Tag: Reese Witherspoon

Posted on

May Reads

May 1 – 31: Road Trip to Boise, Idaho where we hiked, biked, and quarantined with my family.

“What a slacker!” I thought as I came to the realization that it is already July and I am just now posting my May Reading selections. Like many of you, time is moving throughout my life very differently these days. I usually describe myself as a planner, yet I am learning to embrace a more organic flow to my day. While spending time with my family in Boise, John and I made the tough decision to postpone our wedding, ensuring that our friends and family feel safe and healthy to travel when the time is right to celebrate together. I did spend plenty of time reading, I just didn’t spend any time writing.

Staying in has given us the opportunity to work on house projects. John has taken to woodworking and I am trying my green thumb in the garden. I feel grateful for the ability to do so. I have taken time to dive into books to better educate myself of the racism that exists within the United States and what can be done to combat it. I am listening to my body and more importantly my mind. Walking with Moxie. Reflecting. Taking breaks. Reminding myself to slow down. Reset. Relax.

I will be sharing more about our house projects, more readings, and want to read lists. Enjoy!

FICTION

Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel by Celeste Ng : 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

“All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leap like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never – could never – set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key she though, was to avoid conflagration.”

Elena Richardson follows the rules. She understands and appreciates the rules. Shaker Heights, where she lives, is a thriving community carefully planned out with immaculate lawns and excellent schools. Mrs. Richardson doesn’t believe that there are ways of doing things, but rather there is the right way to do things. She is primarily focused on raising their four children, each bound for an Ivy League education and great things. Enter Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl. Their attraction to Shaker Heights is the quality education for Pearl. They become members of the community in a rental owned by the Richardsons.

Mia is an artist and single mom doing her best to provide for Pearl. Elena mothers in the way she believes is best. The story unfolds while a family friend of the Richardsons attempts to adopt a Chinese-American baby left at a Fire Department. The friends of the Richardsons find themselves in the middle of a custody battle with everyone in town taking sides. What does it mean to be someone’s mother? Author Celeste Ng hits on many themes throughout the novel. What makes up one’s identity? The secrets we keep. How important is it to follow the rules? What rules should we follow? This is a story of the lives within a community that are woven carefully together, yet easily pulled apart.

I loved this book. I had heard from a couple of friends that this book was something they picked up and just couldn’t get into. It does have a slow start to set the scene. Ng cautiously introduces each of the characters in different lights, from different angles, having the reader craving for real action. Once the story picked up speed, I couldn’t put it down. This novel was chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club and as many of you will know has been turned into a TV series on Hulu. I enjoy reading books that have transitioned to the screen. They are usually never like what I imagined them to be in my head, but that is what I think makes them fun to enjoy. I get to paint my own picture and enjoy someone else’s interpretation of the characters.

Beach Read by Emily Henry: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

As the month of May crept along, my book selections got better and better. This book, Beach Read, was chosen by my book club. This is a new book! It came out May 19th, so I went to downtown Boise and purchased at, Rediscovered Books, a local book seller. This book is light hearted and fun, as a beach read should be. If you are looking for a fun, flirty, and romantic novel then consider picking this one up. Swoon!

January Andrews and Augustus Everett are both writers, but of very differing genres. January writes romance novels and Augustus, or Gus as he is known, usually writes dark literary fiction where most of the characters don’t survive. They considered one another rivals in college, each fighting for the best book deal. January, suffering from writer’s block and the death of her father, gets out of town and quarantines herself in her late father’s beach house, only to find Gus doing much of the same next door. They strike up a bet to swap genres and see who can get published first. This involves teaching one another their craft. January teaches Gus the art of romantic date settings and Gus invites January along to interview sketchy survival death cult members. Guidelines of the competition state there will be no falling for one another. Will they be able to resist one another? Will either of them finish a novel? You’ll have to pick this one up to find out!

Regretting You by Colleen Hoover : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Another light and girly read, Regretting You also had themes relating to the complicated Mother-Daughter relationship. I picked up this book because I loved Colleen Hoover’s writing style in Verity. She creates an Alice in Wonderland effect for me, where I feel as though I fall into the looking glass or deep within the story she is telling. I have been known to devour her books. If pulled away from reading them, I find myself daydreaming about the characters and wondering what they are up to, as if they were real people I know. While my first introduction to Hoover was through Verity, I learned that she writes across a variety of genres and for both adult and young adult audiences. This is not something I am accustomed to seeing from many fiction writers – but am very impressed with her range.

