Sunday Coffee – Thanksgiving

Posted on November 26, 2017 by Thistle

I’m back! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday week. My break was both busy and relaxing, consisting of:

– Oathbringer! The release of Oathbringer is of course why I decided to take a mini-blog break in the first place, combined with it being an upcoming holiday week. I told my family I was taking vacation, and then spent three days binge-reading the 1235-page tome. My emotions were all over the place as I read and I had major mood swings because of everything I felt from those pages. My poor family, haha.

– I finally saw a new therapist here, but one visit was enough to know it wouldn’t be a good fit. Back to the drawing board.

– I made a new header for the blog! Finally! I’ve been meaning to do this since 2014, and here it is, three years later…

– Last weekend, the boys stayed with my mom, so Jason and I got our first night off/out in about eight months. While we didn’t do anything spectacular – we just went to Half Price Books for some Christmas shopping then to the grocery store – it was lovely just to hang out and chat and not have to parent for a bit. I went to bed super early that night (8pm!) and had a lovely long night of sleep before the boys returned to us the next morning.

– A cold front finally came through that same weekend. Halloween was a nasty, fitful-rain night that brought in a muggy heat wave. The first few weeks of November were in the mid-to-high 80s with high humidity and general blah-ness. That was really affecting my mood and my desire to go exercise. This cold front (and dry front!) was definitely needed.

– There was, of course, Thanksgiving. I spent this with my dad’s side of the family, some extended family I hadn’t seen in over a year. My sister and brother-in-law came in from out of town and I got to hang out with them (and my brother) both at the Thanksgiving dinner and afterwards at our house. My family made cranberry orange muffins for the party and they were sooooo good!

– The day after Thanksgiving was packed! I had lunch out with extended family at my favorite restaurant (India Oven). There was some Black Friday shopping (well after the crowds were gone!) and then we began decorating our house for Christmas. It’s tradition for us to start playing Christmas songs and putting up decorations on the day after Thanksgiving. We didn’t get everything done, but our house is starting to feel like the holidays! Plus I discovered that we have one outlet that is controlled by a light switch. It’s right by where we decided to put the Christmas tree, so that’s perfect! We used to have one of those before we moved to Boston, and haven’t had one since then, so this was a neat little fun thing about our house to discover. I love being able to turn the Christmas lights on and off at the switch. Yes, I’m a dork.

So it was a good holiday, fun and full. Jason and the boys go back to work/school tomorrow and life (and blog) shall resume as normal. 🙂

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OATHBRINGER!!!!!!!

Posted on November 14, 2017 by Thistle

Stand by. Binge reading in progress.

Blog-posting to resume after Thanksgiving. Have fun and be safe over the holidays, peeps!

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Sunday Coffee – Book Hangovers

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Thistle

I know of two kinds of book hangovers. One of them – when you finish a book but your mind stays trapped in that world and you’re not quite ready to let it go – is one I actually enjoy. This is when I get to multi-read. I love when books affect me so much that I begin to read them several times in a row. I’m highly anticipating this happening this coming Tuesday when Oathbringer finally makes its appearance on store shelves and in Audible queues!

The other kind of book hangover is not so pleasant, for me at least. It happened to me earlier this week, when I read Truly Madly Guilty. I got sucked into the book and essentially didn’t move all day long. I read and read and read, long past when my body and eyes were comfortable, long past when I normally go to bed. While it wasn’t 24 hours, this was essentially Readathon-style reading, except that during Readathon, I make preparations to prevent book hangovers. I take planned breaks. I get up and walk for 10-15 min chunks every hour. I space out my reading with blog updates and such. There was none of that when I read the other day. No breaks, no intermissions, no movement. And the next day, I felt like hell.

I’ve never had an actual hangover. I’ve been drunk, drunk enough to get a hangover, but I’ve never had one. My only guess is that my tendency to over-hydrate on a daily basis helps me to not get too dehydrated when I drink. (I’m the sort of person who regularly drinks 15-20 cups of water a day.) But I definitely get book hangovers when I get sucked into a book and don’t adequately prepare for it. And it’s no fun the day after that kind of reading!

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Truly Madly Guilty, by Liane Moriarty

Posted on November 10, 2017 by Thistle

Three couples are gathered for a barbecue when a tragedy happens in a second. Everyone is left spiraling outwards, marriages in turmoil, mental health ragged, family relationships impaired. A single moment is all that’s needed to change lives.

