round Up: The One About Books

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  For whatever reason this week I felt really chatty about books, so buckle in for a long post!

Eats

First up, the story of a spontaneous "eggs" benedict.  On Sunday morning I woke up a bit groggy from the time change.  We don't have anywhere to be on Sunday mornings so I usually don't feel the time change until Monday when it disrupts our routine, but for some reason the effects of the change kicked in right away this year.  I wasn't sure what I wanted for breakfast so I took my time over coffee to figure it out.  I kinda wanted eggs benedict but also I didn't want to cook, so I put the idea out of my head.  Then I thought a bit more about it: I had English muffins, a ripe avocado, some chickpea "egg" salad, pickled onion, and some mushrooms that I'd cooked up a while ago and had in the freezer...that was most of the ingredients...hmmm was there any way that I could get motivated to get off the couch and make the sauce?  I dug deep and found that the answer was yes.  The only shortcut that I took was that I didn't bother with the lemon juice and I couldn't tell so that's a shortcut that I'll keep going forward.  The end result was well worth the trouble of five minutes of cooking and one minute of washing a pan afterwards.

Other than that, the only other exciting thing that I had this week was a reboot of an "I have no idea what I want so I'll just throw a bunch of random stuff in a bowl" success, largely from the freezer.  What you're looking at is a base of fried rice (kinda based off this recipe, what I've been doing is anytime we have leftover rice I'll make fried rice and then portion it off in single servings in the freezer), some of Trader Joe's Beefless bulgolgi, julienned carrot, green onions, and an egg topped with sesame seeds and a drizzle of sriracha.

Anyhoo, the moral of the story is that pickled onions in the fridge and mushrooms and fried rice in the freezer are three staples that I've added to my life in the past few months.

Workouts

Another week, another big bite out of Caroline Girvan's Advent series.  I've only got 4 workouts left so I'll finish it this week.  Overall I love these workouts and it works well to double up on the shorter workouts. 

Let me repeat that OVERALL I LOVE THESE WORKOUTS and now I'll tell you about the two exceptions to the rule.  It feels rude to link to something for the sole purpose of telling you that I didn't like it, and there's only one "glute workout with ankle weights" and one HIIT workout on the Advent list, so you can get there if you want the experience first hand.  The "glute workout with ankle weights" was 20 minutes of 1980's style leg lifts with no rest breaks.  I felt like I was back in middle school and that the workout achieved nothing except for putting a lot of strain on my neck and shoulders from holding an extended plank.  HIIT isn't something that I do well (because I'm so slow at the moves that it doesn't get my heart rate up very much).  I wouldn't have minded nearly so much except that it was the workout right after the leg lifts.  That one particular day felt like a colossal waste of fitness time.  I'm comfortable saying that for sure I will never ever do another "leg lift" workout - the 1980's called and said to keep the past in the past.  As far as HIIT, if I do another series that has a weekly HIIT day I'll probably sub out one of her cardio with weights workouts - those are a good change up from just lifting and they feel productive rather than humiliating.  But hey it was only one day out of a great streak of workouts so it's all good.

Watching

Nothing except for random YouTube videos anytime that I'm in front of the TV and have time to kill...for whatever reason my TV watching mojo is low right now.  That's the kind of a problem that will fix itself in due course.

Reading

Oooh....I've got a dishy one.  The Social Climber by Amanda Pellegrino is about Eliza Bennett, a New Yorker who enjoys having a name in common with a Jane Austin character and is days away from her wedding that will cement her into the top 1% of society.  She's someone who has made her own luck, but as the big day draws nearer, certain Things That She Doesn't Want Anyone to Know start coming out.  Actually that's my paraphrase of the blurb, from where I am 80% of the way in Nothing That She Doesn't Want Anyone to Know has been told except to the reader, but things are looking rocky.

Is this the best book ever written, is it Great Literature, and should you drop everything and go read it?  The answer to the first two questions is no, I can't answer #3 for you, but I can tell you that this book is scratching every reading itch that I have.  I'm so hot for it because it fulfills my #1 reading need of a central character that I absolutely believe in and that I'm rooting for (no she's not the World's Greatest Human but I like her), and every page that I read just makes me what to know what's going to happen next even more.

How did I find this book?  Lemme take a minute to go into my reading backstory, philosophy, and recommendation sources.

My reading backstory is that my parents are readers, and I grew up in a house full of books where the library card was the most prized possession.  I read obsessively as a young 'un through early adulthood.

