parenting
04 Feb 2019

a first birth story: part i

I’ve tried to write this story so many times since June 10th, 2016. I’m afraid that I’ll write it wrong, that I won’t have the skill to turn my memories into A Real Birth Story – not just a retelling of facts and events, but a real story, with tension, rising and falling action, and a really moving message.

And that’s probably where it stops. Did my birth have a message? Does it have to? Maybe the message that birth is raw and messy and painful and never exactly what you expect, just like life? Or… Wow, look what the human female body can do with the help of – or in spite of – a supporting cast of loved ones and medical professionals? That there’s never been a birth like mine, so let me tell you about every tedious, exhausting centimeter of it?

Additionally, I was hoping to have this written and posted before I had another birth story to tell. I almost met my goal, but not quite; as I am finishing, my first-birthed child is doing arts and crafts at daycare while my second-birthed, two-month-old child is napping in her crib (like a g.d. angel). I’m feeling compelled to look back at what I’ve written here – all 7,000 words, if that can be believed – but should I edit? I don’t know. My instinct is to let my words and feeling be. This is what my memories were like a few months ago, when I only had one birth under my belt: loquacious, dramatic, and – in my own, loquaciously dramatic way – reverent. Now that I’ve done this twice, I have a new perspective about what was happening the first time around, with me and my firstborn. I can see the struggle – invisible to me, even just months ago – between badly wanting to be a mother and fearing for my health, my marriage, and my identity. The pregnancy (and preceding Planning to Be Pregnant) the long overture; the birth the loud and sudden shift into the opening number; the strum of apprehension and anxiety the theme churning below it all.

The message?

That there is probably nothing as physically, mentally, and spiritually frightening as bringing another life into the world.

That sometimes everything can go wrong while simultaneously going exactly right.

That the lead-up might be pointless, the story mostly boring, and the aftermath of anecdotes only the “you had to be there” kind of funny, but it’s all part of the drama of being human – of perpetuating the human race – and there’s really only one way I can figure out how to tell it, so here it goes.

 

Part I: The Pointless Backstory

I felt fine all day. Unremarkable. As normal as could be, given my pretty-dang-huge state. According to photos taken on my phone, the concerns of the day – June 9th – were exceptionally mundane. We got a parking ticket. I found the mailbox closest to our new apartment. I sent a screenshot of my terrible sleep stats to my sister. I went to CVS, where I received a ream of coupons.

This was my newly late-third-trimester utilitarian life. After months of planning to bring our baby home to our 450-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment, we’d finally been granted an opportunity to relocate into something more suitable for a growing family. So we moved. My miles long “To-Do Before Baby” list vanished in face of the daily labors and concerns of moving house. Every day there was something to pack, to unpack, to clean, to shuttle, to buy, to locate. Work was more of the same – wrapping up projects, sending emails, and leaving instructions for coworkers – with breaks to lumber over to my weekly doctors’ visits.

That day, I lumbered home from work at five. My husband called me on his way home from an end of the school year Teachers Drinking type event. He sounded somewhere between cheerful and tipsy. His band was playing that night at a restaurant in our neighborhood – did I want to get dinner with him before they played?

Sure. Why not. The food’s not great, but it’s food, and we were about to have a baby! We were supposed to be getting out of the house for quality couple time while we still could! While I waited for my ride, I triaged the new apartment and set upon the second bedroom. It was slowly filling with “homeless” items, like my husband’s musty sheet music collection, but it was also where potential houseguests with air mattresses might land. I cleared off the surface of my desk – the only piece of furniture in the room – and plugged in a lamp. I investigated the sheet music. Lance called, and I hopped into the car. Slid into the car? Plopped into the car? I was 38 weeks pregnant. I probably plopped.

I went from feeling normal to irritated pretty quickly. There was a coworker in the car, hitching a ride home. My arrival did not pause their loud, too jovial banter. They were, in my estimation, tipsy, and my husband was not driving like a cautious tipsy person ought. When his friend got out of the car, I asked for the keys and grumpily drove us both to the restaurant where we sat down for a mediocre meal.

Shameless, starving pregnant lady that I was, I ordered both an appetizer – grocery-store quality guacamole and chips – and a burger. Quality couple time, here we come? But by the time my entrée was served, my husband’s band started to arrive. And by arrive, I mean barrel into the small restaurant, pull a chair up to our table, and talk shit with my still jovial and tipsy husband. Romantic.

I finished my burger as quickly as I could and left with the car: tipsy husband can stumble home later. We had so much to get done – if I had to do it by myself, I would. I drove to our old apartment and started loading up the car with very important items that I needed right this second. Like a bulletin board, so I could finish setting up my entryway table. And the hanging bins containing 100% of our unborn child’s clothing and blankets.

When I parked my car outside of our new apartment, I remembered I was hugely pregnant and left basically everything in the car. Make my deadbeat, annoying, tipsy husband deal with it later.

I went upstairs. I set up my entryway table. I unpacked some stuff. I got dressed for bed and thought I’d sit and read in my pajamas.

Then my water broke. Two weeks before my due date.

1
goals
30 Jan 2019

unnecessary spending: one month in

In January, I spent more than 850 dollars in at least 40 different unnecessary ways.

This “mostly frugal” girl is a bit shocked.

I’m not going to list everything I bought. Instead, here are some general patterns I observed in this first month of spending, in order of least complex to most.

 

Automatic payments for online services

Once upon I time, I signed up to give my money away to various causes and companies in regular, small increments. I’m old enough that this still feels like a novel way to spend money – kind of fun, but also kind of dumb? Over the past few years, I’ve felt like I’m in a cycle of wanting to cancel all of these automatic “deductions,” but then I end up signing up for something new to replace it.

Right now I spend 28 dollars a month of my personal money on such subscriptions. This month my Audible subscription reactivated – I paused my account a few months ago and forgot to “un-pause” it, so add 14.95 to that. I also purchased three months of access to an online exercise program. And of course, there’s Netflix – 10.99 paid out of our joint account.

I don’t necessarily feel bad about spending this money. Usually this spending brings me small, daily pleasures – like my NYTimes cooking and crossword subscription – or supports artists whose work I admire and enjoy. But they do add up quickly and definitely aren’t necessary.

 

Food products and activities that make life feel more fun – especially when hosting guests

This month I was lucky to have some of my immediate family members come and visit. We spent about 125 dollars this month while guests were in town… pretty much all on food products. Is it necessary to eat at restaurants or buy junky snacks when guests are in town? No. But it does feel celebratory – these folks might be sleeping on my living room floor and staying indoors most of the time with me and my crazy children, but it’s still their “vacation!” The reduced time spent on the household labor of preparing meals is also a plus. But to be honest, I mostly I feel called to provide a taste of the East Coast to my deprived Midwestern family members; aka, when in Boston, eat some good pizza, bagels,seafood, and – if you live in my neighborhood – Italian pastries. Food is our familial love language.

