life maintenance
15 Oct 2012

2012: week forty-one

October 7 – October 13

Today is Day 29 of my Whole30 challenge. For those of you living under rocks, who don’t click links, or who otherwise prefer me to explain things, Whole30 is an paleo-like elimination eating plan, meant to be followed for 30-60 days.

Things you can eat:

  • Meat of all sorts
  • Vegetables of all sorts, except for white potatoes
  • Olive oil, coconut oil and milk, and animal fats
  • Some nuts and fruit

Things you can’t eat:

  • Rice, pasta, corn, quinoa, wheat, bread
  • Dairy
  • Sugar and artificial sweeteners
  • Alcohol
  • Beans

I decided to try it out for a number of reasons. Although I try to eat healthy most of the time, working many jobs really wreaked havoc on my eating habits and choices. I was eating a lot of junk, sometimes out of choice, sometimes out of necessity, but more frequently, just plain stress eating, which I didn’t realize was a problem that I’d kicked until it came back. Anywho, I thought that a prescribed, short-term plan would be a good way to remind myself that food=fuel and get back to having good habits.

I decided to coerce The Boy into joining me because I enjoy receiving text messages  that read “Can I eat XXX” and then replying “No,” and then getting a reply that says “A:@#$fin I HATE YOU,” repeated multiple times daily. Just kidding. I asked him to join me because I knew if I didn’t, every day he would eat some bread or something and then ask, very sincerely, what exactly is so WRONG about bread, and I can probably just have a little bite, right?

Anyway, I would definitely recommend a Whole30 challenge to anyone who wants to feel more in control of his or her health and food choices. It’s not as hard as it looks, and although you think you can’t live without X, Y, or Z, just take a deep breath and remember that you have lived many months and will live many more and THIS IS ONLY ONE OF THEM. Slow your roll. It is a little more expensive than normal eating, because cheap calories are cheap and real food is pricy, so be warned and budget accordingly.

I wasn’t a perfect Whole30er – I relied a bit too heavily on nuts and fruits, didn’t eat enough veggies, and may have willfully ingested some corn starch while on the quest to find the elusive crispy sweet potato fry (this recipe is the best I’ve found so far!). I also didn’t see any life changing, world-altering results… probably for those reasons exactly. However, I have felt the same general benefits I’ve felt other times I’ve given up sugar – the steady energy levels, the ability to differentiate between physical and mental tiredness, the absence of food cravings (save for the occasional dessert-related fantasy). I had fewer headaches and no stomachaches.

I generally feel more well-rested and healthy, less worried about what I eat, and more in touch with what foods are nourishing.

Also, I learned to eat olives, embraced flavored seltzer water, and had a happy/sad moment when all of the 30 dollar pairs of pants on the sale rack at Banana Republic were too large.

I will probably do this again, maybe 2 or 3 times a year, to reset.

Aaaaaaand on Wednesday, I am going to a bar after work to eat nachos and drink a beer.

 

Reading:

  • The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
  • The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
  • Books about tuberculosis, Charles Dickens, and Frederick Douglass

Watching:

  • Just realized that both seasons of Shameless are on demand. Heck yes.
  • Tried to watch The Wire, but had a little trouble paying attention enough to follow what characters were what, and then my DVD player stopped reading the disc.
  • Tried to watch Midnight in Paris, but it was really late at night and it was silly and I wanted to go to bed.
book lists
13 Oct 2012

blog to book round-up

It is no secret that I am a diligent, obsessive blog reader. I think my blog-reading days began at the information desk at the Charles V. Park library – I had a handful of urls memorized, most of them blogs of the Mommy variety. It is somewhat disturbing to me that some of these bloggers have children then are five, six, seven years old, when I read through their pregnancies and birth stories and such. Oy vey.

Additionally, some of these bloggers also have book deals. And while I in the midst of my pre/post-graduate reading slump, I certainly read myself a lot of them.

Jani’s Journey is probably one of the single most heartbreaking blogs I have ever chanced across, and not just because the idea of raising a very young child with schizophrenia is probably the most stressful, life-altering challenge I can imagine. The truly painful part of this blog is observing the unrelenting backlash – readers who don’t believe in mental illness, who believe that Jani’s problems must be rooted in abuse, who report the family to Child Protective Services. Michael is an honest writer, laying down the realities of life with his daughter, his struggling marriage, the constant struggle to make ends meet and convince health insurance companies to pay for medications and treatments. This makes him vulnerable, but a powerful voice in the world of mentally ill children and their parents who will do anything to help them.

