Books

Because I’m constantly doing awesome things, I decided it’s only fair to share the wealth. Here’s a quick rundown of some things that made me happy last week:

Runkeeper’s Running for Fat Loss I’ve been pretty lazy for the last month or so when it comes to running. I have another 5k coming up in about three weeks, so I decided to get back into training a few weeks ago. I’ve used Runkeeper for my training over the last seven months, usually using the Beginner 5k workouts as my guide. I switched over to the Running for Fat Loss program to focus on maintaining a slower pace for a longer amount of time versus the widely varying (but, in my experience, highly effective) Beginner 5k workouts. I’ve seen great increases in my endurance and stamina. With time, I expect my speed to increase as well.

Call Me by Your Name Want to get swept away by a romance? Want to remember that feeling of a budding crush that drives you absolutely insane? Want to remember that excitement of the first skin-to-skin contact with your beloved? Want to remember falling in love in the most exquisite language? Then read Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman. I read this book over the weekend and promptly gave to it a friend to read because the poetry in the description was to beautiful to leave it to myself. It reminded me that falling in love isn’t something you make happen. It happens to you in a uniquely earth-shattering way. This is basically a novel-length musing on love and lust that takes place on the Italian riviera and it’s gorgeous because how could a novel whose setting is the Italian riviera not be beautiful?

Best read by Oshkosh's version of the Italian Riviera. This angle does capture the screaming children feeding the dirty gulls.

Best read by Oshkosh’s version of the Italian Riviera. Unfortunately, this angle doesn’t capture the screaming children feeding the dirty gulls.

Videogum’s Breaking Bad Recaps Not to belabor the point, but I really like Breaking Bad. I also really like humor. And when the two are combined, it’s like my wildest dreams coming true. Not be dramatic or anything. I first heard of Videogum from Stereogum, back in the days when I was a music snob and only listened to music produced by weirdos in New York basements. Videogum is great for topical and viral humor, as well as tv show recaps. I forgot about the site for a while, but when Breaking Bad came back, I remembered their hilarious recaps. I don’t want to give anything away, but they definitely called Todd an “obedient child-murderer who ruined our Jesse” in this one. New recaps are posted each Monday.

Child murderer. Straight up child murderer

Yesterday was a long day. I was busy all day at work with training, meetings, evaluations, and projects. I came home in one of those moods that just left me wanting to through my hands up and scoff. Not scoff and explain myself or complain, just keep raising my arms and scoffing, as if to tell the day to get up off my grill.

I put on sweatpants, poured a glass of wine, and joined my roommate to watch a mediocre romantic comedy before retreating to my bed around nine. I wanted to read and thought about continuing The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I had started over the weekend, but I decided against because it was on my Kindle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle, but I just couldn’t deal with it. All I needed printed words. A few years ago when I got my first e-reader (the Kindle 3G keyboard), I looked forward to reading on it, because it was truly an escape. In the middle of a Toni Morrison novel, it ceased to be an electronic device and became a book.

Then in October when I got my Kindle Fire HD, that sort of stopped. Instead, it became a tool to more effectively look at pictures like this on Pinterest:

Owning a Kindle went from being an intense and passionate literary experience to a disturbingly efficient pinning obsession. (If you follow me on Pinterest, you know that My “Lolz” board is the most well-developed. It doesn’t take much to entertain me, apparently.)

But last night I didn’t want cat memes. I didn’t want 27 ways to rethink my bed. I didn’t even want a recipe for peanut butter caramel ice cream bars. I just wanted a book. Turning to my stack, I realized how wonderful it was to have so few choices. Instead of having dozens of books, apps, and websites to choose from, I just had three books. And since I just wanted to remember the beauty of words, I reached for Joyce Carol Oates.

For about an hour, I remembered what it was like to read before I owned a Kindle: Smelling the air that escapes from the crack of the spine’s glue, appreciating the thickness of a roughly-cut page as it’s turned, finding the most comfortable way to hold the book (One hand? Two hands? Resting on a pillow?) While deciding whether to reach for a pencil to mark a passage or just dog-ear the lower corner, I told myself I need to do this more often.

I love the portability of my slow-growing Kindle library, but nothing will replace the satisfaction I get from holding a book.

I also don’t think I’ll ever lose that thrill I get from marking anything in a book – a holdover from being forbidden from writing in library books.

Thanks to Jennifer for the idea for this post! If there’s something you’d like me to write about let me know by stopping by the Everything is Blooming Facebook page, writing me a message, posting on the wall, and checking out some of my previous posts. And don’t worry, you’ll get a shout out if I end up using your idea.

This morning, Everything is Blooming hit 10,000 views. Thank you for reading! I love you!