Hi friends! Just 3 books this month. I did read a couple other fluff books that aren’t really worth a review. More often than not this month, I was working puzzles at the dining room table rather than reading. It was a much-needed mental break. Please share what you’ve been up to and any good books you recommend.
Get ready for Self-Compassion September! That right, a full month of posts all about being kind in how we treat ourselves. I’m not the best at this, as we all know, but we will dive in together and look at how we can change this. I am making my way through an online Self-Compassion workshop co-facilitated by Drs. Kristin Neff (Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
She shouldn’t take any notice of what those muppets think, says Granny. Because all the best people are different—look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them. Granny is seventy-seven years old, going on seventy-eight. She’s not very good at it either. You can tell she’s old because her face looks like newspaper stuffed into wet shoes, but no one ever accuses Granny of being grown-up for her age.
I just had to read this one because I loved Britt-Marie Was Here. Elsa is a lonely 7-year-old and is rather mature for her age. Her best friend, her rather nutty grandmother, dies and leaves a series of letters for Elsa to find and deliver. I found the fairy tale world/sci fi part of the book so imaginative and unexpected. I enjoyed the characters very much and really felt I got to know them and understand them and their relationships to each other as they unfolded. Recommend.
One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.
This biography came out three years ago but is now a movie, which must be why it came up as recommended to me on Amazon. It took me a couple weeks to get through it, but I could not stop reading it or skip ahead. Something was so compelling about getting an honest account of how Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Wolfe approached their writing and the struggles and relationships they encountered. Perkins’ intimate connections and continual support were the reason their books came to be. He behaved as if literature were a matter of life and death. Perkins also altered the traditional notion of the editor’s role. He became a change agent by seeking out and publishing authors who spoke in a new voice. Highly recommend.
Max Perkins was unsurpassed. His literary judgment was original and exceedingly astute, and he was famous for his ability to inspire an author to produce the best that was in him or her. More a friend to his authors than a taskmaster, he aided them in every way. He helped them structure their books, if help was needed; thought up titles, invented plots; he served as psychoanalyst, lovelorn adviser, marriage counselor, career manager, money-lender.
“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.”
It does sound dense and boring, but it is exactly the opposite. This book is written clearly, with a dose of humor, and so beautifully that it was a disappointment to me when I’d finished it and there was no more to learn. I feel like this should be required reading for every human on the planet.
“When judging modernity, it is all too tempting to take the viewpoint of a twenty-first-century middle-class Westerner. We must not forget the viewpoints of a 19th-century Welsh coal miner, Chinese opium addict, or Tasmanian Aborigine…. We can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals.”
“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.” Groups of people make cultures or certain tools (like money, “the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised“) work because every member believes in them.
How the world and its peoples evolved to be how we are today is fascinating. This is the story of how we went from many individual small tribes to the (almost) single global group that humankind is today. There are many, many parts of the book I’d love to share with you, but I’ll settle for a few…
“It’s a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a straight line of descent, with Ergaster begetting Erectus, Erectus begetting the Neanderthals, and the Neanderthals evolving into us. This linear model gives the mistaken impression that at any particular moment only one type of human inhabited the earth, and that all earlier species were merely older models of ourselves. The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species. And why not? Today there are many species of foxes, bears, and pigs. The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least six different species of man. It’s our current exclusivity, not that multi-species past, that is peculiar.”
“Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was, until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only 400,000 years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last 100,000 years – with the rise of Homo sapiens – that man jumped to the top of the food chain.”
“Over the past 10,000 years, Homo sapiens has grown so accustomed to being the only human species that it’s hard for us to conceive of any other possibility. Our lack of brothers and sisters makes it easier to imagine that we are the epitome of creation, and that a chasm separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.”
Did you all know this? That there were many different species of man? Fascinating. I also read that our rather sudden leap from the middle to the top of the food chain (in the Agricultural Revolution) is what has caused huge consequences. Other animals at the top, lions or sharks for example, took millions of years to get to that point and evolved the necessary functions to be there. We assumed it with very little change in brain size or other checks and balances in the surrounding environment so we could not (ahem) wreak too much harm on the earth and other species.
“We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.”
Truly fascinating, right?
“I am neither better nor smarter, only maybe luckier. And I should be ashamed of scoffing, ashamed of thinking I know it all, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain. And those who mock faith don’t appear to be any happier. So maybe instead of looking down on things, we should be looking up. Because, underneath our egos and our attitudes, we all share this: a deep yearning for comfort, and the dream of a peaceful heart.” ~ Mitch Albom
You know that Bon Jovi song that goes, “The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town?” I’m singing, “The kids are back in school, the kids are back in school.” While our summer was pretty easy (especially compared to the amount of dread I entered it with!), I love the beginning of the school year, starting new activities, meeting new teachers, and all the holidays in the fall.
There were a couple of parents who were shocked to see how much Sweet Girl had grown over the summer. And I can see it too. Mr. B and I have talked about how she is braver and more confident. Beginning a new camp each Monday really helped her practice going into unknown situations.
You can conjure an entire imaginary audience to watch and learn from your instructional art videos and bath time chemistry concoctions. I love that you could do this for hours at a time if we let you. Your creativity and imagination impresses me.
We have had lots of house projects going on and you asked if you could redo your room as well. It went from a pink little girl’s room (dolls, stuffed animals) to a big girls room (chapter books, shelves, loft bed). You had set ideas of exactly what you wanted and we made it happen. Even more impressive, you tossed or donated so many of your toys and clothes, being willing to part with things for the first time. THAT was huge for you!
It feels so great to have more space for what is left. And nothing more is needed. I’m hesitant to buy anything or accept anything that’s going to take up that precious empty space on a shelf. Our house doesn’t look bare. It looks more HGTV-like than ever. 🙂
Here’s an example of a probably common struggle. I bought a rather expensive craft storage system a few years ago. It’s called a ScrapRack and it’s for organizing and containing the multitude of ephemera by category. I spent quite a bit of money on it, so even though I decided not to use it anymore, I hate to just donate it because of what they call “sunk costs,” so much invested and not enough use. But… it’s taking up closet shelf space. So I had to cut my losses and move on.
Our junk drawer was a disaster. I couldn’t even open of close the drawer most of the time. And finding what I wanted? Hopeless. I have a place for each item and now it’s so much nicer.
Being AWARE of whatever is causing stuck energy in your body, your house, your mind, etc. is supposed to be the secret to conquering clutter. It makes sense that examining the underlying why of doing something will help us overcome it. It’s the old, “what you resist, persists” adage. Anything that causes resistance becomes your clutter. Do you avoid folding laundry, making a phone call, telling someone no? Personally, I am currently in some sort of self-blame mode about binging on Girl Scout cookies, specifically Peanut Butter Patties. Darn those addictive little discs! To help myself, I’ve got to get them out of my house.
You missed a spot. You should just take care of that now. You should pay the bills today and get it done. You should start a load of laundry.