January First goes back to the beginning, to before Jani was born, before the blog, and follows this family through unbearable trials. I think that reading this book gives a deeper understanding of where Michael and Jani are in the blog – the bond between parent and child, the horrors of living life with astronomically high levels of stress, and what a HUGE problem health care for the the mentally ill has become. This is a book you read flipping pages madly with one hand and clutching your chest with the other.

My Favorite Roommate introduced me to Kelle’s blog Enjoying the Small Things a few years ago, and I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, Kelle is obviously a talented photographer, her kids are adorable, and her writing is fine. However, I have trouble with reading personal writing by those who live in obvious, undeniable wealth – this is likely a personal failing, but I find it difficult to empathize with how difficult life is for those who have showy personal belongings and large houses.

That being said, I liked Kelle’s book, Bloom, more than her blog. The book is more of a memoir, and it turns out, Kelle’s history really isn’t too different than anyone else’s, with low-paying jobs and such. And while I don’t have much to contextualize the experience of having a child born with Down’s Syndrome, I found her retelling of her experience quite raw and honest in a way that I imagine is likely rare. But mostly, I just liked this book as an object – well-printed, well-designed, and full of Kelle’s lovely photographs. It feels nice in your lap.

Pre-2008, Stephanie Nielson’s blog, The NieNie Dialogues, was a stay-at-home mom’s collection of sparsely narrated candid photographs of clothing, craft projects, and children, vegetarian recipes, and super-sappy love letters to Mr. Nielson. In conglomerate, I found her life inexplicably intoxicating. I spent a lot of time sifting through her archives, marveling at these small moments and wondering if my life was that whimsical and pleasing but I just lacked the perspective to see it. When Stephanie and Mr. Nielson were severely injured in a small plane crash, the content and tone of the blog changed dramatically as her abilities and perspective changed completely.

A memoir that begins with Stephanie and Christian’s courtship and moves right up to her return home from an extensive stay in a burn hospital, Heaven is Here manages to capture the fantasy-romance of the pre-crash Nie as well as the struggle – physical, mental, spiritual – that occurs when your happy-little-life is 100% derailed. I’m not saying this book (or her blog) deserves any literary awards, and those who fear heavy-handed religiosity and conservative politics might find either or deplorable, but I found this book to be quick and satisfying.

Well, that was a lot of tragedy. I didn’t realize until this exact moment that I read a lot of depressing shit. Well here’s a remedy: a delightful narrative cookbook – Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach, based on the blog by the same name. I checked this book out from the library, oh, a month ago, and I refuse to return it. I loved reading through the short, memoir-ish vignettes that follow Jenny as her relationship with cooking and food changes through single life, married-to-a-fellow-foodie life, life with little kids and life with bigger kids. There is practical cooking and time management advice – how to get food on the table fast, how to make one dish to feed picky palates, how to make a decent recipe out of any combination of meat+fat+veggies, and a collection of recipes that are right in my wheelhouse: real food with real ingredients, not too fussy or too decadent, delicious. I have been cooking out of this book like its my job, even though I am on a fairly restrictive diet! – and I don’t want to give it back, I just don’t. So there.

Other blog-to-books I have at least moderately enjoyed in years past:

book reviews
12 Oct 2012

the thief – dare me – the future of us

One nice thing about last week’s mood: I got a lot of reading done. Three mini-reviews, commence.

I probably don’t need to tell you what Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief is about because it was published in 1996. In 1996 I was too busy reading Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Caroline B. Cooney to read fantasy. Lucky for me, The Thief was still enjoyable 10+ years later, and even luckier, it’s one of those fantasies that barely qualifies. You’re not quite sure it is a fantasy. In fact, you’re not quite sure of when or where the story is even taking place – you’re uncovering the landscape and the social structure and the culture as you read. But that is a lot of fancy-talking for a book that is, fundamentally, an exciting little adventure story starring one of the most endearing protagonists I’ve met in a long time – Gen, a feisty, braggy thief-boy who has landed himself in the King’s jail who ends up on an indentured, cross-kingdom adventure to steal something mythological.