Celebratory dining doesn’t feel too problematic for longterm budgeting, as long as you don’t have guests too often. Celebratory Trips to Starbucks, however, feel more insidious. No, now that I’m on maternity leave I cannot go to Starbucks every day. However, I can – and do – go to Starbucks pretty much every day that I leave the house. Because a cold drink makes running errands feel less like drudgery. Because when my husband is with me going through the drive-through with peaceful children in the back seat feels a little like a date. Because I usually spend my own personal money, so I let myself be more frivolous. Because of habit, poor morning caffeination planning, or because I’m having a shitty exhausting day and maybe it will make me feel better. At any rate, I spent more than 50 bucks at Starbucks last month, which isn’t exactly a festive, once-in-a-while kind of expense.

 

Shopping or coffee to alleviate less-than-ideal scheduling

It’s Friday morning. I get up at 6:15, get dressed, get my baby fed and dressed, help get my toddler out the door, and head out the door as a family. Toddler daycare drop off at 7:30, husband work drop off at 8:00. Baby has a doctor’s appointment at 9:15. What do you do to kill the resulting hour? Drive all the way home so you can go upstairs and unpack a baby only to pack it back up again? Or do you sit in Starbucks for an hour with a book and a coffee? It’s not necessary, but three dollars seems a pleasant way to fill a scheduling gap – especially since you get a cup of coffee out of it.

 

But then the appointment is over and it’s 10:00 a.m. You need to pick something up at a store that doesn’t open until 11. You’ve already had too much coffee and the store is right next to a Trader Joe’s. You are running low on milk and eggs, and it’s always nice to stock up on TJ’s favorites, but you don’t exactly NEED to be in a grocery store… Needless to say, such a hapless individual would be impossibly fortunate to spend just three dollars to fill this particular scheduling gap. At the very least, this hapless individual should probably make a list before entering.

 

“Good Deals” (on items I may or may not buy either way)

The on-sale item is a stupidly common spending trap, and one that my cheap-ass self falls for too often. On one hand, nobody would fault a person for researching a necessary purchase, to find the product that meets your quality standards for the lowest price. On the other hand, “research” often results in more generic “shopping” – once I’ve decided to pull out my credit card, spending tends to beget spending.  Is it really a good deal to buy a 40 oz vat of hummus at Costco when you could have made it at home for pennies on the dollar… or when you then need to buy a giant bag of carbs for hummus dipping? Or when you walk out of Target having spent 75.00, no matter how many items were on your list.

In December, against my better values, I signed up for Amazon Prime. My justification: I have a new baby who will probably need some random baby items and also prevent me from doing much out-of-the-house Christmas shopping. I canceled it in mid-January, so naturally I wanted to place One Last Order (as though Amazon would be going out of business after they lost my 12.00/month?). 160 dollars later, I now have an adequate amount of my favorite pens in the house, many, many ounces of protein powder, a year’s supply of water filters for my coffee maker, and more items of dubious necessity.

 

Too often I find the line between what is necessary and what is just cheap to be rather blurry. I also don’t feel good about purchases born in a vague, consumeristic fear – if I don’t act NOW, then I’ll end up paying more later! But then again, my coffeemaker probably does need water filters, so maybe I just need to chill out?

 

Convenience Foods

I did not find a good way to track my unnecessary food spending this month for the following reasons. A) hanging onto and parsing out unintelligible grocery receipts is difficult for those who aren’t at home with very young children most days and B) diving into what form of calories are “necessary” vs. “unnecessary” is a much bigger challenge than other sorts of spending. If I am supposing this food dichotomy, I am supposing there is some sort of way I *should* be eating. As a recently pregnant, currently nursing person, I’ve been on nutrition autopilot, hoping that whatever I happen to cook or eat is good enough. It’s probably time to think more seriously about my family’s general nutrition again, but for now, I’m relying on habit and instinct – for better or for worse.

One category of calories that draws my attention, however? Convenience foods – especially convenience snacks. In this busy season of my home, this means Delicious (but nutritionally-questionable) Bars of All Sorts. Granola bars. Breakfast bars. Fruit and nut bars. Protein bars. Bars that pretend to be healthy but are really just Rice Krispie Treats dipped in chocolate with a peanut or two on top. Is any such bar a *necessary* part of anyone’s diet? No. But when that  inevitable moment where I am out and about with children and realize I have forgotten to adequately feed myself strikes, a one-handed snack is a really, really nice thing to have in my purse. Ditto to applesauce squeezes for grumpy toddlers. For now, in these Survival Mode months where experimenting with homemade granola bar recipes sounds like a laughably distant luxury, I’m okay with a little convenience, I think. Later this year, I may narrow in on this more complex area of my regular spending.

 

Impulse purchases, usually to solve a nagging problem (or generally make myself feel better about my life)

This is the the big one for me: the purchases that feel most fraught, that leave me feeling so conflicted about my spending judgment.

Usually, these are household purchases that fall in the middle of the unnecessary-necessary spectrum: less necessary than toilet paper, more necessary than a seasonal throw pillow. Usually, these household purchase purport to solve a problem or annoyance in my daily living. Usually, when I decide to pull the trigger and spend the money, I enjoy having solved said problem, but I also feel bad about it. Why, I’m not quite sure. Because I usually purchase such items in a sudden impulse? Because I feel guilty throwing money at minor problems I should either work around or just endure? Because I usually do such spending at Big Box stores, buying plastic contraptions made in factories on the backs of unprivileged populations that will end up, someday, in a landfill?

Obviously, this kind of spending will take some more unpacking. But yes, I did spend 100 dollars on a baby sleep course this month because I was sitting in the dark for an hour tending to a crying babe who refused to sleep and it made me feel like I wasn’t alone. And I did spend 27 dollars on 4 new ice cube trays because I’m thirsty all the time and tired of having mismatched trays fall on me when I open the freezer and also pinching parts of my hands on the ones that are cracked and broken. I am both enjoying and feeling bad about both purchases.

goals
26 Jan 2019

2019 New Year’s Resolutions

New Year, New Resolutions. Despite my failure to keep my seven-hundred sub-resolutions in 2018, I’m looking back at my original list of annual intentions, and I don’t think I really did that poorly. My resolution to Live Seasonally was more of a complex, not-so-achievable resolution than an out-and-out failure. Looking back, it seems that the goal I set wasn’t so simple; I didn’t want to “live seasonally:” I wanted to set and achieve quarterly goals that took into account the season of the year, and of my life.

And yeah, one of them was to get pregnant, grow a child, birth it, and raise it for a little bit, all while working full time, side hustling, and raising my other child. If that’s not a capital-S Season, then what is?

My second resolution was to play a bunch of board games. Luckily, this was a joint resolution with my husband. My husband is a stickler for his NYRs – he’ll read 30 books this year even if it means mainlining hundreds of pages of graphic novels while listening to children’s books on his headphones, dammit. I may have piggybacked on his success a little, but I’ve put in enough time and work into this relationship that I deserve the payout, imho.

