Tag Archives: book review

20 books and 20 lbs (week 23): Salman-ella

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Well, I can finally say I finished book #4: “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie. And holy cow, was that a slog. I haven’t had this much trouble reading a book since I started {unnamed Harry Potter knockoff that I got for free at a movie theater and put down as fast as I picked it up}.

So, here’s the deal with “Midnight’s Children”: simultaneous with the birth of India as an independent nation, hundreds of children are born whose destiny are tied to their homeland in a unique and magical way. One of these children, born almost exactly at the stroke of midnight, is Saleem Sanai – a character who is equal parts what he can do on his own and what can be done to him by others. He seems to be a fairly irredeemable person, in a book filled (primarily) with similarly irredeemable people. Innocents are trampled into the dust in one way or another in Saleem’s rambling, long-winded, and often overbaked descriptions of…just about everything. When I complained to DH about how difficult it was to get through this book, he explained that Rushdie is a writer who writes as though he likes the sound of his own (written) voice. I can definitely vouch for that. The book has some flashes of amazing imagery, barely peppering an otherwise completely overwritten tome. Tipping the scales at more than 500 pages (for the paperback version I read), “Midnight’s Children” spends a long time going seemingly nowhere, and then it concludes unsatisfactorily within the span of about 15 pages.

If you’re a fan of Rushdie’s, then more power to you. The only other book of his that I’ve made it through successfully was “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”, and that was A LOT shorter. Plus, I was reading for a book club..so the time pressure to finish it was way higher.

Of course, I’m also a bit behind. We’re nearly halfway through the year, and I’m only starting book #5. That’s a bit troubling. For those following along at home, my new read is “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by Jenny Lawson (aka “The Bloggess”). I’m not quite 100 pages in, and already I’m in love with her in a massive way. She’s funny, self-deprecating, and completely off-the-wall…but her writing (even when it rambles) makes FUN of the fact that it’s rambling and riffs off it like it’s just another joke. In other words, it’s completely self-aware writing, in a way that poor Rushdie just can’t possibly match. Yes, I said that Jenny Lawson is a better writer than Salman Rushdie. As someone who a few months ago raved about how awesome Dickens was, let’s just assume I’m not talking completely out of turn, eh?

I have a whole stack of other books to get to, with an all-star lineup including (more!) Warren Ellis and (new!) Neil Gaiman, so I’m very excited to continue my book challenge post-Rushdie. Man, it’s like I have PTSD from reading that book.

On to better times, eh? Let’s talk about weight loss…or not.

So, I haven’t been losing a ton of weight, but I haven’t been gaining, either, so that’s a good thing. I’m about 8lbs down from where I was at the start of the year, and I’ve been the same weight for the last three weigh-ins. Partially spurred by summer (yeay!!!) and partially by a desire to try something new, I’m drinking iced tea at dinner every night. It’s a tall glass (probably about 10-12 oz) of unsweetened decaffeinated iced tea. Frankly, this weekend was too nice NOT to bust out the pretty glass pitcher and make some sun tea, and I figured that if I drink more at dinner, perhaps I’ll eat less. So far, it’s working. I find that the combination of the tea and the food is keeping me to a single plate with no seconds on anything – and still feeling full without feeling overfull.

Of course, I don’t think this is a fad diet (I’m not planning on switching to some diet where all I do is drink tea), and I’m perfectly content to drink my iced tea unsweetened (that’s how I prefer it, actually), so it’s not like I’m adding calories. If anything, all I’m doing is adding extra water. I doubt I’ll keep this going indefinitely; more likely, I’ll switch back to water only at dinner but work hard to get through an entire glass at each meal instead of nursing it over the course of the entire evening.

I’ve kept up with the plankaday almost every single day (only two skips – once due to illness and once due to exhaustion unrelated to illness), reaching 2:00 for six straight weeks of planks. It’s pretty crazy to think where I started and where I’ve gone. I still have a belly, but I blame that on my love of ice cream o’clock…and I’m just not ready to let go of some things yet.

But, halfway through the year and I’m nearly halfway to my weight loss goal, but only about a quarter of the way in my reading goal. Time to get a move on, on all fronts, I’d say.

