test 123
1. Book that was made into a movie: Orchid Thief/Adaptation [7/24/2021]
2. About Aging: Dorian Gray [7/26/2021]
3. In another "Language:" Pattern Language [7/27/2021]
4. A book from Arvida: Prep [8/12/2021]
5. Firmar las paredes de tu laberinto: Fictions Borges [8/27/2021]
6. Something Old: Candide [9/26/2021]
7. Something New: Hunter Gatherer's Guide to 21st Century [9/19/2021]
8. Finish a Book in Literally One Sitting: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions [9/21/2021]
9. Travelogue: Biking with Butterflies [9/24/2021]
10. Animal: The Body, A Guide for Occupants [10/10/2021]
11. Vegetable: Braiding Sweetgrass [11/22/2021]
12. Mineral: Rough-hewn Land: A geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains [9/30/2021]
13. Gorey Story: Gashlycrumb Tinies [10/7/2021]
14. Rory Story: Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette [11/11/2021]
15. Dystopia: The Beach [10/14/2021]
16. First in a Series: Mistborn [10/24/2021], Court of Thorns and Roses [4/10/22]
17. Something borrowed, something blue: Cheri [10/26/21]
18. Something banned: Salome (Oscar Wilde) [11/7/2021]
19. LGBTQ: Redefining Realness [11/3/2021]
20. Nanowrimo product: Night Circus [11/14/2021]
21. A book in another language: La casa del arbol #27 Jeves de Accion de Gracias [11/20/2021]
22. Poetry- Larkin's Collected poems [12/21/21]
23. Inter-Library Loan: Poor Charlie's Almanack [12/27/21]
24. Falcon guide: Foraging California [12/30/21]
25. Something 'crafty: Kitchen Table Tarot [1/2/21]
26. Something translated from another language: Unbearable Lightness of Being [1/17/22]
27. Mundane (to never be bored): What It's Like to Be a Bird [2/12/22]
28. Subversive: Neverwhere [2/15/22]
29. Soul Food: That Cheese Plate will Change Your Life [2/21/22]
30. Cautionary Tale: The Anarchy [3/1/22]
31. Stranger than Fiction: Map Thief [3/14/22]
32. Bonhomie: Lessons from Madame Chic [4/3/22]
33. Coming Attraction: Waking Up in Eden [4/8/22]
34. Book about being made into a movie being made into a movie (2): Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates) [10/19/22]
35. September edition of vogue [9/18/22]
36. North Ave candles required reading set
37. Something Wet: And a Bottle of Rum [9/26/22]
38. Something Dry: Easy Way to Stop Drinking [11/5/22]
39. In another Language (2): Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego [11/10/22]
40. Do Not Finish 40 things... (20/40)
****
1. Adaptation-- cerebral, self-conscious, true to real life in a cringe-worthy way. Greater entertainment value from reading the book first, these are such separate works that watching the movie isn't a substitute for reading the book. I felt like Orchid Thief was plenty for a New Yorker article but a little too sparse to elaborate into a full length book. It helped motivate me to put a chocolate scented Sharry Baby Oncidium on to the cultivation wishlist and to appreciate the slippery slope into collecting them.
2. Not sure if this was about aging so much as vanity and hedonism. Still working out how I feel about Lord Henry - I love his witty dialog and wish more Victoriana/Steampunk was written like this, but his influence on the protagonist leaves something to be desired.
3. Feels like cheating to call this another language, but it is a classic for me. First read through changed the way I looked at the world. This read through, with home ownership and all the construction that comes with it, it served as more of a punch list to make the spaces I'm responsible for maintaining feel more comfortable.
4. It turned out Arvida was mostly preowned books vs best sellers. I bought 2 for $6. I felt like I had seen Prep listed in various suggestions for WASPy lit but I'd never pulled the trigger on it. There was a lot of teen angst that annoyed me, probably because I could recognize my young awkward self in it. Perfect as a Rehoboth beach read I could walk away from without wondering if I wanted to keep a copy for long term reference. I also bought a paperback copy of Candide (had been thinking about this in the sort of PR Maye Musk pushes in A Woman Makes a Plan) and discovered upon getting home it was fully marked up, but that the note taker was pretty organized about her notes, so maybe that's a feature not a bug?
5. The Baroque period of early works reminds me so much of Joyce and what teenage self thought my writing could become while still being astonishingly original and cerebrally funny. I also loved to see how he felt his writing had evolved based on the introductions and afterwards.