I don't remember exactly where my reading journey got derailed, but I think it was having to travel for work in the pre-Kindle era.  I can't quite fill in the gap from ages 24 to 37, but those were the Reading Dark Years.  I never stopped reading, but it was less of a thing and there was a long phase where I only read memoirs and self help.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I am saying it wasn't a wildly exciting time.

The Reading Dark Years ended in late 2012 when Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers started raving about a book called What Alice Forgot.  I hadn't read a fiction book in years, but she made me curious so I picked it up at the library.  Look, I've come across many people who hate this book with a passion, but to me it was a breath of fresh air and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  I left the journey determined to Read All the Books...but whomp whomp I was in grad school at the time so I couldn't.  The other problem was that just because this one particular book was so great did not mean that every book on the planet was as wonderful.  I read what I could in very limited time for the remainder of grad school.

Meanwhile I'd met the hubs and the stepsons.  In our early dating days, the boys were in grade school, and hanging out with them meant a lot of downtime while they went to activities and did homework.  I suddenly had a lot of free time thanks to finishing grad school, so anytime that I went over to see them I always had my Kindle with me.  It was a very happy time for getting to know my now-family and for reading.

Funny dating story==>I knew from our first conversation that my husband was a reader, and the first time that he came over to my house he took a look at my bookshelves and was able to speak to pretty much every book in sight==>a man who knows his John Gardner and his Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) is a keeper.  But the first time that I went to his (now our) house, there was not one book in sight.  I was a bit concerned about this, but the explanation was simple: he lost the downstairs bookshelves in the divorce and he'd done a deep clean of the house before my visit so that's why there was neither a book nor a lego in sight.  Later on I told this story to stepson #1 and his first question on my reaction to entering a house with no books was "did you think we were stupid?"

That takes us to today.  Reading is a constant, but the only slot that I have for it is the 10-30 minute window before bed.  The exception is when we go on beach vacations, which inevitably end up as book binges for the entire family.

Given that reading is the last priority in my life right now, I don't have any "goals" - I don't care how many books I read, how long they are, whether they're Great Literature or Potboilers, and I'm not trying for a diversity of genres or authors.  My only goal is to read books that I enjoy, so if something doesn't reel me in right away, I'll DNF that sucker without a second thought.  I do have my lifetime favorites that I'll reread every few years, but for the most part I'll only read a book once.  I think that reading will move up on the priority list once the kids leave home and we stop working, but that's a long ways off.

I took a look back at 2022 and I counted 24 finished books - 22 new and 2 rereads - and 5 DNFs, so if we add in that there are other DNFs that didn't make the blog, that's an average of 2+ books a month.   Sometimes I gobble up a book in less than a week, but more likely it takes me a few weeks plus a break between each book.  Because I'm looking for things that hold my attention, I tend toward mystery/thrillers and that probably won't be changing anytime soon.  However, I can't help but notice that I read two "Real" books last year - Golden State and Station Eleven - that I enjoyed very much, so I am trying to work in more Classy Reads here and there.

I'm Team e-book all the way.   Physical books take up space and you have to be organized enough to have them with you when it's time to start reading.  A Kindle gives me a whole library in one small package.  As someone who respects a dollar, obviously I prefer to get books from the library, but I don't sweat it if I want to read something RIGHT NOW and the only way to do that is to buy it.  The reason I'm willing to wildly throw my money away on books is that before the hubs and I got married we checked in with a financial planner to get a second opinion on our finances.  As part of that process we both detailed every last penny of our spending for the past year.  I was expecting to see hundreds going to books but it was only $30 so...yeah that's why if I'm cool with just buying books.  Also, if it's fiction I'm READING it, but if it's non-fiction I prefer to LISTEN to it.

(Pro tip: if you're in to the latest releases and money is tight...it's most likely a shorter wait to get the physical book from the library than on Libby.  So yes I *could* spend $0 on reading if I wanted to...I just don't want to).

Back in the old days I used to keep lists of what I'd read and what I wanted to read, but I haven't found a way to do that in my current life.  Once upon a time I used Goodreads, but it got to be too much to keep it updated and I had a long TBR with no memory of why I wanted to read the books that were on it.  For a while I tried to just put in a hold for anything that I wanted to read on Libby, but it was the same problem and I ended up with a massive stack of DNFs.  Today this blog is really the only record of what I read and my TBR list is in my head.