I was wary going into this book. While I loved Big Little Lies, I really disliked The Husband’s Secret and I didn’t know which of the two categories this one would fall into. Turns out, it’s the former (thankfully). I sped through this book and…well, I can’t say enjoy is the right word. This book is depressing in many ways. But I was engaged, at least, and I connected with the characters, and I loved the way the book wound everything together. I appreciated this book.

Moriarty’s books discuss a lot in terms of suburban, privileged lives. In this one, we’re exposed to the psychology of a person who grew up with a hoarder parent, the complicated friendship that grows between two people forced to be friends by a parent, the various ways marriages are tested by tragedy, impostor syndrome in many forms, and the subtle changes in children’s behavior that may or may not indicate a deeper problem. There’s a heaviness to all this burden, but also hope, and I like the balance that Moriarty achieves.

Posted in 2017, Adult, Prose | Tagged | 5 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Financial Stress

Posted on November 8, 2017 by Thistle

The biggest source of stress in my world right now is money. The whole situation is stupid and ironic, and all down to a bad decision we made in 2014 that at the time we thought was a good decision.

2014: Jason had a good salary. Not huge, but large enough that our family of five was doing well. We were frugal, so we didn’t spend huge amounts. Every month, we put money into savings and paid extra on our mortgage. We’d owned our house for over eight years, and we’d bought it at a pretty decent price when the market was super low. Our only credit card was used strategically – we put all our expenses on it every month (to earn points) and paid it off in full when the bill came, so that we never had any interest. This way we earned free flights and hotels, and avoided debit fees at our bank (which was still stupidly charging per use). We had enough for vacations or emergencies, and we didn’t have to worry about paying the bills every month.

Continue reading →

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City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett (audio)

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Thistle

City of Blades takes place five years after the end of the first book in this series, City of Stairs. General Mulaghesh – a side character from the first book – is called out of retirement to do some reconnaissance work in a city that used to be a stronghold of divine war and death. The city’s goddess is most certainly dead, but something is bringing back the nightmare warriors of the past, and it’s up to Mulaghesh to wade through foes both living and dead, human and divine, to stop the mythic end of the world.

While City of Blades is set in the same world as City of Stairs, it isn’t a continuation of a storyline. It helps to have read the first book for world-building purposes, but this is its own standalone plot. It’s quite different in many ways from the first book. The narration, for example, belongs primarily to one character rather than having a giant chunk dedicated to other characters and storylines. There’s also less mystery and more thriller aspects. The pacing is more straightforward, with fewer twists. I would say both books were equally good, just different. I look forward to seeing what the third installment will bring, as I know it’s also after a big chunk of time and its own standalone story.

Performance: I enjoyed this performance. Alma Cuervo does a fantastic job with all these characters, and this audiobook (unlike the first book) is cleaned up so that you don’t hear any of the mouth and throat noises.

Posted in 2017, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Looking Ahead to 2018

Posted on November 5, 2017 by Thistle

I know, it’s a bit early to start looking ahead to the next year. I guess there’s some part of me that has already left 2017 behind. I’ve started writing my dates with /18 at the end already. It’s not that 2017 was a particularly bad year. Lots of frustrating and negative things happened, but the eventual changes were good ones. I think it’s those changes that make me anxious to leave the old behind and start anew. The beginning of the year always feels like a new beginning, so it’ll be nice to have the new year to compliment the new house, new job, new routine, etc.

Anyway. For whatever reason, I’m starting to look forward. Making plans and goals. And more to the point here, making reading lists.

Every year, I make a list of the books I want to get to that year. I don’t actually have to read every once of these books – plenty get tried and culled along the way – but it helps me to organize my reading year. It’s the best way for me to keep track of the books that are coming out, and to keep my audio queue and to-investigate lists pared down to minimums. In beginning 2018’s list, I’ve realized that this is going to be a lull year. As of this writing, there are only a half-dozen books being released (that I know about) by authors I love, and of them, only two are ones I know I won’t cull. I’m currently in the process of thinning out my to-investigate list and audio queues, and depending on how far I get in that process this year, I might have less than a dozen titles on my priorities list next year!

