What I Read in September 2018

It's book talk time!

It's been another month of working my way through my Goodreads list, with a few extras tossed in. I still have probably about a year and a half to go before the list is done (there are going to be some books that hang out there for a bit, since the library doesn't have them. Some I may order online; others, I'll just wait until they magically appear in my life, I guess!). When I'm done with the list, I'll start reading my way through my own shelves (along with reading some library books here and there for variety, of course), but that'll be a while yet.

Anyway, here's what I read last month.


1. Little House Living: The Make-Your-Own Guide to a Frugal, Simple, and Self-Sufficient Life- Merissa A. Alink

I follow Merissa's blog, Little House Living. It's a lovely blog with tons of recipes for everything from shampoo to oven cleaner, and the book is no different. It's almost information overload, so recipe-heavy is this book. If you're looking for a way to simplify the products you use, this may be something you're interested in. Merissa leads an interesting life, and I wish I knew what her schedule was and how she crams in making all of this stuff! There are times when my bottle of homemade floor cleaner sits on the counter for weeks until I can get to it...


2. Out of Orange: A Memoir- Cleary Wolters

If you've watched Orange Is the New Black on Netflix or read Piper Kerman's memoir of the same name, you know that Piper wasn't alone in the wrongdoings that lead to her imprisonment. In the series, her partner in crime (literally) is known as Alex Vause; in the memoir, she's known as Nora. In real life, Cleary Wolters was the woman who persuaded Piper to join her in international drug trafficking, and in this memoir, she shares her side of the story.

There's not a TON about Piper or about prison itself in this memoir; the vast majority of it had to do with her time as a drug trafficker, which, to be honest, didn't sound at all glamorous to me. The drug lord she worked for sounded terrifying; so much of her work involved waiting around for weeks on end; the stress of trying to enter a country with suitcases crammed full of drugs would have given me enough heart attacks to kill every last elephant on the planet ten times over. I didn't see the appeal to that kind of life whatsoever, but it was interesting to see what Cleary had to say. I just so happened upon this book at the library; I'm not sure how I managed to miss that it even existed, but I'm glad we crossed paths.


3. Girl in a Bad Place- Kaitlin Ward

The story of a teenage girl whose best friend gets caught up in a dangerous cult.

Well-written, fast-paced, and intense. Not quite what I was expecting, but still a great read, especially if you're interested in cults and closed groups like I am.


4. Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors- Jeanne E. Arnold, Anthony Graesch, Elinor Ochs, Enzo Ragazzini

A deep look into what working families own, and how they store and use those items, along with the spaces they live in. If you've ever wanted a glimpse into what people's houses look like when they're not blog- or company-ready, this is your book.

I'll be honest. The pictures in this book seriously stressed me out. So. Much. CLUTTER. I went on a massive cleaning rampage after reading this. I do not want any part of my house to look like what I saw in these pictures. It's bad enough when my kitchen table gets covered in papers (or apples and butternut squash, as it is now); the amount of STUFF people crammed into their houses made me feel claustrophobic, and the mess- not just clutter, but straight-up mess- made me anxious.

Everyone has different standards of living, and if these people are happy with their houses, then that's cool. My anxiety about what their houses look like is fully on me and not them, so please don't think this is judgment. It's not; it's more of a testament to what I need my living space to look like in order to feel mentally calm (and I don't always succeed in that, either! It's hard when you're trying to keep up with the belongings of four people, three of whom don't share your desire to not have all their stuff hanging around on every flat surface!). Reading this also reconfirmed my desire to rid myself of superfluous possesions, those things that I own but that I don't use or love. I don't want to have large collections of stuff surrounding me like many of these pictures showed. Too much for me, thanks! This was a seriously neat book, though.


5. Tales From a Traveling Couch: Psychotherapist Revisits His Most Memorable Patients- Robert U. Akeret

This was one from my own shelves, which I read in bits and pieces while I was waiting for interlibrary loan books to come in. I'd picked this up from the thrift store for a quarter a while back. It was...odd. Interesting, but he had some patients who were...just odd. Not even ill in the way that I think most people would classify someone as mentally ill, but... Like, there was a patient who had fallen in love with a polar bear at the circus where he worked, to the point of climbing into this polar bear's cage so he could, um, attempt to be amorous with her.