In 2018, we played:

My last resolution I forgot about entirely by the end of the year. No, I did not Beautify One Room of my Home Every Month… but I did Beautify quite a few of them! My living room now has throw pillows, a rug, a plant, and spray-painted picture frames. Our joint office now has storage space for my sewing machine and supplies. My bathroom has matching towels and bins for our bed linens. Our back porch had flowers and plants this summer, and my laundry room has a drying rack and a little landing area for soaps and weird stuff found in pants pockets. My kid’s closet is no longer a death-trap of teetering Rubbermaid containers. The only rooms I didn’t quite get to were the hallway and kitchen, but I did make some small improvements to both! Thinking back to 2017, I feel like I have really changed the way my apartment feels and the way I feel in it, so I think that’s a success.

Onward to 2019! Well, the 49 remaining weeks of 2019, anyway. I tried oh-so-very-hard to narrow my focus down to but a few goals for the year. Three was the best I could do.

 

Resolution #1: Track all unnecessary spending for 2019

This resolution took the longest for me to focus in on; my relationship with money and spending is not so straightforward. Objectively, I’m a fairly frugal person married to another fairly frugal person. I’m able to pay my bills, afford some extras, and do some savings. But, objectively, I know I could – and probably should – be saving more… so I’m prone to feeling upset and guilty when I do spend money unnecessarily.

This is the dual-edged problem I want to address this year. I don’t want to spend my money on things that make me feel bad to purchase and own; when I do make purchases, I don’t want to feel bad about them. This resolution will hopefully tap into the “manage what you monitor” technique of habit change – I’m keeping a spreadsheet updated with where I make purchases, what I buy, how much I spend and more. I think the benefits will be threefold. First, the act of documentation will hopefully deter impulse spending. I’m considering some sort of public accountability, too, if I can do it in a beneficial way and not one that lets me give excuses for everything I’ve bought. Second, I’ll have some hard data to examine as the year goes on: is this spending a big problem, dollar-wise, or a small one? Are certain stores or categories showing up over and over again?

And third: in order to accomplish this task, I really do have to think quite carefully about what I consider to be necessary or unnecessary spending. I suspect this might prove to be the most valuable part of the resolution; I’ll be flexing decision-making muscles that will hopefully help me feel more in control of my spending, even if my financial priorities and values change over time.

So far… I am spending a surprising amount of money at Starbucks for someone on maternity leave who doesn’t always have access to a car. Also, I haven’t figured out a great way to keep track of my unnecessary grocery purchases, since they tend to get lost in the mix of legit spending. Additionally, deciding what calories are unnecessary or necessary is a more complex assessment than most anything else I buy.

 

Resolution #2: Give Ye Old Blog a facelift

Hello! It’s 2019! I really hope you are reading this on some sort of Feed Reader, if that’s even still a thing, because, guess what – I haven’t updated a single pixel on herlifewithbooks.com since I moved to WordPress in 2013. At the very least, I’d like to give my blog a cosmetic make over and add some of the fancy, “modern” features that most blogs adopted like, three years ago. Maybe I will be inspired to add some new content as well? Or blog more than once a quarter? The sky is the limit! And by “sky” I mean “Amount of Time That My Children Are Either Asleep or in the Care of Another Adult.”

So far…  I am brainstorming and also trying to make occasional time to write (incredibly timely and not at all delayed) posts. Like this one! Because what is the use of a shiny new blog if you aren’t going to write anything, right? Right.

 

Resolution #3: Enjoy regular exercise by 2020.

I recognize that this is the least interesting resolution a human can make. I also recognize that it is neither specific nor measurable. Am I setting myself up to fail? Maybe, but I just couldn’t come up with a year-long fitness resolution that seemed achievable when I am recovering from pregnancy and childbirth and also have two young children – I chose an overly vague goal over an aspirational one.

It doesn’t feel vague to me, though – I actually went out of my way to articulate my desire very plainly.  I don’t so much care what kind of exercise I do. I don’t care how often I do it as long as it’s a part of regular life and not my once-in-a-while-when-I’m-in-the-mood life. I *do* care that I enjoy it. I want it to be a fun part of my life and not a perpetually nagging task on my daily endless to-do list. I’m probably going to have to set some additional short-term goals to make this happen – you know how I love a good “I Resolve to Make More Resolutions!”-Resolution.

So far… I am trying *shudder* an online workout program. I am not usually a fan of workout-video type exercise… but I’m starting to realize that I’m “not a fan” of pretty much any form of exercise for some reason or another, so maybe I need to get over myself. I signed up for Every Mother, which provides daily workouts specifically designed for postpartum mothers.  I went this route because  A) I’m too lazy/out-of-shape to deal with high-intensity anything B) I can exercise without having to worry about damaging my healing abdominals C) I’m hoping that dropping a little $$ will inspire me to follow through. (Not *thaaat* much $$$, though; it was about $40 for a 3 month membership) I’m a few weeks in and am having trouble finding time to do my 10-30 minutes every single day (surprise surprise) but I’m getting it done most of the time. It’s so great! So much fun! Watch me fake it ’till I make it! I’ll stick with this for 3 months when I’m feeling a little more healed, or until the weather gets nicer and I can do some outdoor stuff. I also left my dear little baby (and my Dear Giant Toddler…) at gym childcare this morning for 30 minutes of mild cardiovascular exercise, so clearly I’m super-committed.

~

That’s it! Just three. Well, I mean I also want to read 100 books, but that’s my resolution every year. And have you heard of 19 for 2019. I may or may not have made one of those lists as well. Those aren’t necessarily *resolutions*, though, just stuff I want to do. During this particular year. Entirely different.

best reads
31 Dec 2018

best reads of 2018

Tomorrow is 2019! Happy New Year’s Eve! While I have the opposite of a wild night planned, I think back to how I rang in 2018 a year ago… and I remembered that I went to bed at 9pm in my parents’ house with my 18-month-old who wouldn’t stop climbing out of his crib. At some point I ended up on the floor. I think we also had to wake up for a stupidly early flight. So this year really can’t be worse than that… especially since I am finishing! And! Posting! The Best Books I Read in 2018! Even though I have no time or energy to read anything of enough literary quality to end up on a Best of the Year post, it’s still a wonderful time of year.

Longtime readers (do  I even have another kind of reader at this point? Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) know the drill: these are my favorite reads of the year, regardless of audience, publication date, or literary merit. They are listed in order. I really did love them all – while most of the 132 books I read this year were somewhat forgettable, I really do have a tough time narrowing down the top 25 or so. Please add them to your 2019 To-Read lists. Please forgive me for incomplete and unoriginal sentences below. I have a 5 week old baby and a 2.5 year old in my house and we have all been here together for 10 consecutive days and I guess we all have to live together forever now. Good thing everyone likes to read.