Who knows? Maybe that’ll lead to the discovery of lots of fun new stuff. Maybe it’ll be like other lull years and I’ll have a lackluster reading list. Maybe some of you lovely bloggers will clue me in to other books I should be looking at in 2018. Maybe some of the books I’ve been looking forward to but which currently don’t have release dates will release (Lethal White, The Muse of Nightmares, The Lost Metal, the next Shades of London or Dublin Murder Squad books…). Pretty please?

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 6 Comments

Book Disappointment

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Thistle

Earlier this week I started a new book. It was a random Audible find that seemed promising. Supernatural thriller, narrator in love with a coworker for the last few years, also taking care of a younger sister confined to a wheelchair. It was an interesting setup with lots of tension – except a few chapters in, the coworker and sister both die. The narrator is left with no one but an otherworldly handsome supernatural creature that she hates but who will obviously eventually be the love interest. No.

I really liked this book in the beginning. The writing was fantastic. The pacing was great. The setup was interesting. The world-building was unfolding nicely. And then everything I liked about the book disappeared, and I was left with a typical YA paranormal romance plot that I’ve seen too many times now. It was like the author started writing one book, changed their mind for some reason, and then wrote an entirely new one. Honestly, I don’t even see how any of the setup was relevant. Why bother, if you’re just going to kill everyone off before the story actually gets started? And why would you make the focus of the plot synopsis all about characters who won’t actually be there for most of the book?

What a disappointment. I quit listening and returned the book to Audible. Thank goodness for their lovely return policy.

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Wellness Wednesday – October

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Thistle

October is one of those very contradictory months for me. With it comes great energy and a feeling of being hyper-alive. In feeling that way, I make a lot of plans, and then end up canceling half the plans because I’ve overloaded myself and feel terribly overwhelmed. This year was no exception. Things I signed up for and/or planned but skipped altogether:

  • the Animal Defense League 5K
  • Siclovia (a street festival here that I adore)
  • an autumn party that my cousin and I were going to host
  • Readathon
  • NaNoWriMo prep (since I’ve decided not to participate this year after all)

On the other hand, I still managed to have friends over a few times this month, throw a birthday party, visit with family I haven’t seen in quite some time, host a dinner party, crochet most of a bedspread, and head to a nearby corn maze with my brother and my good friend Stephanie.

<– There’s Jason and me in the corn. More maze pics at Instagram, if you want.

For the more introverted of my friends, you’re probably thinking…um, just the things you did is enough to cram into one month without the other half you planned…and you’d be right. It’s always this way for me. I just want to do All The Things in October, when the temps just barely start to change here and it finally starts to feel like fall. Might as well take advantage of the energy to do everything I can while I feel like it, right? Even if it means canceling a few things for my mental health along the way.

In anticipating November, I’m likely to take things a bit easier. As stated above, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, so that won’t be the manic focus of my month. Instead I’m going to focus on my health goals, on finishing a couple in-progress crochet projects, on getting all the Christmas shopping done, on taking the family for a group hike, and on my most-anticipated book of 2017 (Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, which releases on Nov 14th).

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Sunday Coffee – RIP XII Wrap-up

Posted on October 29, 2017 by Thistle

The time comes for another end to RIP. For this RIP XII season, I wasn’t sure what I was going to read. Something about this autumn – I just wasn’t feeling terribly inspired. I’m sure that has a lot to do with my brain fog. However, despite not feeling inspired, I did get a number of books read, and quite enjoyed almost all of them. In the order I read them:

1. My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix: a horror love-letter to the 80s that wasn’t really my cup of coffee

2. The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud (audio): the amazing end to a series I’ve loved for years

3. The Call by Peadar O’Guilin (audio): a surprisingly chilling book of monsters made even better by the audio performance

4. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett (audio): a delightful find of dark fantasy thriller to start a new series

5. All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater (audio): dark historical fiction meets magical realism, religion, and folklore

Four out of five were excellent RIP books for me this year, so I’m calling that a win! No rereads this year, despite the fact that I keep swearing I’ll read the unabridged version of Phantom of the Opera one of these days. If I had to pick a best book of the bunch, it would be difficult – probably The Empty Grave simply because I’ve loved the series for so long, though All the Crooked Saints is a tough contender.

There are technically a couple days left of the challenge, but I have no more RIP books on my radar. (Except one that comes out on the 31st, and I doubt that I’ll finish that one in time.) As I’m unlikely to finish any books at all before the end of October, I’m wrapping this all up. Thanks again to our hosts, Andi and Heather, for keeping the challenge alive and kicking!

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