Chelsey Cosh's Blog: From Mind to Mouth - Posts Tagged "popsugar-reading-challenge"

Another year, another PopSugar Reading Challenge!

So far, I'm off to a solid start. Seeing as this challenge is the first for me since BookIt! Reading Club and the beckoning reward of a free personal pan pizza each month from the Hut, I feel a little rusty to the whole thing, but I figure the best way to stay accountable is by doing a monthly recap of my progress. I know I'm not alone in this regard, so it should come as no surprise to readers.

I saw nowhere that said I had to go through these challenge prompts in any particular order, so I've been checking them off somewhat randomly. Without further ado ...

Book #1: A book written by a comedian

I have read my fair share of books by comedians before, most recently Amy Poehler's Yes Please . I've also read Tina Fey's Bossypants and skimmed (but am yet to finish) both Rachel Dratch's Girl Walks into a Bar and Sarah Silverman's Bedwetter . There are countless others, but these are the ones of recent memory.

I wanted to go a little astray with this challenge and choose something that fits the prompt, but not in such an obvious way. However, I didn't want to wander so far that I hated the book and didn't want to complete the challenge, especially not on this first book.

Total disclosure: I love Parks and Recreation . That show brings me joy, but also taught me that being bright doesn't always mean being one-hundred percent confident. The show's protagonist, bubbly workaholic feminist Leslie Knope, a role performed authentically and spiritedly by Amy Poehler, made me realize that I am more like her than even I care to admit. For example, when Leslie gets that big promotion, she's terrified. What should be a moment of joy and triumph is actually a cause for panic. As someone who succumbs to anxiety more frequently than one should, I get that feeling.

Anyway, I love that show dearly and none of that digression matters one iota, other than the fact that any Parks and Rec fan knows that there's never been a character quite like Ron Swanson. I mean, he's the head of a government department with a strictly libertarian attitude toward government as a whole. The actor who portrays Ron is Nick Offerman and, after watching his stand-up on Netflix, American Ham , I figured Nick more than qualified as a comedian. He sure has given me quite a few hearty chuckles and his potty-mouthed serenading also provides a tickle. In fact, Nick decided to take to stand-up to spread his views, particularly the notion of paddling your own canoe.

That's why my first book for this challenge was Paddle Your Own Canoe , by Nick Offerman. Tired of being misconstrued as identical to his Parks and Rec character, Offerman espouses his central values via his book. Sure, the essence of the Ron Swanson character is subtly present and obviously imbued with a little bit of Nick, such as his love of red meat, his carpentry skills, and his belief in self-sufficiency with a toolbox in hand. In the end, Paddle Your Own Canoe is Nick's uniquely whittled tale. By combining his life lessons with a walk through his own experiences from childhood to the Hollywood Hills, Paddle Your Own Canoe is an interesting way to show both a man's values alongside where he came from.

Sure, it's not going to radically change your life, unless you're into woodworking or Chicago theatre productions, but it is an interesting glimpse at how the other half live, and I don't just mean the rich and famous. I enjoyed it a lot and loved seeing those points of convergence between Nick and Ron just as much as those elements of Nick that distinguished himself from that incorrigible Ron Swanson!


Book #2: A New York Times bestseller

This was an easy pick. I use my library frequently and this book fell right into my hands the second I needed something for this prompt. I read her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? , and enjoyed it. It was a fun read, a light and fluffy one, and I devoured it in a couple of days, so when I received the follow-up, I was more than pleased.

I expected Mindy Kaling's Why Not Me? to be more of the same. What I received had that same signature style, but with the maturity gathered from a woman in her thirties. The book spoke more from the heart than ever before. I was touched at moments, empowered at others, and almost cried when I read the list of terrifying thoughts that keep Mindy up at night. I have held some of those same thoughts in the seconds before drifting off to sleep, the kind she describes as the thoughts that soak your sheets with sweat, and Mindy humanizes herself here. I don't think I'm alone in wondering the same thoughts as her, thoughts like whether or not you'll forget the sound of a parent's voice after they've passed away.

Mindy also takes a moment to address how far she's come, how she knows she has lucked out to a certain extent, but that the luck would have run out if she didn't apply a strong work ethic to the tasks placed in front of her. She knows that she started off as a ball of nervous energy, certain that she was in the wrong place and that she wasn't up to snuff. Mindy Kaling is neither Kelly Kapoor nor Mindy Lahiri. She realized that the only way you can feel like you deserve something is to earn it. It's okay to want more for yourself, but you have to be willing to put the hard work in to get it.

In summation, Mindy returns to the idea that, no matter what walk of life, we are all human and we're always going to feel a little bit like a fraud. That's because we're all works in progress, or a "Mindy Project", if you will. So take a step in the right direction.

Book #3: A book from the library

This challenge prompt encouraged me to go the extra mile. I didn't just borrow this book from the library; I use my library religiously, so in my particular case, this prompt didn't feel like quite enough to constitute a "challenge" in the strictest sense of the word. To boost this particular challenge, I decided to get a book through an interlibrary loan, thus enlisting two libraries: my local library who submitted the request and the library who owns the book and is lending it to me. Yes, I realize the irony that I chose a book that basically spits in the face of libraries albeit the spitting is done in friendly jest. I chose Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America .

I know, I know -- two Parks and Rec books in one month! I brazenly provided a buffer of a single book. For that, I can only say that I can safely say that this will be the last book written by a cast member from said TV program. (Although, I have been eyeing up both Modern Romance and Gumption ...)

How could I not read this book, though, after that extra effort? I won't make any more apologies. After all, what other book starts with a full-page dedication, the kind you'd expect the character Leslie Knope to write, that thanks "every living creature in the universe except turtles, whom I find condescending"? That is some Pawneean wisdom there. Viewers of the show subscribed to the town's craziness as much as its inhabitants and witnessed the detail that went into the town. You already know about J.J.'s Diner. You already know about the Sweetums factory, "Pawnee's answer t Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, minus the orange dwarves and child abuse." Don't forget the Wamapoke Casino, Li'l Sebastian Memorial, and Kernston's Rubber Nipple Factory!

Yes, Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America offers a proper tour of this town, a love letter to fans of the show who have immersed themselves so much in every episode that the setting itself feels real. You'll taste the local flavour and love the warts-and-all world described therein.

Perhaps growing up in a small town added to my appreciation. I get the pride a community can have in something as simple and unimpressive as a stop sign. I may not be a citizen of that little fissure-laden pin on the Indiana state map, but I see the beauty of a town that is "first in friendship, fourth in obesity." I'm from that place.


Book #4: A self-improvement book

Picking a self-improvement book was a little tricky. I wasn't about to reach a book on how men were from Mars or how to get over my divorce -- none of that applied to me and certainly didn't interest me. I was debating on whether I wanted to know what colour my parachute was.

Then, epiphany hit. Bear with me, folks, because, of this challenge so far, this book has had the most impact.

Let's go back to 2015. Late in the year, I watched Australian actor Damon Gameau's popular documentary film, That Sugar Film . I was so entranced by what I learned that I immediately wanted to take action. I began researching sugar like a mad child and, finally, made the call. For December 2015 and January 2016, I reduced my sugar consumption to the absolute minimum. That's right; all through Christmas, I was sugar-free. Don't cry for me yet, Argentina; I ate my fair share of vegan chips made from ground blue corn. My significant other went along on the ride with me and we found that the body and the mind really does change. In my experience, it's not so radical as described because your body gradually adjusts and it seems almost imperceptible. Yes, seeing a birthday cake on a TV screen still makes me drool for a second or two, but I honestly wouldn't want a slice if it was offered. I've poured fruit juice and soda for others and smelled its aroma as the fruitiness dispersed into the air or the fizz spritzed out the lid as the bubbles popped on the surface... and I felt nothing. Not at first, but with time, sugar lost its hold on me, the grasp weakening with every sip of water and, occasionally, Perrier. I handed After Eights to my mother and, still, with my self-proclaimed weakness to that delicious dairy delight, I moved past it unscathed. Instead, I eat meat and cheese guilt-free and feel happier for it.

I did that because of a movie. Naturally, curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to know more to improve my well-being. That's why I sought out Damon Gameau's That Sugar Book , which Damon proclaims is a companion guide to reinforce and supplement the information provided by the film. It's true that there is a great deal of overlap, but I still benefited from the additional tidbits here and there. In fact, I wished I had read it earlier because the third part of the book (the book is divided into four sections: the experiment; the science; the recovery; and , for those struggling in the kitchen, some recipes) would have guided me better out of the sugar cesspool. Once you make the decision to reduce or remove added and refined sugars from your diet, the "how" is still a serious hurdle. My significant other slept through half of the first weekend, going through withdrawal from the caffeine-sugar combo he was used to chugging back three or four times a day. It's hard as hell to do it, but it is so worth it. As the author Damon Gameau himself writes, "Many would argue that they eat sugar all the time and they are fine, but how many of them have experienced what they are like without sugar? I suspect very few, given how early we begin our consumption and how prevalent sugar is in our food supply." That's one of the most startling realizations about the experiment Gameau underwent. He never permitted himself to consume ice cream or candy or soda or chocolate bars or any of that stuff we instantly know is bad for us. No, he ate the average daily amount of sugar consumed by Australians through allegedly healthy food, like cereal or juice or low-fat yogurt. I advocate everyone who cares about living to read That Sugar Book. That may sound hyperbolic, but if you want to actually avoid killing yourself slowly and damaging your precious body (you only get one!), it is essential to know how food works. For those who want the abridged, bite-size, Coles-Notes version, then absolutely watch the film instead.

And it's not just your weight, if that's what you're thinking. Your body is taking a beating, sure, but sugar is an addictive substance that messes up your appetite, your brain, your liver (Oh, how it screws with your poor liver!), your blood, and your youthful looks. It puts a dent in your body's defence system.