 

10. My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul

Pamela Paul is the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Before that, she was a fairly normal young woman with one of those useless English degrees and a lifelong love of reading. As a fellow reader who considers charting and tracking her own reading life to be a worthwhile hobby, I was entranced by Paul’s essay about her Book of Books – a notebook where she documented her reading life starting when she was a teen. This memoir follows her fairly normal young adult and adulthood, with attention paid to the books and reading experiences that shaped her. Nothing too flashy here, but I found her life story to be so quietly engaging that I couldn’t put it down.

 

9. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Did you already read this book, when e.v.e.r.y.b.o.d.y. was reading it, in 2017? Well, if you didn’t, I can tell you it was still a very good read in 2018, and will probably be a good read in 2019, too. And there’s good news! I bet your library’s holds list have finally died down! Set in an orderly Ohio suburb, this story is split between three very different families – the Richardsons, who have deep roots in the community but also four teenagers who are up to all sorts of behaviors their proper mother doesn’t want to know about; the Warrens, a single mother and teen daughter who rent a condo from the Richardson; a single, immigrant mother who must work full time to support herself and her infant daughter, and in the process has her daughter taken into state custody; and Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist with a murky past – and her teenaged daughter, who unintentionally weave between the stable suburban families. I like domestic literary fiction, and I like adult books starring teenagers, so I agree with the masses – a must read of whatever year it happens to be when you read this!

 

 

8. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

I heard about this book for years – so many rave reviews, plenty from people whose reading tastes I admire – but I never thought I’d want to read it. A book about people behaving badly on the Internet? I actually spend a decent amount of my time and energy trying to *avoid* people behaving badly on the Internet, so no thanks. Then I read Leila Sales’s If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say for a pro book review; it’s a realistic YA book about a girl who behaves badly on the Internet and the backlash that ensues, very clearly influenced by Ronson’s book , so I thought I might be a pro-pro reviewer and take a chance on So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (read: Jessica wanted to procrastinate, so she found a somewhat acceptable avenue to avoid doing her work!) I was not any more interested in the subject than I ever have been, but DAMN Jon Ronson! I was not only sucked in, but entirely fascinated, and I give all the credit to Ronson’s writing: he’s a talented storyteller who also takes some unexpected narrative risks. So add my rave review to the mix, and I’ll add Ronson to my Definitely Check Out Their Next Book, No Matter What It’s About list.

 

7. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

In August, when I decided to play a little 2018 YA/MG catch up, The Poet X was my first choice. Why? Because it was short! And written in verse, so it reads even shorter! It also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for fiction, so I would get (imaginary, meaningless) Literary Merit points. But external factors aside, I was so pleased with this book. Acevedo portrayed her main character, Xiomara, as a complex, sympathetic teen with a unique set of social challenges – she’s trying hard to balance her family’s staunch religiosity with her earnest desires for independence: to date, maybe have sex, write and perform slam poetry, to challenge some aspects of Catholicism. This felt like the best of old-school YA realism – a personal coming of age story driven by character and not melodrama – but with a modern perspective on race, class, and gender.

 

6. The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis

Another of my earnest Catch Up On The Best of 2018 YA/MG reads makes the list! Isn’t it great when you agree with the critics? I knew nothing about the plot or setting when I started reading, so it did take me a little time to get settled into the story, but the narrator’s voice drew me in right away. Little Charlie – the oversized twelve-year-old son of poor sharecroppers – starts the book extremely down on his luck: he witnesses his father dying of a freak accident, then finds out his father owes money to a nearby plantation owner; he and his mother are grieving and wondering how they will keep up with their work and make money when a goon arrives to collect on his father’s debt. The goon (“Cap’n”) convinces Charlie to join him on a journey to collect on someone else’s debt as a payment for his own, and a cross-country, international, consciousness-raising adventure ensues. I thought this was a perfectly middle-grade sized read – just meaty enough for a 4th-6th grader but without anything extra – and oh gosh, Little Charlie is just one of those endearingly naive but earnest narrators that you (aka, adult readers, probably; pregnant/hormonal readers, definitely) just want to hug.

 

5. Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

A third 2018 YA/MG book – another (mostly) verse novel, interestingly enough. Also, another historical: this time, way more historical, going back to the 1600s in Italy, and based on actual people and actual events! The protagonist, Artemesia Gentileschi, is a seventeen-year-old living in Rome with her widower artist father. Out of financial necessity, her father trained her to paint, and at some point she became so talented he was better off handing his commissions to her – while signing his own name to them, of course. Artemesia is pissed off about this. She desperately wants to make her own name as an artist, and is passionate about painting women with the sensitivity and realism that the male artists of her time just can’t handle. Then, she comes across a successful artist who wants to tutor her – she’s elated… until her tutor’s untoward behavior threatens to destroy her and her family. Is this a work of relatively heavy-handed proto-feminist comeuppance? Yeah, probably. But Artemesia’s struggle to be honored for her own talents – and believed against the words of a more powerful man – reads like a story that could be making today’s headlines. This is a fairly devastating but extremely powerful read.

 

4. The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life if Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in the Store by Cait Flanders

Finding this book felt like a bit of divine intervention: I chanced upon a personal finance blog that, upon investigation, didn’t really seem like a personal finance blog. Then I forgot the URL, remembering only that it was the author’s name dot com. I remembered it (caitflanders.com, RIP) and was like “wow, this is better than a personal finance blog…” and then a few weeks later I heard about this book and put all of these connections together. I’m a bit of a personal finance hobbyist, but I do find many blogs and books on the subject to be repetitive, polemic, and fixated on one-size-fits all advice. How we deal with money is… well.. personal; Flanders’s memoir is the first personal finance book I’ve read that fully embraces that intersection. The premise is a little stunt-memoir-y – Flanders writes about her “year of no spending,” – but since she’s writing about her efforts to not do something, what she ends up writing about is the life she lives instead – and what perspective that experience brings to the life she lived before. This was a quietly endearing – and inspiring – read for me this year.

 

3. Circe by Madeline Miller

Unsurprising confession: everything I know about mythology I learned from video games and the episodes of Wishbone that retold The Odyssey and the story of Hercules. But even though I could only barely keep track of which god was related to which demigod, I was somehow totally into Madeline Miller’s latest work of… mythological fiction? I missed growing up in the Percy Jackson crazy by a few years (*cough* more like ten years *cough*), so I’m a little out of the loop; also, I don’t know exactly what aspects of this story Miller gathered from mythology and what is her own making. But previous mythological knowledge proved unnecessary, for me: I was taken in by the strange, petty culture of gods and goddesses Miller crafted, and by Circe’s rich characterization. She’s a lesser goddess, an unfavored child of the sun god, Helios – who spends most of her adult living alone, banished somewhat unfairly to a remote island; she’s also a singular female who, without much support from family or friends, finds her own power and self-worth.