It didn't go well for him.

It's a great concept for a book, though; I've often wondered if the therapists I've worked with in the past ever think about me, so it's nice to know that they do. :)


6. Scraps, Wilt & Weeds: Turning Wasted Food Into Plenty- Mads Refslund

A gorgeous book that's part-educational, part-cookbook, all about the bits of food that you thought were trash but are actually edible (like, uh, fish scales. I...might pass on that one). This is where I learned that you can actually dry pumpkin skins/rinds/whatever you call them and then grind up those dry whatevers and add the powder into baked goods, so I'm definitely planning on doing that. The recipes in this book were a bit too fancy for what I consider to be everyday cooking, but if you're more of an everyday gourmet, this might be right up your alley.


7. Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History- Bill Schutt

Speaking of recipes...

This book had none.

What it did have was more information on cannibalism in both animals and humans than I've ever seen in one place before. Not that I've spent a lot of time looking; I can't think of anything I've read that focused solely on cannibalism before. I was kind of expecting more about human cannibalism, and the front half of the book focuses a lot on animals, which didn't necessarily interest me as much, but it was still a deeply intriguing read. Also kind of gross, especially where the author ate a few bites of a woman's placenta (cooked, of course) as research for the book.

It tasted somewhat like veal, in case you were wondering.

There.

That's a thing you know now.


8. The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store- Cait Flanders 

The title pretty much sums it up. It's pretty much a memoir, by a woman who seems to be prone to many forms of addiction (human brains can be such jerks, right? It's a roll of the dice, and I'm sorry for anyone who struggles with any form of addiction). She'd struggled with food and alcohol in the past, and after she tackled those issues, she decided to look at her shopping habits, because mindlessly consuming wasn't making her happy, and she realized that she was buying things not for who she was at the time, but for who she wanted those things to make her.

That's something I think we're all guilty of, myself included. We all have those stacks of books gathering dust, because we swore we'd learn woodworking or accounting or French cooking, and then we never did. Flanders's method of dealing with that problem was to give those things away, whereas mine is to use those things to become the best version of myself (for the most part. There are things I've gotten rid of!). I want to become the person who's going to use that yarn and sew that fabric and learn all of those things, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That said, I'm mostly not acquiring new things, just dealing with the things I already own, because there's a limit to all the things I can become!

I liked this. Didn't love it, but it was a good quick read.


9. The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide To Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace- Laura Doyle
10. First Kill All the Marriage Counselors: Modern-Day Secrets to Being Desired, Cherished, and Adored for Life- Laura Doyle

Lumping these two together, because they're pretty close to being the same book.

I'm not sure what to say about these books. I don't think Laura Doyle's totally full of it; she has some good ideas, and a few of the things she wrote made me realize some areas where I could improve, but quite a few times, I went, "Um, what???" Regarding one of her ideas, I asked my husband, and he is absolutely not interested in me letting him drive one hundred miles in the wrong direction just so I don't challenge his masculinity or somesuch; he'd much rather me let him know that he missed the exit or took a wrong turn so that we're not late or wasting gas. I mean, maybe your husband is different and would rather miss his best friend's wedding or that super important work meeting while you sit silently next to him, having seen the exit he was supposed to take three miles back. If so, then Laura Doyle probably has other great advice for you, too, but I have to wonder about anyone whose sense of self is THAT fragile.

I also didn't buy half of the stories she told in the book. Things like "Mary came to me sobbing. Her husband never helped with the fifteen children or the house, and he'd been chronically unemployed for the past twelve years, preferring to spend his days and nights with his golf buddies. Once Mary started following my methods, he surprised her by cleaning the house from top to bottom, taking all the kids to Disneyland so she could stay home and rest, and starting his own company. Today, his company is at the top of the Fortune 500, and he and Mary are deliriously happy!"

