Easy Go-ing

The beautiful thing about prepping your evening meals on the weekend and having early morning workouts, is the time after sunset can be completely devoted to reading.  You can sit on the sofa with your cup of tea while the wind bites and savor a few hours of quiet nothing.  It's a rather decadent start to the year.  Last night, I was determined to finish GG (which means I didn't quite my A game with my frozen garage door this morning but hey, there are always trade-offs).  

If you've ever felt a little twinge of regret about your selection of partners for a relationship, Gone Girl is a book for you.  You will no longer think twice about anyone who has earned a nickname gem.  You know you dodged a bullet with the Valentine's Day Crazy Cat Gun Guy but there were some figurative ones as well. The Werewolf, The Diva, The Rose Cop, and the Tropicana Screamer?  All relatively tame, when you're standing side by side with Amy and Nick.  Be grateful.  [Also, be glad that you vetted a few of these out while you still had your brick cell phone whose number you left behind just after the guy with a four word, eleven syllable name (who still made you reference the III).]

There were two noticeable shifts in the books; the first, about midway through, was my tipping point to finish.  I wanted to know what happened.  Thanks to all of you at the GBC who didn't give me any spoilers as I was six months behind you from last July's selection.  (I may however call you to review the ending!)  I think this book fits a summer read, a winter break, or a spring break read nicely.  Read it in chunks and take a big sigh of relief at your life choices.

Gone and the Wind

You've had an extremely busy day yet you managed to get a lamb and eggplant casserole in the oven.  You splurged for a very nice bottle of wine when picking up the groceries because it's your last for the next 30 days.  You have two book options waiting for you:  a literature classic and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  It's Saturday night...what do you do?

I opted for the novel with the same initials as my car.*  Over the course of the last day and a half, it has become one of those books where I've said to myself:, "I have four minutes, I can read a bit."  It's been a little while since I've stood over the electric kettle with a book in hand squeezing out a few more sentences.  GG is a title that has had a fair bit of press and lots of my friends have already read it.  I resisted it for that reason and until the kindle price dropped to the level where I could optimize my book budget for the month.   Now I'm devouring it like the chocolate cookies with nuts I did not anticipate I'd like either.  

Januaries can be so unexpected.  Hope your week is off to a brilliant (and warm) start.  

*Admittedly not sound logic, but it did sound more like a you-don't-have-a-date so read a fun book choice.

Ready Set Go

something about...

  running
      reading
        cleaning
  resolution-ing
      rebooting
        caffeinating
  reusing
      recycling
        creating
  writing
      riding
        contemplating

Following the Stars to a New Year

Little did I know that the next day after finishing Don't Go Where I Can't Follow a loved one would enter the hospital.  By the time I would arrive, the drawing of all the connections on page #74 was my reality (though I was spared 4 of the 9 attachments).  Prior to this time, I could not have described the feeling of helplessness and exhaustion that comes with sitting bedside.  I actually don't know that I could now, but the experience made me appreciate the book even more, and I have given considerable thought the last two weeks of the simple beauty of holding another's hand.

I had downloaded a few books in anticipation of a scheduled trip that had to be canceled.  During my visit, I started The Fault in Our Stars, not remembering the topic, and then about 30 pages in decided 1) it's not a good idea to read a story about life and cancer back to back and 2) if you need a good cry from your hold-it-together-hospital-day at night, read a story about life and cancer back to back.

But it's unfair to say the books can be lumped into three words "life and cancer".  There is an abundance of beauty around us and sometimes it takes a measure of pain to see more of it.  One of my favorite excerpts from The Fault in Our Stars was: "We made the story funny.  You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice."

If you asked me about my holiday, I would probably tell you about the crazy ambulance ride with the driver complaining about bad brakes while we listened to Black Sabbath or the nurse who got a sub for the IV because the last time she left a pool of blood in the patient's lap.  [I told her it was good she knew her strengths.]

Despite these moments of time standing still, life goes on and there's a weird sort of funny amazement in it.  To that end, here's to a year of discovering beauty and gratitude in unexpected places.