6. Not bad for a 262 year old book. Sure, the nuance of geopolitical and religious satire went over my head, but a lot of the human foibles are relatable. In contrast, I went through my notes on Gilgamesh (5,000 year old book) and found it much more challenging to make sense of individual motivations. I loved the section in Pococurante's library where the cynic is bagging on how tedious the Illiad is and yet it is a required classic in every respectable library, even back in that day. This definitely reminded me a bit of Cervantes, though Voltaire admired Swift and is compared more frequently to him.
7. Picked this up as a new release although it claims to lookback over millennia of evolutionary biology. Interesting to see how many shill positive reviews were up on Goodreads from people who couldn't possibly have read the book yet. The Chapter 7 theory of sex and gender I found particularly thought provoking. We might not want to encourage divorce and remarriage if we think of it as polygyny of wealthy dudes hoarding the fertile women by trading in their trophy wives. Maybe that's why late in life lesbianism could be adaptive? Or why a gay lifestyle might be a better alternative than incel? Or maybe homosexuality is adaptive in the way that using windfall resources to build monuments and throw parties is-- that it makes it just a smidge harder to turn short term abundance into extra population that cannot be supported in harder times? I don't know. I wish they had dug deeper into that. I was also surprised at how fundamentally conservative (in the sense of being extremely skeptical of technology) they were on the whole. I don't think we can just trust that technical innovation will unfailingly find a solution, but I also don't think we can collectively roll ourselves back to more subsistence ways of life that our "hardware" has been honed to handle the authors seem to idealize.
8. I probably spent more time browsing amazon 45 minute reads and listicles than I actually spent re-reading. I came across her We Should All Be Feminists on several lists and figured re-reading this on my shelf would be faster than paying and waiting for Amazon to ship. Fascinating that I can be reading words encouraging me to role model reading and its value to my kid while fighting the urge to respond to a dropped toy or snack request (but that would break the 1 sit requirement!). This is interesting to contrast with the sex roles theory of Weinstein + Heying. How much of culture is because of biological imbalances-- that guys who are usually bigger and have less energetic commitment to bringing another life into the world do technically have 2 extra but really not long-term good for society sex strategies of rape or casual non-commital sex. How much of the onus is on women to tilt the floor for them toward the pair bonding strategy? How much of the subsequent inequalities come from that? I found myself thinking a lot about the marriage proposal with DH. On the one hand, I hated that he took a year to get around to proposing and I felt that I just had to wait it out. That it was a clear expression of how much more I would have invested in this partnership compared to his indifference. But also intrigued by Adichie's concept that it was expected for a man to propose and not a woman to propose to the man was already flawed.
9. I wanted to like this, but the author was so freaking woke. Self-righteous about everything. She should be entitled to sleep at churches, the roads should be made for biker's needs. She's not seeing more than a handful of butterflies a day and throwing her bike to the side to scrutinize milkweed or drag snapping turtles from the path.
10. As a survey, this is great. Things I've grown to like about Bryson books: biographical digging to uncover some usually humorous aspect of a historical figure's personal life, acknowledging unsung heroes in various scientific breakthroughs, and putting the rates of varied causes of mortality into statistics that can be compared roughly to each other.
11. Wish I had gotten this as an audiobook so that I could listen to it while working in the garden.
12. I love that geologic time dwarfs all human achievement; we are all sweating the small stuff. I also love the hope that really small changes can stack over time into big achievements; that maybe my little habits of moving a misplaced toy every time I go from one room to another may miraculously transform my house into something more organized and less chaotic.
13. This is an incredibly inappropriate book to gift/read to other people's kids. Perhaps that's why the library didn't have a lendable copy. That said, I loved this, my 3 year old daughter asked me to read it twice after unwrapping. She even sight recognized "F is for Fanny..." the joke name we told people we had chosen to name her. I hope she memorizes the couplets and recites them at random in preschool to creep out her teachers.
14. Modern family challenges (nasty divorce, navigating LGBTQ) were de rigeur in fin de siecle. The perception that being a mom would hurt her work and therefore distancing her daughter really sucks. Kind of fitting that this mother-daughter thing was a theme in my "Rory story" title. I love how much figurative language was worked into even just correspondence. Let's have more of that. Judith Thurman's vocabulary rocks.
