What I'm Reading These Days

I love books. I wish I had more time for them, but between work, dealing with the grind of daily life, and trying to have something resembling a social life, there's not much time to read anymore. I do get some audiobooks while driving on my long trips to out of town court hearings, but it's not quite the same as curling up with the written word.

That said, here's what I've been reading (or listening to) these days:

Books I've read recently:

• The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen. I read this one a few months ago, and I found it interesting. It's a biography of a man, Daniel Suelo, who decided to stop using money entirely. He squats in a national park, scavenges for food, and occasionally barters for what he needs. He has run-ins with the law because it's fairly impossible to exist in this society without using money. Suelo is creative and dedicated to his cause. I have some sympathy for him, since I've often fantasized about leaving the rat race and getting away from it all, but I think he goes a bit too far - eschewing medical care and such.
• Broke, USA by Gary Rivlin. I read this one a few months ago as well. The central thesis of the book is that pawn shops, subprime lenders, payday lenders, check cashing places, tax prep shops (the big box ones like H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, not regular CPAs), etc. are preying on the poor and ruining society. I agree with the author about tax shops (I took the training at a big box tax shop a few years back when I was unemployed, and after a day of training, I could tell the places were skeevy and set up to prey on poor people. I didn't finish the training or get a job there.) and some of the lender abuses. However, I think the author is overreacting about the pawn shops and check cashing places. Sure, the terms at those places aren't great, but where else are some people going to go? I think it's pretty clear that the author has never actually been poor. To be honest, if you had asked me 10 years ago, I probably would have agreed with the author, but I spent some really poor years after law school (like down to my last $2 and not knowing where the next dollar will come from kind of poor), and I've changed my tune. In some places, he came across as a bit paternalistic. It was an interesting look into an industry I didn't know too much about before reading the book, though.

Books I'm reading now or will be reading shortly:

• Dragnet Nation by Julia Angwin. I read an excerpt from this book last week, and I found it so interesting that I picked it up from the library. It's about all the ways that the government and private companies and organizations monitor our online and offline activities and what kind of creepy things they learn about us in the process. I'm about a chapter in so far, and it's both fascinating and terrifying. The book combines two things I enjoy - technology and privacy.
• I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. This book is about all the bacteria that live in and on us and how they interact with us. It's fascinating, if a bit weird. I definitely wanted to take a shower after a few chapters. I'm about halfway through.
• Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. This is a memoir of a woman who was raised by survivalists in Idaho who kept her out of school. Eventually, she decided to go to college and ended up going on to a PhD at Cambridge. I read a blurb on the book and immediately went to put it on hold at the library. I love memoirs, and I'm completely fascinated by stories of people who escape from fundamentalist subcultures. I can't wait to read it. I'm second in line in the hold queue.

Books I've tried to read but just couldn't finish:

• Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff. I wasn't really all that interested in reading the book to begin with; I figure anything in there would eventually make the news anyway. The only reason I decided to read it was because the White House tried to bully the publisher into not publishing the book, and I wanted to take a stand against censorship. I got about a chapter into the book before putting it down. I'm no fan of Trump by any means. I think he's despicable. However, the book had an air of sensationalism to it that got annoying. I'll just read the news. At least I wasn't out any money. I got it from the library.
• The Harvard Classics. I had planned on reading this 51 volume set this year as my new year's resolution. I haven't even picked it up yet. I just don't have time to basically do self-study college in my spare time right now. I've already been to college. These books will have to wait.

Books I've Read Lately

...or, rather, books I've listened to while driving to court lately.

Last year, I had a new year's resolution to read and review 12 books. I read a lot of books but never got around to reviewing them.

Now I'm so busy with work that I almost never have time to sit down and read a book. It's sad; I love reading. However, I'm spending so much time in the car driving to court hearings in far-flung locations that I've taken to listening to audiobooks. It's not quite the same, but it's still pretty good. So here's a list and mini-review of the books I've listened to lately:

1. Searching for Sunday - Rachel Held Evans

Literary check-in

I set a New Year's resolution to write 12 book reviews this year. It's the end of July, so to be on schedule, I should have 7 book reviews. I don't. I've been reading books but not writing about them. Over the next few weeks, I'll write the book reviews I've been neglecting.