I'm not buying it, and most of the stories in this book sounded pretty much like that. There's never any contingency plan for what to do when her methods don't work- she guarantees they will, and I think that discounts a large portion of human nature. She also comes dangerously close to dismissing some forms of abuse (and putting it on the wives to change, instead of the husbands), which made me extremely uncomfortable.

So if you read these, I suggest a grain of salt, maybe even the whole shaker. Take from it the good parts, run screaming from the rest. They're those kinds of books.



What did you read this month? Do you keep track of what you read?




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What I Read in August 2018

And now, book talk!

I find libraries so relaxing. Ahhhhhhhh.

I'm going to start backtracking at the end of each month and go through everything I've read throughout the past month. Maybe you'll find something good to read, too! Side note: I'm still working through my Goodreads To Read list, and a LOT of that is nonfiction, so if you're not a huge nonfiction reader, bear with me while I plow through the rest of the list. I promise, I do read fiction! Sometimes I read heavy stuff; other times, I read lighter stuff, which is like a delicious dessert for your brain (I enjoy cheesecake, if anyone's offering). It all balances out. :)


1. Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living- Elizabeth Willard Thames

Ohhhhhh, I loved this. I really enjoy the Frugalwoods blog; her style is so relaxing and approachable, which makes for an incredibly engaging read. The book is written in the same style, telling the story of how Thames and her husband came to save up enough money to buy the rural homestead of their dreams and be financially independent. My goals and dreams aren't the same as hers, but I still found her story really inspiring.


2. Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions- Susan Tive and Cami Ostman

A collection of essays on women at various points in their religious journeys, in what you may or may not find extreme (as the authors cover in the foreword, extreme is in the eye of the beholder, or, in this case, the believer or non-believer). This wasn't *quite* what I was expecting, but still a very good read, as I'm a huge fan of reading about other people's experiences, especially when it comes to religion, which I've always found endlessly fascinating.


3.The Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien

I was lucky enough to be able to hear the author speak last week at a local high school as part of a parent education series. This book is a fictionalized account of a man's experiences before, during, and after the Vietnam War. Some of the experiences were very similar to what happened to the author; others were not, and he discussed that in his talk. It's moving and some parts are hard to read, but it's worth it to push through, because this is something that needs to be understood, as far as we can understand another person's wartime experience. My son's English class is reading this this year, so I'm curious as to how he'll perceive the book.


4. The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel: The Rise of a Village Theocracy and the Battle to Defend the Separation of Church and State- Louis Grumet with John Caher

If you're not familiar with Kiryas Joel, it's a village in New York whose residents are almost entirely Hasidic, of the Satmar sect. Their public school district has been very controversial, and this book deals with the first major legal case against that district. Again, it wasn't quite what I was expecting; there was a LOT of legal talk that was, on occasion, a bit over my head, but it was still fascinating.


5. The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World's Most Endangered Languages- K. David Harrison

Super fascinating book written by a linguist who travels around the world, documenting languages that are dying out or are in danger of dying out. Hopeful, heart-wrenching, intriguing...


6. Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America- Helen Thorpe

 Loved this! Thorpe documents the final parts of high school and all of the college years of four friends, all of whom were born in Mexico. Two are here legally; two don't have documents. The struggles that the undocumented young women faced are gutting, from healthcare to jobs to school, to driving legally, to being able to rent an apartment, to being able to care for their family and younger siblings... My heart absolutely broke for those two girls over and over again. This book was published in 2011 and I'm deeply curious as to how the women are faring today. If anyone knows of any updates, PLEASE let me know. This was a great, great book. I've read Helen Thorpe before and have enjoyed her, and I'm looking forward to reading more from her in the future.


7. Almost Amish: One Woman's Quest for a Slower, Simpler, More Sustainable Life- Nancy Sleeth

This started out well. The back cover made it seem like the author had gone on a journey to slow her life down, and here's what she tried, and here's what worked and what didn't, etc. She told the story of how she and her physician husband realized their lives weren't exactly working for them and how he quit his job and they reworked everything in accordance to their newfound religious faith.