15. So this was supposed to be a utopia but deteriorated into a Vietnam chaos. It was both a page turner and a chore. A chore because I really couldn't sympathize with the character. A 14 year age difference has such a big generational difference in the X vs. Millenials divide. I thought the relationship with time was so implausible. This kid was somehow so world-weary as an early 20-something. The actors were comfortable spending days idling on a beach, not making contact with family for months. Here, that seems crazy. Shouldn't you be curating your social media on all these beautiful island shots? Cross-referencing your lonely planet map with google earth images? And the incessant smoking. The survivalist/sustainability angle seemed like such a stretch. They would need to go into town so much more than just a periodic rice run.
16. This was fun. More innocent romance and friendship lines than I expected. Is this guy really LDS? I got a bit bored with all the pushing/pulling of metals (though this is a great facet of the world he's built) so I found myself thinking of the metals as food groups in food wars-- I burned {carbs} to soothe emotions, {veggies} for strength, etc.
16B. Not quite a world-builder (too many holes smoothed over with glamours and surprise special abilities). The strengths balance between the two races is a bit too lopsided to make inter-relations really convincing or intriguing. That said, this had a lot more plot depth than I expected for this genre. Found myself binge-reading this over 3 days. Would continue the series.
17. Thought this would be more risque blue. Breakups are tough, regardless of how stoic we pretend to be. Steampunk ladies of a certain age probably used henna too. How do any of these characters support themselves? Hardworking attributes make them more likeable.
18. So this is definitely gothic as a plot, but I'm not sure it deserved to be banned. Perhaps because of the tension between religion and secular interests in France during the fin de siecle? Still don't quite get what the moon is supposed to signify for the characters-- maybe their own personal line to some pagan divinity and ability to prophecy? Pretty sure Herodias's page was in the closet about that chief of the soldiers...
19. The memoir part of this was fascinating. The part where I felt like I was being lectured to about the unique challenges of a demographic by a social justice warrior was more off-putting and divisive. The most beautiful idea in this was that of "Mahu... being transgender in the loosest understanding: to cross social boundaries of gender and/or sex." That seems vague enough to give people space to maneuver in their own self-definition without necessarily having to disclose everything to every potential long term friend or love interest they meet.
20. This was captivating to read in November while I'm sure all those other aspiring writers are out there in the struggle. It is beautifully complex which is a bit discouraging as someone contemplating a Nanowrimo challenge for myself, while knowing full well that a draft goes through so many revisions before publication. It reminded me of the best parts of Burning Man. There was more world-building than I expected, though maybe less than would have been helpful for understanding the full scope of the plot (i.e. how the magic systems worked, the terms and previous iterations of the challenge).
21. Perhaps a cop out to read a kid's chapter book in another language, but that's how I started with English. Timely given I'm finishing this Thanksgiving week. Interesting to pair with Braiding Sweetgrass first nations perspectives which I'm reading concurrently. And even learned a word like "seguro" is a colloquialism that probably would not have made sense in the 1600-1700's.
22. First read. Glad I wasn't discouraged by The North Ship. That I only really liked/understood Conscript in its totality meant I was missing something? My mind kept running to, "oh, he set this in winter or mentions evening [again] so this must be [another] metaphor for death and how fast it goes and how trivial our accomplishments..." That said, almost every piece in the collection is shot through with imagery and comparisons that gave me pause. I love how he doesn't take himself too seriously (Morning, noon & bloody night... p 310, caber limerick, Last Will childishness, etc.) I keep thinking about the surprising vulnerability in The Mower. The critique of commerce and human nature in Sunny Prestaytn and Essential Beauty. The sense the lad doth protest too much in Self's the Man and Dockery. Worth revisiting.
23. Glad my local public library was able to track this down for me through interlibrary loans-- it was fun and helpful to page through once but a bit unwieldy to serve as a dedicated reference in my personal shelves.
Many anecdotes were repeated across the talks, so you could achieve a similar effect by streaming youtube videos of Charlie talks, even if they aren't specifically the 11 included here. You could also try googling Charlie Munger's suggested reading list. This ends in the early aughts and a lot of good psychology surveys came out after that which might give you a sense for where Charlie was going in his 11th talk-- I had a lot of flashbacks to my intro to behavioral psych Hastie & Dawes, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World textbook in that talk. I also found myself thinking a lot about Jacob Lund Fisker's Early Retirement Extreme when it came to building a "latticework of mental models." The main thing I think you would miss are examples of charismatic self-deprecation in the correspondence between people requesting Charlie speak or reacting to his speech that follow the lectures.
