Books, Books, Books and Where To Find The Time

I have ordered so many good books recently. And, of course, they all came in at the same time. Hopefully, I can renew a few times. I’m not the fastest reader and I have housecleaning and a family to tend to. I have a book to edit and my exercise routine. I’m getting the kids out more now that the sun is shining for a few days.

I have visions of leisurely laying in the hammock with stacks of novels near me on the porch floor, a tall glass of iced tea with a mint leaf from the garden. But this is still two and a half months away.

At present I have English and Math assignments to work on with the youngest and my many jobs. I will practice speed reading. A friend of mine talked about skimming books and reading a novel every other day. I was impressed. She works full time and still flies through the books. So, I started doing a little speed reading myself and I found that many books are 20% story and 80% filler. You can skim through them and not miss much. Then there are the books that you want to chew every bite slowly and taste the layers of flavor.

There are books that are so colorful and eloquent that they teach me to think deeper and write with more flare. I don’t rush those. I have taken to annotating the books I own. I highlight and tab up a storm and it helps me study them and digest the brilliant metaphors and turn over fresh ideas.

Books have taught me to write better, think deeper and have inspired me to change big things in my lifestyle.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown helped me downsize my jobs and make my life easier. I learned to pick two priorities and let everything else go so I could thrive focusing on two parts instead of doing so many things just ok.

What Falls From The Sky by Esther Emery encouraged me to unplug the internet for a couple years so my family could get back to real life; reading, thinking for themselves, artwork, and being outside. We didn’t do it 100% but it was enough for us to see how it effects us and that we don’t want it turned on full time. Sadly, it is back on again for school but there are intense boundaries.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond gave me more compassion and understanding of the human condition with poverty and slum lords. It also enforced my determination to secure our housing. When we made a big profit off selling our rental, instead of blowing it on an RV or inground pool as we dreamed of doing, we paid off half of this mortgage. That was because I read this book before we had the check in hand and thus, we made a smart decision for us. We don’t need an RV for travel as we don’t really have time to travel and we bought an above ground pool for $350 at Habitat For Humanity. It has made every Summer wonderful.

Samuel Pepys is a biography of a Naval administrator for the Royal Navy from the seventeenth century who journaled his life every day for ten years. He wrote about the Plague and the Great Fire of London and years of political and religious upheaval. I have learned so much from him in the way of a history, work ethic, enjoying luxuries of life, what not to do and how not to act as well as how to become an expert in a chosen field and thrive at what ever we choose for a career. He had his faults but he was brilliant and successful. He seems like a strange mentor for me, but I immersed myself in Claire Tomalin’s research and found myself inspired to study and work on my writing with a more scholastic approach as he would have done.

Another author that is inspiring me is Natalie Goldberg. I’m reading Writing Down The Bones, which then had me ordering two other books of hers: Long Quiet Highway and Wild Mind. I love her writing and the way she approaches it. As a fellow writer, I get what she’s talking about and it helps me understand myself as a writer. She sees writing as a Spiritual practice and I love this revelation.

There was a book, Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs that first enlightened me to my eldest having Autism. It was such an unlikely book to get this diagnosis out of, but a small page where Augusten describes his older brother turned the light on for me as a mother and I realized what was going on with my child and went on to do some research, coming to the conclusion that we had high functioning Autism. It changed our life and relationship for the better and was such a blessing.

I could go on but I won’t. I have to get to reading this stack of books.