My Own Worst Enemy

It's that old song and dance:

• I start a blog/project and set off on some new idea.
• Life happens, and I get behind a self-imposed deadline.
• I feel discouraged and lame, and the pile of abandoned ideas grows.

I know many have trouble with this. It's really something we don't talk about; I know my own reasons involve shame and self-degredation, always feeling like a failure.

Last weekend, and early into the week, Brett and I were cleaning up the apartment thoroughly. It was time for our yearly inspection, and I wanted to make sure that we presented a good front of stability and neatness. As I sorted through one of my many bookshelves, this one with notebooks, I looked to see how many of them were blank versus how many had an idea or two near the front that had been tossed aside when I hadn't visited it in a while. The answer: more than I care to admit.

If you hadn't guessed, this is all to premise that no, I had not written all the reviews of the books I've read so far. And I currently a little behind on keeping tracking with my goal to read 52 books this year. But now is the time to stand up and dust off the shelves, and getting to reading and writing.

If I'm going to ever stop standing in my own way, I'd better learn that it's okay to not be super on top of everything 100% of the time.

Nourishing the Soul [Book Review of Voracious by Cara Nicoletti]

I came across this book on a list of recommendations by Off the Shelf, as a book for "the bookworm who loves cooking".

That sounded right up my alley. I love books, and not only do I love eating food, but I love cooking. I was sold.

From the moment I began the book (yesterday), the title described more than the author's hunger for good food. There's a search for meaning in the meals she read about it books from her childhood, for finding truth in those small moments of memory. Nicoletti then takes that meal from the pages, or her interpretation of it, and transforms it into an actual recipe for the reader-chef to create on their own.

I loved Nicoletti's honesty. She laid her memories out, letting the reader know some pretty intimate moments she'd shared with family and friends. They're the kinds of memories that never really come up on their own, but with the right trigger can instantly start replaying in our minds.

Reading of her bookish childhood made me recall my own, though of a different strain than Nicoletti's. Hers was a family affair, with sisters and parents and grandparents and extended family all encouraging this habit and giving her books to read just at the right time. Mine felt like a struggle to keep it alive. My parents encouraged me well enough, especially regarding maintaining a strong intellect and curiousity that reading provides. But they couldn't buy me all the books I wanted, didn't have the ones from their own childhood to pass down. The school library, when we were allowed to visit, left me wanting (we had assigned times once a month, maybe.)

I managed to find enough to around to read: Mrs. Janes's collection in 3rd grade was where I read all the Sweet Valley Jr. High books she had; I saved the extra change from lunches for when we'd get that beautiful Scholastic order form, buying the others I'd circled that my parents said were too much; the old and slowly obseleting storylines of Encylopedia Brown in the local library. It was in that last place, in our town's teeny library that I read those tween-centered puzzlers, ones that followed in the same vein as Nancy and the Hardys, but wanted you to solve it. One of these series printed the answers backwards and/or upside down, to be read in front of a mirror with the book flipped if need be. These books taught me two things--how to think and question all the details that lay bare, and how to read that text without flipping or a mirror. The latter is a great trick for middle school students.

I am digressing though, which to segue back to the review, is something that does show up in Nicoletti's book in just the right amount. Back and forth in time with her is her natural storytelling mode, one I obviously can relate to. But in a much better way than I do, she makes sure the reader is grounded in the purpose of this entry--why this book particularly inspired her to re-create or imagine a recipe.

Speaking of, those recipes! They sound divine! I personally can't wait to try those Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (inspired by If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, obviously). The selections are not all like that example, a central obvious choice. Her particular humor shows through her recipe paired with Lord of the Flies, Porchetta di Testa. Or "Hansel and Gretel"'s Gingerbread Cake with Blood Orange Syrup.

Another way Nicoletti's particular voice came through that resonated with me was when she included books that she didn't necessarily like but recognized their place in her life.

Some advice for all parents out there: if you have a kid who already overwrought and anxious, Astrid's Lundgren's Pippi Longstocking is not the book you should read to her. Ande [her sister], ever the party girl, was thrilled by the book, laughing aloud and kicking her feet at Pippi's brazenness and spontaneity, but I was horrified. Her unpredictability bewildered me — her life was an unstructured nightmare, a circus! And I hated circuses. Even her appearance terrified me — those untamed flaming red pigtails, that cavernous gap in her garish smile...Pippi's chaotic existence had me stressed.