Some concepts I thought worthwhile to note and revisit routinely:
*The Iron Prescription-- not being entitled to have an opinion on something until I can state the arguments against my position better than the people in opposition.
*Disraeli compromise-- put the names of people you're inclined to hold a grudge against in a drawer and check back periodically to see if the universe took them down without you going out of your way to seek vindication... I picture Arya in Game of Thrones doing this.
*Try not to end up in a situation where you are selling something you wouldn't buy, working for someone you don't admire, or with people you don't respect.
*Envy drives a lot of [unnecessary] spending. Envy is also a taboo to use as an explanation for adult behavior.
*Low cost index funds won't work if they are too prevalent of an investment strategy (vs. some form of buy and hold value investing), but they are preferable to the alternative of paying money managers fees and additional taxes to shuffle money around without achieving better results.
*Bureaucracy crops up when there isn't sufficient deserved trust between actors and is much less efficient.
*To create a policy that makes cheating easy and implies it is socially acceptable is unethical and worse than tolerating some degree of unfairness at an individual level.
*Try to "kill" at least one of your loved beliefs annually (avoid getting too ideological about a single point of view)
24. This was great. I love that the author is a field guide based close to home (in the LA Basin) and taking a course taught by him is on the bucket list. If I can find a copy second hand (or other titles by this author), I would add it to my personal library.
As a newbie with more of an interest in "survival gardening," I wished this book was organized by range so I could skip straight to the Urban and Chaparral, but I understand the motivation to arrange it by plant families to better determine the likelihood that some unknown specimen of a known family is going to give you a bad time. I also wish there was some sort of chart showing the continuum of greens from the "so bland, you really should mix it with other things for interest" to "so bitter, picking it young won't help you, you should boil it and change the water at least 3 times." I guess I could build that myself through trial and error and Nyerges's notes; the rankings would probably change based on what time of year it was as well.
25. Lots of fun with a breezy snarky style. Will probably get a personal copy when the library cuts me off.
I was relieved to find you can approach tarot like art history meets the Forer effect and get value out of it without needing to track moon phases or rebrand your fur kids as familiars... Just use this as a tool to tap into archetypes which exist for a reason and cast the confusing mess of day to day life as more of a hero's journey.
How cool would it be if her cover artist, Harry Briggs, illustrated a rockabilly deck?
...
40. Did not finish: 20/40
*Women Who Run With the Wolves
*One Second After-- turned out I had already read this, given it a 2 star on Goodreads, and forgotten about it.
*Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment... Skimmed a few chapters of this, but felt like reading the whole thing cover to cover wasn't a great use of time, seeing how I already know I have avoidant tendencies and that "knowing" is more than half the battle to plasticity into something more securely attached.
*American Nations: A History of Eleven Rival Regional Cultures... Could see myself wanting to read this cover to cover if only to recommend and discuss it with family members living throughout the states-- are we Yankees? Tidewater? I read a few chapters specific to SoCal (El Norte), and found it a bit more helpful in understanding more about Latino culture and why higher education seemed like such an after thought here. However, it seems El Norte are more of an afterthought in these persistent culture wars and at a greater risk of allying with northern Mexican states to form their own not-exactly-American-not-exactly-Mexican nation.
*Stirring up Fun with Food. Oh hey, Buffy wrote a cookbook. I never know how to categorize cookbooks. Are the DNF if I skim them like coffee table books? How many recipes do I need to attempt for it to count as "done?" There were some really cute ideas here (Christmas gingerbread terrariums, star wars May 4th, shark week) but it seemed the fun was pretty formulaic-- can you make it into a cupcake/muffin? can you put it on a stick? How about using cookie cutters to plate it in a more whimsical way? Could you serve it in a mason jar? But I definitely came away with ideas and didn't spend the whole afternoon in a pinterest death scroll...