I'm not particularly religious myself, but I have no problems reading about others' deeply held beliefs. Rachel Held Evans has some delightful books, and I deeply enjoyed John Pavlovitz's A Bigger Table (this one *really* made me think, which I appreciated!). I also really enjoy the writings of Rabbi Harold Kushner. But about halfway through, this book switched from pleasant to preachy, and I found myself disappointed.


8. What I Eat: Around the World In 80 Diets- Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusio

A large coffee table-style book, full of great photographs of people from all over, surrounded by a spread of everything they ate on that particular day. It's arranged by calories taken in, ranging from somewhere in the 800's to over 12,000. It was a pretty neat look at how diets differ based on not only where you live but what class you belong to. There's quite a bit of text in this photo-heavy book, so prepare to be holding this giant book up for a while!


9. Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America- Linda Tirado

Tirado wrote this book after a post she wrote on poverty went viral. There's a lot of hard truths in here about what life is like for poor people- what society demands from them (but not from others), how they're viewed and treated, the ways they help and hurt themselves (and sometimes they have good reasons for doing so). This is an excellent book. For me, it was preaching to the choir (but I'm still glad I read it, huge thanks to I Heart Tightwads for making me aware of this book). I haven't experienced the type of prolonged poverty that she has, but I've worked those jobs where management doesn't schedule you but threatens your job if you don't come in every single time they call you to come in an hour before they want you to start working (this was also the same job that forced me in after I'd been awake all night vomiting. Yes, it was retail. Yes, I worked face-to-face with customers, several of whom commented on my ghastly appearance. And we wonder why cold and flu season is so awful in this country? DING DING DING). I've been food insecure, I've had to put medical stuff off for financial reasons, and I was extremely lucky to have a dentist who worked with me on paying off an extremely large amount of dental work. Like Tirado, my dental issues were through no fault of my own- hyperemesis gravidarum is not good for your teeth- but I still dealt with people who judged me for their state, and I still felt that shame.

If you're sensitive to swear words, you should steel yourself before diving in, because she uses them a lot. I'm not bothered in the least, but even if you are, this is a really important book. I was surprised by the Goodreads reviews. It seemed to me that a *lot* of people there absolutely missed the entire point of the book, and that disappointed me. Far too many people ignore the humanity of others, and think that serving the public is an undignified job and thus the people who do it are worthy of their scorn and derision. If you've never worked a crappy retail job where customers threaten your life for policy created by someone that makes hundreds of times more than you, try it out and see how great it feels to make about fourteen cents a minute for that experience (that's actually more than I made when that happened to me. Yay, minimum wage!), and then try to pay rent and buy your kid new shoes and pay off that hospital bill from that surprise bout of pneumonia and see how grateful you feel to that employer. Tirado covers all of this and more.

Super important book right here, one that I feel like a lot of people could benefit from reading, because I see far too much scorn and disgust thrown at low-wage workers.



I finished a book today and started a new one, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep going with it. It's one my son recommended to me, and the writing style is very good, but I'm not sure I'm in the greatest headspace for it. It's rare for me to abandon a book, especially one from my To Read list, but I'm' already feeling a bit down because of my back issues (more about that on Monday's recap), so I might move on to something more appropriate for the place I'm at right now. :)


What about you? Read anything good lately?




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Weekly recap: 7/30/2018

It's the start of another beautiful summer week here at my happy little suburban homestead. We're expecting some rain later on today, which is excellent for the garden, but for now, it's sunny and gorgeous out. Let's get started on the Weekly Recap!


MONDAY

Errands! This was one of those catch-up days where we had to run all over town. Walmart for cat supplies, Walgreens for a prescription, the bank, and then Costco for peanut butter (and hummus, because COSTCO HUMMUS!!!). By the time we were done, it was lunch time and then nap time for my daughter. During her nap, I prepped for dinner- Cauliflower Potato soup and cut-up cantaloupe. After dinner, I took my son for a haircut (there are so many people who do great haircuts at home on their family members, but I'm not at all confident in my ability to do that without making my husband and son look like improperly shorn sheep). I helped my son with his summer French homework, and then watched some television with my husband.


