Tag: recent reads

Recent Reads: I’ve been holding out on you!

Lauren4 Comments

On Tuesday, I finished up a book during my lunch break, decided I should write a post about it, then realized I’d finished five other books since the last time I did a book review post!  I don’t know how or when that happened by I’m simultaneously feeling pleased (for reading lots!) and disappointed in myself.  Let’s fix that today!*

*Today, as in the Rockies Home Opener!!!  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know Joey and I look forward to this day ALL YEAR LONG.  As is tradition, we will be lunching at Biker Jim’s, drinking beer in the sunshine, breathing in that Coors Field air, taking note of everyone’s walk up song and rooting for our dear Rockies to be less bad than last year.  Happiest of Fridays!

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light

Okay, don’t get me wrong I really liked this book, but I had heard SUCH good things about it that I think I expected to like it a lot more.  I’m even having a hard time pinpointing what I didn’t love about the book.  I just can’t really put my finger on it.  I guess I should just focus on what I did like, which was the effortless back-and-forth interweaving aspect of how the story was told, a totally new perspective of what it was like to be a young boy in Nazi Germany, the indisputable love a father had for his blind daughter, the fact that Marie-Laure was never painted as helpless and the language.  It read like poetry and there’s nothing better than literature written like that.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane

Wait, you don’t re-read Victorian lit for fun?  Me neither…  In all honesty, I started this in December and though I flew through the first half, Part II took me FOREVER to get through.  Partly because I was reading other things and partly because Jane’s life without Rochester is boring as can be.  Come on, we knew it and she knew it too.  I did finally make it through (and gave myself a pat on the back), but I think it’s safe to say I probably won’t be reading that again any time soon.  I swear I liked it the first time around!

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

Grownup

This was our March book group pick and it was all of 60 pages long.  I read it in less than an hour, then made Joey read it so we could discuss.  It made a few mentions of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and it did have that same eerie appeal to it in the beginning, but then Gillian Flynn fell into her pattern of writing a book with three twists and it felt all too predictable.  The feminist in me wants to love a successful female author, but the English major in me says her writing is formulaic and far too concerned with shock appeal.Read More »

Odds & Ends, Take 4

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Whoa, it’s been a year (almost exactly) since my last “Odds & Ends” post!  Time to remedy that.

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My mother-in-law gets us all office calendars for Christmas and I seriously love mine this year!  I hang the pages up in my office so by the end of the month I have a wall of inspirational artwork.  I take a picture at the end of every month then forget to do anything with it.  Maybe I can do a cool end-of-the-year collage?!

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We made these chicken nuggets (sub chicken for fish, obviously) last weekend and it makes me wonder why we don’t do it more often.  So easy, so satisfying in that “I feel like a worry-free kid” kind of way.  Also, if you can’t decide between ketchup and BBQ sauce, don’t!  Let’s not talk about how I put the BBQ sauce upside down in the fridge and the lid wasn’t fully on so it went everywhere and I didn’t realize until two days later when our fridge suddenly reeked of BBQ sauce…

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Denver “graffiti” is looking so dreamy lately.  I spotted this alley full of art on our walk to Cart-Driver last week and had to stop and take a picture.  Together with the bright blue summer sky, it was gorgeous.  If someone wants to graffiti this kind of stuff on my garage door instead of tagging it with their name, that’d be great.

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All week we’ve been leaving work at lunch time to go home and water our lawn.  Yeah, that’s technically a one person job but leaving the office for an hour and eating a giant salad in your own sunny backyard is more fun.  Two other days we went out for a little day date.  A slice of deep dish pizza + a side salad on the patio is the way to this girl’s heart.

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We’re almost out of this bag of coffee already and I’m like “who drank all this so fast?!”  Would it be weird if I kept the bag for sniffing purposes?  And speaking of Huckleberry Roasters, our second lunch date this week was there!  They sell sandwiches and salads from a really cute Denver café and I was looking for an excuse to be one of those people that’s hanging out at a coffee shop in the middle of a week day.

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My mom let me borrow this new book of hers.  I liked it right away when the author stated that “if you like eating at chain restaurants, I don’t want you as the audience of my book!”  Well that’s blunt! 🙂  It was part stories, part restaurant guide and all awesome.  There’s nothing I love more than “connecting” with someone who gets New Orleans food.

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Have you ever put yogurt on toast?  No?  Is that weird?  Whatever, I was doing it even before Bon Appétit told me it was cool.  But in all seriousness, if you toast your bread to that point of extra crispy perfection then layer it with yogurt (Greek OR plain!) and peanut butter, you have yourself one good tasting breakfast.  Bonus points if you add banana slices!

Wishing you all a very Happy Friday!  We have a busy weekend but it’s fun stuff busy instead of yard work busy, so I’ll take it!