Sunday Coffee – A Nod to Nonfiction November

Posted on November 24, 2019 by Thistle

I don’t read enough nonfiction each year to participate in Nonfiction November, but I always think of November as nonfiction month* in my head, probably because I’ve spent so many years watching other bloggers participate. Most years, I try to read something nonfiction during the month. This year, I’m going to do something a little different. Beyond reading something nonfiction in November, I’m going to answer the weekly prompts – all in one post, and a little late for some, early for others.

Week 1: Your Year in Nonfiction
Since I began blogging in 2008, nonfiction has consistently** sat around 10% of my reading each year. This year has been no different, with six of my 54 books being nonfiction. Sadly, of those six books, I only enjoyed three, and one that I didn’t enjoy actually made me furious enough to rant publicly. Of the three I enjoyed, Kid Gloves was the best. Lucy Knisley is just an amazing writer. Note: These numbers and thoughts reflect nonfiction reads only up to the end of October, when Nonfiction November began.

Week 2: Book Pairing
I’ll admit that I’m really not good at pairing books. Also, I tend to pair nonfiction with more nonfiction, heh. But I thought perhaps that my favorite nonfiction pre-November, Kid Gloves, might pair nicely with my favorite fiction of the year so far, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. Kid Gloves deals with pregnancy, infertility, and miscarriage. What Alice Forgot has a secondary storyline that is nearly as important as the first, also dealing with pregnancy, infertility, and miscarriage. Both give a lot of good information and explore an emotional minefield that many people tend to ignore or hush up.

Week 3: Be the Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert
I would never consider myself an expert on a particular topic, but there’s one nonfiction area that I know better than other areas. Back in 2011, I began reading tons about nutrition and health (with a dash of fitness on the side). I’ve read roughly three dozen books since then ranging from food history to weight loss memoirs, from running manuals to treatises on eating disorders. Three dozen may not sound like much, but considering that I read 5-10 nonfiction books per year, that’s quite a bit over eight years. A few favorites have included The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson, Wine Isn’t Rocket Science by Ophelie Neiman, Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, and Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley. I would love to hear what other folks recommend in this category!

Week 4: Nonfiction Favorites
Generally, unless nonfiction is done in graphic novel format (like with Lucy Knisley), I tend to approach it via audio. I don’t find nonfiction to be as engaging as fiction, and in print form, I tend to abandon books more frequently. However, this means that nonfiction has to jump two hurdles to make it onto my radar. Not only does it have to be written in a way that I like, but the audio narrator has to be bearable. As for the writing, I tend to be turned off by far-distance perspectives (like history books that describe big-picture movements rather than what a situation was like from the view of the people living through it), gimmicky or commercial-sounding prose, biased viewpoints, or straight-out recitation of facts. I read on a broad variety of topics, and can be hooked by nearly any subject as long as it’s written in a way that engages me (and read aloud in a way that doesn’t turn me off!).

Week 5: New to my TBR
Um…none. To be fair, I’m pretty picky about nonfiction and tend to read it in bursts, when I’m interested in specific subjects. So, can you help me add to my nonfiction TBR? Because I’ve been craving running-related nonfiction lately. Not how-to books or personal memoirs, or books about running insane ultramarathon distances. That seems to be all I can find, though, because I just don’t know enough about how to look properly. Thoughts or suggestions?

Well, that’s it for me. I only read one book for Nonfiction November, and I plan to finish another book I’ve been reading slowly throughout the whole year. And hey, that’ll be over my normal 10% thus far!

Since this upcoming week is Thanksgiving, I’m going to take the week to be with family. I’ll see y’all next Sunday, and hope you have a lovely week!

*****
*Well, I think of November as nonfiction month AND as NaNoWriMo month, but as I haven’t participated in NaNo since 2015, that has fallen a little bit aside in my head.

**Except for 2015, which bizarrely shot up to 27% nonfiction.

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Burnout, by Emily and Amelia Nagoski (audio)

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Thistle

Subtitled: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Self-help is definitely out of my comfort zone, but I really loved Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are (one of my favorites of 2015), so I decided to give this one a chance as well. It’s supposed to be a guide for women to deal with the physiological reactions to stress that add up over time. I have mixed feelings about the book.