This story bounces back and forth between Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter Clara. Morgan would like a life for Clara different from her own. Pregnant at sixteen and married too young, Morgan felt as though she missed out on a lot. Clara believes her mother to be completely predictable (read: boring). She too wants a life different than her mother’s. Morgan and Clara disagree quite often. Luckily, they have Chris, Morgan’s husband and Clara’s father. He is the one to unite the family, amid their warring personalities. When Chris is involved in a tragic and suspicious accident, Morgan and Clara both struggle with how to go on living. For Morgan, support comes in an unlikely place, while Clara begins to date a forbidden boy. Secrets are revealed. Things aren’t what they seem. As I mentioned before mother daughter relationships are messy and complicated.

Red, White, & Royal Blue: A Novel by Casey McQuiston : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book was a fun rom-com and a bit steamy. If the premise of this book was read tabloid style, it would read something like, “British Prince Henry in love with Alex, son of the U.S. president?” This book is so much more than that. With the political failings of our current government, Red, White, & Royal Blue serves up more humanity, love, and reality than the one we are currently living in. The story follows Alex, whose mother is the first elected woman President of the United States in 2016. Much of his life he has been involved in politics and the tabloids. A scandal ensues when he and his sister attend a royal British wedding and Alex accidentally pushes his rival, Prince Henry right into the wedding cake. Everything is captured by the paparazzi. As damage control, their mothers, the POTUS and Queen of England, no less, force the men to agree to a truce. They will be best friends, or at least seem like best friends to the media. As they spend time together and actually get to know one another, a deeper connection develops. Their fake friendship quickly shapes into a secret romance, hidden from the world.

This queer love story made its way to the New York Times best-seller list in 2019. McQuiston’s pages are filled with modern pop-culture references, yet the themes are honest and relatable. What is the importance of love as it relates to your family, career, and in some cases, your family’s vision for you? How do you find the courage to be true to yourself and let go of the fear brought on by a world telling you to be anything but yourself?

NON-FICTION

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D. : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Western world, we, the science minded, believe that thoughts and feelings are the results of the chemical reactions in the brain where happiness can be an outcome. The Dalai Lama flips this notion on its head and asks, “What if the chemical reactions in the brain are the results of our thoughts or feelings?” What if we choose happiness and this choice can influence our brain chemistry? What if we have that power? According to the Dalai Lama, happiness is the purpose of life. There was no more perfect time to read The Art of Happiness than two and a half months into a pandemic.

Locked down in my home, I read this with a Mindfulness Book Club organized through work. Every week I would gather with co-workers on a Zoom call discussing the Dalai Lama’s teachings. Originally published in 1998, the concepts presented are not new, yet they are things we Americans have a hard time believing and an even harder time practicing. A co-worker was reading this for a second time, reflecting on the timelines of our reading and that this is a book that can be revisited during trying times in life. In the book the Dalai Lama separates happiness from pleasure. He discusses the interconnectedness of the world and all of us in it.

The most important message I learned from this book is that happiness is something to be practiced. To be happy is to invest in your own happiness, to spend time and energy and brain space figuring out how to create the neural pathways in your mind to foster happiness. Like yoga practice or even athletics you are trying to learn or master, practice is the key. Happiness is a state of mind rather than something that happens to us. The First Truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering, pain, and misery. The Dalai Lama helps to explain that life is not without suffering. No one can go through life without experiencing it. Therefore, the practice of happiness in one’s life become that much more important.

Rather than think of myself as the victim of the pandemic, locked inside my house, I shifted my mindset. I am safe within my home. I am learning how to successfully work from home. I am leveling up on my technology skills. I am growing and learning. I am being challenged. How do I embrace these changes and create habits of happiness?

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The right to: Spend your own money. Go to school. Earn an income. Access contraceptives. Work outside the home. Walk outside the home. Choose whom to marry. Get a loan. Start a business. Own property. Divorce a husband. See a doctor. Drive a car.

All of these rights are denied to women in some parts of the world.

I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author, Melinda Gates. As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she has dedicated her work for the last twenty years to help people with the most urgent needs, all over the world. I loved listening to Melinda weave stories of the inspiring women she has met throughout the book. She addresses topics of child marriage, contraceptives, and gender equality in the workplace. She has found that in order to lift up societies, we need to invest in women.

