February Reads

You may be wondering why my February post is appearing in late March… Life has taken a strange turn since my last post. My apologies on the delay, but now seems like a good time to share with you my recommendations if you, like myself, are trapped inside due to the COVID-19 STAY HOME advisories. In this time of caution, I’ve come to learn that when I focus on gratitude for the things I am still able to do, I am able to keep my mood positive as well. Luckily for us here in Oregon, the weather has been gorgeous and reading has been taking place outside in the backyard with stints inside by the fire when the rain comes. 

I would also like to note that below I have linked each of the books recommended to Portland’s Powell’s City of Books website. On March 17th, Owner and CEO Emily Powell wrote a heartbreaking letter to employees about having to make the hard decision to close their door and layoff most of their staff. Powell’s is not the type of business that can afford to pay wages and benefits while the doors are closed, as much as they wish they could. I cannot imagine Portland without Powell’s. For anyone who lives here or has visited, I think you know how special this place is to the city. If you are considering purchasing a book or two during your lock in, consider supporting this local establishment. As of the writing of this post they are offering free shipping on orders of $25 or more. Today I ordered a couple of books on my ‘To Read’ list, an enamel pin, and a 1000-piece puzzle of Multnomah Falls. 

Alright, let’s get to it!

The best book I can recommend from last month was The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This book was selected as the March book for my bookclub. I finished this book in a day and a half. My fiancĂ© John and I were headed to Mazatlán, Mexico for a wedding. I started this book on the plane ride down there and got to finish it poolside enjoying Mojitos.

The synopsis: A young magazine reporter Monique Grant is hand selected by Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo for a tell-all. Evelyn made her way to Los Angeles and to her career in show business in the glory of 1950’s Hollywood. Of the scandalous details everyone wants to know about are Evelyn Hugo’s reasons for leaving the business and the intimate details surrounding her seven husbands. Evelyn delves into actor rivalries, friendships, and love. Monique will learn the Hollywood drama, secrets, and her own personal connection to the legendary actress.

I couldn’t help but imagining some of the scenes described of old Hollywood to be like the one portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s recent film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I loved this book and I was surprised by the twist. 

Next up, Verity by Colleen Hoover comes in a close second place for my favorite read of the month. Growing up, I was raised on Nancy Drew, so I have an affinity for Mysteries of any kind and this one was a page turner. Verity got my attention from the very first chapter. This was a hard one to put down and another book that I finished in about a day and half. It helped that I spent most of the day poolside with two for one mojitos, but regardless I recommend this to anyone who likes suspense novels. This book was selected as one of our book club books from last year that I never got around to reading. I am totally kicking myself for not picking it up earlier! I learned that author Colleen Hoover started writing without any intention of publishing her work. She has since published 19 novels across a variety of Young Adult and Adult genres. Many of her books have made the NY Times Bestseller List. 

The synopsis: Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. 

I can’t give anything away. Just Read It!

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin was given to me by my mom. She has a Little Free Library near her house that has a rotating selection of bestselling books. She will often read or pass along the ones she has heard are good. This book was a hard one for me to get into. The plot is heavier than your typical murder-mystery. However, as I read, the characters grew on me and I found myself curious to know how it all unfolds. 

The synopsis: In New York City, 1969, four young siblings visit a psychic they hear about who can predict the day they will die. They keep the dates secret from one another, but each one is affected in different ways.

Fiction is my favorite genre to read. It helps me relax and sets my imagination free. Those three were my fun, fiction books for the month. I rotate back and forth between fiction and non-fiction books to add some variety to my reading. I enjoy reading non-fiction to learn about something or someone new.

If you need a good laugh, I recommend listening to books by comedians because usually the audio is read by the author. It’s equivalent to listening to them do 8-hours of stand-up comedy with more intimate hopes, dreams, and aspirations thrown in. I listened to The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer on audio. I admit that I was a lukewarm Amy Schumer fan after seeing some of her movies, but I had never seen any of her stand-up in full. I recently became a BIG fan of hers after watching her 2019 Netflix special Growing. I highly recommend.

