The Years of Rice and Salt

Title: The Years of Rice and Salt
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Genre: Fiction, Alternate History, Drama

I had a tough time with this book. It's beautifully written, and the prose really lights up the movie playing in my head. It's an alternate history starting with the Black Death and centered (mostly) in various Asian locations. You kind of hopscotch through history written by the Buddhists, Daoists, and Muslims who survived the plague (which is fitting because this was supposed to be for last year's book challenge topic "about a plague"). It's fascinating and complex and full of new ideas to explore.

However, it's difficult for me to read books that don't have a "true" ending. I'm too American in that way, I suppose. Conclude, wrap the story up, and if there must be a lingering "What happened?", then let it be just one. This novel left me with so many questions that I'm still mentally grumbling about it two days later, and I haven't been able to start my next book very successfully. 

Other than that, this was enjoyable read. Let me know what you think of it.

Another 2017 Challenge

Because reading 117 books isn't enough...

In 2014, I attended a women's retreat with our church, and I was thoroughly unimpressed by the theme "Be-you-tiful You"...until I heard the message. Shari Braendel of Fashion Meets Faith was the speaker, and she was fantastic. If you've never had the opportunity to attend one of her seminars, please do. She has a powerful testimony, and she really opened my eyes to what I look like.

Having grown up in South Texas (farther south than Corpus Christi!), I grew up as a shorts and short-sleeved shirt kind of gal. I'm not super confident with color and trends and all that, so I kept close to the "basics." In fact, I didn't realize how plain my clothes palette was until I overheard my friend Kristina of PWC Moms (a great resource if you live in Prince William County, VA) tell my eldest daughter, "Well, honey, your mom is a black, white, and grey kind of person." I have no idea what they were talking about, but in the years since, I've discovered my closet is pretty close to Kristina's description. So you can see how Sheri's seminar was useful to me. She is sweet and funny and all about celebrating who YOU are, not in turning anyone into a fashion plate.

I bought Shari's book Help Me Jesus, I Have Nothing to Wear, which is a fun, easy read and good reference guide. Shari breaks people into general body types and makes her recommendations for best fits based on that. She also recommends color schemes based on your skin tone, hair color, and eye color. Her free color analysis will give you your color scheme. Thanks to her, I manage to look reasonably presentable on a regular basis. I still wear shirts and shorts (like today), but they're nice, well-tailored pieces that a) are comfortable and b) look nice on me. As you can see, I still like black and white.

Anyhow, the point of this post is this: Lately, Fashion Meets Faith has been advertising Shari's new online program: 27 Hangers. I haven't attended (because even though it's only $27, I can't justify the expense to myself), but the idea intrigued me. One of my friends from two moves ago wanted to do a yearly challenge with just 12 pieces of clothing. I wasn't brave enough for that. So when Shari and FMF rolled out 27 Hangers, I thought, "I can do that." So I finally did. Yesterday morning, I took every single piece of "regular" (not sweaters, jackets, etc. because they're too bulky to store) clothing out of my closet, and I was really surprised by how many clothes I have. I selected the 27 most useful pieces of clothing for this season (as you can see, I'm in shorts now but a cold front may roll through at any moment-Louisiana weather is nuts!) and hung them up dutifully. I intend to live in these 27 clothes for the next three months. If I like the challenge, then I'll go ahead and switch things up for summer and so on.

So, what did I keep? Surprisingly, 27 pieces of clothing is a lot. I have four dresses, three tunics, two leggings, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of shorts, one pair of capris, and the rest is tops. I think. That's going off the top of my head. As you can see from the picture, I'm on hold on the phone and need to be at my computer to reference the issue I'm calling about. But so far, I'm happy with my choices.

Mind you, this is "daily" clothing only. I did go through my workout clothes drawer, my personal clothes drawer, and my pajama drawer as well. I kept five pieces of workout gear and pajamas, and I won't tell you what I left in my personal drawer. We've no need to be that personal.

All the other clothes are in a bin in our storage room under the stairs. I may break, and I may not. If I make it, then I'm going to do my best to give away at least five unused pieces of clothing from the storage bin. This will be hard because I love my clothes even if I don't wear them very often. Maybe absence will make my heart even fonder of them. Who knows?

I hope to keep you updated with a weekly picture of what my 27 hangers produced. We'll play the "She wore that last week" game. LOL.

Blessings to you, my friends.

P.S. I did not receive any compensation for this post. I just really like Shari Braendel's message and hope her knowledge will be useful to you. After all, it's the new year-out with the old!

2017 Goals

I've kind of stopped with resolutions. My husband and I do monthly goals instead, e.g., give up alcohol or caffeine for a month. The entire family has monthly goals as well: do neighborhood clean-ups when we go for walks or volunteer somewhere together every weekend. We don't always meet our goals, but we try to have a positive impact on our world around us.