TUESDAY

My son wanted to take his girlfriend on a picnic, so I volunteered to do some baking for him. As soon as I got up, I got the bread started, then I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned! When the kitchen sparkled, my daughter and I threw together some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bars. She loves helping me in the kitchen, and I love spending that time with her.

Done! Two loaves of bread, one dish of bar cookies. NOM.

After we finished with our baking, my daughter and I did our Reading and Geography lessons (Bosnia and Herzegovina). I then rearranged my pantry, which ended up not needing too much rearranging, so I cleaned out the dish cabinet, weeding out some old sippy cups and plastic cups we didn't need. Totally streamlined the entire cabinet, so that made me happy. I organized the little storage area next to the fridge as well, then straightened my daughter's room (TOYS. SO MANY TOYS *sob*). We made a trip to the library, where my daughter played and I read a not-on-my-list book. In the evening, I helped my son with his French homework.

WEDNESDAY

This was the day I tackled a much-needed project: I cleaned out my kitchen island. Holy cow, that thing was in desperate shape. Freezer bags all over, plastic storage containers and a collection of lids scattered everywhere, it was dreadful. I took everything out, tossed two disgusting frying pans that no one should have been cooking on, collected all the freezer bags in one giant bag, stacked the plastic containers in a way that I could easily access what I needed, along with the corresponding lid. The whole thing looks SO much better, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief once that was done. I had thrown the laundry in beforehand, and I hung it out to dry afterwards. I took the kids out to lunch at a local burrito joint, and during my daughter's nap, I helped an online friend with some vegetarian recipes and organized my over-the-stove cabinet.

Fancy? No. Organized? YES.

When my daughter woke up, I read to her for a bit from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility while she played, and then I practiced the piano. I've got three pages of my current piece (still Angel Eyes by Jim Brickman; I haven't had much of a chance to practice lately) down pretty well, so I'm focusing on working on the final two. After dinner, I mowed half the lawn and read my library book.

THURSDAY

One of those days where nothing much gets done. I spent the entire morning giving my son and his friends a ride to a not-so-local amusement park, then finished my library book during my daughter's nap time. And then...

New pet!

Just kidding. We went to the county fair with my sister-in-law and her son. My daughter looks forward to this event all year long, chattering about riding the carnival rides and asking when we're going again when it's 20 degrees and snowing, so this was huge for her. We got to check out the farm animals, my daughter and her cousin rode those super-scary, I'm-always-worried-they're-going-to-collapse carnival rides, and some of us ate disgusting fair food. It's not a cheap night, so I'm glad it's only once a year!

FRIDAY

Yard sales were a bust again. I don't necessarily think it's because the quality of sales are going down, just that my needs have changed. A local church has an enormous sale twice a year, and that's where I get most of my daughter's clothing. I'm good in regards to clothes, as are my husband and son; I don't buy knickknacks for the house; we don't need furniture; my daughter is full up on toys... There are a few things I have on my list that I'm still looking for (a digital kitchen scale, a pasta maker, canning jars), but really, I don't need much, and honestly, I'm kind of enjoying that.

Post-fruitless yard sales, my daughter and I did Reading and Geography lessons (Brazil; she was fascinated by the Carnival costumes). During naptime, I did dinner prep, making a tofu and veggie curry with a curry sauce from Aldi; this is a great meal to make when you have a lot of produce you need to use up! After that, I watched a TV show for free online, and when my daughter woke, we went to the library, where we picked out new books and my daughter practiced her reading. We came home and ate dinner quickly, then returned to the library, where we enjoyed a children's show where the performer juggled and spun plates (which kind of felt like a metaphor for my life some days!). I finished a book from my Goodreads To Read list that night.

SATURDAY

After kid gymnastics, we hung out in the backyard for a bit, dealing with the garden.

Soon, my pretties. Soon...

