Tag: book club

Memory-a-Day in June

LaurenLeave a comment

Friday, June 1st: Spending half my lunch hour at the grocery store and feeling a bit frantic/impatient standing in line at the self-checkout.

Saturday, June 2nd: Biking to the Farmers’ Market for the first time this summer and feeling like we were back in our summer Saturday morning groove ♥

Sunday, June 3rd: Having the oven on for 2 hours to roast two giant beets, that I definitely should have cut into smaller pieces.

Monday, June 4th: Carrying two Spicy Black Bean Burrito Bowls outside to eat dinner in the back yard and feeling extreme happiness about what was just a regular old Monday, but made better because it was summer and we could eat outside and still have time to walk our pup afterward before the sun went down.

Tuesday, June 5th: Going for my usual Tuesday morning run but instead of pushing myself, I took it at a snail’s pace and then felt really good by the end.

Wednesday, June 6th: Wanting an exact repeat of Monday, then deciding to let Wednesday night unfold on its own terms and hey, we still got to eat dinner outside!

Thursday, June 7th: Laughing really hard with Joey as he told me a story about the chaos that had unfolded at his basketball game the night before.

Friday, June 8th: Feeling my pup’s head resting on my leg when I woke up and realizing his BFF Joey had already gotten up and he hadn’t followed him out of our room for once!

Saturday, June 9th: Feeling proud of myself for going to a social event solo and actually enjoying it!

Sunday, June 10th: Sitting in my car in the Nordstrom Rack parking lot and giving myself a mental pep talk to head to the mall to dress shop when I felt like I had zero energy.

Monday, June 11th: Feeling that “oh shit, I’m leaving for vacation on Thursday!” angst that had my brain creating a to-do list that I couldn’t actually tackle at work.

Tuesday, June 12th: Feeling crabby and on edge all day.

Wednesday, June 13th: Discovering an almost bloomed bud on my sister orchid.

Thursday, June 14th: Eating a homemade burrito in the car on our way to Iowa.

Friday, June 15th: Singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” with a bar full of people.

Saturday, June 16th: Eating a cold piece of Little Caesar’s pizza at a wedding at midnight.

Sunday, June 17th: Watching a low hanging cloud unfurl as we drove through Nebraska.

Monday, June 18th: Taking 8 friends to the Rockies game and feeling like I got to spend time with them all.

Tuesday, June 19th: Feeling rushed and overwhelmed while trying to make lunch salads for the week and dinner all at once in a hot house.

Wednesday, June 20th: Being blown away (again! still! forever!) by Kaleo.  This time (like the first time!) at Red Rocks (and with Hannah and Josh), so it was extra good.

Thursday, June 21st: Back to eating dinner al fresco after a few days off and feeling like it was the best way to celebrate the first official day of summer.

Friday, June 22nd: Being in a bad mood for a reason I couldn’t place, then miraculously feeling better once the sun was out.

Saturday, June 23rd: Petting our dog with a shaky hand while we waited to see a new vet for the first time and wondering how Andi would react.

Sunday, June 24th: Thinking pizza sounded good for dinner and just going with it instead of trying to talk myself into cooking something at home.

Monday, June 25th: Making it out of the house, everything in hand, on time for work.

Tuesday, June 26th: Driving home with a book club high because the discussion was lively, the book was wonderful, the friends were a plenty and probably mostly because I ordered a glass of wine with dinner.

Wednesday, June 27th: Stinging sweat dripping into my eyes during a hot and difficult yoga class.

Thursday, June 28th: Driving around for 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot in the Highlands.

Friday, June 29th: Feeling sort of tired but SO THANKFUL not to have any Friday night plans.

Saturday, June 30th: Second guessing myself after buying a veeeery soft cheese for our pre-Shakespeare Fest picnic.

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It’s July tomorrow and I can’t even believe it but I’m also incredibly excited because it’s many-a-family-member-birth-month and shockingly, it still seems less busy than June and I’m totally fine with that!

Recent Reads

LaurenLeave a comment

I have finished three books recently and haven’t even mentioned them… what am I doing??  What can I say except that I’ve been distracted by Marvel movies, summer daydreams and pondering what my dog is doing while I’m at work.

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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

I’d been wanting to read this one, so imagine my delight when it turned out to be our April book club pick.  I even won a copy of the book in our raffle!  Not going to lie, it is LONG.  And about three-quarters of the way in, it started to feel long.  But up until that point, I enjoyed it.

It begins as the story of a Korean girl moving to Japan and though her life remains a constant thread throughout the story, it does expand past her and manages to find a balance between telling the personal stories of its characters and the larger picture of life as a Korean in Japan.  I was completely ignorant to that narrative so I found this book so informative and eye-opening.  The characters go through so much pain and keep pushing on in such an inspirational way.  However, towards the end, there was A LOT of jumping from character to character and generation to generation in a way that left me wishing I was hearing about the characters I had spent the previous 300ish pages with instead.

For what it’s worth, the rest of my book club loved it!

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Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

I love a good coming of age story but they can be very heartbreaking and this one certainly is.  I’m at a loss for how to describe the plot of this book because, honestly, I was caught off guard by how it ended.  I’ll tell you that much of it is about a high school senior named Niru, living in D.C. with his devoutly religious Nigerian parents and their discovery that he is gay.  I cringed through the following chapters, where his father hits him, his mother takes him to church and then both parents decide a trip to Nigeria is necessary.

The story twists toward the end and the last chapters are narrated by Niru’s best friend, Meredith.  While I sincerely felt for Niru and didn’t mind the writing, the plot of this book felt a little too complicated to fit into such a tight frame.  I don’t regret reading it though!

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling

Can I just start by saying this memoir was not what I thought it was going to be?  It’s just over 150 pages but the language is smart and complex in a way that had me re-reading passages quite a bit.  It also gave me the impression of a work in progress that someone had pieced together.  Each chapter read like an essay that may have mentioned things from other chapters but could have just as easily stood on its own.  The first chapter could just have easily been the last chapter and vice versa.  Also, there was a lot of talk of food (and wine), but I didn’t find any of it all that descriptive.  Maybe I’m not cultured enough, but Liebling lists a lot of French dishes that I had no familiarity with and he offered no explanation, so I sort of glossed over it.

All this being said, I got absolutely lost in writing that seemed from another time and a version of Paris that will only ever exist in memories and that was a pure delight.

What are you reading?