If you're waiting for the world to change, you're going to be waiting awhile. As Mahatma Gandhi said, you have to be the change you want to see in the world. Companies who care about profits have worked on finding that "bliss point" where you keep coming back; it's really no different than cigarettes. (In fact, fifteen percent of a cigarette is sugar.) Big businesses fight nutritional scientists and their research and will pull funding if they don't get the answer they want. If you've been under the belief that somehow boxed cereal is part of a complete breakfast or that soda is okay in moderation, then this book will explain how it's virtually impossible to drink soda in moderation. One look at what dentists call "Mountain Dew mouth" should point you in the right direction.

We need to get together and opt out. As nutritionist David Wolfe once said, "None of us is as smart as all of us." Every person in my life had an eyeroll or a snarky remark when I said I was cutting out the sugar. Some got furious. I can't imagine how my eating habits affect them in the slightest, but they were nonetheless frustrated with me. Damon addresses this phenomenon in his book, but not his film. I wish I had known, so I could prepare for the backlash. My significant other thankfully jumped on board, so I wasn't alone. In That Sugar Book, Gameau writes, "People may scoff now if you remove sugar but it is only because they don't understand. And remember that sugar is very addictive so some people will not go down without a fight. They will defend their addiction to the end because it is like a friend or a lover to them." I don't want sugar to be my lover.

I understand trepidation. I was scared, too, but you're stronger than you know. If you're really hesitant but still want to do something, then at least cut the sugary drinks. Just stop consuming soft drinks; fruit juices; energy drinks; flavoured waters; flavoured waters (FYI: squeezing lemon into water does not count as flavoured water); sports drinks; flavoured milks; and tea, coffee, or lattes with sugar. If you want to go further, then I recommend the book. Eating every two hours during that detox is a great tip I learned long after the fact, so while the movie is the starting point, the book shows the path to take.

Don't say goodbye to your treats because sugar is not a reward; it's a punishment. Say hello to a better life in every conceivable way. I don't know about you, but if a "treat" was going to increase my chances of cancer, kidney failure, and Alzheimer's, I'd say no thank you.

Now, can someone please help me off this soapbox? I have some reading to do.

Here I go again, tangentially reading. I've come to the conclusion that I have no problem reading a certain amount of books; my problem lies in sticking to PopSugar's official list for this year. I can't help myself from digressing from the list of prompts.

This month, I started reading Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self . (This book came to my attention after being mentioned on a special edition of the Canadian panel talk show The Talk in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked that it was the book his father gave him in an attempt to teach him about mental illness.) The book seemed a little dry and old, bearing in mind that it all stemmed from a psychoanalysis journal from the seventies.
The one thing I did learn from it that was worth mentioning is the idea of grandiosity and depression as two sides of the same coin; for example, someone who relies upon love by being an achievement-oriented personality is beloved for what they're doing, not who they are, and if eventually they hit upon an area where they are not the cream of the crop (something bound to happen at some point), they will become completely deflated and feel unloved because of this single failure, which could trigger depression. This information wasn't new to me, but it did offer an explanation as to why. As a young child, I was tested and declared officially by the school board as "gifted and talented", so I found this particular section interesting.

Okay, fine, I admit it. That wasn't my only foray away from the beautifully cleared garden path into the wild woods completely unsanctioned by PopSugar. I read Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers . Yes, another Parks and Rec book. Ron Swans-- I mean, Nick Offerman writes about a list of great Americans in this anthology of profiles. You've got your usual types, like former presidents George Washington and James Madison, but you also have some unique and interesting choices, like Conan O'Brien, Yoko Ono, Carol Burnett, Willie Nelson, and Michael Pollan. It's equally great to read this book from start to finish as it is to skim from profile to profile. I learned some details about how these great Americans sometimes weren't so great; it's definitely a fair assessment of each one, as unbiased and objective as possible. That's what makes Gumption stand out for me. I'd definitely recommend it.

That being said, we're here to discuss the PopSugar Reading Challenge. And I have definitely done better than February, but not quite as good as January for this third month. Feeling a sense of the first quarter passing me by, I found it easier to shift into high gear. The prompts themselves even motivated me to fly forward through my own procrastination and distraction (non-related books or otherwise).

Book #6: A book that's under 150 pages

Originally, this was going to be my book that I could read in one day. After all, it is basically a children's book. My slow reading got in the way, though, taking me three days to chip away at this itty-bitty literary gem. Yes, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince is a classic and now I know why.

Quite remarkably, The Little Prince explains its own significance. In chapter fourteen, the little prince waxes on about how beautiful the desert is, even as they are in search of water, and explains that part of its beauty is that a well is hidden somewhere there, like buried treasure. Our protagonist takes in his words and realizes that this idea can be applied in a more universal way, that "what makes them beautiful is invisible." The narrator believes that physical, tangible things, the kind of things boasted and shoved upon us by a material world, are often mere shells with no value unless we assign it value. Simply put, "what's most important is invisible..."

It's the love we feel, the laughter we hear, and the connections we form in our heart that transcend the physical object. These are the things worth protecting. It's worth quoting the secret that the fox tells us after the little prince tames him: "It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

I also found it interesting how life mirrors art. The author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a pilot who crashed in the Libyan desert and had to travel three days in search of help, very much like the narrator in The Little Prince. The parallels don't stop there, though. The narrator talks about how he once had a love for art, but grown-ups stifled his creativity and he moved away from it. Antoine, of course, enrolled in the art school L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in his younger years, something he gave up when the war started. (That's when he became a pilot.) In a strange turn of fate, after Antoine sustained an injury, he was supposedly forbidden to fly, but nonetheless, he insisted on being given some sort of flying duty. So, in 1944, Antoine set out from Borgo, Corsica, as part of the French air squadron, tasked to fly over Nazi-occupied France.

And no one ever saw him again.

Antoine wrote The Little Prince in 1943 and vanished into the stars (just like the little prince) in 1944. Spooky.

On a more brutal note, there is also a tale of euthanasia here. Certainly, that's not explicitly communicated and perhaps it was never even the author's intent, but, by the end of the tale, I could sense a glimmer of it -- that message in support of dying on your own terms through mercy killing. Oh, I don't want to give too much away, in case some people haven't been lucky enough to discover this brief tale of love and loss. I think I'll zip my lip from hereon.


Book #7: An autobiography

Spanning from her highly unstructured years of home-schooling to her awkward thrust-upon-her-by-chance music college years to her final rise to Internet stardom (and the fallout), Felicia Day wrote her life story, You're Never Weird on the Internet , in the same style for which she is known.

For anyone who doesn't know Felicia Day, it would be worth the time to check her out, either through her Geek and Sundry videos or even her popular Goodreads page.

As someone with a bit of a Type A personality myself, I related to all the micromanaging quirks. In fact, one of the most important chapters (although it wasn't my favourite) was called "The Deletion of Myself" and dealt with stepping back and saying, "No," instead of reaching for every opportunity. In Felicia's case, diving into so much so often had extremely negative consequences, putting her health at risk.

My father has anxiety and depression, so I understand the reluctance to view mental illness as a disease that you need help to fix. That's why page 228 resonated with me: "Imagine saying to someone, 'I have a kidney problem, and I'm having a lot of bad days lately.' Nothing but sympathy, right? [...] Then pretend to say, 'I have severe depression and anxiety, and I'm having a lot of bad days lately.' They just look at you like you're broken, right? Unfixable. Inherently flawed. Maybe not someone they want to hang around as much? Yeah, society sucks."

And she's right. People step back and treat you like you're patient zero when it's mental illness. There's no sympathy for your disease when you can't see it reflected back at them as a terrible rash or an iffy number in a blood test. Either people drop you like a hot potato or they think they can fix you with a knock-knock joke. In my father's experience, you need help and support and even medicine, but you also have to learn to fix yourself. It's hard. No question about it, it's an uphill battle. But it's doable.

Felicia's message ultimately is one of encouragement, for all kinds of people. I think I can sum up her book in this little nutshell from page 232: "You need to be able to feel proud of yourself even if you were living in a tiny hut in the middle of nowhere, taking care of goats. You are unique and good enough JUST AS YOU ARE. As a theoretical goat herder."


Book #8: A book you can finish in a day

I tried reading Ethan Frome , but the clock hit midnight and -- poof! -- the book didn't meet the requirement of this prompt. Sure, it is possible that I could have finished it in a day, but I didn't; if I'm going to do this challenge, I'm going to do it right. So, instead, I moved on to Maria Shriver's Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into the Real World .

I read Shriver's book in the span of a few hours. Based on Shriver's commencement speech at Holy Cross, this book doles out little pearls of wisdom that she has gained throughout her life. These pieces of advice are trite, sure, but they are said so often because they are true.

One of her lessons is that "no job is beneath you." She reminds the reader that "starting at the bottom is not about humiliation. It's about humility--a realistic assessment of where you are in the learning curve." Maria details her ill-fated attempts to do the sound on a news program, only to discover that she was utterly incompetent in that regard. Once removed from that, she was able to do field reporting entirely (instead of balancing that with sound). By starting at the bottom, she ended up learning everything there was to know about reporting, which was her true love. She also learned that not only did she not like working with sound equipment, but that she was dreadful at it. Only way to do that was to start by working at the bottom.

To be fair, most of us don't consider working at a news station a lowly job, but there is some truth in that you can learn something everywhere, even if the lesson you learn is that you don't want or cannot do what you're doing at that job. The only way to be certain of that is by doing it.

... which brings me to another piece of advice Maria gives so generously: "Failing is part of learning." We've all heard this one before, so it comes as no surprise. I do like that Maria recognized that college grads do not have that in their brains. They're hardwired to succeed and be whatever they want to be. They believe every inspirational quote that's been thrown at them. There's no problem with believing in yourself; it's admirable and should be encouraged.