And, hey, hey! One more summer reading book – done! That brings my total to three. Yeah, baby.

I generally like Books for Adults that feature teenage characters, even teen protagonists. However, I have seriously mixed feelings about Books for Adults that are about Teenagers and Teenage Culture. Ever see the movie Thirteen? Books for adults that expose the secret lives of teenagers always seem super sensational, inherently exaggerated. Megan Abbott’s Dare Me is full of naughty Varsity cheerleaders, content to lord over their peers, teachers, and half the world on the virtue of being young and sexy. Their parents are invisible, they cheer while hungover and in between binge & purge sessions, they run rampant and unchecked… until a new coach rolls into town and upsets the social order between Super-Popular Beth and her right-hand-man, protag Addy. The girls battle subtly, psychologically, while a murder mystery reveals itself, and Coach alternates between teaching the girls to become true, athletic, throwing and jumping and flying cheerleaders… and inviting the girls over for wine. Is this attempted reality, or shock value?

And while I will avoid spoilers, let me just say this: in stories about intense, problematic female friendships, there is a certain plotline that shows up again and again and again, and I spent the entire book thinking about Beth and Addy and saying to myself “Man, every other book would explain this by XYZ, but I’m glad that Dare Me doesn’t seem to be going in that direction.” Then, on the last 3 pages, it did. Dammit.

 

I wanted to read The Future of Us when it was published because A) Carolyn Mackler is on my perpetual Authors-To-Read list and B What a concept! Two teens discover Facebook ten years before it exists and see their future lives – as a child of the 90s,  I was sucked in. However, the book fell off my radar (as books are wont to do when you are in grad school) and if it hadn’t been a book club pick, I likely never would have read it…. and maybe it would have been better that way. This book annoyed the crap out of me. First of all, according to Mackler and Asher, the 90’s was a time and place when life looked identical to the way it does now, except every few minutes you put on a Green Day album, put on scrunchie, or noted how strange this new concept called “Caller ID” seemed to be. Basically, it read like heavy-handed faux historical fiction full of those nostalgic in-jokes we children of the 90’s love, but are probably irrelevant/annoying to all others. This book also suffers from horrible pacing (50-60 pages of the two protags trying to prove to themselves that this Facebook thing is real… the disbelief is timely for teens who can barely comprehend the Internet, of course, but THE READER KNOWS IT IS REAL BECAUSE IT IS A STORY AND WE HAVE TO BELIEVE SO PLEASE CATCH UP THIS IS BORING). Also, Emma is so, so unlikeable, but not even in an interesting way. Book club members had a point – maybe teenage girls are boring, wishy-washy, and yes, unlikeable… maybe I have outgrown the truly authentic teen protagonist? Or maybe Emma was just annoying and her character development kind of crappy.

This might be my last foray with fiction, so from here on out, look forward to nonfiction reviews aplenty. Let me tell you a little bit about tuberculosis….

2
book awards
11 Oct 2012

2012 National Book Awards

It should not surprise me at all that I have not read a single book nominated for this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I am usually lucky to have read one book on any given set of award-winning books, and the NBAs are always a titch more obscure than the rest of the bunch, including books I haven’t even heard of.

But this year’s picks seemed an especially quirky bunch. A middle grade fantasy full of unpronounceable character names. A sad-looking YA contemporary I would have probably passed over for more exciting pastures. Another book by a previously-honored kidlit celeb. The token non-fiction offering. And a book that seems to be about people and monkeys.

I’m sorry, after muddling through Peter Dickinson’s Eva, I’m not sure I can bring myself to read another book about people and monkeys without fearing that the people might turn into monkeys at any moment.

And of course, none of which I have read. Ah, well. Better luck in January!

Bomb: The Race to Build – and Steal – The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

Out of Reach by Carrie Arcos

Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

 

1
life maintenance
10 Oct 2012

life as a normal human: holidays

There is something civilized about holidays, especially if they are paid. Each holiday commemorates something seasonally specific, but I do not think it is a coincidence that these treasured days off appear regularly, almost monthly, like the national powers that be are aware that more than a month of working 40 hour weeks without a day off will make most folks a little nuts.