On a personal note, I have very clear and simple goals: stay healthy (by losing a bit of weight and exercising regularly), finish gift shopping for Christmas by October (so I can focus on the real meanings of Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as being able to have fun throughout the holiday season), and reading. 

Yes, a year without reading is horrible to imagine. Here's my reading list (as of now) for 2017. Currently, there are 139 books on the list. Nineteen of them are must reads for blogging purposes. The others are completely up for grabs. Ingrid of Getting Lost in the Stacks decided that this year's challenge is to get through the stacks of books that are either lying around the house or listed on our Kindles. My goal for this year is 117 books in honor of 2017. What books do you recommend from this list?

Audiobooks are denoted for me to remember they're available in that format. With my hour-plus commute most days of the week, these books are a great way to keep reading and stay off my mobile while driving.

And yes, 2017 is the year for me to catch up on my Star Wars reading. I'm a bit of a fan, and it's been waaaay too long since I spent time in a galaxy far, far away.

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To Read List	Instant Mom	To Blog List	An Ishmael of Syria
	In the Shadow of the Banyan		Small Great Things
	The Queen's Lover		Medievalist Comics and the American Century
	The Royal We		The Girl from Venice
Audiobook	My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry		Sirius
	A World Lit on Fire		My (Underground) American Dream
	Arab of the future		Kid Artists
	Escape from camp 14		The Midwife
	The Nightingale		Beauty and Attention
Audiobook	The black count		Life Unexpected
	Dead Wake		The Undesirables
	Secrets of a Charmed Life		Trust My Heart
	The Marriage of Opposites		The Honorable Heir
Audiobook	Yes, My Accent is Real		Pointe and Shoot
	When Books Went to War		Victoria
	Brainmaker		The Other Einstein
	Girl at War		It is Well
	Red Queen		In the Blue Hour
	The Thing About Jellyfish		The Murdered Messiah
	The Japanese Lover
Audiobook	The cross and the switchblade
	The traveling tea shop.
	Empress of rome
	Still alice.
	The great leader and the fighter pilot.
	The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
	How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
	Before the End, After the Beginning
	Julio's Day
	Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass
	Across a Hundred Mountains
	Mexican Whiteboy
Audiobook	The Madonnas of Echo Park
	Into the Beautiful North
	Our America: A Hispanic History of the U.S.
	The Distance Between Us
	Still Dreaming: My Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill
	The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigration Rights Debate
	Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
Audiobook	The Scorch Trials
	A Hole in Texas
	Map of Fates
	Bloodline
	The Moviegoer
	The Lottery
Audiobook	Lily and the Octopus
	The Swans of Fifth Avenue
	The Queen of the Night
	Modern Girls
	Hamilton: The Revolution
	The Geek Feminist Revolution
	The Only Pirate at the Party
	First Women
	Rise of the Rocket Girls
	White Trash
	Salt to the Sea
	Me Talk Pretty One Day
Audiobook	A Tale of Two Cities
Audiobook	Les Miserables
Audiobook	Moby Dick
	The Lovely Bones
	The Poisonwood Bible
	Middlesex
	The Memory Keeper's Daughter
	Under the Tuscan Sun
	Mr. Darcy's Diary
	The Romanov Sisters
	The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
	The Women's War
	The Princess Diarist
	Hidden Figures
	Library of Souls
	Mozart in the Jungle
	The Girl in the Spider's Web
	The Underground Railroad
	Lords of the Sith
Audiobook	Aftermath: Life Debt
	Dark Disciple
	Ashoka
	The Miniaturist
	Alexander Hamilton
	Me Before You
	After You
	A Man Called Ove
	Do More, Spend Less
Audiobook	Cinder
	Charity Girls
	Night
	The Force Unleashed
	The Hundred Dresses
	Women of the Silk
	An Edible History of Humanity
	The Prophets of Eternal Fjord
	Hard Contact
	Darth Bane series
Audiobook	Ana's Story
	Out of the Darkness
Audiobook	The Language of Flowers
	Monuments Men
	Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Audiobook	The Omnivore's Dilemma
Audiobook	In Defense of Food
	Relativity
	Into the Thickening Fog
	The Perfume Collector
	The Chemist
	The Memory of Us
	The Paper Magician
	Winter Men
	The Light of the Fireflies
	Star Sand
	About the Night
	War Brides
	Pierced by the Sun
	Rage
	The Shelf Life of Happiness
	The Age of Daredevils
	Wake in Winter
	All's Quiet on the Western Front
	In the Shadow of Lakecrest

How I Read So Much for Free

I don't know about you, but I find this very depressing: 

(I've tried finding more current stats to make sure these numbers are still accurate, but I haven't dug any up. If you find some, let me know, please.)