One of her stories highlights the complexities of the issues faced when working to make significant change. In 2004, the foundation wanted to help lower HIV amongst sex traffic workers. They had a project with the goal to increase the education and use of condoms. The women claimed not to need more condoms or education on the use. They already had them and knew how to use them. They needed help with violence and domestic abuse. Not seeing the connection, the foundation at first declined. They did not want scope creep, which means to lose focus on the original intention of the project. As they continued their work to combat HIV, they set up safe meeting spaces for the women to drink tea together. In these spaces they began to listen to the issues the women are faced with. The women said they would use condoms if they did not get beaten when asking clients to use them or attacked by police if found carrying them. The women indicated that the only effective way they had found to stop a man bullying women, was with a large group of other women. If a woman they knew was being attacked, a whole gang of women could rush in and scare him off. So, the foundation created a hotline. A woman being attacked could text a 3-digit code and within minutes 12-15 women, a pro bono lawyer, and the media would come running to her aid.

“As women gain rights, families flourish, and so do societies… and when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone,” writes Melinda. Her stories range from her time at Microsoft and challenges she has faced with inequality as a woman to helping women in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. Her humanitarian work is truly remarkable.

Posted on

March Reads

@MissMoxieDog and I practicing social distancing at home.

Over half of the month of March, my fiancé, our puppy Moxie and I have spent in quarantine due to the coronavirus. It has been hard not to feel isolated and trapped inside our own home at times. The transition to working from home no other company except for one Over half of the month of March, my fiancé, our puppy Moxie and I have spent in quarantine due to the coronavirus. It has been hard not to feel isolated and trapped inside our own home at times. The transition to working from home with no company except for one another has been challenging. Luckily for us, I am an early bird and John is a night owl. Our differing preferences are something we used to fight about during our “pre-quarantine” lives; but now we appreciate the space we allow each other. I wake early to let Moxie out and spend a couple of hours to myself, reading with a cup of coffee. I’ve listened to audiobooks while on walks around the neighborhood with Moxie, which has been a wonderful way to break up the day between conference calls. 

To keep my mind off the real world, I picked up two more suspense novels, both of which I highly recommend. First, I read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. My bookclub read this one last year, but I never had a chance to pick it up. It was a 2019 Goodreads Choice Winner for Mystery and Thriller. 

The synopsis: Set in London, Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, is married to Gabriel, a fashion photographer. One evening Gabriel comes home late from a fashion shoot. Alicia shoots him five times in the face and never speaks again. No one knows why she did it. The case makes her famous in the news. Her previous artwork becomes highly sought after. Meanwhile ‘the silent patient’ is put in psychiatric care. The story follows Theo Faber, her psychotherapist, as he seeks to understand the motivation for killing her husband. The story starts off slow, but gets dark and twisty very quickly. 

March Must Reads: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides and Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu.

My second best escape into fiction for March was The Last Mrs. Parrish by LIV Constantine. This book was given to me by a friend who recommended it as a fun and easy read. Exactly what I needed. The author LIV Constantine is actually the pen name of writers and sisters Lynne and Valerie Constantine. The Last Mrs. Parrish was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club book, and is being developed by Amazon Movie studios into a film drama series. 

The synopsis: Young Amber Patterson thinks she deserves more in life. She desires money and power. If only her life could be more like the fabulous Daphne Parrish. Married to real estate mogul, Jackson Parrish, Daphne is the queen of the Connecticut socialites; living lavishly in a fairytale marriage, or so it appears. Amber works to ingrain herself with the Parrish family. Amber appeals to Daphne’s desire to help others and becomes her closest friend. The plan that Amber puts into action is revealed slowly,  revealed page by page. 

I fell in love with Tiffany Dufu’s book Drop the Ball. I chose to read this one because of my tendency to follow rules to a fault. I thought this book might help me to focus in on the things that were most important. Her book’s focus on achieving more by doing less. Dufu explains the importance of partnership in the household and the mistake many women make drafting up completely unrealistic to-do lists. No doubt there are many of us who leave the office and going home can feel like our second shift. Dufu, using her own experience, explains why being a perfectionist in your own home is more hurtful to both your partnership at home and your sanity. It is impossible to “do it all”. Once you accept that, and learn to delegate in the home (like you probably already know how to do at work), it is amazing the things you can make time to focus on. I highly recommend this book. While listening to this one, I couldn’t help but talk about it to everyone I encountered. 