But reality sets in and then you're left feeling disappointed that you're not winning awards for just showing up. This naive outlook is extremely common and, when those dreams aren't fulfilled, it can lead to those depressed feelings I mentioned before from Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self . (See? Sometimes it's good that I veer off of the reading challenge. I may just learn something!)

As Maria puts it, "the hidden message was this: If you fail, shame on you. Well, that's not true."

Even more importantly, she recognizes that work should not be your one and only goal because it won't keep you warm at night. She learned to "quit identifying [her]self through [her] career." You should live all aspects of your life.

... which brings me to yet another gem! "Superwoman is dead . . . and Superman may be taking Viagra." That is how Maria puts it. A little abstract, but the gist is that absolutely nobody can do it all. They cannot be Martha Stewart in the home and kitchen, Jenna Jameson in the bedroom, and Barbara Walters (or whomever fits your field of work) in the office. It is absolutely delusional to think that you can do it all ... right now. You can do it all, sure, but "life is a marathon," as Maria says, and that means that you can do all of those things and more over the course of a lifetime. You can be June Cleaver with your baby for some time, but then you'll have to skip the PTA if you want to be CEO. There's a time for everything and something will always have to give. Do not beat yourself up about it and absolutely do not compare yourself to others. Their priorities are not your priorities; their resources are not your resources. You do what you can with what you have and you never try to match up with anything else around you.

I have been lucky enough to have a good mother who instilled those lessons at an early age. I grew up in a neighbourhood with supremely wealthy folk. I don't think we were in the same tax bracket (but then again, what do I know? Sometimes people foolishly live beyond their means -- another thing I've learned) and yet I never felt less than them because I never compared my experiences and my goals and my worth to anything anyone had around me. The reality is that they are not me. I never played that game.

This game starts young. I can recall vividly how frequently comparisons are made in university, high school, and even elementary school. There is always an air of ridiculous competition. When everyone in my class wanted to know my mark, I didn't want to say it aloud. I didn't want to: a) compare myself to others because, but also, b) give others a reason to compare themselves to me. It may sound arrogant, but I'm just trying to report the facts: I did exceptionally well in school. Anything -- and I do mean anything -- that was thrown at me, I was able to excel at, which left a lot of my peers feeling less-than. That was never my intention. I was just being the best me I could be, but I always felt a little bit bad about it. It's unfortunate, but I have realized since then that it was them comparing themselves to me and I never gave them reason to do so. I almost always encouraged those around me. I was not them and they were not me, and I certainly never asked them to be.

And now, I'm full grown, and most, if not all, of that school pressure has dissipated. Other pressures enter your life, but if you're lucky, you've learned how to deal with them. Sure, I wrote a few books and I'm getting married this June, but that doesn't make me any better or worse than anyone else. I know many unmarried people younger than me who don't work but who have one or two or more children and that has been their priority, not mine. It takes all types to make the world go 'round; it sounds condescending, yes, but it is absolutely not. My mother and Maria Shriver both made it perfectly clear that comparisons are lethal and helpful to no one. The goal is simply to grow you, not you in relation to everyone around you.

The hardest part of this piece of advice (or any advice, really) is internalizing it. It can all feel hippy-dippy and nice but unrealistic, but if you engrain it into your being and live your life in line with it, then it just becomes the truth of your existence. Eventually, the little voice in the back of your head doesn't have to tell yourself to be this way or don't be that way. You just live your life that way, in accordance with those values.

Oh, one last gem: Be smart with your finances. It doesn't matter what you make; you should know where your money is and what you're doing with it, or rather, what it's doing for you. (Again, I've lived my life this way for so long, starting with my first safe at the age of four, that this way of life has just become automatic. But you can always learn more. And I do.)

Maria did say other things in this itty-bitty book, but I only mentioned what I found the most interesting. I bet you if you read it, you'd find something completely different worth quoting.

To be fair, this book was very short. That's why I chose to read it; it only took a few hours. I feel that, given more time and more pages, Maria could have written you a very detailed template-style manual for your life. That's just the kind of woman she is.

The only things I didn't like about her book is that some of her comments, especially regarding her husband, feel painful now. Written far before scandal hit her marriage, there was no way for her to know what was coming to her and what was going on behind her back. I can't blame her for not being psychic, but I also cannot deny that these sections of the book made me a touch squirmish.


So that was this month in reading. I read a great deal, but only three books qualified for the reading challenge. C'est la vie.

Next month could be interesting. I've been skimming the prompts again and have found "a murder mystery" particularly icky. In general, I don't like the murder mystery genre. Whodunnits and detectives and crime stories make me snore. However, I love books like Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . In fact, The Millennium Trilogy are possibly my favourite books ever, owing largely to the iconic titular character, Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately for this challenge, I've read all of that series already. I know Gillian Flynn has penned a few more books, but I'm not sure if they're murder mysteries and I don't want to do too much research for fear of spoilers. So, here lies my conundrum. What murder mystery should I read? Send me your suggestions!

June was a busy month. Not only did I have family over for my wedding, but -- hello! -- I got married. I had a wedding in two parts: an intimate ceremony and dinner with family, and then, a few weeks later, a reception with DJ and dinner for more family and friends. So, a busy bee I have been.

I tried to read, but nothing came to fruition. I did chip away at it, though, so as not to fall too far behind. I really tried to get back in stride for July.

This is what I managed to muster this month.


Book #22: A book set in your hometown

There's something to be said about this whole graphic novel thing. After reading Umbrella Academy a little over a month ago, I wanted to read another graphic novel. And considering how difficult it is to find a book actually set within the confines of the townlines where I reside, I knew I was going to have to be flexible.

So, with this prompt, I figured anything even in the vicinity of Toronto was close enough. I was a little shy about reading Margaret Atwood, considering that my high school literature teacher who would and could read just about anything absolutely despised Atwood. I do intend to read The Edible Woman , but not today. In lieu of that, I went for something unique: the story of a Japanese-Canadian attending an all-girls Catholic school. Going in, I knew nothing about Skim except that its reception was very positive. I also knew the authors were cousins: one wrote the story, the other illustrated.

Skim is about Kim Cameron, nicknamed Skim; she's a depressed, lonely, and confused teenage girl. Her "friend" Lisa is moody and exploitative and self-centered. Lisa gives meaning to the phrase, "Who needs enemies with friends like these?" Like I said, Skim attends an all-girls' Catholic school. There, the girls are catty and dismissive, especially the self-important Julie Peters and her lemming-like friends, all of which treat Skim cruelly or don't notice her at all. Isolated in their own little private-school sphere, these spoiled girls in their clique-y world bounce off each other, creating conflicts that need not exist or campaigning for causes they don't really care about, just for something to do. These are your stereotypical mean girls and very hypocritical ones at that; they preach kindness and compassion as they're sharpening their claws. We all know the type. (And if you don't, it was probably you.)

Not everyone gets to go to private school, like Skim does, but her story has a very universal quality. The experience Skim has seems very genuine, very true, as if either one or both of the authors went through this mill themselves. I know that, for many, that is how teenage life feels. In an effort to survive, Skim turns rather unsuccessfully to Wiccanism. She has no outlet. She writes in her diary. She is struggling to figure things out. She falls in love and makes what could have been a serious error -- a crime, in fact. However, in the end, Skim eliminates some of the darkness from her life and finds someone a little more like her -- not a lover, but a real friend. And I don't think this book is filled with any lessons or happy endings, but it doesn't have a sad ending either. If anything, there is a modicum of hope for Skim yet. And that's happy enough for me.


Book #23: A book about a road trip

Boy, did I take my sweet time reading this one.

I started reading this book at the beginning of June. Then, as aforementioned, my family visited from England for six weeks.

So, needless to say, I put down Paper Towns until July. It was trickier to get back into it with such a long break in between. I was about 100 pages in already and I wasn't keen on rereading them. It came back to me fairly quickly, but I had lost the mood I had back in June. The tone had changed, at first almost imperceptible, but once realized, still ineffable.

I can see why my sister calls this book her "least favourite John Green." It is by no means a bad book; please don't misconstrue my lower preference for it as a negative criticism for the writing. The thing is, the plot is largely lacking. It has all the makings of a mystery with no get-up-and-go to actually investigate. So much time is spent in the earlier chapters of this novel with an adolescent protagonist whining about life and obsessing about his missing sort-of-friend without straining himself too much to actually do much about it. It reminds me a lot of the rantings of Holden Caulfield. For that reason, you lose interest before the real action starts on page 243. That's right; the road trip doesn't start until page 243. The book barely scratches the 300-page mark. After that, we get an hour-by-hour rundown of travelling up the East Coast in a minivan. And I won't go any further because, if you do happen to want to read it, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Yes, I saw the film first again, but, unlike with The Fault in Our Stars , that experience had no effect on my enjoyment of this book. Paper Towns is not a teenage fairy tale. It is a journey, both literal and metaphorical, about impressions, expectations, and the breaking of those illusions by truly knowing a person. People are windows, in essence, but we cloud them up and use them as mirrors instead. Ultimately, this novel teaches us a lesson in empathy, realizing that everyone has emotions and is struggling with something and that people live their lives not to feed into some caricature painted by outsiders but to fulfill the needs of one's self and loved ones.

So, while it may be impossible to walk in someone else's shoes, there is something noble in the attempt. And while it's not my favourite John Green novel because of the ambling pace combined with the hecticness of the constantly shifting narrative, I still appreciate the hamfisted delivery of its message.


Book #24: A dystopian novel

I get that Fahrenheit 451 is a cautionary tale about censorship. Oh, boy, I couldn't not get that; without an ounce of subtlety, Bradbury whacks you over the head repeatedly with that message. I also understand that we as readers should empathize with the plight of poor Guy Montag whose eyes have just been opened and whose mind has been blown by the capacity to think freely. But I don't pity him at all; frankly, I don't care for the guy. With its writing style that, to me, is too reminiscent of the ramblings of a madman rife with paranoia (Montag, not Bradbury), I found it incredibly hard to get absorbed in this tale of a dystopian future in which the population indulges in a hedonistic lifestyle prescribed by conformity-loving social authorities that tell you what to think and constantly placate you into feeling good by never really feeling anything at all.