A book that I added to my ‘To Read’ listed based on the recommendation of a friend is The Greatest Love Story Ever Told: An Oral History by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. If you don’t recognize them based on their names, think Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec. and Karen from Will & Grace. They are married in real life and they read this audiobook together. I’ve listened to quite a few books by comedians now, so I should do a whole post on this topic. More to come.

I found Anna Kendrick’s Scrappy Little Nobody completely relatable. She describes navigating her career through the performing arts. Originally from Portland, Maine she set out for Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. She shares what it was like to go from an unknown actress on the set of Twilight, to Oscar Nominated for her role in Up In The Air, alongside George Clooney. In a funny aside, she talks about struggling to afford to pay rent while also having a stylist hired as a favor to her dress her for the Oscars. The stylist recommends she purchase a pair of heels for “seven-fifty” and she replies with, “SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!”. Anna describes what it was like to go from struggling actress to star overnight. She recounts how the Oscar experience isn’t all glitter and glam. She is witty and outspoken. I found it easy to relate to her ambitious and sometimes neurotic mindset.

Lastly, I checked out Meb Keflezighi’s 26 Marathons: What I Learned About Faith, Identity, Running and Lifeon audio as a book to motivate me to start training. At the time I was training for the Nike LA Women’s 13.1 Half Marathon. I signed up with a couple of my girlfriends. We booked a hotel near the beach. We were excited to race and spend time together in the sun. We trained together some days, but on others when I needed to set out for 3-5 miles on my own, I had a hard time finding motivation. Portland’s rain and gray skies were not helping. Listening to Meb’s book on my solo runs helped get me out the door. Each chapter is a different marathon he raced in where he couples his experience in each race with the life lesson he learned along the way. Anyone who has attempted to run a marathon knows that the training takes more mental strength than it does physical. Meb shares how even he struggled with the thoughts of, “Why am I doing this?” while out on the course. He shares stories about injuries, self-doubt, and the importance of recovery. His book was inspiring for me. It served as a reminder to me (even before I was encouraged to stay put for a while) that having the ability to run is something to be thankful for. 

I hope you enjoy some of the list below. Feel free to take what speaks to you and ignore the rest. I will be posting my March Reads list soon.

My February Reads:

Love Your Library <3

All Multnomah Library locations are closed Monday, February 17th 2020 for President’s Day.

Are you looking for more ways to live more sustainably, or simply to own less ‘stuff’?This Valentine’s Day weekend get to know your local library, send them some love and give yourself an extra high five for consuming less. You may even have a library near you in walking distance. You can visit the library and check out a physical book, download an E-Book or Audiobook straight from your phone, or go above and beyond and pay those late fees you forgot you had. <3.

Digital Library: E-Books & Audiobooks

Funding for Public Libraries come out of tax dollars. This is a service that you are likely already paying for. With the selection of digital copies of books, whether your preference be reading or listening, there is plenty to choose from. I check out books from the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon. For Multnomah County and most other libraries, all you need is a valid photo ID to apply for a card. Here is a link to the many library locations around Portland. Once there you can apply for a card. After you have received your card and set up your PIN, you will have everything you need to access your account online at the library’s website. You can then access the Library catalog to check out or place a hold on E-Books and Audiobooks.

Three apps that my local library suggests borrowers use are: OverDrive, Libby, and Kindle. They can all be downloaded to your phone or tablet. I mostly listen to Audiobooks. I have used all three. I feel that Libby is the most user friendly.

Everybody Reads 2020: There There

What if everyone in Oregon read the same book? That is the idea that inspired the Everybody Reads community program, organized by Multnomah County Library and the Library Foundation. Each year one book is chosen. The library buys additional copies of the book to lend to readers. They also publish discussion guides, host events, and organize a reading by the author.

For 2020, the Library chose Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There as the 2020 Everybody Reads Book. Orange’s book follows 12 Native people in America on their way to a powwow. The book explores identity and belonging. There There was a 2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction and made the top 10 Best Books of 2018 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Tommy Orange will be speaking at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Thursday, March 5, 2020 at 7:30. Tickets can be found here.