We were able to get our first harvest of any size...

Green onions, basil, and cherry tomatoes. YUM!

We have so many tomatoes out there, it's not even funny. I'm going to be drowning in tomatoes in a few weeks!

During naptime, I finished a book from my Goodreads To Read list, then finished weaving in the ends of my dishcloths.

FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!

Friends of ours had generously invited us to a barbecue at their house, so we went there for dinner and enjoyed a lovely evening with friends. At home, I helped my son with his French homework, then began watching the new season of Orange is the New Black with my husband on Netflix (NO SPOILERS!!!!).

SUNDAY

I cleaned the kitchen in the morning (how does the kitchen get so disgusting on weekends?), then started knitting a Christmas gift mitten, which I worked on throughout the day.

Just needs to be sewn up!

The yarn I'm using is Malabrigo, and I'm not impressed. Several times, the yarn was frayed and/or broken entirely. I don't know that I'll purchase this kind again. I'm hoping to sew this up sometime today and then get a start on its buddy.

We had lunch with family (I brought my knitting), and at home, I helped my son with his French homework, then read a book from my Goodreads To Read list during naptime. Post-nap, my sister-in-law and her son came over, so we enjoyed a visit with them (I knitted while we chatted), and then had dinner together at a local Chinese restaurant. I read a little in the evening, and my husband and I watched another episode of Orange is the New Black on Netflix.

One other small update:

So, while I was in Door County, my husband cut down our apple tree. This was planned. When we moved in here, I was SO excited to have an apple tree; I've always wanted to live on a property with fruit trees. Unfortunately, this tree was absolutely not healthy. The first year, we got a few apples, but after that, they were all mostly rotten, the leaves were spotted, and the trunk was half-hollowed out (that first year, a rotten branch did a slow crash onto one of our cars! No damage, but that was when we realized how unhealthy that poor tree was). Ants had taken over part of the trunk and really did some damage, as you can see in this pic:

Isn't that terrible? Poor tree. :(

Just awful. I was really sad about having to cut it down, but it had to happen. Last year, I read Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, which utterly convinced me of the importance of trees, of taking care of them and planting them, and so I insisted that we needed to replant. My husband listened, and so I'd like to introduce you to our new baby:

Isn't it sweet????

It's a hybrid plum tree, one that grows well in our climate. I'm so happy! Fingers crossed that it thrives and provides us with years of fruit, shade, and happiness. Soon, it'll be joined by a new buddy, but I'll save that for another post. :)

It was a pleasant week here. Looking at these pictures and re-reading what I've accomplished and the things I've done throughout the week really makes me appreciate my life. I've got a wonderful husband, great kids, a house that keeps me warm and dry (it needs updates and some work, but it's HOME, you know? Even with all its warts, it's the place I cook nourishing meals for my family, the place where I'm teaching my daughter to read, the place where my son comes down the stairs in his fancy choir clothes and looks so handsome and grown up, I can't believe 16 years have already flown by. This is home). I'm grateful for every part of this life. :)

How was your week?

Goodreads To Read list: 161 books
Dishcloths: 18

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Book review: A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen

"Have you read A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen?" a friend said recently in an online book discussion group. "It's this really great middle grade novel about life behind the Berlin Wall." Well. That's something I didn't know much about, and so onto my Goodreads list it went. Turns out my local library had it, and thus I grabbed it to read while I wait for my interlibrary loans to come in.

Gerta is a young German girl whose family is becoming more and more wary of the tense political atmosphere around them. After much discussion, her mother finally agrees with her politically active father that it's time to move, and he and Gerta's brother Dominic head out on a two day trip into Western Germany to secure an apartment and a job. In an amazing stroke of bad luck, the border is closed overnight, leaving Papa and Dominic trapped in the West, and Gerta, her brother Fritz, and Mama trapped in the East, the side controlled by the Soviets.

