What I Read in January 2019

This week, I'm doing something a little different.

It's been a quiet week around here. For one, I'm dealing with that nasty fatigue again. I'm not sure if it's because there's something going on medically (regular metabolic blood tests came back fine, so I'm not anemic and it's not my thyroid, but we're wondering if I have some chronic swelling that contributes to my fatigue), or if it's because I can't get comfortable at night and end up waking up constantly and switching positions over and over throughout the night. Maybe both? Who knows. I'm just dragging right now. And then there was this:

The Polar Vortex swung through here and I basically threw on 234782347293 layers of clothing and huddled under a blanket with a book the whole time. Our cars wouldn't start, not that we wanted to go anywhere anyway, but I just wasn't up to doing much whatsoever. It was a really, really quiet week around here. So instead, I'm posting January's reading log!

I have had such an amazing reading month!

For all that I felt reading slumpy back in October/November, I'm exactly the opposite right now. I credit this entirely to the What Should I Read Next podcast. I've been listening to this as I fall asleep, work in the kitchen, and complete other tasks that don't require listening to anything else. It's gotten me so excited about reading new things, branching out of my regular genres and including more fiction in my life. Every trip to the library seriously feels like Christmas morning these days.

I'm trying something new with this post. Years ago, I used to run a book blog that received some moderate attention (decent number of followers, multiple authors quoted my reviews on their websites; the Raleigh News & Observer's book page quoted me; I was occasionally offered books to review by authors and publishing companies). I absolutely loved book blogging, but it got too difficult to keep up when my son went to school full-time and I took some college classes. I miss it, and so I've decided to start another book blog, dedicated fully to my reading life. I'll list the books I've read here, but I'll link to my book blog, and if the book interests you, click on through and read the review!

Here's what I read in January of 2019.

1. Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity- Emily Matchar

2. The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom- Helen Thorpe

3. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea- Barbara Demick

4. This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost- Carolyn S. Briggs

5. The Cult Files: True Stories from the Extreme Edges of Religious Belief- Chris Mikul

6. The Magdalen Girls- V.S. Alexander

7. Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper- Hilary Liftin

8. Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids- Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross

9. Switch and Bait- Ricki Schultz

10. A Crazy Kind of Love- Mary Ann Marlowe

11. The Adventures of a South Pole Pig: A Novel of Snow and Courage- Chris Kurtz

12. How Does It Feel to Be Unwanted?: Stories of Resistance and Resilience from Mexicans Living in the United States- Eileen Truax

13. I'll Be There For You: The One about Friends- Kelsey Miller


Thirteen books isn't bad for a month! I think in 2016, I managed to read something like 21 books in January (I was really stressed and reading was how I handled it), but I'm pretty happy with thirteen. :)

Hopefully this week will be a little more energetic (crossing all the things!). My son has his rescheduled choir concert on Wednesday- it was supposed to be Friday, but with the rehearsal on Wednesday being cancelled due to the brutal cold, they moved it to this week. I have to drive him and his friend on Friday after school to a place that's only about 5 miles away but ends up taking about an hour due to traffic (one of the few drawbacks to where we live), and I really need to do a deep cleaning of the house, since everyone was home so many days last week- I've just been too worn out to do it. We'll see how things go. I don't want to push myself and make things worse.


What have you been reading lately?

Friday thoughts 2/1/2019

Goodness, what a strange week it's been so far. With the brutally cold temperatures we've been having, my #1 goal has been to huddle under a blanket and stay warm. Our car wouldn't start on Wednesday or Thursday, but that just means I've gotten in some extra reading time, so I'm not necessarily complaining. ;)

Here are some of the interesting things I dug up online this week!


*Why you should surround yourself with more books than you'll ever have time to read*

I've become very anti-clutter in the past few years, and very not-overwhelming-myself-with-material-possessions, but the reader in me loves this article. To me, books represent possibility. They contain all the things I could know, could learn, could become, if only I sat down and spent time with their contents. I keep a three-shelf bookshelf across from where I sit in the living room, and it's crammed full of books I brought from upstairs, the ones I'll read first when the library stops stocking such fascinating books (because that's totally going to happen...). Those books give me comfort; they're just there, and I *will* get to them. Until they, I'll just enjoy what they stand for: the possibility of a better me. :)


*Steep Climb in Benzodiazepine Prescribing by Primary Care Doctors*

Full disclosure: I'm not on any of these meds. I have nothing to control my pain other than OTC ibuprofen (and you can imagine how well that works when I'm struggling to walk). In the far distant past, I did have a prescription for Xanax to help my I've-been-awake-for-three-days style of insomnia (which was what my doc and I had settled on, and what worked, after trying probably five or six other kinds of meds). I only took it when absolutely necessary and ended up getting rid of an expired bottle of it when we moved back home.