Books I've read this year but not reviewed:

• The Startup of You
• Lean In
• Outliers
• Evolving in Monkey Town
• The 4-Hour Work Week

Books I'm in the process of reading and will review when I'm finished:

• Blink
• Introverts in the Church

Books I'm planning on reading and reviewing before the year is through:

• The God Who Weeps
• Hacking Work
• The Single Woman's Guide to Retirement
• Go Set a Watchman

Books I've already reviewed:

• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I've linked to Amazon for the books even though I either got them from the public library or already had them sitting on my shelf. I can't exactly link to my bookcase! :-)

The list is subject to change if I stumble across a particularly interesting book. But now that I have it out there in the blogosphere, maybe I'll be more likely to follow through.

Reading List

I'm looking for some book recommendations to help me meet my goal of writing 12 book reviews this year. I prefer nonfiction, but a good thought-provoking fiction book is nice, too. (No fluffy beach novels. If I want fluffy literature, I'll get it in movie format.)

I've already reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

I'm in the middle of reading The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, and once I finish it, I plan to review it here.


I'm halfway through Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, so it might get a review, too.

I read some of Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard a few years back, and I really need to pick it up and finish it.

Books I plan to read and review:

• The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens - I heard an interview with Fiona Givens last year, and I was so impressed with her that I knew I had to read her book.
• Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg - This book seems to be a must-read for any woman with a professional career, and I really should have read it a long time ago.

So far, the list is heavy on business and social science with a dash of theology thrown in for good measure. What's missing are the books about physical science and psychology. Any recommendations?

Book Review - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

One of my new year's resolutions was to write 12 book reviews this year. The plan was to average one review per month, but as you can see, it's the end of March, and this is my first book review. I've been reading lots of books; I just haven't been writing about them. (I guess I'm still like my elementary and middle school self - the bookworm who didn't like writing book reports.)

My first review of the year is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. This book has taken the world by storm with its simple method of de-cluttering. Called the Kon-Mari method, the book advocates sorting belongings by category, holding each one individually, and deciding whether or not it "sparks joy". Readers are instructed to keep the joy inspiring items. Everything else should be thanked for its service and then bid goodbye.

I got the book because I had too much stuff. I had been carrying around boxes from move to move to move that somehow never got unpacked. I would often dream of my apartment catching on fire and burning to the ground to give myself a fresh start (while I and the cats were safely away and the blanket my late grandfather made for me somehow in the trunk of my car). When my apartment got flooded last year and half my belongings were destroyed, I was, very temporarily, annoyed that the flood didn't get the other half as well. Clearly, I had a problem, and it needed a solution.

Book Review - Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

I recently read the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. It's half cookbook, half memoir. Reese chronicles her efforts to make tons of food items from scratch after losing her job. She documented the cost of the homemade version, the cost of the store bought version, and how difficult or annoying it was to make the item herself. She chronicled both her successes and her failures.

I found the book to be both funny and useful. I especially liked her empirical approach to the issue. Since I'm saving up to buy a house, I don't want to waste money on things that are more trouble than they're worth. Plus, I'm not someone who finds great joy in cooking. I like to take on a big project now and then, and there are some things I find fun to do, but mostly I see cooking as a chore - something that I do simply because it needs to be done. I do, however, have a bit of a mad scientist streak, and this book appealed to that part of me.

Reese enjoys cooking way more than I do, so her calculation falls a little more to the "make" side of the equation than mine does. However, I was surprised by some of the things she said fell in the "buy" category. Burritos and jam both fell under "buy" for her. While I love a good taqueria burrito, they're not that hard to make at home. And homemade jam is far superior to anything at the store and costs about the same.

Several times throughout the book, I found myself surprised that anyone would think to make certain items homemade. There's a recipe for pop tarts, for example. I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to make ricotta cheese. I'm going to have to give it a try sometime. She has a marshmallow recipe that I want to try as soon as I can figure out what to use in place of the gelatin to vegetarianize it. (I'm thinking either pectin or agar-agar.)

I skipped most of the meat chapters, but I did start reading the one on chickens with the hope that I could find some egg recipes. But halfway through a rather graphic description of killing a rooster, I decided to skip the rest of that chapter, too.

In all, I recommend the book. There's something for the urban homesteader, the person who loves to cook, and the mad scientist.