It's an interesting concept; it’s what drew me in in the first place. And the idea of firefighters burning books is genius because Bradbury automatically has his audience, readers, on his side without much need for persuasion.

However, I cannot get behind the execution of this story. Everything seems so drawn out and tedious. Instead of cheering Montag on, I grew to hate him, not because of his actions but because of his babble. Regardless, Fahrenheit 451 sparked the ideas for so many other stories, so for that alone, I am grateful.



I still have a few books that I took a huge chunk out of this month, but those will have to wait because, with a chapter or two left to read, they are still pending completion. We won't even touch on the various books that didn't fit this challenge that I read anyway. I read a book on cognitive behavioral therapy (because I'm boring); Neil Gaiman's book of speeches, articles, and other non-fiction writings, The View from the Cheap Seats ; my husband's favourite Goosebumps volume, The Beast from the East , which is evidence that I am regressing into an eleven-year-old child; and a fairly dense Chuck Klosterman anthology (which included a handful of articles that I read years ago when I borrowed my friend's copy of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs in high school.

So, yeah, I can't be contained to the list. I should stop fighting it.

Still, I managed to get through a fair share, enough to make it less horrific that I didn't read at all in June.

Next month, I hope to conquer what I have still in progress, which includes a book from Oprah's book club, a book that's set in summertime, a National Book Award winner, and a book set in Europe, as well as tackling a book at least 100 years older than me and a book with a protagonist who has my occupation.

Until then, happy reading!

August is a good month for family. My mother and sister both celebrated their birthdays (and then, today happens to be my birthday, but that's September, so that's a story for next time). My parents celebrated their wedding anniversary in August (31 years and counting). And with the bright sunny days, we all just want to hang out on the patio together and eat barbecue. Life is good. So, what did I do? Bury my nose in a book. In fact, I buried my nose in a lot of them.

This reading challenge is going to give me a Vitamin D deficiency.


Book #25: A book that's set in summertime

For this prompt, I went to a classic: A Midsummer Night's Dream . I mean, "summer" is in the title, so I can't be wrong.

This is the second of Shakespeare's comedies that I have read. (Although I was given a copy of Much Ado About Nothing by my special education resource teacher as a child, I never got around to reading it and instead read The Tempest first as part of my high school syllabus.) As far as Shakespearean comedies go, it's not my favourite (The Tempest, by default, is); Midsummer seems too much about the folly of love and doesn't say too much here or there about anything, really. Everything's just done for shits and giggles. I appreciated The Tempest's motivations behind its actions and, frankly, I'd rather read any of Shakespeare's tragedies over his comedies. Still, if I can deduce anything from Midsummer, then the principal point is that true love and happiness are made-up, a fallacy concocted up from magic and trickery. So, the happy ending and marital bliss and all the joyous laughter are merely . . . nothing? Ultimately, I don't know and I don't care. The sourness of that message, as that is all I can extract from what is ultimately a huge farce, is far more pessimistic than anything in the tragic downfalls of King Lear, Othello and Desdemona, Romeo and Juliet, or any of the like. Sorry, Willy, this one's just not for me.


Book #26: A book from Oprah's Book Club

When I was a kid (because, during her heyday, I certainly was a young 'un), I loved Oprah. She was this magical entity of smiles and giggles. She did some very serious episodes, which at the time I didn't fully understand, but for the most part, it was animals, information, celebrities, and laughs. And, as it turns out, books. I loved to read as a kid, so you would have thought I would have been much more aware of her book club.

That was not the case. I only really took note in light of the James Frey incident. I bought his book because of Oprah, further evidence of the Oprah effect. I was shocked when I found out that some of this so-called true story was, in fact, fabricated. Now, I feel like that's not such a big deal, considering it doesn't make the story and the experience it conveys any less true in theory. For the same reason, I feel that the Orange is the New Black television program, which has veered far from the original source material, Piper Kerman's memoir of the same name, is still true. Now, the names may be different, the locations, and any other number of details, but the experiences are much the same and the injustices even more so. The essence is real, and sometimes that's good enough.

But that's neither here nor there.

The point is, I didn't know a great deal about Oprah's book club until her show was off the air. I had read White Oleander not because Miz Winfrey had declared it so, but rather simply because I wanted to. It wasn't until later that I noticed her stamp of approval on the cover.

So, I had nothing in mind and had to look up a list for this prompt. I was oscillating between Paradise and the book I eventually chose. I determined that, considering its popularity, I would most certainly read Paradise in the future. It would not disappear like a faded memory from the public conscious, so I went with Option B.

I had never heard of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day . Written by Pearl Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy tells the story of Ava Johnson, a successful Atlanta stylist, recently diagnosed with HIV, who returns home to Michigan to spend some time with her sister before leaving for San Francisco. She slowly gets wrapped up in the details of her sister's life until she finds not one but many reasons to stay put. But can she really live her life there? Or is she just being delusional? Coping with the shock of an incurable illness must be terrifying, but, while Ava does address her fears surrounding her diagnosis and the social stigma she faces now, the book mostly skims past all of the darkness and depression and god-knows-what-else that one would probably succumb to after that, trading it all in for Ava's composure and strength. As nice as it is to have a poised protagonist, that part feels less than realistic.

Otherwise, I absolutely freaking loved this novel. Pearl Cleage writes so well in Ava's voice, an ongoing trickle of thoughts that never feel contrived or constructed. Everything feels natural and respects the character's best and worst parts without sugarcoating or demonizing. She thinks what she thinks, completely uninhibited. She doesn't act on every thought. That's what makes her real. We sometimes have fleeting flashes of darkness, happiness, idiocy, prejudice, and everything else under the sun. We, as humankind, only act on a very small fraction of those ideas.

Lastly, I found Ava's quest for self-improvement inspiring. I'm sure Oprah did, too, and that's why Pearl Cleage's book landed itself a coveted spot on her Book Club list. Forever canonized as Lady O's lit of choice, I am glad that this novel got some attention -- not just by the world but by me. It was a fun experience to read and I am glad I found it.


Book #27: A book set in Europe

This is my favourite book so far. (It gets the edge on Sharp Objects, a vastly different novel.) It more than fulfilled its prompt as a book set in Europe with discussion of places like Italy, Greece, and Iceland, and settings like Switzerland, England (currently the country most on Europe's bad side), and a cafe in Le Marais and other parts of Paris. That book was Me Before You .

If I cried once, I cried a dozen times. Although I'm sure Me Before You is categorized as a romance novel, that's dealing with it in far too basic terms.

For one, it has a greater depth of subject matter than your average generic bodice ripper. There's an intense heaviness there you can't shake nor can you find in a Harlequin paperback. It transcends the genre in that way, but author Jojo Moyes is the real reason why Me Before You is so damn spectacular.

Her writing style rubs us raw and holds the bare skin to the flame. We feel it. We don't want it to hurt, but it does. We're invested despite ourselves.

In one of the more tearful moments, I concluded that Louisa Clark, the fictional protagonist, must be speaking to me. I couldn't stop flipping the pages, hearing the next thing and the next thing. Louisa’s voice (really, Jojo Moyes’s voice) beckons. Having experienced some of the same things this character has, I felt a closeness to her that I haven't felt since Lisbeth Salander (for the record, anything I might have in common with Lisbeth doesn't make me even remotely similar to her). In ways I like and in a few ways I don't (I too can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless), I am like Louisa. Her story is ridiculously unique and individual and yet, in its tenderest moments, it engages everyone with the ubiquity of its emotion.

I absolutely loved this book and I don't think I'm alone in my fascination with it. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Me Before You.


And that is it for August. A mere count of three for this month seems too small in my mind, though. Fingers crossed I can make some serious headway sooner rather than later. I am not looking forward to reading a 600-plus-page chunkster, but this is what the PopSugar gods have decreed. This challenge is, like, totally hard, guys.

Until then, happy reading!

The last week of September is typically celebrated by the ALA as Banned Books Week, in which readers exercise their right to read whatever they please, free from censorship. As someone who wholeheartedly supports freedom of expression, I really felt the need to mark this occasion. I already read Animal Farm this year, which is still banned in North Korea and has been banned, at some point, in the UAE and in many communist countries. As a child, I read many banned books, including Green Eggs and Ham , And Tango Makes Three , and the entire Harry Potter series. In fact, when I tried to put on a school play for The Philosopher's Stone, I faced a huge amount of censorship. While my music teacher wholly supported our endeavours as little 'uns running around, putting on a show, painting cardboard for sets and scrambling to come up with costumes while one of us learned to play the film score on piano, our principal waited until the day before the big event to tear down our beautifully hand-painted posters for the play clear off of the school walls and throw them in the trash. It was, for two seconds, heartbreaking. And then I was pissed. I still remember how furious that asshole of a principal made me feel to this day.

So, needless to say, I don't like the idea of censoring children. If children aren't ready for something, they often can decide for themselves. That's why they close their eyes and look away when they're not ready. They put down the books they're not ready to read yet. You don't need to legislate or rip apart a library.

And it's really counterproductive because, in the end, kids are most intrigued by the things they're told they can't have. "You can't read that" sparks a desire for a book that wasn't even on their radar. So, joke's on you, censorship.

Like I said, this month, I needed to read something to mark this occasion. Book #28 was my nod to freedom, in more ways than one.

So, let's begin.



Book #28: A book translated to English

I started this prompt by reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist , which would've marked the second book that I read with a protagonist named Santiago, the first being The Old Man and the Sea. However, my interest waned pretty hard with that one, despite its meagre page count.