20 books and 20 lbs (week 9): Gains & Reads

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It’s much easier to track your weight properly when your scale doesn’t occasionally decide to take a day for itself. When mine registered that I gained 6lbs in a week, I thought it might be having one of those moments and thought better of trying to record what seemed REALLY UNLIKELY. Well, either it was on the fritz or I managed to gain 6lbs and lose 5lbs, all in the span of 2 weeks. (I think my first theory is more plausible.) In any event, only one pound has really been added to the tally, and I’m still almost 4lbs below where I started.

For someone who hasn’t been working out and who hasn’t made radical dietary changes, THAT’S NOT BAD.

When I read Elizabeth Comeau’s latest Get Moving blog post, her comment about “When I want to do something, I will do it” really resonated with me. I’m much the same way. Sure, there are times where I’m cajoling myself into it, but then once I’m there, I’m either into it or I’m ready to bolt. If I’m ready to bolt, I didn’t really want it. I do want to lose weight and I do want to be healthier, but it’s not about a specific number in the end, really, so much as it is about not feeling like a schmoo.

Of course, I don’t have the energy to get up at 4am, as she does, and then keep going until 10 or 11pm. I typically get up between 5:30-5:45am and the race begins. Shower-makeup-get dressed-get kids up-get kids dressed-make lunches-get everyone to wherever they’re supposed to be…and then after work, it all starts up again: race to get the kids-make dinner-eat dinner-bathe kids and/or do dishes-put kids to bed-…whatever I have energy left to do (often not much).

So, I want it, but maybe I don’t want that go-go-go life that Elizabeth has just yet. And the good news is that’s okay. Pushing yourself into something you don’t yet want may be a great thing if all you need is a nudge…but if you don’t really want or require the nudge, it may push you in the complete opposite direction, and I don’t need any more disincentives beyond the standard exhaustion.

As far as the books go, I have another one down! I have started reading my fourth book, “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie. It’s a bit slow-going right now, but I can’t tell how much of that is Rushdie’s writing style and how much is my going to bed too late to get more than 2 pages before I start to faceplant into the text. In the meantime, while I try to figure out which it is, here’s my take on the third book in my reading series this year…

Book #3: “Sunken Treasure” by Wil Wheaton

A collection of short pieces from other books, stories, and an amazing production diary from an episode of “Criminal Minds”, “Sunken Treasure” is just a fantastic (and quick!) read. There’s so much about Wheaton’s writing that really speaks so well to me. Having acted in high school and college (but nothing since then, and only ever on stage), I keenly felt his elation when he landed parts that made him want to sing and his frustration when parts he wanted didn’t come together. I laughed out loud at his retelling of a “Star Trek: TNG” episode done in an MST3K-like fashion, poking fun at his castmates and generally picking apart the plot as though it were oratory roadkill. When you’re giggling in bed as you read, disturbing (or keeping up) your sweet dh, who then looks over what you read and laughs well enough for himself, you know you have a great book. I’ve read several of Wheaton’s other books, including “Dancing Barefoot” and “Just a Geek”, and I highly recommend picking up any of his work. He’s funny, snarky, sensitive and sharp – not just a writer, but clearly an artist.

20 books and 20 lbs (week 6): nearly 2 of each down!

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…Well, nearly so. In the past two weeks since my last update, I’ve managed to finish off two books and drop another 1-1/2 lbs! I’m about to start my third book, and I’m down 4-1/2 lbs since the start of this challenge. NOT BAD. Of course, it’s not like the weight is flying off my body – but that’s on me (quite literally) for not having gotten into a full-on exercise regimen yet. This weight loss thus far is all about tweaking my diet. I’m not even making major changes.

The good news about making tweaks is that I don’t feel like I’m giving up anything. So what if I don’t have flavored coffee in the morning? The farther away I get from having it, the more I can taste the HFCS in the flavor and simply DON’T WANT IT. It’s not that I don’t want a bagel twist or a donut because it’s the faster way out of my local Dunkins; it’s that I know that the donuts aren’t getting me where I want to go and I can have a multigrain bagel and feel fuller anyway.