*Collected poems 1909-1962. T.S. Eliot. So I did actually read most of these, but after slogging through Larkin's unfinished work, I skipped the unfinished section. I love that Jennifer L Scott "gave me permission" to look up analysis of these without feeling like I needed to puzzle them out until I was totally stumped. I liked Prufrock for how it reminded me of AP Lit and the angst of being a teenager and wondering if I should approach someone, or keep my interest to myself. I thought the Sweeney conceit was fascinating. I loved how Wasteland could reference passages in earlier sections. The impact WW1 had on Hollow Men. The conversion and Ash Wednesday wasn't my favorite, not quite as dark and cynical of life, but did like how the analysts pointed out you could get stuck in an unfinished train of thought and that this is precisely how to illustrate that in a poetic form. I liked how logistically realistic the wiseman's journey was in the Magi. The Cultivation of Christmas Trees would be beautiful to dust off and send with a potted rosemary to family. I was also struck by how closely he studied Shakespear and other classics as well as mass and religious service prayers. This is something I would not at all have grasped allusions to without analytical footnotes.
*Plant Paradox. Picked this up looking for Instant Pot set and forget ideas that would work for adding some interest to the Pizza-Pasta-Taco-Tikka-Scalloped potatoes-leftovers grind. It is OK, but not as IP focused as I expected and the guy is very anti-Lectin, which evidently is in high concentrations in the nightshade family. So might be good for ideas when hosting the Grands, but wasn't taking heavy notes/page on this one. I do like that this is the first book I've come across that suggests a plant-based swap for what would be a meat main and keeps the recipe otherwise the same, i.e. Quorn, tempeh, jackfruit, hearts of palm, mushrooms, whole head cauliflower.
*Moon Book (Gail Gibbons). Someone else had a hold on this kids book before we could get to it.
*Instant Pot Bible Copycat recipes. Maybe all cookbooks are DNF in the strictest sense? Did inspire me to look up that I have a 6 QT IP Duo that is 8 almost 9 years old. Some intriguing ideas in here (tamales). some that seemed like clean up would be too messy given the serving size (almost all the cheese-based dips--why no pot in pot called for?). and a lot of finnicky ingredients lists to make the most authentic recipe rather than work with what I have in the cupboards. General structure is pretty meat-forward and gave me pause in looking at the table of contents for their Freezer to IP other book. I'm still skeptical about pasta in an IP. Worry that a lot of these "too spicy" sauces can't really be deconstructed to make a kid-friendly version. Seems with dried beans they call for do not soak and cook on high in liquids for 40-45 mins, good to know. Also looks like I could throw cornbread mix in the IP on high for 28 mins and get a similar to oven result. Inspired to take another crack at fall soups, possibly orange chicken/BWW's wings.
*Walking in this World-- realized Cameron's schtick is 12 week journaling exercises and while this would be the logical "next" in the series by publish date, I want to work on the prosperity one instead.
*30 Lessons for Living-- read most of this, but got into the Happiness section about how time is fleeting and don't put things off and realized that the summaries at the end of each section were plenty of exposition and skipped the body of the chapters themselves.
*Make Sew and Mend-- love her youtube channel, but this got very niche (and advanced) very fast to be a practical guide for how to sew on the buttons, jingle bells, etc. that fall off my kid's costumes, how to tailor things to be more flattering (and now gen z I guess is all about untailored oversized sweatshirts?).
*In Our Time-- just pulled it for the Indian Camp short story discussed in a writing Master Class. Didn't feel the need to go through the rest of it, although his writing is beautiful and the idea of a short one-sitting story is delicious (but unrealistic with the needs of a 4 year old).
*Natural Navigator-- too dense and oriented toward navigation not nature observation
*Llewelyn's Tarot-- not as girl talk engaging as kitchen table tarot
*Coding in Scratch Jr-- impossible to page through this deliberately with ready to go 4 year old on the ipad, ended up modifying the demos.
*Candle Making Basics-- had some great intro ideas... but then I found the Candle Science site in trying to get a better sense of why Soy vs Parafin and while it is a total crafty racket (markets as sell your crafts as a small business but I think in reality, it is jokers like me that aren't going to make a marketable product any time soon), there is a lot of good relevant advice there to keep me going.
*Field Guide to the Birds-- Audubon recommends so I would go back, but kid attention span and the feral cat situation make really heavy duty bird watching out of the question.
*How to make clay characters-- interesting to thumb through for ideas, but I wasn't interested in copying these characters step by step. It was also helpful to see she used wire to position them as well (what I had done with Moxie)
*D'Aulaire's book of Greek Myths-- got through all the myths and most of the post-script, but one page away on Jan 1, 2023 kiddo asked if it was 6 yet (it was 5:58) and if she could get up and run around yelling, "Happy New Year!" Did not realize they were a married co-artist team and not actually Greek (Swiss and Norwegian?).