Summer Reading Programs

Summer is one of the best times to escape into a good book. Most libraries have Summer Reading Programs for kids, teens, and adults. These programs have prizes and giveaways to help motivate readers throughout the community. Here is a link to the Summer Reading Program prizes and winners from 2019.

Staff Picks

Not sure what to read? Your local library are filled with passionate staff readers excited to recommend their favorite books. Check out the Staff Picks from Multnomah County right now.

Used Book Sale

For Portland residents, the Multnomah County Library has a Used Book Sale two times per year, one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

Spring Used Book Sale

  • Friday, April 24, 6pm-9pm: Members Only Pre-Sale
  • Saturday, April 25, 9am-9pm  – Trivia Contest + Cash Bar 6pm-9pm
  • Sunday, April 26, 11am-5pm  – Educators get 50% off with Teacher ID
  • Monday, April 27, 9am-3pm – 50% off EVERYTHING or $25/box

Goodreads App

Enough about the library. Now, I have to tell you about my favorite app Goodreads! I use this app while perusing the bookstacks at the library. Goodreads is free and is filled with recommendations from other readers. I use Goodreads to create lists in the form of digital bookshelves. In the app, I have three different ‘shelves’: my Want to Read, my Currently Reading, and my Read books. My favorite shelf is ‘Want to Read’ which I often use to pick out my next read. The shelf can be sorted in a number of ways. The ‘Read’ list comes in handy for keeping track of which of the books I’ve read by my favorite authors. For some of my favorite prolific authors, like Chuck Palahniuk or Nicholas Sparks, it helps me to ensure that I’m not picking up a book I read years ago.

I used to write lists of books I wanted to read in notebooks or on scraps of paper. These scraps of paper were hard to keep track of. Some I shelved in the books I finished. Others may have been returned in library books.

The stats tracked by the app are amazing. At the end of every year Goodreads provides a visual report of all of the books you’ve read. For example it will show you the book voted most popular by other readers, the most reviewed book, your longest book, etc. You can also track your stats throughout the year. If you have a Goodreads profile, you can access stats through your profile. Once there click on ‘My Books’ and then select ‘Stats’. Here you can see your reading over time cut by books, pages, and publication year. One of my favorite features is the ability to set a goal for number of books read by the end of the year.

There is also a social aspect to the app. You can connect with your friends on Goodreads, see what they are reading, and keep track of their want to read shelf. My bookclub has used this to connect with one another.

Note: if you do download Goodreads, my first advice to you is to manage your notifications appropriately. I didn’t when I first downloaded it and was receiving hundreds of email notifications weekly from all of my friends adding books to their shelves. In short, turn them off.

If you are curious to what I’m reading now or want to read in the future, follow me on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/elysse.

Download the App

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Happy Reading!

January Reads

Here are the books I read in January:

Who doesn’t love traveling? Airplanes are one my favorite places to read. Traveling can also be one of the best opportunities to unplug from your digital lifestyle and dive into a good book… if you can just resist the urge to binge watch Game of Thrones or start a new TV series. This January, work travel provided me with plenty of reading time. Planes, train, and automobiles. I took advantage our long flights, including two different 9+ hour flights over the Atlantic, daily shuttle bus rides, and spending our layovers in the lounge. I listened to half my January books using the Overdrive App for audiobooks that I checked out from Multnomah Country Library.

Note: If you have a library card at your local library, be sure to look into Ebooks and Audiobooks before your next trip. This is a FREE way to bring books with you on your travels. You can read them on your iPad or tablet. Audiobooks can be listened to straight from your phone. It also helps to lighten your luggage.

I kicked off my new year with Greta Thunberg’s book No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference. Thunberg’s book is a collection of her speeches from the last couple of years. They include her 2019 address to the United Nations. Greta is a 17-year-old climate activist from Sweden. She was named Time Magazine’s 2019 “Person of the Year.” She wrote all of her own speeches. I was impressed with how passionate and well spoken she was for a 15 or 16 year old (at the time).