 

2. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

I haven’t written much this year, but when I did, I wrote about this book . It falls under the category of nonfiction that isn’t necessarily more artful, profound, or revolutionary than anything else I read all year; instead, Deep Work simply explained a concept that I needed to understand at this point in my life, and it did so with simple engaging urgency. This is the book I thought about the most all year. While I took Newport’s message – do everything you can to do the kind of work that takes all of your concentration – to heart, putting it to practice has been a little more challenging. It’s no surprise that this is yet another self-help-y/productivity book that doesn’t mention caring for toddlers, pregnancy nausea, or breastfeeding… or chronic pain, mental illness, the economic/personal necessity of working multiple jobs, or any other everyday life situations that myself and people I know might find to be significant barriers to ever achieving Deep Work. But for me, I’ve found his ideas to serve as a gentle beacon that reminds me of what’s important: reading, writing, and caring for myself and my family, aka doing the things that only I can do. Doing that work with intention and as much brain power as I can muster is never going to be a bad idea, and the more time I spend on it the better. I definitely want to re-read this in 2019, and am looking forward to his next book, which looks like a good, old fashioned anti-technology manifesto.

 

1. And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready by Meaghan O’Connell

I have read a great many books about pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood over the years. In my experience, they tend to run in two directions: the slightly crunchy, softly-lit, “isn’t motherhood just GRAND” kind of book, or the Hey, Parenting sure SUCKS so you should feel totally empowered to complain about it – and sure, have another glass of wine. I don’t necessarily have a *problem* with either of these narratives… but neither of them have really spoken to me, either before I had kids or after. While my own experience of motherhood hasn’t been quite the same as O’Connell’s (she is a little more on the PARENTING SUCKS side of the spectrum than I am) there was just so, so much that she got right about the broader experience of the culture of motherhood RIGHT NOW. Millennial Motherhood, maybe? If that wasn’t so annoying? Of being a young, creative, hustling woman who also might want to procreate, even though it’s probably not a good idea and you have no good role models and nobody even TALKS about it. Of the bizarre, sourceless pressure put upon mothers to do everything right, before, during, and after birth that just permeates even your most private moments. Combine that with a fantastically wry voice and I’m-actually-laughing-out-loud-and-not-just-using-it-as-a-textual-interjection humor, and I’m ready to pick this one up again. For the third time. There’s a lot more I’m forgetting to say here, but it’s 8:15 p.m. and my 2.5 year old is at least somewhat silent in his hopefully dark bedroom and my five week old is waking herself up and it’s New Year’s Eve so I should probably at least see if my husband wants to share a glass of wine before I put on my flannel pajamas, so I’m just going to go ahead and push publish, and I’ll see you in 2019!

goals
17 Dec 2018

postpartum

A few weeks ago, I had a baby.

I’m still a little sore, still a little wiped out, still bleeding. But I can feel my body healing. Knitting itself back together. It’s recovering from the Olympic-level event that is childbirth, and also returning to a state of equilibrium I forgot I could exist in. I have a body that can bend over and can put on socks and shoes without getting winded. A body that can wear jeans without thick, stretchy waistbands. A body that can properly digest food! The transformation from not-pregnant to pregnant to not-pregnant, this second time around, was familiar yet still entirely startling. Everything changes so slowly while you are gestating – symptoms shifting week by week, belly expanding steadily but gradually  – until bam! It’s all over! Baby ejected. Time to lactate, to heal, and to rebuild.

My mind and my emotions seem to be on a less linear path. With my first, the only thing I could predict was the newness of it all, so – somewhat paradoxically – the tasks at hand seemed more clear.  Pregnancy, childbirth, caring for a newborn, raising offspring in general: it was all new, scary, exciting, and mysterious. Everything I knew was likely to be altered in some unpredictable way. My job was to hang on and attempt to enjoy the ride if at all possible, and that’s what I did.

This time, I spent my pregnancy with this lingering – almost haunting – image of what my life and body were like before we decided to have a second child. My firstborn was twenty months – smart and entertaining, pretty well-behaved and sleeping through the night. With a toddler, two full time jobs, and a side hustle or two between us, my husband and I never felt like we had enough time for everything we wanted to do. But we had a little time for some things. I felt moderately in control of my life. It was a good place.

For the 39.5 weeks, while I was nauseous and tired and excited and nervous, I also knew I would get back there, to that good place. My body would be returned to me, and so would my life. My first pregnancy felt like getting ready to jump into an abyss; my second, like taking a break from regularly scheduled life. My life, like my body, would be returned to me, eventually.

Eventually, but not yet. Yes, I’m an optimistic second timer who is used to living in Mom Mode and hoping to enjoy the benefits of my parenting experience this time around; more joy, less obsessive Googling, maybe? But I’m also a wizened second timer who does remember what happened in between my first delivery and that more comfortable time: sleeplessness, worrying illnesses, days and evenings lost to your child’s varying moods or ability to nap when he needs to. Just because I remember my okay-enough parenting life more clearly doesn’t mean I’ll get back there sooner.

And I’m also learning, trial-by-fire style, that there is an Abyss-Jumping element to any major family change. I expected night wakings, but I did not expect a newborn who refused to sleep in her designated safe horizontal sleeping space (this has improved greatly in the last three weeks, but heck if I’m going to get over-confident about anything now…) I expected regressions and behavioral issues with my smart, entertaining firstborn… but I did not expect a complete dissolution of his sleep schedule. I also didn’t anticipate how my own delicate hormonal and somewhat sleep-deprived state might influence my ability to parent a sleepless toddler. I’ve forgotten a lot about the early newborn days in the past two and a half years: one thing that’s coming back to me now with persistence is how you are forced to take each day as it comes. No matter how much you want to schedule, plan, and predict, you can’t know what a day (or night) will bring you until you get there.

But three weeks ago – back when I was still scheduling, planning, and predicting – I set some intentions for this postpartum time. I hoped that I could take adequate, deliberate rest during this first month, even with an active toddler at home. Despite a few busy days and rocky nights, I think I’ve been able to succeed here. I hoped that I might be able to deliberately enjoy getting to know my new baby. Again, sometimes this has been harder than I thought it would be (“just be happy! what is so hard about that?” said the world keeps saying to me, for 33 years and counting…) but I am definitely feeling more chill about a lot of things that stressed me out the first time around. I hoped that I could do what I need to nurture my oldest through this change – this has been the hardest part of this transition, so far, and no, I don’t no if I’m succeeding.

Looking forward, I had hoped to “bounce back” to feeling like myself more quickly. I don’t know if the baby brain fog is dissipating faster this time around because I’m already in Mom Mode, or maybe I’m just giving myself the grace to not do a whole lot right now. I also hoped to prioritize health and fitness as I recover and settle into our new family routines. I’m still feeling a few weeks away from feeling physically ready to exercise – and logistically ready? Who knows… – but I don’t want to squander the powerful clean slate that has been offered to me. I’m working these hopes into my 2019 NYRs, so stay tuned.

And that’s really it. I’m three weeks deep into this new way of life, but still… in between. Transitional. Liminal. I’ll be here for forty days? Six weeks? Three months? I’m not sure yet, but I know I’ll be here for awhile, mostly on the couch, trying to be nice to myself and taking it one day at a time.

books
09 Oct 2018

how to read more: hold literary auditions

Last month I went on a bit of a reading spree. I knew I had a few weeks ahead of me to read what I wanted. I didn’t want to fritter it away feeling indecisive about what to read – I just wanted to get it done!