I love that. Pippi gains no ground in winning Nicoletti's over, but the book was read at a paticularly rough childhood moment. It's one where I felt a kinship with Nicoletti when she shares the memory of her making pancakes with her mother and both of them agreeing on Pippi and her rambunctiousness being too much to bear. Books have a particular poigancy when they also help us connect to the people standing next to us.

To divuge another personal anecdote: my mom loves yard sales. Adores them. When I was four, give or take, we were looking around, and I found a book bound in burlap brown, two boys silouhetted on front below the title pressing the material, The Tower Treasure. Fans will recongize that this is the first entry in the decades long Hardy Boys series, but at the time, I just thought that it looked like it might be good. I knew how to read at the time, and after persuring the first few pages, I knew I wanted it. I brought it to my mom, now talking with the woman selling these items. I still have an imprint of this woman's face, looking down me with a emotion I can only describe as well-meaning condenscension. She then said that might be too big a book for me. Momma, ever the opportunist when it comes to being right, opened the book to the first page and told me to read the first paragraph aloud. So I did. The woman was so impressed that I could read it at my age said we could have the book for free. Looking back, part of me wonders if she just thought I was younger than I was (I have always looked younger than I am). But in this scene from my past, I look back with fondness at Momma's simple response, a thread I see throughout my life and the lives of my brother and sister--Momma and Daddy's pride in all that we three had within our heads and motivation to not let others' expectations dampen our goals.

Because of the way it made me think back on my own reading youth and whetted my appetite both for food and for reading, this book is one I recommend not only to the cooking bookworms like myself, but to all with fond memories of the books they read in the back of their heads.

(P.S. I don't agree with her view of Holden Caulfield, but I love her inclusion of Middlesex and The Little Friend, two of my favorite books.)

The Hope That Sustains

While 2016 was a strange, strange year for almost all involved, one of the biggest personal upheavals for me was the loss of my desire to read.

I've had bouts of reader's block before: from having to read something for school and not being interested, overwhelmed by all the choices on my shelves and unable to choose, or just too involved in other things before I notice the same book has been in my bag for months on end.

Towards the end of the year, when I visited my family for Thanksgiving, I noticed myself falling into old routines from my youth, particularly my ease of grabbing a book when I no longer wanted to continue a conversation. For the first time in months, I devoured two books within the span of a few days. I felt like my old self who could flip pages and take in the content at breakneck speed. Unfortunately, I seemed to lose the motivation again on the flight back to Virginia.

Maybe it was a difference in location once again, but I tore through another book when I went with Brett to his parents' for Christmas, finishing a 300+ page book within roughly 12 hours.

As 2017 moved from future to now, I was reminded by Goodreads to set my reading challenge for the year. I fell woefully short in 2016 (a mere 27 of my 55 goal). I seem to do better in odd-numbered years, oddly enough. So, in an effort to not lower the bar to be too easy, I set my goal as 52—a book for each week.

Yesterday, though, I was looking through one of my many listicles bookmarked with potential "to-read" additions to my list, and I came across a book that I thought, I know I have a ton of books at home, but man, that one sounds really really good.

Another New Year trope is to read organizing and how to de-clutter one's life articles, in an attempt to stave off my inner hoarder of all things printed and bound. One of the suggestions I recently read regarding books, courtesy of everyone's favorite "less is more" guru Marie Kondo, was that the best time to read a book was that initial reaction period when you first had gotten the book, before it was placed on the to-be-read-at-a-later-date-aka-when-I-win-the-lottery-or-inherit-enough-money-to-never-need-to-work-again. She then advised that if you haven't read it within that introductory excitement period, it's best to go ahead and get rid of it.

While I won't heeding that last snippet any time soon (sorry, Brett), I thought of that in the seconds after I had read this book's blurb. Conbine that with yesterday's weirdly rough morning, and bam! I spend my lunch going to Barnes & Noble to pick it up and start reading it before I return to work.

Now, just over 24 hours later and finished with that same book, I feel invigorated in reading again. To try and capitalize on it, and to fulfill some of those goals to myself about writing more, I'm taking on PopSugar's 2017 Reading Challenge to inform which books I read and reviewing them in individual posts.

I know oh so many of you are clamoring to make sure that you don't miss a moment of my book reviews, but don't fret, dear readers. I'll aggregate them on a single special page that I'll link with the appropriate entry as the year progresses.

I feel really hopeful right now, as I usually do after finishing a book. (Usually. I'm looking at you, Bel Canto and Super Sad True Love Story, for being the exceptions to that norm.) I hope that this feeling continues, throughout the year, for all things. But I'll have to remember: this hope came through effort, through action. I can't just sit by idly and expect hope to fall down. I have to make it happen.