The First 20 Minutes was a book that my fiancĂ© had been recommending to me to read for some time now. Running actually makes your knees healthier? This is the best news I’ve heard all year! I listened to this one on audiobook during my commute. Gretchen Reynolds references numerous sports science studies helping to dispel myths we have about sports and activity. John, my fiancĂ©, loves this book for the study about HIIT (high intensity interval training) and the benefits of such workouts for endurance training. After reading it he developed his own “No Running-Running Training” to prepare for relay races like Hood to Coast. According to Reynolds and the studies in the book, athletes can achieve endurance benefits equal to that of running for 90 minutes by instead doing six INTENSE 60 second interval sprints on the CrossFit type assault air bikes. This study and a variety of others share the importance of moving our bodies for better overall health in the long run. My favorite study discovered runners in their old age actually have healthier knees than those of non-runners. Looks like I should keep running, running, and running, running!

Room and Conviction were my fiction books for January. Room had been on my bookshelf for some time and I was hesitant to start it, based on the heavy nature of the plot line. The book is about a young woman kidnapped and held captive in a backyard shed, or “Room” for seven years. She gives birth to a child while in captivity. Room is told from the perspective of her 5-year-old son. I love the narration and seeing the world through the eyes of someone discovering the outside and often scary world for the first time. Room was adopted for screen in 2015 starring Brie Larson. Her performance won her an Academy Award for Best Actress. I have yet to see the movie but may watch it later this year.

Conviction was chosen as our January Book Club Book. I was super excited about this one. I found it on on Reese’s Book Club list. Reese Witherspoon picks a book each month with a woman at the center of the story. Reese’s Book Club is a division of her media company Hello Sunshine. You can follow her on social media @reesesbookclub or follow #readwithreese. Denise Mina’s story is another creative use of storytelling. The book flips back and forth between the realtime plot line and a true crime podcast that Anna, the main character, is listening to. I’m a big fan a podcasts and true crime mysteries, so it had all of the ingredients I needed to be a good book.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This was my favorite read of the month. Palahniuk is my favorite author, and in his new book he is dishing out advice for aspiring writers. Finally. I began this blog to share my adventures, be it running, reading, or travel. I also started this blog to dust off my writing skills. Reading anything by Palahniuk leaves me wanting more. The same goes for Consider This. He goes back and forth between doling out advice and sharing stories from his book tours, many of which I have attended in Portland, OR. If you have never been to any of his book tours, they are unlike anything you have ever experienced. If you are curious about them, many people have uploaded them to YouTube. There you can find a taste of his wild creativity. Be forewarned his content can be graphic in nature and people have been known to faint at his readings. Guts a short story from his novel Haunted has caused more than 100 people to faint in live readings. I could go on and on about my love for Chuck Palahniuk, but I had better save that for another post. In Consider This, Chuck shares insider tips for writers and his distain for author photos. He encourages writers to go out and find a workshop, to read their work aloud, and try “dangerous writing”, which is writing about a deep, dark secret or unresolved anxiety. Even if taking up writing is not for you, this book has some amazing stories and lists of fiction and non-fiction worth adding to your reading list.

Last year, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers and really enjoyed it. I think I actually flew through it within a couple of days. Other physical books by Gladwell have been hard for me to get into, so for Blink and Outliers thought I would try audiobooks. Both were available to borrow from the library right before I took off on my international work trip. In a world where we have so much data at our fingertips, Blink asks us to reconsider the importance of our first impressions and snap judgements. He also provides instances where snap judgements or “thin slices” were more informative than many months of deliberation and analysis. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman can observe a couple’s interactions for only a couple of minutes and predict if they will last. Outliers is also very interesting, but it I found it less inspiring to hear how the best hockey players happened to all be born in January or that there are underlying success factors that are responsible for the success versus hard work. I agree with Gladwell that it is a factor that we should consider when celebrating someone’s success, but I also think it is much harder to find such correlations. I commend him for the analysis he has done to find these so called “outliers”.