I pulled it off. In September, I read 15 books, 12 of them in print. I read a mix of adult, children’s and teen books, but I decided to focus on the critically acclaimed/generally buzzed-about 2018 KidLit titles I’d missed; otherwise, experience tells me, it will be 2019 and I will forget about them altogether. (Sorry 2017… and 2016… and 2015……)

My method for selecting what books to read ended up being a pretty fun part of my month – and effective, too.

First step, place way too many books on hold at once. My primary sources this time around were my Goodreads To-Read List, Heavy Medal’s discussion titles, and the multi-starred books from Jen J.’s hallowed spreadsheets.

Second step, choose 3-4 books as my “contenders.”

Third step, hold an audition for which book will get the honor of Being Read! Otherwise known as: read a little of each book.

Since I work in a Library Full of Books, I usually do this on my lunch break – it is really similar to my former Reading Lunch habit. Lunching in/near a library is probably not in everyone’s daily routine, but I do think there’s a benefit to putting a time limit on your task. If you have a luxurious child-free lifestyle and find yourself with an hour alone in a library or book story, you could hold an audition on the spot. If not, you could sit down at home with a few members of your latest library haul or your Unread Library and maybe set a timer: during naptime, over breakfast, before bed.

Fourth step, Read!

Why did this work for me? I can posit a few guesses. I tend to respond well to a finite set of tasks, even if they are arbitrary. My two-year-old and I have that in common. “First we find the letter E. Then we push our pants down. Then we pee on the potty. Then we eat some yogurt!” See what I did there? This is really the same concept. “First I pick some books, then I read a bit of each, then I choose my favorite, then I read it, then I pick some more books!” The reading becomes part of the process – a step on the path, not the end goal.

Additionally, I find the sense of competition to be a motivator, however manufactured; maybe the next book I read isn’t THE BEST BOOK EVER, but I can safely say it is the Best Book of a Small Sample Set!

Yes, I am one of those people who is not above fooling herself into any number of dubious beliefs or behaviors. I can, indeed, hide cookies from myself in my own kitchen. On a less self-deluded level, when presented with a few relatively similar options, I found myself better able to assess what kind of book I was going to feel most motivated to finish. I liked these two books of the four, but this one was shorter so it’s the winner. I just read two historical fiction books in a row, so this time I’ll choose a fantasy. All four of these books seem pretty good, but *this* one is due back to the library at the end of the week, so I’ll give it extra points.

Conveniently enough, I was often inspired to read the “runners-up,” as well. I chose to take a few notes during my auditions so I would remember what each book was about; when I was about to finish a book but didn’t have the time/inclination to hold another audition, I returned to my notes to choose my next read. A nice side effect: even if I never got around to reading all the books I auditioned, I at least learned a little about them during my brief reading and note-taking. There’s no way to read every great book that will ever be written – one of life’s greatest tragedies, in my perpetually self-motivated opinion – but staying well-informed about what’s being published for children and teens is part of my job and avocation. I’m always wondering how to engage with books I won’t have time to read in a way that feels productive and authentic rather than a consumer-y waste of time. This wasn’t too bad an option.

And last but not least, I found myself feeling more decisive about squeezing other “off-auditioned” books in between my more prescribed reads. Even though I was choosing to read all of these books, having a little process to follow made my auditioned books feel slightly more required. After every one or two “required” reads, I found myself feeling especially inspired to throw in an older YA title, an adult book, or something else to mix it up.

All of this added up to a fun month of reading that also felt productive, which beats starting and not finishing 10 random books around my house, having to return them unread, and generally rolling around in book ennui. I’m not sure how sustainable reading at this rate is, but it was at least a fun experiment with a beneficial side effect: I just happened to read 3 of the 10 titles longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Way more impressive than my usual zero.

I will leave you with this, my list of books in September after they “passed” an audition. They were all pretty good, and I’m pretty sure I would have read none if I hadn’t intentionally given them a chance to lure me in.

The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge

 

life maintenance
26 Sep 2018

winter, spring, summer, and fall

 Winter

Now that three-quarters of 2018 has passed, I have learned something about seasonal planning: while it seems more intuitive than, say, Random Ass Planning, it is not magical. There is probably no magical system that will eliminate all of my stress while multiplying my productivity. No list of goals can conquer all of my innate tendencies in one fell swoop; no amount of concentrated, applied ambition can easily and immediately override certain ingrained patterns in my life, my body, my family’s lifestyle, and – in general – the condition of being human on this planet.

This Winter I started a quilt. I spruced up the office. I bought a lighter so I could light some candles and then my husband hid it from me.

In March – the earliest days of my Spring – I started sketching out a new plan.

Then I got pregnant.

Spring

Two weeks later I got exhausted and nauseous and stayed that way until some time in June.

I suppose I can look at it this way: I took one of those lofty Winter goals – to think about Kid #2 – and really gave it my all! Totally knocked it out of the park. I gave lying in bed and trying not to feel like garbage my complete and absolute focus. It was my One Goal, actually. Leo Babauta would be so proud.

Once the first trimester fog lifted, it was definitely Summer. Time for a fresh start. Time to relax. To get outside. Eat a lot of tomatoes. Start planning all that priceless warm-weather fun.

Summer

Or, perhaps, host a steady stream of out-of-own guests while your husband is on Planet Grad School!

In our spare moments, we squeezed in all of our annual travel desires and obligations (Michigan! North Carolina! Niagara Falls!), I attended my many mandatory doctor’s appointments, wrote book reviews, and parented my shiny new two-year-old. And by “shiny,” I mean high-energy, verbally demanding, and LOUD. Also, it was 90+ degrees with 90% humidity for the entire season, I swear.

For extra credit, I weaned my two-year-old from breastfeeding and, over Labor Day weekend, we started potty training.

Fall

So now I’m staring down Fall. September, October, November. Back to School season. My third trimester. What can I realistically hope to accomplish? What needs to change, even for this short while, to maintain household sanity? What is just going to happen: the inevitable that I need to prepare for? Or even just recline into?

There are plenty of women who can’t or don’t allow pregnancy to slow them down in any way: women who can continue their fabulous or ambitious lives while also gestating children. I’m pretty sure they all have Instagram accounts.But for me? Right now? It’s a real challenge. For many days, just showing up at work and at home with family feels like more than enough to expend all the energy I have. Plenty of hunker down and SURVIVE days. Is everyone alive and fed? Has Mom had more than 6 hours of sleep? Everything else is ignorable – water under the bridge of everyday life. Good job, Working Mom. Good night.

The good news? This month, I’m riding a modest wave of fresh energy. I’ve taken that good Back to School September mojo combined with Third Trimester Nesting/Manic Preparedness Urges and taken that to the power of a new planner. I’m getting up early again. I’m making – and tackling – to-do lists again.