On the negative side: There is more bias in this book than I prefer in nonfiction. It is very definitely slanted toward a heavily liberal viewpoint. It doesn’t matter that I agree with the viewpoint – I just prefer my nonfiction to be a bit less biased. It’s also written a bit more layperson and simplistic than Come As You Are. I would have preferred to delve deeper into the science and to have less cutesy names for situations and feelings. Also, I didn’t particularly like the audio reading, which was read by both authors. It was overly familiar and, like the book, a bit too cutesy and slanted for me.

On the positive side: The science sources were legit. I loved that Robert Saposki – one of my favorite modern scientists and a leading researcher into biological stress science – was referenced right from the beginning. There was a lot of good information in the book and a lot of good steps to take to move your body through the stress cycle. Lots of stuff any person could put into practice. There’s also a lot of great history on gender bias, cultural norms, and discrimination of many kinds. Burnout discusses everything from body image to group connectivity (finding happiness through others is not a negative thing!!). And best of all, there’s no simple solutions or steps to just “make everything better forever!” like you find in too many self-help books.

My end-takeaway: I think I would have liked the book more had I been reading a print version, because the audio reading put me off quite a bit. I plan to acquire a copy at some point, because there’s a lot of good information in here and I think there was too much for me to absorb with just one reading. Plus, there are worksheets and steps to take over time and so many other things for which I’d like to have a physical copy to reference.

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White Sand Volume 3, by Brandon Sanderson and Rik Hoskin

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Thistle

My thoughts on this third volume of White Sand remain very similar to previous volumes:

1 – I’m not a fan of the artwork in these graphic novels. This illustrator was different in this volume, but kept with the same style. I find it hard to connect with and it’s a bit confusing to follow.

2 – It took me some time to remember what had happened in previous volumes. The story itself doesn’t have the depth and breadth of a traditional Sanderson novel, entirely due to the format it’s told in. Consequently, it took some time for me to get into the story. I did enjoy it by the end, however.

3 – At one point, Sanderson offered a rough draft version of the novel original for this series, and I requested it. It’s still waiting for me to read, and I’ll do so at some point. I’m just not a huge fan of reading books on an e-reader so I’ve put that off. Rough draft or not, I’m sure I’ll love the novel version better than the GN adaptation. However, I’ll keep reading the adaptation, because I pretty much read anything Cosmere-related.

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Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, by Kate Racculia

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Thistle

Tuesday Mooney is comfortable with her life. She has a job she excels at, her own apartment, a couple close friends, and lots of introvert time. Part of her knows that she’s just a teensy bit bored with the routine, probably why she jumps at the chance of a treasure hunt when an eccentric old man dies and leaves a trail of clues that should lead to his fortune…

I’ll admit that I was wary going into this book. Racculia’s previous book, Bellweather Rhapsody, was a favorite of mine several years ago, and I wasn’t sure how well Tuesday would live up to it. The title didn’t particularly appeal to me. Nor the cover, nor the setting (Boston, ugh), nor the plot synopsis. But I had to give it a shot, right? I loved Bellweather Rhapsody, after all.

Opening chapter/prologue: quite intriguing, and with a bit of a spooky paranormal vibe. Totally my thing. After that first chapter, the book started a bit slow. The crux of the book, the whole treasure hunt bit, doesn’t start until roughly 50 pages in. Before that, you have characters. But here’s the thing, y’all: Racculia does characters right. There were so many reasons I was willing to try out this book and put it aside before I began, and then Racculia just came in there and began writing the realest of real characters with fascinating prose, just like she got to me the last time. The woman can write. I didn’t even like some of the characters, but I loved them at the same time.

Tuesday Mooney. She was an awesome narrator. Even though I’m nothing like the woman, I can relate to her in so many little ways. Tiny things. Very specific things, like how The Cask of Amontillado was the one Poe story I found extremely disturbing, too. Because Tuesday isn’t simply a broad character with relatable emotions; she’s a real person, with specific likes and fears and memories and history. All the characters were like that, grounding the story with solidity and realism, which was particularly important on a backdrop of mild absurdity (the whimsical and sometimes dangerous treasure hunt) and supernatural elements (are there really ghosts? or are they just tricks of the mind?).