The downside to tweaks is that you don’t see big results. I’m not really seeing this as a bad thing, though, since I look at this as a long-term life change I’m trying to make, not a “biggest loser” competition or something, where the goal is to lose as much as possible as fast as possible. If I’m going to lose weight and get healthier, it’s not going to happen with crash dieting.

As it is, I have a new product to test out that I’m excited to talk about in a few weeks, once I’ve had a chance to let it kick my ass about a bit. Here’s something else – and a reason why I want to hug hug HUG Elizabeth Comeau at the Boston Globe. My sweet friend, @BeWellBoston, introduced me to #plankaday and though I’m not at a six-pack, I see that even from having done this EVERY DAY since the start of the year, my belly IS getting flatter. No, really. It’s kinda crazy and kinda awesome and I can’t wait to see the result when I get another month and a half in.

In other words, progress is being made towards the 20 lbs and I couldn’t be happier about it.

So, then we get to the books side of things.

Book #1: “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens

For those who haven’t read Dickens, he’s not exactly the one to keep you rolling in the aisles. And perhaps putting in all those hours reading Neal Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle” tenderized me to that particular time period, but I was really drawn into the book. Sure, it took about 150 pages before I really started to get a sense of where he was going (the book being just under 400 pages, in the paperback version I read), but once he gets there, it’s just a riveting read.

For the majority of the book, “A Tale of Two Cities” careens back and forth between London and Paris around the time of the French Revolution that sent so many of the aristocracy to oblivion, courtesy of Madame La Guillotine. The London part of the story follows a former prisoner of the Bastille and his sweet daughter, who falls for yet another French émigré living in England. The story in Paris is one of greater intrigue, centered on a wine shop run by a couple who not only brew but pour out the boiling oil of proletarian dissent across all of France.

The relations between all the various parties get incredibly complex and the threads eventually converge in Paris, where fear, domination, lies and love create an atmosphere as charged as that of a thunderstorm. It’s not a fast read until you get to maybe the last 100 pages, and it can be difficult to keep some of the male characters straight early on, but the reward is definitely there. It’s a fascinating, frightening, and ultimately tragic read that I’d highly recommend.

Book 2: “Crooked Little Vein” by Warren Ellis

I was introduced to Warren Ellis by my sister and BIL, who told me of this mad hatter writer who was a prolific and perverse tweeter. I started to follow him during the last World Cup and I can’t say I was ever disappointed. Ellis is the mastermind behind many graphic novels, including “RED” (which inspired the movie of the same name), and “Crooked Little Vein” was his first (non-graphic) novel. Well, I say that and yet “graphic” is an easy way to describe it. Ellis draws his characters and scenes with such intensity and depth of description that you can’t help but have perfect images in your head…some of which you wish you had brain bleach to dissolve.

The story follows a hapless private detective who is a magnet for just about every awful thing you can’t dare to imagine. Much of it scatalogical or sexual (or both), these horrors just seem to make him even more resolute that whatever higher powers exist must hate his guts. When presented with a high-paying job to retrieve a mythical lost alternate Constitution, he takes off on a cross-country chase with a smarmy sidekick who quickly turns into more. As they race across the country in search of the lost tome, they encounter even more vileness, danger, and complete losses of humanity. And while this all could be terribly discouraging, there’s something still rather comforting in knowing that Ellis is drawing these people as the caricatures – the people on the outskirts of normal reality, rather than the examples of the Everyman.

Having only previously read Ellis’ stunning web-based graphic novel, “FreakAngels”, I already had a sense that he’s a twisted, mad bastard of a writer who enjoys taking no prisoners and pushing the boundaries of what polite society can’t fathom tolerating. There’s no benefit to only ever reading that which stays within your comfort zone, lest you never learn to expand that bad boy. “Crooked Little Vein” is a fast, engaging read that will challenge you NOT to run for the hills…and if you stay for the whole show, you’ll be glad you did.

Book #3: “Sunken Treasure” by Wil Wheaton

I’m starting this one tonight and if it’s anything like the other stuff of Wheaton’s that I’ve read, I’m going to devour this book in very short order. Note that you can’t buy this (easily) on Amazon in print form, but it IS readily available via the publisher (lulu.com), if you want to play along at home. E-book versions are also available, if that’s how you roll.