I listened to Between The World and Me and Ta-Hehisi Coates read it. It was a profound letter from father to son of the history of racism in America. Coates shares his own coming of age experiences and difficult lessons his son will have to learn in order to understand ‘what it is like to inhabit a black body’ in America. Coates does an excellent job of sharing his heartbreaking perspective, one that is easy to turn a blind eye to occupying my own ‘white body’ and ubiquitous systemic American whiteness. It gave me an opportunity to step outside my own body to feel his fear and experience his anger. Beautiful and painful. It is eloquently written, and I wish that I had the physical copy of the book to see how the sentences and paragraphs strung together. The author reads the book like poetry. Toni Morrison described this book as “required reading” and I very much agree with her. It is a short, but moving book, which attempts to enable the reader to walk a mile in another’s shoes.

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Reflecting on 2019

Reading was once my favorite.

Long before obligations and adult responsibilities crept into my life, I spent my summers reading on a blanket in the sun in the front yard. I devoured my “chapter books” filled with adventure, mystery, and high school drama. I loved Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, and Goosebumps. My mom challenged me to add in “The Classics” suggesting The Catcher and the Rye or Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. Reading was encouraged. iPhones and social media didn’t exist yet. Life was simple.

2019 was the year I fell back in love with reading. Early in the year, my cousin invited me to join her Book Club. I agreed, but it was an extra-curricular activity I wasn’t sure I could fully commit to. I wanted to do it even if I wasn’t sure if I could find the time. Challenging myself to read more often and connecting with amazing women once a month could only bring good things. Before that, books would pop up into my life every now and then. I usually took the opportunity of a long plane ride to dive into a good book and power down my phone completely. I can usually get through two or three books during holiday break or a beach vacation. Reading Nicholas Sparks, on location, visiting my family in North Carolina is the best way to pass the day. Suntan, sunshine, and sea breeze.

I have been a fan of Goodreads App for a long time. I use it when I walk into any bookstore or library to remember what books I have been wanting to read. It helps you organize your books into “shelves”. I have three: Currently Reading, Want to Read, and Read. Every year the app would ask me to set a reading goal for how many books read for the year. In 2017, I read 6 books. In 2018, I set a goal to read 12. That is only 1 per month and I ended up reading 17. So in 2019, I set a goal to read 30 books. It was about double what I read the year before and I knew I would be more motivated than the year prior with the help of my Book Club.

Reading brought me back into the world I love. I was able to turn my ‘work-brain’ off and make room for more creativity and learning.

In 2019, I read 37 books! Now… I didn’t make it to every Book Club meeting, nor did I read every book we selected. I did read quite a few books outside of my comfort zone. I read books that I wouldn’t have chosen based on their genre or the cover art. Reading more brought me back to the world I once loved as a young girl. It has helped learn how to turn off my ‘work-brain’ and make room for more creativity and happiness to my everyday.

I usually prefer to sit and read physical books, but my schedule and the busy world we live in doesn’t allow me that luxury. Some of the books I completed last year were in the form of audio books. Listening to books on my drive in bookended my day before and after work nicely. In some cases, I was so interested to find out what happened next in whatever I was reading that I started listening to my books while running. Listening during a long run was able to take the place of a training partner when I couldn’t find anyone to join me.

My favorite audio books were the ones the author read, such as Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Scott Jurek’s North, and University of Portland Alum Kunal Nayyer’s Yes, My Accent Is Real. There is nothing more humbling than training to race only 26.2 miles of a marathon while listening to Scott Jurek’s 2000 mile trek along every step of the Appalachian Trail.

Ask For It and Myth of the Nice Girl were both books that boosted my confidence in the workplace. I learned tactics for negotiation and read success stories of other professional women asking for what they want when it comes to their career. I shared both books with co-workers and girlfriends who would also love the learnings shared.

For 2020, I set the goal to read 60 books doubling my 2019 goal. This will be challenging because while I did read almost 40 books last year, a goal of 60 books is a little more than 1 per week. If you have any book recommendations, please send them my way.

Here is the list of books I read in 2019:

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