I loved this book so much. It was the first book in AGES that I’ve taken with me everywhere, to pull out in every little downtime moment I had to read. I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump for the last month, and Tuesday made me excited about books again. PLUS, I discovered a hidden code in one of the messages that was never addressed in the story. It makes me wonder what other little Easter eggs I missed in the reading. My code-breaking mind says that I’ll probably need a reread or two to go find some. And perhaps a great discussion with some fellow likeminded folks who enjoyed the book as much as I did.

PS – I gotta say it: Thank you so much Kristen for alerting me to the publication of this book, and for introducing me to Kate Racculia’s work in the first place.

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Sunday Coffee – Almost Home

Posted on November 17, 2019 by Thistle

Last weekend, we got an unexpected phone call from Morrigan. Normally he can only call on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He was feeling depressed because he’d been told that, since it was so close to the holidays, it was possible – even probable – his paperwork wouldn’t get processed until January and he wouldn’t be home until then. He’d really been hoping to make it home by Thanksgiving, so this was tough for him. We talked him through it and eventually got off the phone. I wrote to friends and family about the update and asked them to send him lots more letters.

Tuesday Morrigan and I had our normal twice-weekly conversation. Then on Wednesday morning, Morrigan called while I was driving home from dropping off the boys at school. He’d gotten his departure date. He’d be coming home the following Monday. As in, tomorrow.

This weekend has been about prep. His old room had been converted into Jason’s bedroom and office, and half the house has been packed away into the garage in anticipation of the upcoming move. Some of those packed away items include the clothing Morrigan boxed away to receive after boot camp. Whoops! So there was a lot of shuffling and digging around and adjusting. But since we’re all supposed to be moving in just a few weeks, and things will be better sorted after that.

Next steps are in progress. Morrigan has decided that since the military didn’t work out for him, he’s going back to his original plan, to go to college in Kansas. It’ll mean a lot of loans and student debt. He could go to a public school here in Texas for a lot less of all that, but he’s decided that his dream school is worth it. We’ve already talked to the school and are prepping to get him enrolled and housed for the spring semester, starting mid-January. And so we start again, back to plan, just a semester’s worth of a blip in the meantime. Morrigan will be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, he can help us move next month, and he has a tiny bit of money saved up for the future. We wish him all the best in that, and really just look forward to seeing him safely home tomorrow!!

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Not a Review: Call Down the Hawk

Posted on November 15, 2019 by Thistle

For about a year in 2014/2015, I was under continual emotional distress mixed with depression, severe anxiety, panic disorder, and worsening insomnia. The cause was outside my control, and I just kept spiraling further into a mental health crisis despite weekly sessions with a wonderful therapist and a team of doctors trying to get my medications right. When you have complex PTSD and are living with continual triggers, there is no coping. No healing. No escaping. At some point, you break.

Continue reading →

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Sunday Coffee – A Fitful, Sluggish Week

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Thistle

I didn’t mean to disappear this week, but it was one of those weeks:

Time change – I detest this time change. I always end up losing hours and hours of sleep for days, no matter how I prepare, and end up sluggish and unresponsive for a few weeks. I wish we could just stay at Daylight Savings Time year-round. I say this every year, of course. The good news is that I finally slept last night, and slept in quite late this morning, yay!

Car – My car, which is only a couple years old and has only 50k miles on it, went from fine one minute to not starting the next over the weekend. We had to get it towed to a mechanic shop that we trust. Turns out, I needed a new fuel pump for just under a thousand bucks. Oy.

House – We finished contract negotiations on the house we’re downsizing into, and all went better than expected. Yay! At least something is going well, right? Fingers crossed that our December 4th closing goes on as planned.

Quiet – Things have been so hectic for so long that I basically fell into quiet mode. I sat down a lot, doing puzzles or staring out the window, listening to some long audiobook rereads of favorites. There’s still a lot that needs to get done, but this week I needed some time to just sit, rest, disengage, go quiet for a bit. Possibly this might continue with regards to the blog. Between planning/packing for a move, prepping a house to sell, the upcoming change in our holiday plans, and anticipating Morrigan returning home at some unknown point, I might just keep listening to old rereads and staying offline. In any case, I should check in weekly, and I’ll be back at some point. I always am. If I don’t see you much before then, happy holidays to everyone!

