Uncertainty

I’ve rarely been great at keeping this updated because of indecision. Going forward, this may get split into two blogs; one more personal, faith based. The other, books. It may work with both but we’ll see!

Some articles I enjoyed:

The book I never want to hear about again but this article is still fantastic.

2020 Books!

Sleep podcasts

This above list was compiled by The Daily Trade which is legitimately one of my favorite emails each day.

Wood bookmark

Ink and Wonder wood marks

When I started this post, Covid19 had not taken over the world. Now, it has and almost everyone knows someone dealing with it. The above links seem almost frivolous now but I still think they matter. Here are some others I’ve found useful.

http://www.dailyyoga.com/

Amazon’s World Book day Which I honestly look forward to each year as I’ve found some fantastic authors/reads, through this.

Damn Delicious by Chungah Rhee has some great recipes that our home has been cooking for years. Homemade hamburger helper, baked honey garlic chicken, slow cooked honey garlic chicken (which we make in the instant pot too), honey garlic shrimp, and Korean beef bowls are all in regular rotation.

BookPeople is my favorite bookstore and it is here in Austin. They have great selections of books and events (when we’re not in shelter in place anyway) and have been giving recommendations on Instagram.

Books I’ve read and loved lately:

Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia out June 23, 2020

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth Book 1) by N.K. Jemisin

Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas-Contreras

The Devil’s Harvest by Jessica Garrison, out May 5, 2020

Block Seventeen by Kimiko Guthrie out June 23, 2020

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner, out May 5, 2020

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo-Villavicencio

Failed!

Clearly I am not great at remembering to use this. I can’t even blame other social media entirely; while I do spend a lot of time browsing on them, I rarely post on them. I do however, engage with people on Instagram quite a bit because it’s fun for me to connect when I’m pretty much homebound at the moment.

 

I do, however, have some ideas and will start drafting some posts so I don’t space out as badly (with reminders this time!)

I have some book reviews, and giveaways to do as well so hopefully I can get my crap together.

Miracles and Other Reasonable Things-review

Sarah Bessey is one of those writers who, I always feel like I really want to sit down with over some tea and scones and just talk geek about Doctor Who, Netflix, our kids, and our complicated relationship with the Church and God. While I have thought this previously with her two other books, as well as her Field Notes emails, I felt it in an even deeper way with her newest book, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God. I cried, laughed, shook my head, Googled, and commiserated (chronic pain is no joke).

Some quotes that really struck me and I highlighted:

I believe with my whole heart that the number one place where women should be flourishing is in the body of Christ. So I preached about what it might look like when ordinary women like us rise up in faith, at our full strength, instead of silencing or numbing or dumbing down or retreating in response to cultural pressure. It’s dangerous. Women who are awake are dangerous to the powers and principalities around us. We need to stop waiting for permission that has already been given. We’ve been commissioned to embody the Gospel in every corner of our lives.

 

If God had not forgotten me—and clearly God had not—and yet I was still part of the company of the unanswered prayers, perhaps that meant that I had misunderstood something about God. Perhaps the problem wasn’t God; perhaps the problem was the God I had created and the God I had been given.

 

Like most of us, when I walked through my own valleys of darkness and suffering and loss, God was often revealed to me in the darkness rather than in the light. The valleys were where I became intimate with God, far more than the mountaintops.

As someone who also deals with chronic pain and frequently wonders if I have pissed God off somehow, or if God even cares, this book really resonated with me. Also! The cover is beautiful and after you read it, the back sort of hidden image makes more sense.

The benediction at the end will. make. you. cry. It is so so beautiful. I actually did receive this copy as part of the launch team but I had already preordered an audiobook copy and all opinions are most definitely my own!

Blogging

I always want to come back to this platform and do more but the truth is, I rarely have enough energy to get out of bed most days. I do read a lot and will continue to do so but my energy for much else isn’t really there. I may try to do little mini reviews here as I find it easier to post here than on instagram. So for starters, here are some of my favorite reads from the last year or so.