Last week was an off week, and it was certainly a comfort to think that I had a three day weekend awaiting me.

I honored the day by…

  • Waking up early-ish and trying not to play too much early-morning Skyrim
  • Spending my morning alone in a productive-ish manner – cleaning, scheduling, & running
  • Knitting approximately twelve stitches (slow but steady)
  • Doing laundry in a most pleasurable way – a cup of hot coffee at the cafe across the street from the laundromat, taken out of doors, with friends and even doing a bit of extracurricular writing.
  • Butternut squash & apple soup and the boy’s latest attempt at sweet potato fries
  • Reading a book about tuberculosis
  • Using expensive deep conditioner while washing my hair
  • Putting a blanket on top of a Rubbermaid and pretending it is a coffee table

 

assorted media
09 Oct 2012

a tale of three movies

In the three years I spent in grad school, I think I watched a grand total of three movies in the theater. Maybe four.

(All of them were arguably for children, but that is neither here nor there)

Last week I decided to make up for lost time. Or, more accurately, I decided to see one movie, then somehow ended up seeing two more in a five day span.

On Saturday, we met up with friends to see The Master. Early Oscar buzz has begun, and like always, barely any of the movies that are getting any hype are even available to watch in theaters yet, much less on DVD. The Master was, and it was showing at my favorite theater, so after digging through our car for change to fill our Brookline parking meter, we squeezed into a sold out showing.

I thought it was bizarre, ambiguous almost offensively well-acted. So basically, Oscar-worthy.

On Tuesday night, a children’s lit friend of mine joined me for a showing of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I was skeptical throughout most of the film, probably because I just re-read it and was feeling a little too close to the text or whatever. It seemed like a nice, tame high school flick, but was missing the kind of mounting tragedy that you can feel while reading the book. And it is difficult, I think, to portray a character who self-defines by the books he reads and the music he listens to and the journals he writes on screen. These are intimate, personal experiences that you have, right along with Charlie, when you read a close first person narration. On the screen, all you see is a stack of paperbacks, scant voice overs that seem sarcastic, and songs that blend in with any other indie soundtrack.

However, the last twenty minutes of the film punched me in the stomach. The mounting tragedy mounted quickly, and illuminated Charlie’s relationship with Patrick and Sam in a way that I didn’t get from the reading the book.

Also, Ezra Miller, who are you and where can I get more of you.

But if I have to choose a favorite flick-of-the-week, I will have to shame myself by skipping over the Future Oscar Winner and the YA Classic On Film. So sorry, guys, but my heart belongs to…

Pitch Perfect.

I’m pretty sure this movie was created expressly for me. It has all of my favorite film elements:

  • Raunchy, random comedy with extra puns
  • That campy This-is-so-bad-it’s-good feeling
  • Anna Kendrick
  • Elaborate musical numbers

Oh, and it’s about collegiate a cappella. Win. If you are a former a cappella nerd (or a close associate), you will notice A) persistent a cappella in-jokes that will make you giggle and B) a persistent poking-fun-of said a cappella nerds. One of my favorite scenes was an inter-a-cappella-group party scene, where everyone was drunk, macking upon one another with abandon, and instead of dancing, 75% of the crowd was just singing along  to the music.

Oh, a cappella, I miss you.

weekly
08 Oct 2012

2012: week forty

September 30 – October 6

Every day this week, I came home from work and became inexplicably grumpy. Didn’t want to cook, didn’t want to clean, didn’t want to do anything except play Skyrim or hide in my room and read a book.

It could be the diet. It’s been 22 days of Whole30 now, so we are on the home stretch, but I am getting a wee bit sick of chicken.  And also, everything else that I can’t eat sounds amazing. I am not sure what to make of this. It’s no fun to end a food experiment thinking “Man, glad THAT’s over! Now back to this bag of Fritos…”

It could also be the weather. It rained all week and was alternately very cold and kind of muggy. I left two umbrellas on the train. I didn’t run at all, and my hair was frizzy.

An off week. Not all weeks can be on.