Brene Brown is one of my favorite authors. I listened to Dare to Lead on audio during the first couple of weeks in coronavirus quarantine at home. At first I felt weird listening to a “business” book when I felt like I wasn’t being allowed to leave my home to go manage business like I was accustomed to. Anyone who has read anything by Brene Brown knows that the topics of her book are not “business,” but are that of people and vulnerability. So, at first, I was the vulnerable one mourning the loss of my day-to-day routine and corporate way of life. It took some time listening to Brene, but I finally got over myself and began practicing more gratitude for the things I do have; I was home safe and healthy and could afford to listen to her books on morning walks with my pup. I found her messages of leadership very applicable to the things we are going through right now. It reminded me how important it was to check in on my teammates. I needed to make sure they were doing well and transitioning into our new reality before we start thinking about “business as usual.” It also helped me to appreciate the leaders I have within the organization in which I work. All of whom have made significant efforts to prioritize the health and well-being in this new time of uncertainty. 

Finally, I also read Jeanine Cummins novel American Dirt. My book club chose this book as our February Book, but I only got about halfway through. At the time we selected it in January, the novel was receiving quite a bit of publicity. This book is fiction and follows the story of Lydia and her son Luca as they flee Mexico due to violence brought against their family by Mexican cartels. 

American Dirt was selected for Oprah’s Book Club, which usually solidifies any book’s success and adoption by book clubs everywhere. After Oprah’s announcement Latinx community members spoke out against Cummins’ portrayal of migrants and Mexico and called out the whiteness of the publishing industry. “Book Influencers” on social media who had once been promoting the book were taking back their endorsements.

Cummins was criticized for the seven-figure advance she received to write this novel. There were a few other missteps by the publishing company that showed their priority was on the business of selling books to book clubs versus telling an immigration story. In the discussions surrounding the book, many brought up the importance of Cummins’ identity and suggested readers choose #OWNvoices books instead.

As someone who loves to read both fiction and non-fiction. I was curious to read this book because I wanted to formulate my own opinion. I didn’t feel that I could do that without having read it. Many people “boycotted” reading American Dirt and took to using the hashtag #OWNvoices. The concept of #OWNvoices was started in 2015 by Corinne Duyvis as a rallying cry for diversity in literature. The goal was to “highlight books that are written by an author that shares a marginalized identity with the protagonist.” I can see both sides. I think representation is extremely important. I believe in the concept “see it to be it.” Most young people especially need to see themselves represented in leaders both in the media and in their community to better know what is possible. However, I also worry about creating a culture, especially in fiction, where writers feel limited to only write about their own personal experiences. Some of my favorite writers do write what they know and their stories are richer because of it. On the other hand my favorite author Chuck Palahniuk doesn’t consider himself a writer, but rather a collector of stories. He likes to sit and observe people or connect with others who share both heartbreaking and heartwarming stories about their lives. These are real people, and he collects their stores and weaves them into the characters in this novels. He is a wonderful storyteller. He has the ability to make the reader feel both happy and sad in the same moment of a story for a fictitious character who is loosely based on something real. 

Having said that, I would not necessarily say that American Dirt had that same kind of human connection or story telling. I enjoyed reading it. The pace of the story ebbed and flowed, moving faster at parts and slower at others. In our Book Club conversation, many felt that the storylines felt forced, or simply there for shock value. There was much discussion online about Cummins use of stereotypes for the Mexican immigrant. Other articles I read compare the “cancel culture” surrounding American Dirt the book burning of the digital age. All things to contemplate. Cummins has claimed to have done 5 years of research in Mexico. She says she interviewed individuals to help her tell a more authentic story. The afterward in her book talks about wanting to bring more voices to conversations about immigration. If nothing else, this book can inspire you to have your own thoughts or discussions around #OWNvoices literature, discrepancies in representation in the publishing industry, race, immigration, representation, and free speech. 

If you want to read about the controversy surrounding this novel for yourself, check out some of the below.

Posted on

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 fiancé 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 fiancé, 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.

Affiliate Note: There are affiliate links above. Shopping the links above helps to fund this blog. Thank you for reading!