I’m feeling like I have the slightest grip on my life, again. Even with a pants-peeing toddler under my watch. And the third trimester aches and pains and HEARTBURN oh, dear God, the heartburn.

The other good news: I’m still reading. Kind of a lot. I’m pushing myself to Just Read some of the 2018 kid’s and teen titles that will surely fall to the bottom of my TBR come 2019; I’m about to finish my 6th since August 27th. I also muscled through the end of All the Light We Cannot See (yessss) and snuck in Jenny Han’s 2015 P.S. I Still Love You, just for fun. Lara Jean ended up being my 100th read of the year.

Winter, again

I know it won’t last long – both the energy boost and this Fall in Boston. Fittingly enough, I’m due December 1st: I’ll say goodbye to the season and hello to a new life. In the meantime the aches and pains will soon get worse. The heartburn, too. Soon I’ll have to figure out what to do with my loud, crazy, awesome, barely-potty trained toddler while I check into the hospital and give birth to his new brother or sister… then, I’ll have to figure out how to live under the same roof with two children.

I’m so much less anxious than I was with my last pregnancy; I’m honestly excited to meet this little person and see how he or she fits into our family. But I’m still petrified of how painful the process will be; how long it will be before we can even start to feel normal again. Because these waves of energy will surely give way to fatigue, confusion, and frustration. That blurry, scrabbling feeling like my life is close to capsizing will return.

Then it will go away… before it comes back.

No magic plan or planner is going to save me from all that – the ebb and the flow, the hormones, this inconvenient human condition made all the more complicated when you create and live among your own offspring. I can’t transform these messy, less-than-planned seasons of my life, but I can always try to make incremental progress, to find ways to feel steady for just a few moments, and to fill my days, months, and seasons with good memories, big ideas, and great books whenever possible.

Sincerely yours,

Acid-Reflux-y-but-Optimistic Jessica, (who.is.possibly.in.deep.denial.about.what.is.coming.for.her.around.the.gestational.bend….)

2
book lists
02 Jul 2018

summer reading 2018

So it’s July and 90 degrees out, but I’m still not sure it feels like Summer.

I mean, the signs are all there. The AC is cranking. The fridge is stocked with iced coffee. My dress+sandals wardrobe is in rotation. My 2-year-old is all “why are you trying to put me to bed when it’s still light out, you fools??” at 7:45 every night. School is finally out for Teacher Husband. Everyone on the Internet posted their Summer Reading lists weeks and weeks ago.

I’m not entirely convinced. We had a long, chilly, dreary Spring in Boston this year, which I haven’t quite forgotten about. We also started the Crazy Busy Summer Season a bit early, this year. Our daycare provider is on a long, deserved vacation. The good news? We’ve had a cavalcade of family in and out of our house to babysit – this is great for us, since time off of work is precious, and for the kid, who got to spend time with two faraway aunties and two faraway grandmas this month. The bad news? I feel like everyone has been on vacation, except I keep having to show up at work everyday… and also work harder at keeping my house somewhat inhabitable. Also I’m going to Michigan in two days to visit my sister’s baby, and some extremely beloved out of town (country?) friends are swinging through later in July. Phew.

See also: book reviews. I started off my Guide season so on top of my reading! Like, freakishly on top of both reading AND reviewing. Oh, past Jessica. So much can change in but a few short months. The season’s deadlines have all officially passed, now, and I still have a stack of questionable YA books waiting to be read and reviewed. My Summer Reading cannot truly begin until I conquer this task, which puts me in a strange position: I must read more books I don’t want to read so I can then read more books I do want to read.

This reading life thing takes some serious stamina, people.

Anyway, once summer finally starts, maybe I will be lucky enough to read some of these great books that have caught my eye! Here’s what I hope to be reading sometime before the leaves start falling off the trees.

Young Adult Books

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevado

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman

Save the Date by Morgan Matson

Middle Grade Books

Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol

 

Adult Fiction

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin

Still Life by Louise Penny

 

Adult Nonfiction

The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need From Grown Ups by Erika Christakis

Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy by Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam

Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature As an Adult by Bruce Handy

 

Summer Reading Lists Past

2017 – 2016 – 2015– 2014 – 2013 – 2012 – 2011

goals
05 Apr 2018

33

A few days before my birthday, I started writing a little something about what’s going on in my life. I mean, there’s nothing really remarkable going on – just work, commuting, family life, reading, and reviewing – so really it was more about how I *feel* about what’s going on in my life. The short and entirely unsurprising answer: I’m feeling a lot of complicated, conflicting things about what is, ultimately, a really good life.

The slightly longer answer is that I’m really struggling with managing time and energy. I know, I know. I have a full time job and an almost two-year-old. These are super hands-on months: the months of constant supervision and constant transitions and inconstant sleep. Building even a single good habit seems an insurmountable challenge, while bad habits seem to slip in without my permission or even notice. When I do occasionally have the wherewithal to make a plan or decision that doesn’t involve my family or my job, I find myself forgetting all about my conviction within days; or worse, I can’t remember why I ever wanted to accomplish that task in the first place.

I was writing about all of those feelings, and more, when I was about to turn 33. And then I reported for jury duty, and after being empaneled on a trial, stayed there for almost two weeks.

This was an unexpected life-shake-up. Like I said, I’ve been struggling. Amidst the struggle, I thought that I could really use a vacation. Not a trip, where I’d wind up exhausted and playing catch up at the end of my “time off” – but just a week away from my normal routine. I thought it, and it appeared – a pseudo-vacation! I mean, I still had to show up every day, but I also found myself with this strange thing called “down time.” Jury duty involves plenty of waiting, ideal for working on book reviews or reading, while the more relaxed schedule and 20-minute commute left me with a few hours a day by myself. In my own home. With nothing to do.

I used some of that down time to read Cal Newport’s Deep Work, a book that I might describe as… profoundly moving. His central message: arrange your schedule and train your brain toward the singular goal of doing the kind of work you have to concentrate on – and the kind of work you find exceptionally important or meaningful. It’s nothing entirely revolutionary, especially if you, like me, are a productivity book junkie, but there was something about the way Newport put it that really made a lot of sense to me. One reason I find concentrating on my work to be hard is because I don’t feel strongly about it: maybe I’m trying to work on things that I think I should find meaningful, but I don’t. Another reason: I’m of the Internet addicted era. My neurons are not necessarily wired to do deep work.

A perk of jury duty: ample time where I needed concentrate very hard on what lawyers and witnesses were saying, even though what they were saying might not be terribly interesting. I found it surprisingly difficult, especially at first, to avoid tuning out what everyone was saying in favor of running over my own quotidian concerns in my mind. Also, trials include all sorts of 1-5 minute breaks where lawyers speak in heated whispers and the jury just gets to… sit there. Without our phones. Torturous, but good practice for my neurons.