We need to be reading, folks! Books open your mind and imagination. If nothing else, they serve as entertainment. At best, they teach you how to appreciate other people's worldviews and help you learn some compassion. Let's talk a little bit about how I read so many books for (nearly) free.

At any rate, I'm one of those horrible people who don't buy more than five books in a year. That's an average of less than half a book per month, folks. But in 2016, I read well over 100 books. How does that work? Two words: the library. Two more words: electronic books. Two last words: my Kindle. 

There. My super secrets. Our library has a wonderful online collection via Overdrive, and I use it nearly religiously. I can check books out for 30 days, which is usually more than enough time, and if I do run out of time, I can renew easily without losing my spot. Every once in a great long while, I'll check a physical book out of the library (e.g., something super-recently released that hasn't been added to the online collection yet), but since I'm so rarely in the actual library, I don't do this very often.

If you check out my previous post, you'll see that I encourage use of audiobooks. Our library's Overdrive collection has a lot of the most popular books on audio, and the narrators are typically rather wonderful. My kids and I are especially fond of David Tennant's wonderful readings of the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell. It was his performance on those books that led me to be a Doctor Who fan, actually (yes, I'm one of those people whose first Doctor is Christopher Eccleston...I'll eventally get to the classic Doctors, but today is not the day). Last year, I loved Aziz Ansari's reading of Modern Romance and Billy Crystal's narration of Still Foolin' Em. Although listening to a book isn't quite the same as reading it, I still count audiobooks toward my annual reading totals. Listening to the news is the same as reading the news, right? Same principle here.

Finally, my Kindle. Oh, how I love my Kindle. I was a first-generation adopter way back in 2008. I spent a significant amount of graduation money on that device, and it lasted until 2013. One of my kids accidentally crunched it, but I decided to love her anyway. Now, every one of us in our fiver family has our own Kindle. The kids love theirs and take exceptionally good care of them (ages: 10, 8, 6). My husband's Kindle has been to Iraq and Afghanistan. When it isn't being used my Kindle is either on my bedside table or in my purse, ready for its next adventure. Kindle's charges last forever (forever being about two weeks for me), and they are light as can be, which means there is zero burden on my shoulders when toting it around. I want to say my Kindle has about 200 books on it right now, but I really have no idea. It's a lot. I've read many of them and intend to read most of them by the end of 2017. 

If you're thinking about purchasing an e-reader, I highly recommend it. Yes, you can read on your tablet, iPad, or phone. Sure. But the glare is killer. Plus, the battery dies quickly. Finally, I don't like distractions. When I get alerts on my devices, I feel that horrible compulsion to see what's going on. Then I waste time on email, Facebook, or whatever instead of using it on my book. Plus, Kindles are much lighter than tablets. This is bonus brownie points because I do not like heavy purses. 

Any Kindle is going to be good. I have the basic one that is a few generations old. It's got advertisements that I ignore. Actually, most of our family's Kindles are used models. We found them at local yard sales or on Craigslist. They were super cheap and in great condition. Mine even came with Star Wars books that the owner forgot to delete. Woohoo! :) The kids and I got our Kindles for $25, used. My husband's was brand-new three years ago, and I bought it during an Amazon buy-back of old Kindles program. I think it ended up being about $45? The Kindle purchase accounts for the "almost" part of the free reading bit. Over the years, my Kindle has averaged about $8/year. Next year, it'll be even less. Yes!

Now, I said I don't buy many books every year. This is a slightly nebulous statement. I "buy" free books on Amazon every once in a long while. Sign up for an account on www.bookbub.com to get weekly notifications on discounted books. There's always at least one free book listed in your Friday email's recommended list. Also, Amazon has a lovely "Top 100 Free" list in their bestsellers section. It tends to be laden with smutty novels, but sometimes you get some real gems like Book One of the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series. Right now, there's an autobiography on Nikola Tesla and an interesting-looking sci-fi novel available for free.

Additionally, I sometimes earn credits for choosing slower shipping than the free Amazon Prime two days. I save the credits and purchase books with them. Since I didn't really spend money on them, I don't consider them true expenditures.

Finally, if you're a Prime member, then you must check out Prime Reading. There are all kinds of beauties available to discover there. Also, you get to choose one free, early-release for Prime members only book every month via Kindle First. 

                                                                  

So...that's how I read so much for so little, folks. I use the tools I've got via the library and Amazon's free book opportunities. There are many, many more ways to get free books (e.g., Blogging for Books). Feel free to leave reading tips in the comments.

Disclaimer: I get tiny kick-backs from Amazon if you order from the links in this post. If you don't want that, then search for the items on your own browser. Just a tip: use smile.amazon.com to support your favorite charity. The pennies add up if you're an Amazon frequent flier. Also, I didn't get paid for the Amazon-centric post. I just really love their free books.