Instead, I moved onto Marie Kondo's Spark Joy . I had read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which was not life-changing as promised, but still doled out a little bit of advice in regards to how to properly organize a home.

Marie Kondo is Japanese and doesn't speak English, as far as I know, and thus this book was translated. To be fair, I am basing this on an episode of Ellen that Marie was on, so I could be wrong.

Either way, she has a unique style of getting organized, in that she believes her objects can feel things. Socks must breathe; balling them up is cruel. It's a very emotional process, she claims, to clean up, but it is beneficial because it can restore so many wanting aspects of your life. That's why she asks her clients and now her readers to evaluate every object in their home and decide if it "sparks joy." If it doesn't, you thank it for its time and toss it. If it does, you keep it and display it properly in its own place.

Some of her method is too wishy-washy for me. I have no trouble keeping things tidy. If anything, papers are my weakness, but even then, they're categorized and kept in neat folders or binders with appropriate labeling. I do love when life is neat and organized and I appreciate that Marie Kondo does, too, but some of her tips are either arbitrary with no evidence of their effectiveness (other than her telling us how no one rebounds from her wonderful method, which is a touch biased at best and arrogant at worst) or practically obvious (for example, don't keep unnecessary crap you don't like). Ultimately, Spark Joy retread the same ground that her first success walked on. I expected more in depth advice or a greater visual aspect to this so-called "illustrated master class", but alas, it was not to be. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with this one.


Book #29: A National Book Award winner

First of all, what is the National Book Award winner? It turns out it isn't one award to win but several, handed out by the non-profit National Book Foundation who aim to celebrate the best of American literature and have been doing so since 1950. It's a collection of awards given to writers by writers and once included awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, science, religion and philosophy, history, children's lit, and a bunch of other categories. Now it has been narrowed back down to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and, recently, YA lit.

I then did a little research into what books had won this esteemed label and it turned out Alice Walker's The Color Purple earned this honour. The Colour Purple is one of those books that I have meant to read because I saw the film at a young age and knew the book was out there but never got around to reading. So, you can imagine my delight in finally finding a reason to read it that was a touch greater than the fact that I really, really, really wanted to.

I found that The Color Purple is largely plotless, but in a good way. I don't mean that nothing happens. In fact, a lot of things happen. It's hard to recount all the things that happen. But since this book is about a life and life is largely plotless, it feels like that, each event occurring because it happened to, and not because someone wrote it to be so. The novel revolves around the miserable existence that our protagonist, Celie, ekes out while married to an abusive husband who openly courts another woman right in front of Celie's eyes. She raises his disrespectful children and feels the oppression of being an African-American farmwife in the early decades of the twentieth century. I won't say too much because I don't want to ruin the novel (I never want to ruin a novel for anyone who hasn't read it), but I must say that watching Celie become more and more liberated is wonderful. An independent woman is a beautiful thing, a woman who realizes she needs love but that sometimes it comes in weird and unexpected forms.

And, above all, this is a book about sorority. The relationship between Celie and her sister Nettie is intensely vital. Without it, the book lacks that golden thread to tie all its parts together. It's a solidly written tale of Celie's life. And, of course, I appreciate the title. I may not speak the same words as they do or share the same belief system, but I too believe in the power of the colour purple.


Book #30: A book that's published in 2016

This one was a no-brainer for me. I am glad I waited long enough for this book to come out.

A play on words of one of my favourite novels of all time, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is the writing debut for comedienne Amy Schumer.

Schumer is, of course, hilarious, but not everything she has to say is funny. No, sometimes it's heartbreaking, like dealing at a too-young age with the humiliating limitations of her father's MS, and other times, it's cautionary, like her encounters with emotional, physical, and sexual abusers.

Taken as a whole, Amy's biography is a full story, one that ranges the emotions of a real-life being. It is funny most of the time because she is funny most of the time, but it also realizes pain, beauty, yearning, misguidance, outrage, and fear, too.

It is nice to read an autobiography that seems like even the author herself is surprised at what she finds. She really digs in. I have to applaud Amy for that. I wish more were like her.


This month marked book number thirty, so, if all goes well, I will be solidly into the thirties by Halloween. As I sit now, I have eleven more to go and exactly three months to do it. I truly think it will be a travesty if I don't make it through and hit that end goal. They don't call it a challenge for nothing. Needless to say, it's going to be a bumpy ride, but I'm ready to buckle in and buckle down.

Until next month, happy reading!

October has come and gone. Soon, the snow will fall. I know -- depressing. I am trying desperately not to get the winter blues with the lack of sunlight and the biting cold creeping in.

No, I will remain excited. After all, the holidays are coming soon, full of jubilation and times spent with our loved ones.

And let's not let the spooktacular Halloween celebrations wear off too soon. After all, I did look like this:



Despite this ennui, I managed to keep reading. There's no time to spare if I ever hope to complete this challenge. This is what I mustered this month.

Book #31: A book with a blue cover

Don't think for a second I didn't consider rereading The Cat in the Hat .



For some unknown reason, I really struggled with this one. I could not find a book with a blue cover that I really wanted to read.

I thought I had finally come to a decision when I started reading The Light Between Oceans . Unfortunately, I was borrowing the book and had to return it before I had a chance to really get into it. I do intend to go back to it, but as for its fate to be the book with a blue cover? Sadly, not to be.

Which brings me to Neil.

Neil Pasricha has devoted many years and many pages to helping others find happiness. He is probably best known for his Book of Awesome , but now he is trying to approach happiness as an equation.

I have read The Book of Awesome, which, to me, is a coffee table book, not meant to be consumed all in one seating like a novel but rather perused to bring a little dose of joy into your life at regular intervals or when you need it the most.

I liked the approach of his new book, too, The Happiness Equation , with its scribbles and sketches. It was cute, more like a conversation with graphics drawn on a napkin to illustrate the point.

However, I would not find it to be the most mind-blowing of investigations. Most of what Neil points out is a retread. In fact, I would argue that a significant portion of this book is quoting others. Buddha said this. Newton said that. Richard Feynman points this out. Tom Hanks points that out. It's a game of he-said, she-said, at times, and that is a touch grating. I did like the anecdotes, but endlessly quoting others didn't really help me get anywhere. It just felt like padding.

The gist is as follows:

"Always remember there are only three goals. To want nothing. That's contentment. To do anything. That's freedom. To have everything. That's happiness. What are the nine secrets to get us there? Be happy first. Do it for you. Remember the lottery. Never retire. Overvalue you. Create space. Just do it. Be you. Don't take advice."

I find it rather hilarious that the last piece of advice in this book is to not take advice, but nonetheless, it is probably good advice at that.

The other lessons throughout the book are ones we already know. I think the most interesting was to "do it for you". We already know we should aim for self-fulfillment, but the controlled studies of different groups and how their performance is affected by outside motivators, like money or fame or what have you, is fascinating. That is probably my favourite part.

As a minimalist, I was already on board with the lesson advising us to "create space" by streamlining and automating those decisions that don't matter but take forever.

I'm also a big believer in "just do it" because the second-guessing is the killer. The cyclic nature of doing to create the self-confidence is obvious, but having it pointed out and illustrated is great. I appreciated that one a lot, too.

I suppose, by already being a fairly happy person, most of these lessons were already understood by me and that's why I didn't get quite so much out of the book. For someone who is looking to be perked up, this book is a great set of beginning resources, a course of action for you to follow, but, in the end, while I enjoyed reading it because of Pasricha's writing style, The Happiness Equation needed to dive a little deeper to discover a bit more.

Book #32: A book at least 100 years older than you

What can I say that hasn't been said? This play may be by Shakespeare and it may have that lovely turn of phrase, but if you're getting the message at all, you'll realize that it's a horribly sexist one about how women should be beaten into submission and basically sit underneath the boots of their husbands. Women are property to be owned and should be at their beck and call at any given moment.

I came to this play mostly because I knew it was the source material for the film Ten Things I Hate About You. I love that film, the way it plays the basic premise of this play for laughs, making Baptista, the father of two very different daughters, a doctor who delivers babies and can't bear the thought of finding his baby girl knocked up. As a result, he concocts a plan: his youngest daughter Bianca can date once her elder sister Kat does, and Kat couldn't give less of a hoot for the slobbering idiots surrounding her. Much better than the actual source material, this film has reasons and motivations for the women to act the way they do. Unlike Shakespeare, the screenwriters realized that women act not on whims but because of reasons and this film doesn't shy away from them. I can't believe I'm saying these words, but the film is better, you guys.

Anyway, the play left me feeling disgusted. I'm a feminist and a human being. This shit would not fly in today's society. Frankly, if this is what it was like to live in the 1590s, they can keep it.



In terms of October, that's all I managed to get through. Although I am in the midst of several books, those measly two are the only ones I finished in time for this blog. Next month, I'm hoping to be well on my way, completing a handful at least. That better not be wishful thinking on my part -- this year and thus this challenge has almost come to an end!

Until next month, happy reading!

Time is a cruel mistress.

Needless to say, this month flew by. It feels like Halloween was only yesterday. And now I can really feel the impending tick-tick-ticking of that ball being dropped. Can you hear the ringing already, the ringing in of a new year? I feel no sympathy for what has been a year of questionable occurrences and a helluva lot of loss. Other than getting married, 2016 has been a sour one. But I will discuss that next month. For now, I'm simply looking forward to The Big Fat Quiz of the Year to squeeze some laughs out of a year that surely produced a cabernet that merely consists of spit and tears.

With November whizzing by like an errant Frisbee, my disappointment should be apparent as to how little I was able to read in that stint of time. It's going to be a hard-won battle, this challenge.


Book #33: A science fiction novel

The Internet, how glorious a thing. I was not looking forward to this prompt. I'm not a big sci-fi reader, although I love me some sci-fi film and television.

But when it comes to reading, I never thought I'd find something human, something more akin to Orphan Black than Star Trek.