 

Reading:

Watching:

  • So, I fell down the Girls well again. Good thing there are only a dozen episodes – they watch real quick.
  • I think I’ve solidified by Fall TV schedule: I’m watching The Mindy Project, How I Met Your Mother, and Call the Midwife. That’s it. I didn’t like any of the other new shows, and I never caught up with the old ones, so there we have it.
book lists
05 Oct 2012

let the bodies hit the floor

YA Realism isn’t always “real.” Nor does it need to be “real” because “real” is one of those words that means very little and what little it means is highly subjective. This is bringing back unpleasant memories of cryptic philosophical reading assignments past, but what I’m trying to say is I get that YA books might not seem realistic to me and real-ness is not a particularly unbiased way to judge a piece of literature.

However.

I have observed some trends in contemporary YA realism that seem… um… unlikely. And then when seven other books feature the same unlikely feature, it seems that statistically speaking, the world of YA realism is a world much stranger than ours.

Exhibit A:

There Are Dead Bodies Everywhere, And At Any Time You Or Someone You Love May Chance Upon One

 

I’m sure there are more examples that I’m not thinking of, and this isn’t even including the numerous other books in which characters discover the dead bodies of their family members after some sort of trauma… which is slightly more likely than chancing upon a strange corpse in a public place, but just as traumatic. Actually more traumatic. I need to stop talking about this right now, and please don’t ask me about the time I chanced upon a dead cat on my way to the train because I might still be recovering.

 

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Sum

Paper Towns by John Green

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfeld

 

 

book reviews
03 Oct 2012

Every Day by David Levithan

Every day, for his/her existence, A wakes up in a different body of someone nearby of the same age. For that day, A can access that person’s memories, sleeps in their bed, kisses their girlfriends or boyfriends (or not), and then at midnight, a new life. Each chapter is a day, and each day has more meaning when for the first time, A falls in love and can’t help but use each subsequent day-in-the-life to reach out to Rhiannon.

I have two things to say about David Levithan’s Every Day.

1. I am super-duper excited that this book is Levithan’s long deserved day in the sun, what with full-page Entertainment Weekly reviews and the attention of the mainstream reading community. He has been writing excellent YA for years and is deserving of praise.

I enjoyed Every Day a great deal, especially how effortlessly Levithan creates the worlds of so many varied teenagers in so few pages. However, I think that some of Levithan’s other books explore the nuances of young relationships and love with a bit more subtlety. If you are new to Levithan and looking for more, might I recommend Are We There Yet?, Marly’s Ghost, or my absolute favorite, The Realm of Possibility.

2. So, about that Day 6025.

The short of it (not news for most of you), on Day 6025, A wakes up in the body of an obese teenager. A has never been obese before, never existed in a body of that size, and he reacts with immediate negative, offensive language. This is not a flattering or sensitive portrayal of life that is reality for many, many Americans and young people.

However, I can see the literary purpose of Levithan’s choice to set A against his body – this is a point in the novel when A wants to make a relationship work with Rhiannon, but in this less attractive body, Rhiannon finds it harder to see A inside, to see why it’s worth the effort to date a non-bodied entity. A is scared of this potential hurdle from the get-go – he/she is always A, but he has no control over any given corporeal appearance. And the feeling of being in a body that doesn’t feel the way your body should feel is uncomfortable. I get that.

But I don’t think this excuses the level of vitriol in Levithan’s language. It really was jarring even for me – a generally sympathetic, easy-going reader. I don’t know if it’s the author’s responsibility to make artistic changes in order to please every subset of people, but it seems that this chapter could have been written to the same effect with maybe half of the negative language, without the stereotypical perceptions of overweight people. It sucks that this one chapter has ruined the reading experience for so many.

book awards
02 Oct 2012

BG-HB Awards

At the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards Ceremony, esteemed authors and illustrators give speeches to a full-house of children’s lit aficionados, scholars, publishers, and general supporters. We all marvel over their cleverness and their ability to write delicious teen and children’s books.

The highlights:

The creators of Chuck Close: Face Book knew nothing of children’s literature, but were adorable about it.

Julie Fogliano was seeing a dream come true with And Then It’s Spring; her speech was touching and inspiring.

Mal Peet insulted all Americans but that’s okay because he is a genius and I cannot stop loving Life: An Exploded Diagram.

And Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen were so very young and charming that everybody in the audience died. I am dead right now, actually.

The best part? I showed up alone and there, waiting for me were all the folks that I know and like – former classmates, professors, new coworkers, and some of my dearest friends. My people. Love it.