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Sunday Coffee – Step By Step

Posted on November 3, 2019 by Thistle

Good morning. As usual during the “fall back” time change, I’m up even earlier than I would be on a normal morning. On the one day a year where there’s an extra hour to sleep, I always wake up several hours earlier than normal, as if my body is trying to prepare me for the next four months of jet lag. (I don’t like “standard” time, can you tell? I’ll “spring forward” any day to get back to where there’s actually light in the evenings again!)

My thoughts are scattered on this extra-early morning. Yesterday, we worked on finishing up a lot of the major projects in the house. One of the big ones involved clearing the garage out of any donations, returns, and large-item trash, and making room for the dozens of boxes I’ve packed in the last week. The house has begun to echo as all the walls grow bare. Unfortunately, after we packed my car with all the things we needed to return to Lowes, my car wouldn’t start. So that’s a new project/expense on our plates. Sigh. Anyway, beyond the car issue, things went fairly smoothly yesterday. Our house is a cross between a disaster zone and an obstacle course at the moment, but progress is being made.

We had the inspection on the other house this week, and have entered the next phase of contract negotiations. Still hoping all goes well, and we’ll close in about a month. That’s the reason we’ve been pushing so hard on this house, though – the sooner we have it on the market, the quicker it can sell and the less mortgage overlap we’ll have. It’s a weird position to be in, though. We’ve bought/sold a lot of houses over the last five years as we’ve moved around the country, but this is the first time since 2014 that we’ll be living in the house as we’re selling it. Part of what we’re doing right now isn’t just packing to move, but staging the house for photos and showings. It’s all a bit surreal, as if we only partially live here. A stage-set family, appropriate for generic Walmart picture frames.

On top of that, we don’t know when Morrigan will be returning home, or how long he’ll be staying. We’ll only get notice of his return one week beforehand. Jason took over Morrigan’s room when he left last month. He and I can’t sleep in the same room anymore – we both sleep so poorly that we keep each other up all night. After a few years of trying to make the situation better, we finally accepted the inevitable and sleep separately for all our sakes. But we’ll have to reconfigure again when Morrigan is home. And of course, Morrigan had packed up all his belongings in a way that could be shipped off or stored longterm when he left, so all that will have to be rearranged. (His normal clothes are packed, for instance, as they provide all his clothes at boot camp.)

It’s a scrambled mess, but I’m starting to see the final product emerge from the chaos. It really helped to get all the boxes out of rooms and into the garage yesterday. And today will be a bit of a break. On Sundays, Ambrose’s friend Tyler comes over and everyone in the house (except me) plays D&D for a few hours, and then football occupies quite a few of us for the rest of the day. Perhaps I’ll take a nap to deal with the extra early morning. Or just go to bed super early tonight. I look forward to that already!

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October 2019 in Review

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Thistle

Well. October started off with a BANG – Morrigan got his ship date from the Navy, set for the 10th. In lightning fast time, we’d thrown him an early birthday party, and he’d dealt with job, bank account, packing, etc. We dropped him off with his recruiter on the 9th, and saw his swearing in ceremony on the 10th. Then he was off, and suddenly we were a family of four at home. It was a surreal whirlwind that first half of the month, and before my brain could fully catch up, Morrigan was being medically discharged and prepped to come home. Poor kid.

On top of that, we’ve been working flat-out on getting our house ready to sell and trying to find a new place to live, so the entire month has passed in a haze of crazy. In good news, some of that crazy has paid off, and we’ve entered contract negotiations on a new house. Irony: It’s literally on the same street as our current home, just all the way at the other end of the neighborhood (about a half-mile away). Heh. If all goes well (with inspections etc), we’ll close in early December. Now we just need to get our current place on the market ASAP so there’s not too much overlap in mortgage payments, right?

Reading
According to my reading log, I read five books this month. I remember them, kinda. It’s hard to pick a favorite in a month where your brain was elsewhere for every read, but I’d have to guess Tunnel of Bones at present. This may change in the future as certain books end up with sticking power and others don’t, or as I reread.