So, I went looking and found this. And thus I picked up Mermaids in Paradise .

This book reads like chick lit at first, focused on a woman that prattles on about getting married and where her honeymoon shall take place and what her friends think and keeping up appearances and blatty-bla-bla. On her trip to a beach resort in the British Virgin Islands, she becomes acquainted with a bunch of people that she thinks about purely in the negative as too-this, too-that, and simply not cool enough to be her friends. Keeping everyone at a safe distance, she is pulled toward this clan of alleged misfits by her husband Chip who is all-too-friendly. One of these people is a woman named Nancy, a marine biology expert who is obsessed with parrotfish. And one day, she becomes entranced by something else: mermaids. She's seen them, of course, which seems like poppycock to everyone else. But buoyant on the paradise of the island, they decide to venture out and look for these mermaids, this time with a camera. And they see them, too. They even get footage. Unfortunately, the resort catches wind of this sighting and decides to take advantage of these marvels, these people of the deep, and therein lies our conflict. The resort vs. this rag-tag team of tourists. It can be quite thrilling at times.

And the sci-fi aspects don't seem so apparent, but when I get past the surface, I find that this novel tells the tale of environmental disaster, frankly. Deb, our barely likeable protagonist, waxes on about technology, asteroids, evolution, climate change, and the future. These topics are typical sci-fi fare, but her Valley Girl tone distracts from it.

So, there it is. I read some sci-fi. I think I may have even liked it. Although I'm not so sure I liked Deb.



Book #34: A book with a protagonist who has your occupation

I have three jobs, so I had to pick one. I chose writer. That brings me the most joy and is the most authentic representation of me.

Luckily, there are tons of books about writers: Atonement , The Help , Misery , The Hours , The World According to Garp , Wonder Boys , The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. , The Shining , The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay , ... and the list goes on.

If you'll notice, two of those books on there are written by Stephen King.

Stephen King is the consummate writer, the kind of iconic figure known by all, including people who don't read. His reputation precedes him, so I figured, there's a writer who writes about writers.

I thought I could check off the box, but no, the question is, which novel of his vast collection to read?

I first considered Misery, but I don't feel that I am that kind of writer, the world-famous but overly private type who writes out best-selling manuscripts on a typewriter in the woods. Sure, I'd love to be that cliche, but I'm just not that caliber. Instead, I saw myself more as a sentimentalist with a somewhat disturbed undercurrent.

What could be better than his novella The Body ?

That speaks more to me: the family-oriented writer who looks back as a framing device to narrate the book. To be fair, I didn't know if this was how the book was, but I presumed based on the wonderful coming-of-age film Stand By Me , which is an adaptation of King's The Body. I think I write about the past and wax nostalgic, so I definitely leaned toward that.

Plus, The Body is a quick read, which meant I had more opportunity to dig into another book for this challenge. I gotta keep that pace to cross the finish line.

Now, The Body is, without a doubt, a good book, but as I read (instead of watched Stand By Me), I actually felt sad. There's a lot of sorrow in nostalgia, just as much bitter as there is sweet. And in the case of the four boys in this book, it cuts like a knife to hear about their fates, about their limited prospects, about the society that gave up on them before they gave up on themselves. It truly hurts.

The author captures something unique when he says (and this is just as much Stephen as it is our protagonist) that "the only reason anyone writes stories is so they can understand the past and get ready for some future mortality." Death is a big part of The Body, sometimes not taken seriously enough, but brutal in its face-to-face reckoning. When they see Ray Brower's corpse, it's no longer giggles with the boys. It's real. And it sticks with them forever.

I myself remember the first time I saw an open coffin. I was too young to really appreciate the concept of death, to really understand the finality of it, and so, I wasn't upset the way older individuals would be. But it carried some weight because the image sticks in my mind. Perverse as it is to describe it like a movie scene, that's what it is. A tiny videoclip that plays on and on for about five seconds that left me with something, although I cannot be sure exactly as to what that was.

There are many great lines in The Body, but none are as vitally important as this one:

"At an age when all four of us would be considered too young and immature to be President, three of us are dead."

Although the boys are walking across town to see a boy's dead body, the book is far more about the passing of his friends, his three dear childhood friends, that he cannot shake after decades of not quite being buddy-buddy anymore. They all went their separate ways, and that, for many of us, is its own kind of death, a finality of something that, no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to get back. But there are also literal deaths, and although I can't imagine what that is like, since I am fortunate to not have suffered the death of a close childhood friend in my life, I can understand the weight. That would stay with you. I feel the weight thinking about my pets that have passed, how wonderful and unique each one is, and how I will never get that back. As I'm writing this, I am verklempt. I can't imagine what losing a person would be like, someone who spoke to you and shared their thoughts and passions and dreams and jokes and disappointments and regrets and everything else that filled their body.

It is hard to talk about these kinds of things. But, like King writes in this very book, "the most important things are the hardest things to say."




That leaves me with seven books to read in a month. Seven! That's a lot of pages, especially since I foolishly left the prompt for the chunkster book of more than six hundred pages to this point in the game. Oh, well. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that. I am well on my way to finishing two of them this week with any luck.

Until then, happy reading!

It's the most wonderful time of the year: the end of the Popsugar Reading Challenge. Man, was that a brutal goal or what?

It's difficult to fit reading seven books -- seven! -- in along with the usual holiday hustle-and-bustle. So difficult in fact that this is what happened:

Book #35: A political memoir

I wasn't too sure if Jimmy Carter's book A Call to Action actually qualified as a political memoir, seeing as it didn't do the typical biographical slant the way other memoirs do. However, since most of Jimmy Carter's post-presidential career (and pre-presidential, to some degree) dealt with his actions in trying to improve human rights, then I suppose it is a memoir, after all, detailing his life outside of the Oval Office. It still remains political, though, dealing with international efforts to improve women's rights on many fronts. He talks at length about how sex-selective abortions performed extensively in China and India to ensure that they have only sons and no daughters is, while a problem in and of itself, the trigger for sexual and physical abuse on women through child marriages, human trafficking, and prostitution, seeing as the disproportionately great number of males born in these environments demand women that just aren't there. The line of causation is easily drawn, but not so easily altered to improve conditions.

He talks about his life growing up in Georgia and how, although he works extensively with his wife through the Carter Center to improve women's lives around the world, his home is just as guilty of injustice towards women as Atlanta is "one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States." He discusses the Bible and the Koran and how they support the idea of women's rights. He covers a wide range of topics, including "honour" killings, sexual assault, rape, spousal abuse, war, slavery, human trafficking, child marriage, dowry deaths, genital mutilation, maternal health, the pay gap, and political participation. Some of what he has observed in his life, we already know, but some of his findings surprised me, such as the great steps made forward in Morocco for women's rights.

The book is a bit saddening to read all in one sitting, which is what I was trying to do, because we -- and I mean, we, the people, all of humanity, population planet Earth, that we -- have so much further to go. That being said, Jimmy and his wife Rosalyn have made a difference by allowing people far and wide to empower themselves. In many countries, it is best to allow the community to do the work, as they are not seen as outsiders trying to foist their ideology upon others. It also gives them transferable skills that they can use in their many endeavours. It's the "teach a woman to fish" approach.

While it was not easy to digest some of the atrocities occurring miles away and equally right next door, it was easy to understand. The former president writes with eloquence and style and, as a skilled orator and the author of twenty-plus books, I expected nothing less from the 39th POTUS. I can understand from the overseas work he writes about (and surely, all the work he doesn't mention, too) why he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. He truly cares about women, considering it a human and civil rights struggle worth the fight. Ultimately, I feel that he believes that, by making us equal and together, the world can, will, and should be better.

No question, I can get behind that.


Book #36: A book and its prequel

I'll be honest. This was not my first choice.

I recall, a long time ago, reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe at eight years old and being totally bored. I don't remember anything I read. I only remember snippets from the movie that was released. So I don't know what possessed me to delve into the Chronicles of Narnia full-force, signing on to read not one but two instalments in the series.

I originally wanted to read Wide Sargasso Sea , by Jean Rhys, which is a prequel to the classic Brontë novel, Jane Eyre . Alas it was not to be. I knew I would never get through Jane in time, rendering Sargasso a no-go, too. (I vow to read them both one day. I'm fairly sure I'll enjoy them.)

So, here we are.

I started with Prince Caspian . I can't remember exactly why I picked this book as the starting point. It's been such a toil reading it that I couldn't recall when I first broke the spine. I faintly remember doing some light research on books and their prequels; I believe the pairing of two Narnia books was listed. I figured, it's children's literature; if nothing else it will be a fast read.

As anyone who has read Heart of Darkness will know, the page count does not determine how quickly you will finish the book. Your own enthuasiasm is the only factor that matters. And I was tepid about the Narnians and the Telmarines, let me tell you. It took me an eternity to get to that final battle between Prince Caspian (or, as it was, High King Peter acting on Prince Caspian's behalf, which I found oddly coward-like of Caspian, the young man who we as readers should be cheering on to be king choosing to not fight the foe himself, but oh, well, I didn't write the damn thing) and the usurper King Miraz. Not much else happened. I feel it was what we were building to in the end. However, the most interesting part of the book for me came early. I was drawn in by the Dwarf's retelling of Caspian's childhood, growing up in a castle as an orphaned son, his father killed by his uncle, the new King Miraz -- a total Hamlet scenario, if I ever saw one. The community has been mostly eradicated of Narnian magic, like the dwarves, the dryads, the centaurs, the giants, the talking animals, and so on and so forth. King Miraz disapproves of them so much that he hopes his nephew, Caspian, never learns of them, dismissing anyone who brings word of it into the castle, especially if it goes to the boy's ears. Still, Caspian will be king one day. That is, until King Miraz has a son of his own, an heir to his stolen throne, which means only one thing: Caspian must go. Not go, as in on a sojourn to the Alps where he happily lives the rest of his days as a sheep herder. No, he means go, as in on a permanant vacation, never coming back again, one-way ticket to corpseville.