Everyone Knows You Go Home by Natalia Sylvester is really good (and look at that cover) and she has a new Young Adult book coming out in May of next year that I will be getting as well! Everyone Knows You Go Home was my favorite read of 2018 and so so good I still recommend it all the time.

Monsoon Mansion was my second favorite read of last year and that is as far as I got with ranking my reads for 2018 since I read 150 something books last year. This one is a nonfiction memoir that reads like fiction and is definitely a sad but good read. Hopefully that makes sense.

A book I read this year that absolutely crushed me and I still loved it even though I wanted to throw my Kindle across the room more than once was A Little Life. I cried. I smiled. I wanted to yell and scream, okay I may have actually screamed what the hell a few times because what the hell? Another bookstagrammer was reading at the same time and we kept sending messages of yelling and anger and happiness then rage and we still both rated it 5 stars. We loved it but we were mad as hell at it. Still, 10/10 would recommend reading it.

I’ll try to do this every week or so with recommendations and maybe by genre.

Review: Anna Karenina

After a long hiatus from here due to health issues and job loss, I’ve decided to devote more time to this blog. Starting with reviewing some of my favorite books. First up, Anna Karenina.

This one is obviously not sponsored or anything. It is just one of my favorite books! Maybe my favorite. I know a lot of people hate Tolstoy because he can be quite verbose and his books are longgggggg. It took me three years to finally finish Was and Peace. But AK, I have a physical copy; audiobook and ebooks. Even a poster from Litographs that I adore.

Back to Anna. I love this book. I love the rawness and craziness of Anna and the sweetness and confusion of Levin. Anna loves fiercely and naively.

There are so many little stories that connect everyone in this Russian aristocracy novel. Anna, usually playing the dutiful wife, risks it all for love of a, well, basically a stranger. She did what many men had done without repercussions and lost it all. (*cough* her brother *cough*)

Levin, I think Levin is usually people’s favorite when reading it. He is a loving, caring, gruff, lost soul. He is so passionate and sticks to that passion wholeheartedly and I adore him for it.

Kitty is also naive but I adored her. She didn’t act like the typical society princess she was raised to be once her heart was broken and I loved it.

Anyway, I’d recommend this book to anyone. To me, this and War and Peace are such wildly different books that I wouldn’t even compare them except for Tolstoys writing style.

The Dream Daughter review

I was able to read an advanced copy of The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain in July and was like, okay this sounds kinda interesting let’s read it. At first, I wasn’t sure about it but I quickly was sucked into it and how the heck it was going to end!

Publishers synopsis:

When Carly Sears, a young woman widowed by the Vietnam war, receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is 1970, and she is told that nothing can be done to help her child. But her brother-in-law, a physicist with a mysterious past, tells her that perhaps there is a way to save her baby. What he suggests is something that will shatter every preconceived notion that Carly has. Something that will require a kind of strength and courage she never knew existed. Something that will mean an unimaginable leap of faith on Carly’s part.

And all for the love of her unborn child.

There is time traveling, heart break, friendships, puppies, children, and hope. Honestly, it may be one of the best books I have read this year and absolutely recommend it. It isn’t normally the type of book I read, but I really loved it and kept thinking “there is no way her baby isn’t going to be with her.” A mother’s love it never ending in this one.

Eve and Christian writing

This is just a random thought but I am reading Jen Wilkin’s forthcoming book “In His Image.” She mentions in a verse regarding Genesis 3:12 how, when asked by God if he, Adam, had eaten the forbidden fruit responded with “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate it.” Immediately placing blame on the “woman” rather than his own actions. Even Wilkin follows up with Wow Adam, a yes or no would have sufficed.