The gist of the article is that ever since the crackdown began on opioids, doctors, especially primary care doctors, have been prescribing benzodiazepines, which include drugs like Valium, Ativan, and Xanax. And now that those are being overprescribed, they're going to be the next drugs to be cracked down on.

*deep breath* All of this makes me pretty angry. Patients with legitimate chronic pain (*raises hand*) are forced to live with zero options for pain control because of stuff like this. We get sent home with paperwork that tells us to keep a positive mental attitude (yes, I've received that; it made me cry. How the hell does one keep a positive mental attitude when walking to the bathroom is so difficult that you're shaking by the time you get there?), and that's it. In the past four years, the only thing I've been offered is something called Meloxicam, which made zero difference in my pain levels (and my pain doc, when I asked him, said if that was the case, not to bother taking it, but didn't offer me anything else). I'm not saying this because I want strong medication- I've taken Vicodin after root canals in the past (I had to Google to remember the name of that!) and it makes me sleepy, and that's obviously not something I can be with a four year old in my care. I'm saying this because it's frustrating, it's disheartening, and it honestly feels like the entire medical profession is blowing pain off these days.  Case in point? A terminally ill friend of mine also has nothing prescribed to her for pain relief. That's where we're at these days.

I'm also incredibly irritated by this line in the article:

For example, a form of talk therapy has been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for insomnia. And simply practicing better sleep hygiene can make a big difference, she says.

Seriously? Because talk therapy is affordable and accessible to so many people? If you've got small children and no childcare, if you can't afford the co-pay (even sliding scale can be prohibitively expensive), if you work split-shift or nights, if there's no one in your area who accepts your insurance- any of these can place people outside the access of therapy services, and incidentally, many of these can be barriers to practicing better sleep hygiene. And that leaves these people with...nothing. And doing nothing isn't healthcare.


*'Delusional' parent's ad demands that babysitter pay for food, support Trump, and love pitbulls*

Yikes.

Don't be this parent!

Summary: a parent placed an ad for a babysitter, making a few reasonable demands, a few demands that were beyond the pale, and then offered a ridiculous salary for what they were demanding.

A few of them I can see. Comfortable with pitbulls? If you've got one, that's probably a good thing to mention; not everyone is comfortable with dogs, let alone pitbulls. I have no problem with that, and if you want your childcare provider to share your political or religious beliefs, that's also not a big deal. But if you want someone with a Bachelor's degree, full-time availability (including weekends!), a second language, and you expect them to own a car, offering to pay them ten bucks an hour for watching three kids is ridiculous and you deserve to be laughed at. That's insulting.


*Scientists Crack a 50-Year-Old Mystery About The Measles Vaccine*

For years, scientists have wondered about the correlation between the measles vaccine and the lower rate of death from childhood infections that children who received the vaccine experienced. Now they think they might finally understand what's going on. Turns out measles screws up your immune system for several years afterwards, making the person who suffered from measles susceptible to all sorts of horrible illnesses. But vaccinating against measles keeps you safe from measles and all the other stuff you didn't get because you didn't get measles in the first place.

This is still a hypothesis, but there's compelling evidence for it. Fascinating stuff!


*Rare half-male, half-female cardinal spotted in Pennsylvania*

Ooh, pretty! The article is really neat and explains exactly what's going on with this bird, how it will most likely be capable of reproducing, and why that's exciting for scientists, so you should definitely read it because it's cool stuff. But really, the bird is just pretty. Nature's pretty awesome. :)



And that's it for the week! Our car did start this morning- my husband brought the battery in overnight, let it warm, and charged it, and I was able to get everyone to where they needed to be this morning, although not without some fear, because it snowed overnight and the roads were wicked. Even doing 25 mph down Main Street, we almost ended up in someone's front yard, twice. I have books due at the library today, so we'll have to go out, but I'm waiting for a bit to let the roads clear up after that!

Have a great weekend, everyone!