So Caspian flees and bands together all the Narnians in hiding that King Miraz doesn't wish to talk about to take down his nefarious uncle.

And that is, in essence, the story. Yet so much of it is tied up in long-winded descriptions of the lake scum floating on the water and the cliffs conveniently located on your left. None of it matters and, in my opinion, doesn't provide atmospheric qualities so much as it bogs down the flow of the narrative and inflates the word count unnecessarily.

But I'm not done yet. After all, the prompt calls for a book and its prequel.

And that prequel is The Magician's Nephew . Now, based on having read Prince Caspian at this point, I assumed that somehow the uncle-nephew relationship between Miraz and Caspian would reemerge in this book, but I'm not quite sure about the magician part. Miraz was not a big fan of the ol' bibbity-bobbity-boo, but this story is a prequel, so maybe he did say his fair share of shazams back in the day. Who knows, right? It's Narnia. Anything can occur.

And yet nothing occurred. I picked it up. And I read about a quarter of it. And then I asked myself what I was doing with my life.

As much as I found Prince Caspian to be a bit of the dull side, I found that The Magician's Nephew was a sleeping aid. Reading should not pain you. It's recreational, not a root canal. I was reminded why, as a child, I never dove into the Chronicles of Narnia like so many had before. It's just not for me. And I couldn't read any more of it. I tried -- oh, how I tried -- but alas, no prequel was read.


Book #37: A book recommended by someone you just met

I put far too much time and thought into this prompt. First, I started to read a Noam Chomsky book, since a colleague mentioned how much he loved him. Even though it was a slim volume, I didn't care much for the subject matter.

Moving on, a client mentioned reading Maeve Binchy, specifically Chestnut Street . I think I would have enjoyed reading it. I like accounts of small-town life, what with my childhood growing up in a particularly small one. Frankly, it made Stars Hollow look like a bustling metropolis. However, I couldn't read Binchy's book because I had waited too long and there was a mountain of holds for it at the library. I wouldn't get to read it until next year.

Alas, I started to scrounge though time and recalled a book recommended to me by a librarian I am well acquainted with now but, at the time of the recommendation, I had only just met her. I figured that kind of fits, and I was all geared up to start reading In Cold Blood , by Truman Capote. I liked Breakfast at Tiffany's , so I figured I wouldn't mind reading another Capote book, especially one that is so iconic in the literary world.

And then another client mentioned The Couple Next Door , which sounded all right. It didn't register with me the way reading In Cold Blood did, but I felt it was more true to the prompt.

But finally, another client -- the customer base includes a heck of a lot of readers, clearly -- she mentioned reading The Girl On The Train . I was already chomping at the bit to read this book and her recommendation was just an excuse to do now what I was going to do anyway.

I devoured that book. The snow fell and I just ate up every word. I think it took me three days, in between working, to finish it. My bookmark was a transient, that's for sure, never quite finding a home at the end of this chapter or that.

I loved the suspense, the thrills, the twists, and the ambiguity. Even if I saw some of it coming, it was still fun to get there.

And I know the film has already come and gone out of the theatres. And I have to assume that the lithe and gorgeous Emily Blunt is probably playing Rachel -- at a guess, I haven't actually seen it yet -- and that should have sat in my head as a physical qualifier as I was reading, but no, I don't picture her at all. The writing is so vivid that I was able to concoct and preserve my own mental image of each character, the pointy cheekbones on Megan's face, the turned-up nose on Anna's. I saw Kamal in my mind's eye looking something like Naz from The Night Of, only a little taller, a little older.

It's really quite remarkable that my brain was able to transcend the Hollywood casting because trailers and ads often gets rammed down your throat so much that the actor is the character, in all sense of the world. The book cover changes to the film poster and the work is supposedly done for you, but you lose a little something in the process. Julia Roberts was never Elizabeth Gilbert to me when I read the book a year earlier, but after watching the same ad on TV ad nauseum, she was. I never pictured Cameron Diaz as Sara Fitzgerald, the mother of the girls from My Sister's Keeper , but after a mighty marketing campaign, they were one and the same. I'll never be able to reread that book and it not be Natalie from Charlie's Angels. Emilia Clarke stopped being the Khaleesi and was irreparably Lou from Me Before You. And Kristen Stewart is in a bit of a pickle, in love with a vampire and a werewolf, don't you think? (To be fair, I never read any of the Twilight books, but still, I can't imagine anyone reading them afterwards and picturing anyone but her.)

But not this time. The Girl On The Train was all mine. No studio bigwig was able to compromise it, which was a nice change.

And what a book it was. To me, it read like Gillian Flynn. And everybody already knows how I feel about Gillian Flynn. Yes, undoubtedly, The Girl On The Train has moments that scream Gone Girl, dark and twisted and incomplete tales with an unreliable narrator. To be fair, Gone Girl left me in the lurch much longer, trying to predict the moves before they occur. Still, while I figured out the whodunnit mystery in The Girl On The Train a touch too early, it's not so much about who did it, but why and how.

Books like these only crop up once a year, maybe twice if you're lucky, and often much less frequently than that. Like Gone Girl and The Millennium Trilogy, The Girl On The Train earns a top place on my bookshelf for encouraging me to gnaw my fingernails off and having the audacity to push me to the edge of my seat. And then shove me onto the tracks. She's just that kind of lady.


Book #38: A book you haven't read since high school

I never realized how many books I read in high school. And worse, I never realized how many I re-read. And that became a problem.

You see, the books I read in high school that I chose to read again at some other point were good reads. I liked them. That's why I read them again. One of my favourites was The Perks of Being A Wallflower , a book I hold near and dear to my heart. I also liked The Lovely Bones . There's some Shakespeare in there, like Othello , The Tempest , and Romeo and Juliet . I read The Poisonwood Bible , a massive and wonderful story of a missionary family in Africa that spans over decades. (If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. As Ferris Bueller says, it is "so choice.") I have re-read these books since high school, so they don't count for the challenge. I own all of these books for a reason.

There are a few I haven't re-read, but these are the ones I didn't like in the first place. For example, I wasn't a fan of Frankenstein . I absolutely hated Heart of Darkness ; reading it felt like a trek through a shitty racist jungle that ended off with a whole lot of pointless death, so I guess it accomplished its goal (?). Needless to say, I wasn't picking that up again.

After much debate, I decided to go with something unconventional. In twelfth grade, I had to do a comparative essay, in which I looked at the common themes in Perks (because, as aforementioned, I loved that book already) and Ghost World . You see, my English teacher at the time was big on graphic novels. He believed they were the next art form or the future of literature, something to that effect. So, to appease him, I picked -- gasp! -- a graphic novel. Since that time, I've read quite a few graphic novels and found some of them to be particularly great. Of course, there's Watchmen , which is wonderful, but I also liked the Scott Pilgrim series, especially with its Canadian roots. In fact, I even read a few graphic novels for this challenge. So maybe my teacher had a lasting impact after all.

Now all I can recall from Ghost World is that it was a bit angsty. But upon re-reading, I realized that it tells the story of the hipster movement and the psychology of those who subscribe to it. I didn't know that back in twelfth grade, but hey, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Ghost World is a melancholy coming-of-age tale, one very different to The Body, which, as you may recall, I read last month. Too cool to genuinely like anything, best friends Enid and Becky live their life with frowns upon their face interrupted with the occasional sarcastic smirk, their existences rife with ironic detachment. Ultimately, they're betrayed by the fact that they feel lost, alone, and scared by the big bad world; they are children acting like adults or what they think adults act like, while they delay the inevitable experience of growing up. In many ways, it is very sad because they want love and acceptance, but lean the other way just because it seems cooler in that light.

There's a natural flow to the conversation, and that casual, borderline stream-of-consciousness style makes the dialogue between Enid and Becky memorable, a remarkable quality that shines through despite the ambling plot. Although there isn't very much by way of story, you almost want to cry at the concealed emotions and the Peter-Pan-esque reluctance to accept that we can't stay children forever. Forced to leave behind those childhood playthings and happy-go-lucky records, Enid and Becky put their best foot forward and enter the real world, however frightening it may be.

I know that what I got out of Ghost World may not be what you will, but that's what makes it interesting. Just because I'm not fanatical about it doesn't mean it's not a good piece of literature. In fact, considering its brevity, I'd recommend everyone try it at least once.


Book #39: A romance set in the future

Someone told me that Ready Player One was a romance set in the future. So, I believed them.

What I got instead was a book so full and rich and whole, a completely different world within our own, which happened to also have a romance in it. I started raving about this book when I was only a third of the way through it. My sister bought it based upon my recommendation. My husband said it might just be his favourite book of all time. When I find something awesome, I want to share it with everyone.

There was bubble of hype enveloping Ready Player One, which gave those often unattainably sky-high expectations. This book could never be the book I anticipated. It just couldn't. It was an impossibility. And yet it did. In fact, it surpassed all of the bars I set. To say I liked the book is to put it mildly.

It's arguably science fiction, but as someone who isn't a fan of the genre, it never feels quite like that. Ernest Cline managed to paint a vivid world, starting from the Stacks and moving into the OASIS and beyond, a world that bonded with its readers through a bounty of relatable references and allusions to beloved works that ignite the genuine fandom in all of us. It's a world so richly detailed and defined that you believe it's real. It's a world that seems possible. In a way, it's its own kind of oasis for us readers.

It would be impossible to replicate a book of this magnitude. Sure, it is reminiscent of the scavenger-hunt-style plotlines in other books, such as the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but that world is a fabricated world of fantasy. Ready Player One taps into reality and shows us something uniquely possible in our world, the one we live in catapulted forward a handful of decades. And Cline found a way to give meaning to the predominantly seventies- and eighties-set nostalgia reel that ties everything together in a beautiful bow.