In verse 6, it says she ate some of the fruit and “gave some to her husband who was beside her and he ate it.” I have always taken this to mean, he did nothing to stop her and heard the entire interaction with the serpent and still went along with it. However, when reading books by male Christian authors, they seem to conspicuously leave out the fact that he was standing beside Eve when she took the fruit and tried it. They focus on the “the woman whom you gave to be with me” gave the fruit to him. Shifting the blame on her. Most other female Christian authors I’ve read also point out this additional verse that Adam was beside Eve when the interaction with the serpent took place.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, just to point out a disparity I have noticed lately in the books I have read.

Recent books I’ve loved

I adore books. I’ve posted more about books than just about anything else on here. So I’m going to post some I’ve loved and why (if I can remember, because, let’s be honest, sometimes brains decide to forgot specifics and instead just GUSH!)

I mostly read on my Kindle lately because constantly buying books can get expensive. However, if I really love a book, I will buy it anyway. I also enjoy audiobooks for my commute and have listened to several I enjoyed that way as well.

First up, are some Christian books I really loved. I read a bit of everything;  these just really spoke to me in some way.

Wreck My Life by Mo Isom (Christian Audio). This book may have been the most raw book I have ever read. Honestly. I had never heard of her prior to seeing this book come around. I thought “well this sounds like it could be interesting. I’m going through some craziness, I’ll listen to it.” She talks about her childhood, her soccer career at LSU, her father’s suicide, marriage. It’s amazing. I enjoy her social media posts (if you haven’t seen it, please do, and I’ll link one of my favorite ones below because she’s hilarious).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mo Isom Aiken (@moisom)

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi (Christian Audio) This is about a man who fully tried to prove to Christian classmates that Islam was the true religion and ended up finding Christianity as where he belonged. Really good! I listened to the audiobook version and loved it.

Steadfast Love by Lauren Chandler (Christian Audio) I just really like her. She’s funny and real and her husband’s church is local to around my hometown and I know/knew

The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp (Kindle) I actually tried to avoid this book. I mean, I really actively tried to avoid this one. I listened to the narrator, didn’t like her voice (I prefer when an author reads their own words but meh, that’s me). I just sometimes am not sure what to think of Ann Voskamp’s writing, or her but this book oh man, it was beautiful and strong and weak and conflicting all at the same time.

Wild and Free by Jess Connolly and Hayley Morgan (Kindle) Just, just read it. It’s like having convos with your long distance best friends.

Play With Fire by Bianca Juarez Olthoff (Kindle) As a fellow Latina, I HAD to read this book by Bianca Juarez Olthoff. I had been following her sister, photographer, Jasmine Star for a long time on Instagram and and started following her a couple of years ago. Adore this loud, opinionated, spitfire of a Latina and all her quirks and realness.

 

I purchased most of these books on my own. Wild and Free and Play with Fire were both review books but it’s been a while and reviews were previously posted.

Oops?

I have been VERY absent from here for almost a year. Oh my goodness. Life just got crazy. My job got even more hectic. I felt like I was losing my mind a bit with work, stress, anxiety, and my health issues. But I have some posts in mind to start and plan on getting back to blogging soon. I miss writing so very much. I also have a wedding to plan so this could be a fun spot to work through some of that!

 

 

Hello!

I have been VERY absent from here the last few months. Ummmm oops? I started a new job in September and honestly, with the commute time and amount of stress in it, by the time I get home, workout, and eat dinner, I am exhausted! I’ve been lifting fairly consistently for the last few months but my eating habits have been off I’ve maybe finished a few weeks books in the last two months (most of them audiobooks on my hour + drive home each day). So I plan on trying to get a post or two a week out for now. One review and one whatever I’m up to. That might be the most spazzy paragraph for me on this blog in a while…oops!

So let’s start with something I really loved. Last year, I did the Battle Body beta program from Fit Like Flint. The full version is on her site here and I HIGHLY recommend it if you need a new workout plan, looking for something different, or short on time; or just all of the above. It gives a lot of great instruction, guidelines and there is a private group with lots of tips and guidance to help you out, and to answer any questions you might have about the program. I enjoyed it a lot and it really helped keep me on track. I plan on starting it over again soon, or trying her new one,12 Week Warrior.