As Gerta grows, life becomes as gray as the wall. Food shortages are common, books are censored or banned, music from the West (like the Beatles) is forbidden. The Stasi (the brutal East German police force; for more info, check out Wikipedia's article) keep their guns trained on the citizens, and neighbors and friends are quick to inform on each other in order to keep the heat off their own backs. Teachers instruct students on how lucky they are to live in such a wonderful Communist country and how dastardly the West is, how immoral and full of misery. But if East Germany is so wonderful, Gerta ponders, why must they force their citizens to stay there upon pain of death?

Having spotted her father and brother at an observation point on the Western side of the wall, Gerta interprets his dance movements, which used to accompany a song about farming that he sang to her as a child, as him asking her to dig. But where? It takes a secret note passed on by a friend she's no longer sure she can trust to help her locate the site, and with a borrowed shovel, Gerta begins digging her way to freedom.

The best kind of books leave you unaware of the physical act of reading, and Nielsen's novel is one of those, easily forming pictures of gray skies, state-sponsored fear, and the dirt-streaked yet hopeful face of a young girl in the reader's mind. Gerta is a wonderfully strong character, never losing her drive or resolve despite her country's determination to quash all indications of individuality. Her fear of losing her brother to the Stasi, her sadness over the end of a lifelong friendship with Anna, her longing to be reunited with her father and brother, every emotion leaps off the page and turns Gerta's plight into one that could easily be our own today, if we're not more careful.

This is a superb book, one I hope will be on the reading lists of middle schools and junior highs around the country. I knew very, very little about the divide between Western and Eastern Germany before this; I learned a little in grade school, and I vaguely (very vaguely) remember the Berlin Wall coming down, but past that, my history education pretty much stopped once World War II ended. Modern history is definitely something I need to focus on more, and this was a fantastic introduction, both in that it was a fabulously well-written story, and that it drove me to want to learn more.

Are there historical time periods you've realized you don't know much about?

Book review: A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

Imagine a walk on the beach. The sand under your feet, the sun shining ahead, the call of birds in the distance, a power plant to your right, the strong smell of...is that some sort of solvent? And is that a half-stripped deer carcass over there? And what's all this trash doing here???

Equipped with a deep love of Lake Michigan (pictured above), author Loreen Niewenhuis decided to undertake a walk on its beaches- a long walk, all the way around. Clocking 1,019 miles at journey's end, Niewenhuis began at Chicago's Navy Pier, touring the lake counterclockwise, through towns, industrial areas, tourist havens, and deep forests with no signs of human life. She walked through various types of weather; occasionally she walked with friends and family, but mostly, she walked alone, allowing for deep contemplation of the lake, humanity and its relationship to nature, and herself.

This story is beautifully written, one of goal setting and determination, a love letter to the lake and a plea to the people who live on it and make the laws controlling it. Niewenhuis wonders over the natural beauty of the lake and the diversity of the wildlife that flock to it, but laments the way it's been not just changed, but devastated over the years. Industry has polluted Lake Michigan in shocking, terrifying ways, and invasive species such as zebra mussels and round goby have severely damaged the biodiversity of the fish population (and many of the remaining fish found in the lake are unsafe to eat). Time and again, she mourns what the lake could be, should be, if only humans would learn to live with it, instead of demanding that the lake serve us.

I'd been aware of some of the problems of the lake, but not to this extent. I live close enough to Lake Michigan that my drinking water comes from there (the water in the middle of the Lake is known to be potable; Niewenhuis drank filtered lake water on her journey, which, after reading her tales of all the chemical spills, and chemical and waste dumping that has taken place in the lake, I consider that pretty brave!), and I was extremely dismayed to read about how carelessly the lake has been treated practically since the beginning of white settlement (the native population lived more in harmony with the world around them). "I began to formulate the idea that the most invasive species of all is probably man," Niewenhuis says, and she's not wrong.

There's a lot to admire about Niewenhuis's journey, her love of the lake, and her persistence (she was back out there just days after being hospitalized for gallbladder issues so severe, her pancreas was affected). Loreen Niewenhuis is an amazing example of not only finishing what one starts, but also delving deeply into a personal passion. She's continued her walks, strolling the shores of all five Great Lakes and exploring the Great Lakes islands. I'm inspired by her drive, her follow-through, and her passion for the natural world, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more about her 1,000 mile walks.