I enjoyed a cushy schedule for two weeks and happened to read a brain-changing book during the week I turned 33. All of that was nice. But after two weeks of hanging out with 15 other strangers in a very small room and thinking about the serious, unfortunate, and complicated case we were considering… and then the thoughtful, liberal introverted empath’s nightmare that is a Jury Deliberation? I was just so, so grateful, for basically every single thing in my life.

I’m grateful to live in a country with a justice system that operates so professionally.

I’m grateful to live in a community where a random selection of jurors can include doctors, teachers, PhD holders, psychologists, and other well-educated, considerate, and fair-minded adults.

I’m grateful to have a job that covers my pay while I’m doing my civic duty.

I’m grateful that nobody in my family has been a victim of a violent crime.

I’m grateful that my husband and I do not have jobs where we work unpredictable, dangerous hours or are confronted with violent crimes every day.

I’m grateful that other people do have those jobs.

I’m grateful for my family, for my husband, for my crazy-smart, delightful child, and for a life where I’m allowed the privilege of struggling over, of all things, my time, my energy, and my feelings.

 

32 | 31 |30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | 24

book reviews
07 Feb 2018

what i read this month – january 2018

First up for January… finishing up a few dangling review books. One of these was left in Michigan. While I was bed-sharing with a wakeful crib-climbing toddler at 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, my spouse was left in charge of packing for our early morning flight… and somehow, my I-Must-Read-This-By-The-End-of-Next-Week book was left behind. Thankfully, my place of business had a copy for checkout, but here’s something – I had to text my Mom and ask her what the title of the stupid book was. Welcome to the end of Guide Season, where I cannot remember the name of the book you are currently reading. Also, welcome to 2017-2018, where contemporary YA titles are equally vague and entirely interchangeable. Here’s a brief sampling I’ve come across in my reading lately:

  • These Things I’ve Done
  • Things I’m Seeing Without You
  • This is Not the End
  • Now is Everything
  • Where I Live
  • You Don’t Know Me But I Know You
  • If There’s No Tomorrow
  • The Beautiful Lost

Mind you, I did not troll lists of YA books looking for the most meaningless titles. I actually read all of these books. And no, for the most part I can’t really remember what they were about.

So I finished two of these meaningless titles in January – These Things I’ve Done and Things I’m Seeing Without You. Book about “Things” A was about a dead best friend and survivor’s guilt. Book about “Things” B was about a dead Internet boyfriend and the alternative funeral industry. I read. I wrote reviews. I moved on with my life.

And what did I move on to?? The exciting world of Books for Adults!

I mean, after I finished three books for Younger than Adults: two about criminals and one about cats. I’ve been wanting to read E. Lockhart’s latest, Genuine Fraud. It’s a rather action-y thriller with a really emotionally distant protagonist, which feels like a departure for Lockhart and did put me off somewhat. But it’s also about class and rich folks that live on the Vineyard, which is familiar territory. About half-way in, the tension really got me, and I sped through the second half feeling entirely uneasy.

I finished reading the winner of the 1931 Newbery Medal on my Kindle – The Cat Who Went to Heaven with Elizabeth Coatsworth, which is the world’s shortest book. It’s about a Japanese artist and his helpful genius cat who really knows what the Buddha was about and – spoiler alert – dies at the end. That’s really all I can say about that one.

And then, my book club’s choice for our February meeting. We are officially reading Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth, but Frank Cottrell Boyce’s debut – Millions – is an optional choice. And of course, when you offer me two books, I will read them chronologically. Millions was quite charming – loved the single-dad-to-boys family dynamic and the just preposterous enough premise.

Next, the adult books:

I listened to two memoirs on audio – Unraveled, a story of how the author went from happy SAHM to divorced and living with her lover in California while her ex-husband maintained physical custody of their three children – and The Year of Less – a story of a twenty-something’s choice to give up shopping for a year. Both were good audio fodder, but The Year of Less was definitely my favorite of the two – strangely enough, it felt much more intimate and revelatory than Unraveled, even though the subject matter was more quotidian.

I also read two memoirs… in print. As in, books that don’t read themselves to you! My first choice was driven by the sad realization that while I have access to plenty of pre-pub books at work, I never… actually… read any of them. So I grabbed Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am, and I really enjoyed it. Excellent prose, short chapters, and very… I don’t know… womanly. Stories about pregnancy and childbirth, about relationships with men in her life, about caring for children and her parents and growing up. It definitely had a woman’s sentiment.

The second was driven by my not-so-brief list of Books I Really Do Want To Read Someday. I picked up Pamela Paul’s My Life with Bob on a Saturday when I had cramps and was also coming down with a cold. A perfect couch-bound weekend read. Also, I’m deeply envious of Paul’s… um… life. As a whole.

And then two works of adult fiction, both about suburbia, but from entirely different angles. The first was Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, which I snatched off the Lucky Day shelf at work, which meant I had to hustle to bring it back. So hustle I did, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m not going to tell you about it because you surely have heard about it. Statistically, you are probably one of the 500 patrons of my library who have it on hold! I will say that it had plenty of the domestic commentary and teen POV characters that I find so appealing. The second was List: A Novel, by my beloved undergraduate advisor Matthew Roberson. It’s an incredibly up-close look at a marriage – so up-close that it’s occasionally hard to tell if you’re still in the same character’s head or if you’ve slipped into the home of another vaguely despairing husband or wife. Compelling, but also somewhat horrifying. I finished it and found myself asking my husband over dinner, “So, what can we do right now so we won’t accidentally start hating each other and get divorced?” We came up with a few ideas…

Aaaand…. theeeenn…  two straight nonfiction books. I did conquer Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less. I was… Less than Impressed. It was fine, really, but not great. I might write more about it later. And speaking of (pint-sized, rambunctious) productivity-challenges, I also read Your One-Year-Old by Louise Bates Ames, which is a parenting manual written the 80s. I read the first half when My One-Year-Old was just about to be One; I read the second half when he was almost 19 months. Some of the advice feels dated (child leashes anyone?), but it’s a bit more holistic than modern baby-raising-manuals, which tend toward the clinical in my experience. It was nice to read about how nutty young toddlers are – in great behavioral and developmental detail – and then have the authors say, repeatedly, “Oh, one-year-olds. Can’t teach them anything! Just wait a few months” and feel better about myself.

I’m officially out of thematic and format-ic connections. Also: damn. I read a lot this month. I listened to Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s incredibly brief We Should All Be Feminists while I cleaned my house one weekend, because was Available Now on Overdrive and I was sucked in by an audiobook that was shorter than an episode of the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Goys. I remember very little except thinking, “Oh yes, I agree with that,” quite often.

You may have noticed that I have skipped from November to January in these (potentially)-faithful reading round-ups. Did I read nothing? No books for 31 days? Au contraire, mon frère. I read about fourteen books in December of 2017. Most of them meaninglessly-titled review books; two adult non-fic re-reads (see: stress); and an adult fic book that topped many Best Of lists when it came out years ago that I just now got around to reading and, of course, loving. See you next month, when I will surely have received the gift of brevity that so blesses most folks who write monthly reading round-ups.