I started my week with Lilian Boxfish Takes a Walk. Which is definitely my favorite read of 2017 so far. I know it hasn’t been so long but still… it’s totally delightful. I can’t recommend it enough. Especially if you’ve lived in NYC.

I wanted to read Lab Girl because it’s been on my list for months but while I liked bits of it, i had a hard time getting through it. I found myself skipping around.

I had the Achievement Habit on hold at the library and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it. I feel like I already do a lot so I wasn’t sure if I need more “achievement” in my life. But I was totally wrong and I am so incredibly glad I read it. It’s by the co-creator of the Design Thinking class in Stanford and it’s full of wonderful, tangible pieces of advice and practices for self improvement. I will have to reread this one.

After I finished Achievement Habit, I grabbed Losing It from my library pile. Not sure what made me originally put this book on hold but i was on the airplane and didn’t want to overthink it. In the end it was meh. Not super mad I read it, but my life is not all that better because I read it either.

I also dabbled in both of the George and the Key to the Universe (and George and the Big Bang) books this week to see if we wanted to pick them for Lit Club. We decided we likely would not.

Not as much as usual, but it’s been a busy week.

Books I Read this Week 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.

I started my week with Shrill because pretty much every end of the year book list had it. I kept resisting it for some reason but then finally broke down and put it on my hold list at the library. I am so glad I did. It was absolutely fantastic. It made me sad, it made me angry, it made me think. it made me cheer. it was really good. I highly recommend it.

I then read In Defense of Food because I saw it come up in the library’s list and I’ve been trying to educate myself about food. While I can’t get behind Gary Taubes’ recommendations because it’s just not possible for me to sustain eating like that, I really liked Pollan’s book. I like the idea of eating as fresh food as possible. I like shopping at our farmer’s market and decided to do it more. I don’t mind paying more for better food. My thought is that if it’s better, we will likely eat less of it to feel full and we will get much better nutrition. I’ve also signed up for a CSA again and I am buying my eggs and fruits and veggies as fresh as I can. I had a long talk with the kids, too, and we will move to eating bread (sandwich) only for lunch and we will experiment with buying better bread until we can learn to make our own. (I just bought a breadmaker to see if we can give it a try.) I am also looking into solutions around moving away from the ritz and graham crackers my kids eat for snack. We are considering extra fruit and nuts. One step closer to eating healthier. I love the idea of eating food where we can pronounce all the ingredient’s names and food that has no more than 5 ingredients total. This will be an iterative process of course and I am sure we will make mistakes along the way. Let’s see how far we can get.

I then read Chasing Secrets because it’s the book we’re reading for our Lit Club so I needed to read it first. It takes place in the 1900s in San Francisco. It’s about the plague outbreak. It was a book I would have never chosen to read on my own, but I really enjoyed it quite a bit.

I then decided to tackle The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck because it also kept coming up as a recommendation. I knew nothing about the author and nothing about much of the premise. I decided I’d give it a shot and see if I liked it. I will say that even though I curse and colorful language doesn’t often bother me, I wasn’t a fan of some of the comments the author made. I didn’t care for all of his verbiage but I did like the book. I liked the idea of picking the things you value and choosing to care about those. And not care about the other things. You can’t care about all. You have to choose and I know this and it was a good reminder to keep it at the forefront of my mind.

And finally, I started reading A Gathering of Shadows because it was about to expire in my library so I was able to get about two thirds of the way there so I am going to have to finish it in a creative way. The third book is coming out in two months and I am looking forward to it.

A middle grade, one young adult, three nonfiction this week. Not terrible, though I miss reading literary fiction, too. Will have to grab some of those next week.

Books I Read this Week 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.