And I'll be keeping a closer eye on the news regarding the health of Lake Michigan, and demanding that my representatives act as better stewards of this amazing resource. You should too.

Because this little girl, and all the other girls and boys out there deserve a clean, healthy lake.


(All photos come from our trip last summer to Traverse City and the surrounding areas.) 

Ooh, I want to read that!: or, reading down your to-read list.

Across from where I blog sits this lovely bookshelf, stacked with books I'm going to get to!

Do you Goodreads? You should. If you're any kind of a reader, it's a fantastic way to keep track of the books you've read and the books you want to read. I've been a faithful user for years now.

In many ways, the genesis of this blog began in December of 2016. I was sitting on the couch one day, sorting through all the books I'd added to my To Read list on Goodreads. (If you're not familiar, you can mark a book as 'Want to Read' on Goodreads, and those will go on a particular list called 'To Read'. After you read and review the book, you can switch it from Want to Read, to Read, and it will no longer be on that To Read list.) And in scrolling through the pages of books I'd decided looked interesting enough to spend my time reading (one day), I started feeling something I don't often feel when I'm checking out books...dismay. Frustration. Displeasure.

Why? Because the number of books on my To Read list had crept up to 332 books.

That's a LOT. And I say that as someone who regularly reads over one hundred books per year.

How did I get to this place? How had I decided that 332 books looked fascinating enough to read and yet done nothing about them other than let them sit around in a computer database? Why hadn't I put some of those books in my head? The worst part of this was that I knew that some of those books had been on some form of my want-to-read list since...gulp...the early 2000's.

Egads. I'll take my literary spanking for that.

And that was that. I sat there on my couch and went, "Okay, this is ridiculous. This has got to stop." I pulled out some paper and began making a list of all the books from my list that could be found at my local library, along with the Dewey decimal numbers. (I adore my library and their collection, as you'll see, is fantastic.) With my small handwriting, the list stretched over four pages and contained over a hundred books! I clipped it together, and on my next library trip, I took it with to start reading down the list.

And I did! It took quite some time, and I took pauses to read from my kindle, but I eventually read every single book my library had from my To Read list, and then I moved on to the libraries with which my library had reciprocal borrowing privileges. I got *most* of those done (some of the books were either no longer part of those libraries' collections, or were checked out or lost, dangit), and at that point, I moved on to books available via interlibrary loan.

As my library has a policy of only allowing four interlibrary loan requests per week, sometimes there's a bit of lag between when I finish one book and when my next book arrives, so that's where that lovely little shelf above comes in. That's not my only bookshelf, oh no. That's just my upstairs bookshelf, and the contents will change (and have already) as I read through the books I own. Most of the top shelf, I'll read and pass on (we have several Little Free Libraries within walking distance of my house, and I've already read and donated three books this spring!).

What I'm currently reading. Choosing Simplicity is a library book; the others are mine.

(And yes, that's the French version of Harry Potter! More on that in another post.)

As of today, my Goodreads To Read list is down to 177 books, which means that in a year and a half, I've read 155 books from that list! Not too shabby, and I think that definitely counts as getting it done (or at least, lodging myself firmly on the path to completing the task!).

It's interesting- before starting to read down my list, I never realized how much I enjoy reading about food. As I mentioned before, food waste is a huge issue for me, and I tackled several books about that, but food politics, history, what constitutes healthy food, and the processes of learning to cook all appeared multiple times on my list. I wouldn't have necessarily named most of those as subjects of interest, but they've been firmly cemented there now. Another fringe benefit of tackling a major project and sticking with it!

Do you have a To Read list? How many books are on it? What's stopping you from getting that number down? I'm much more selective these days about adding new books to that list; I really want to get that number close to zero before I start filling it back up again (and I'll never let it get so out of control again! 332? What was I thinking???). I'd love to hear your experiences with managing your To Read list.