Watching
October was the month for seeing movies that have been sitting on my list for months: The Sun is Also a Star (pretty good), MIB International (really cute), Spider-Man: Far From Home (hilarious), and Photograph (good until the bizarre ending). I also watched an adaptation of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which I read last month, and which followed the book really well. And of course, Hocus Pocus, because October.

House
It was obviously a big one for house projects this month. We:

  1. repaired, textured, and painted the damaged parts of the master bedroom wall (holes from bookshelf installation)
  2. replaced the floor tile in the downstairs bathroom
  3. repaired the back deck, repainting in progress
  4. primed and repainted the boys’ bathroom (Note: I hate painting. –> ) (Also note: we were covering up that insane blue, not the other way around.)
  5. replaced the shower tile in the master bathroom
  6. continued to attack new chinaberry growth in the front garden, plus cleaned up the front garden from fall leaf drop (in progress, continually)
  7. packed up non-essentials to strip the house down to show-condition (in progress)

It’s been all-encompassing and constant go-go-go this month. Oy. We still have a bit of work to go, plus general paint touch-ups around the house, thorough scrubbing up to make everything tidy and lovely, etc. The goal is to have everything done ASAP – the sooner our house goes on the market, the less overlap we’ll have with the new house. Fingers crossed.

Health
Ha ha ha. Yeah right. This is on the back burner of the back burner. I did get new blood test results, and as it turns out, eating higher carbs for six months means that my fasting glucose has dropped from the high end of normal to the low end, and my A1C is lower than it’s been since I was thin. So yeah, eating MORE carbs has stabilized and improved my blood sugar. Go figure, right? On the reverse side, all the house projects have given me severe sciatica, which I haven’t experienced since my three pregnancies all those years ago. Oy. This is not making the work very easy, and I feel really frustrated when I have to sit out while everyone else works. I don’t like being idle!!

Highlights of October
October wasn’t a dark month so much as a rollercoaster month. Here were the brightest spots.

  • Jason is getting his name on a patent, which is awesome! He doesn’t own the patent, but still! Plus, he might be getting some bonuses along the patent process, which would be awesome.
  • We had our first cool front, FINALLY, and by the end of the month, a full-blown COLD front!
  • I got to dress as Halloween Personified one day, haha!
  • Laurence performed excellently in his current play, especially given that the cast had literally three weeks to learn everything they needed to know!
  • Ambrose made homecoming royalty court (though sadly, he didn’t win King)
  • a girls’ outing to a Paint Your Pet night at Painting With a Twist, where we all got to paint our babies – it was Gavroche’s turn to be painted in my household
  • Our orchid bloomed again unexpectedly soon!

Coming up in November
I don’t know. It was supposed to be our cruise vacation, but we had to cancel that. So Thanksgiving, I suppose, and figuring out what Morrigan will try next, and (fingers crossed again) getting our house on the market. Everything is so up in the air right now with so many drastic changes! Funny, I was originally planning to try to get back to NaNoWriMo this year. Um…no. Not under these conditions!

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RIP XIV Wrap-up

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Thistle

It’s been an awesome challenge, y’all! Let me just start with that. I had a HUGE list of potential books on my original Readers Imbibing Peril list – nineteen total. Of those, I read eight, culled eight, and was unable to get to three due to various circumstances. However, I didn’t only read eight books – I read a total of twenty-one books for RIP this year. Most of them were in September, more than half belonged to a single series, and all but three were books I really enjoyed. I discovered two new series to read and love, and a new favorite author. The only thing that could have made the RIP season better was if I could have gotten to those remaining three books.

I don’t know that I could choose a favorite book from RIP, so instead, I’ll give a few favorite-ish choices:

Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw – This is the third book of a series that I began last year and possibly the best of them so far.

the entire Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths – There were a few books here and there that didn’t work as well for me, but as a whole, this series was off-the-charts amazing and I sped through all eleven currently-published books.

City of Ghosts; Tunnel of Bones by Victoria Schwab – It’s so rare for me to come across middle-grade books that I just love, but these hit all the right notes.

I can’t wait to see what RIP XV brings next year, and as always, thanks to the hosts of this best reading event of the year!!

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