As far as book recommendation sources, I don't have a "reading soul mate".  IMO there is no one size fits all "if that person liked the book then it's guaranteed that I'll like it".  It's just a matter of keeping my ear to the ground and listening to the chatter out there.  My biggies are:

• Modern Mrs. Darcy's Daily Book Deals. There's no magic algorithm, it's just a daily list of books that I might not hear of otherwise.  All I do is scan the list to see if anything sounds interesting.  Since it's a list of books that are on sale (1) they're not the latest best sellers so the odds are good that I can get them on Libby right away or (2) if it's not on Libby the prices are in the $1 to $5 range.
  
• Sarah's Bookshelves Podcast.  The secret sauce with this one is that it's a lot of people talking about a lot of books which gives me A LOT of ideas of things to read.
• The Bloggy Blogs!!!  If you write about books the odds are high that I'm picking your brain for reading ideas.  I've said many times that I don't just read blogs for fun==>I take notes!  Special shout out to Grace for giving me the hookup to The Social Climber.

It's taken me a while to figure this out, but I recently found a way to dip my toe in the water before starting a book.  Duh, Libby has an option to sample  books so now I have a way to judge whether a book is getting my attention from the get-go.  That's how I got from hearing about The Social Climber to forking out $10 to buy it two minutes later.  I'm hoping that by sampling I'll be able to reduce my DNF rate.

Just for fun, here's what I read last year from my quick flip through the archives and what I remember about them now:

The Disaster Artist (non fiction, a fun read.  The hubs got it for me for Christmas so that's why it came in physical book form.  I hear that the audio book is epic and we just might break it out for our spring break trip)
The Four Winds (I hated the ending so much that I ended up hating the book)
The Maid (v good.  At the time it bothered me that the main character was similar to Eleanor Oliphant but I don't care about that now.)
The Christie Affair (it started strong, but just like The Four Winds I hated the ending so it was a meh for me)
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (a rare reread - I wanted to see if I was correct that The Maid was a similar character.  Verdict yes but I ain't mad because I enjoyed the reread just as much as the first time around)
The Nothing Man (loved it.  At first I DNF'd because it was too violent/scary for me.  But I kept thinking about it so I went back and skimmed the gory parts and ended up loving it)
56 Days (loved, loved, loved, loved)
Hideout (loved it - all of this author's book have been winners for me and oooh in the process of writing this post I learned that she has at least 3 books that aren't on Libby that I've never heard of before)
You Should Have Known (loved it)
Good Night Beautiful (yes it was on the beachy side but I enjoyed it and it's stayed with me)
Dear Child (loved it)
A Flicker in the Dark  (just OK)
Unmissing (on the above average side for the thriller genre, I liked it )
The Boys Club (oof I'd been on a thriller bender and this was a welcome break.  Note to self I want to check out her second book)
Lessons in Chemistry (eh I liked it but I didn't LOOOOOOVE it)
Working Stiff (my only audio listen of 2022.  Non-fiction, a little slow but there were some good stories in there)
The Golden State (hey non thriller Legit Literature book that I almost DNFd over a slow spot but ended up loving)
The Lies I Tell (loved it at the time, oops I barely remember it now)
The Big Sleep (reread, looooooooove.  Seriously if you're in a reading rut pick up something by Team Noir - Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Dashiel Hammett are the guys who will do you a solid anytime you need something to read)
Stay Awake (loved it)
The Love of My Life (v good, dopey title that doesn't do the book justice IMO)
Before and Laughter (nonfiction, I liked it well enough)
The Accomplice (LOOOOOOOOOOOVE and also loved that a lot of folks in my blogging circle read this after I did.  Pro tip, pick up her book The Passenger for another great read.)
Station Eleven (hey Great Literature Real Book!)

DNF's
The Liar's Girl (DNF due to this being the third book in a row by the same author, no reflection on the book itself.  I'll probably pick this up again sometime)
Bluff (lost interest and I was getting vibes that it was going to get violent/disturbing)
The It Girl (an early DNF, just a blerg book that I couldn't get into)
Cruel Acts (halfway through, too violent/disturbing)
Before I Go to Sleep (too similar to Stay Awake)

Your turn: tell me anything that you want to tell me about your reading journey.  If you've already got a post on it leave me a link!  If you don't have a post on it, c'mon write one and hook me up with the link;-)