I don't think I can go on and on about the book because I may let something slip. To describe this novel too intricately would betray readers, robbing them of a chance to indulge themselves in what has to be one of my favourite books of all time. I couldn't recommend it more.

Thank you, Ernest, for letting us play with you.


Book #40: A book that's more than 600 pages

I wanted to read Anna Karenina , but I had started that before January 2016. So, instead, I went with the first of the long-ass volumes of the Harry Potter series: the fifth instalment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince .

This was a bad idea. I recall finding the Harry Potter series riveting as a child. I tore through the first four, especially adoring the fourth and its Tri-Wizard Tournament. But when the fifth book came out and I got about two to three chapters in, the magic was gone. I found it too slow, not matching in pace, mood, or tone of the others. Something was missing. And I learned that I wasn't the only one to feel this way. My husband -- same thing. Friends of mine -- same deal. We all dropped off at the fifth book. Now, I know that's not true for everyone, that they demolished that book in a day and loved it just as dearly as all that came before it, but I just wasn't one of them.

So, why would I try to speed-read this mountain of a book in a short period of time, knowing I didn't like it the first time? Because I am an idiot.

After trying again and feeling the need for some No-Doze, I tumbled upon this blog, courtesy of Hilary Goldstein. She said: "[B]asing a book on its length is about the dumbest thing you can do. If I read 40 great 200-page novels this year, that's better than reading one stinker just because it's 600+ pages."

Hilary's attitude toward reading a book purely because of its page count is spot-on. The prompt is ridiculous. Why read a book just because it's long? What can be gained from that? You're not being pushed into something varied, something you wouldn't normally read. You'd just pick up the longest book that you think you could get through in time. You know, like what I was trying to do. Sure, I didn't get through it, proof that I didn't really evaluate all that well, but that's beside the point.

Then I did some thinking and a little math. If a page count is all you want, I've got that in spades. I read, outside of the challenge, Think Like A Freak at 288 pages, Bad Feminist at 320 pages, The Sense of Style at 368 pages, X vs. Y: A Culture War, A Love Story at 192 pages, The Beast from the East at 144 pages, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad at 195 pages. That's more than 1500 pages of reading. And that's just a small selection from the massive number of times I went astray during this challenge, wandering away from the prompts to simply read for the sake of reading. I would say I have more than accumulated six hundred pages' worth of additional reading, wouldn't you? I feel like this prompt was fulfilled, regardless of the fact that I did it across many books, rather than one. I'm going to audaciously say I deserve a checkmark on that elusive Book #40 (and probably #41, too).

Because, in the end, isn't the point of this challenge to get you to read a lot, especially things you wouldn't normally read? I think I have had quite the diverse year of reading. I've read about American presidents, mermaids, rich dads, poor dads, the joys of farming, the dangers of sugar consumption, the global scope of women's rights, the generation gap and overlap between those born in the mid-seventies and those born in the late-eighties, casual home decor, care-free home organization, tech-heavy dating scenes, Indian weddings, Cuban fishermen, Canadian schoolgirls, teen cancer patients, teen Lotharios, teen actors, suicidal princes on interplanetary travels, brave princes in magical battles, animals running farms, reporters running home, and reporters avoiding home. I read books where an unemployed drunk, a gang of twelve-year-olds, and a tight-knit group of twelfth graders each solved their own missing persons case. I read how you can have it all, just not all at once. I read about two different Indian comedians (one born in America) who are successful TV comedians and how they still miss their parents. Those moments stuck with me. Those are the moments that allow you to learn about how we, human beings, are all universally connected in some ways.

Sure, some would say that's cheating. (Well, burn me at the stake.) I believe most would say I failed the PopSugar Reading Challenge. (More like a success struck down in its prime.) But let's consider that, purely in the name of this challenge, I managed to read thirty-nine books in one year -- and that's not counting all those books not included under some prompt on this list or even the dozens that I started but put down for one reason or another. For me, that is a win.

Until next time, happy reading!

Reading is supposed to bring something out of you. It's supposed to teach you, enhance you, and inspire you.

So, when I committed myself to doing the PopSugar Reading Challenge last January, I knew it would be tough, but I would gain something from it at the end.

I decided to recap what I read and what I learned as concisely as possible.

Book #1: A book written by a comedian
Paddle Your Own Canoe, by Nick Offerman

Lesson learned: The old-fashioned ways are still good and should not be forgotten.

Book #2: A New York Times Bestseller
Why Not Me?, by Mindy Kaling

Lesson learned: Those scary thoughts just before you go to sleep can happen to even the best and brightest.

Book #3: A self-improvement book
That Sugar Book, by Damon Ganneau

Lesson learned: Don't eat sugar.

Book #4: A book from the library
Pawnee, by Leslie Knope

Lesson learned: Small-town life is far more fascinating than big-city life.

Book #5: A book about an unfamiliar culture
Yes, My Accent Is Real, by Kunal Nayyar

Lesson learned: No matter how brave you are, no matter how old you are, you will always miss your mommy and daddy.

Book #6: A book that's under 150 pages
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Lesson learned: Don't lose your child-like exuberance for the world.

Book #7: An autobiography
You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), by Felicia Day

Lesson learned: Be you, one-hundred percent.

Book #8: A book you can finish in a day
Ten Things I'd Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out into the Real World, by Maria Shriver

Lesson learned: You can have it all -- just not at the same time.

Book #9: The first book you see in a bookstore
Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari

Lessons learned: Love was easier in the fifties because you weren't given so much choice, but you were also so limited geographically that you might not find your soul mate. So I'm very lucky to have found mine. And also, Japanese people aren't having much sex.

Book #10: A book of poetry
Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favourite Songs, by Erik Didreksen

Lesson learned: You can class up even the dirtiest words.

Book #11: A book recommended by a family member
The DUFF, by Kody Keplinger

Lesson learned: My sister knows me better than I thought.

Book #12: A murder mystery
Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

Lesson learned: Trust your instinct. If someone seems shady, they probably are.

Book #13: A YA Bestseller
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Lesson learned: Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

Book #14: A book written by a celebrity
So THAT Happened, by Jon Cryer

Lesson learned: Flamboyancy does not always equal homosexuality. And never have sex after surgery.

Book #15: A book that's set on an island
The Old Man and The Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

Lesson learned: You're never too old.

Book #16: A book that's becoming a movie this year
The Taliban Shuffle, by Kim Barker

Lesson learned: If you don't have to be in a wartorn country, don't be in one.

Book #17: A satirical book
Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Lesson learned: Don't be a pig. Treat everyone with equal amounts of respect and kindness.

Book #18: A graphic novel
The Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

Lesson learned: Being a superhero is not all it's cracked up to be.

Book #19: A classic from the twentieth century
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Lesson learned: Sometimes the ones you love hold you back from seeing your full potential. Sometimes that makes you do crazy things.

Book #20: A book based on a fairy tale
Leaping Beauty, by Gregory Maguire

Lesson learned: Animals are delightful.

Book #21: A book that's guaranteed to bring you joy
How To Be An Explorer of the World: Portable Museum, by Keri Smith

Lesson learned: Take a little time to get to know you.

Book #22: A book set in your hometown
Skim, by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

Lesson learned: Distance yourself from those who make you feel bad about yourself. They are not worth your time or energy.

Book #23: A book about a road trip
Paper Towns, by John Green

Lesson learned: You can never really know a person. There's too much going on behind their eyes.

Book #24: A dystopian novel
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Lesson learned: For Pete's sake, don't burn books or art because you personally don't like it. Censorship is stupid.

Book #25: A book that's set in summertime
A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Lesson learned: Love who you love, not who your parents tell you to love.

Book #26: A book from Oprah's Book Club
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, by Pearl Cleage

Lesson learned: Sleep when you're dead. Don't shrivel and wither before you expire. Live now. Live a full life with love, laughter, and dancing up until that moment.

Book #27: A book set in Europe
Me Before You, by Jojo Moyes

Lesson learned: Let every person have their dignity.

Book #28: A book translated to English
Spark Joy, by Marie Kondo and translated by Cathy Hirano

Lesson learned: Keep the things you like. Toss the things you don't. Now find a place for everything that works for you and keep it there.

Book #29: A National Book Award winner
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Lesson learned: Don't give up and resign yourself to a miserable existence. Strive. Find a way, and while doing so, remember to appreciate the little things along the way.

Book #30: A book that's published in 2016
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, by Amy Schumer

Lesson learned: Don't vote for people who take money from the gun lobby.

Book #31: A book with a blue cover
The Happiness Equation, by Neil Pasricha

Lesson learned: Do it for your own self-fulfillment and don't ever listen to other people's advice.

Book #32:
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare

Lesson learned: If you can help it, try not to marry a misogynist who thinks he can "tame" you by starving you into being his obedient slave.

Book #33: A science fiction novel
Mermaids in Paradise, by Lydia Millet

Lesson learned: The earth is precious. Let's try to stop screwing it up.

Book #34:A book with a protagonist who has your occupation
The Body, by Stephen King

Lesson learned: All life has value. Don't give up on it.

Book #35:
A Call to Action, by Jimmy Carter

Lesson learned: We've got a long way to go, girlfriend.

Book #36: A book (but not so much its prequel)
Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis

Lesson learned: Don't trust your uncle if he took your dad's throne. While you're at it, don't trust anyone who has to steal things rather than earn them.

Book #37: A book recommended by someone you just met
The Girl On The Train, by Paula Hawkins

Lesson learned: If you wake up with a massive wound on the back of your head, investigate. Also, corkscrews and alcoholics mix surprisingly well.

Book #38: A book you haven't read since high school
Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes

Lesson learned: Never let your inner child die completely, but don't let feeling small determine who you will become.

Book #39: A romance set in the future
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Lesson learned: To get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with. (To be fair, Mark Twain said this first in Following the Equator, but the lesson holds true.)



Not bad for a year.