Reading
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Currently Reading & 28 Weeks
I can’t believe it is nearly mid-June and I’m 28 weeks pregnant! Whattttt? Time has flown by. I’m slowly feeling the panic rise, that the summer is going to breeze by me and I won’t enjoy it as fully as I should, and then soon fall will be knocking on the door and I’ll be nursing an infant. It’ll happen like *that*. I know it will. So, I do my best not to foward-think too much and keep trying to enjoy June. Chris and I finished our last Bradley Method class the other evening. I’m so glad we took the class, it was a learning experience for both of us.…
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My Favorite Kind of Entertainment
Growing up, my hobby, other than playing outside, was reading. Now I don’t devote nearly as much time to reading as I should, though the internet is my source of reading a lot of times these days. Anyway, this is the stack of magazines I need to weed through. Chris’ dad gave me a stack of Outside magazines, a new Yoga Journal came in the mail, as did Urban Farm, and Backpacker. So did Texas Parks & Wildlife. I have a lot to flip through! And then there is this stack, too! I have finally worked up the nerve to start The Girl Who Played With Fire, the second in…
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Paddling the Wild Neches | A Review
A few months ago we were in REI when I spotted this book, Paddling the Wild Neches. Having spent the better part of spring and summer working on and around the Lower Neches River near Beaumont I thought it would be a fascinating read. Ever since we did our two thru-thikes I have been intrigued by those who also paddle source to end (or sea) down rivers, particularly relatively unknown or lesser known rivers such as the Neches. I think many people in Texas know about the Sabine since part of it forms the boundary of Louisiana and Texas, or maybe the Trinity and Red Rivers, or particularly the Guadalupe…
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Adventure Reads
These reads have been culminated throughout the years. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some that should be included. Send me your favorites that I should read! Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer Most everyone is familiar with this book or at least the story behind it, the tragic 1996 climb of Mt. Everest in which 8 died and many more lost limbs and were injured. This was my first Jon Krakauer book and read it a lot of while doing a short backpacking trip in central Florida a few years ago. I think a lot of people, ok, a lot of outdoor people, have climbing Mt. Everest on their list of…
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Preoccupied
With books. The Hunger Games trilogy to be exact. Over the last week that’s what I’ve been reading. Of course I could read them all at once but other things have gotten in the way. Work for example. Went back to the field for a few days to the Big Thicket in Beaumont, so paired with my reading I don’t have much time for blogging. I will need to take a break from reading to tackle some creative projects though. Julia Cameron in The Artists Way writes that reading is often a good excuse not to get things done. And she’s right. Reading, at least for me, is very consuming.…
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3 Book Reviews
Back in April I wrote about three books I’d bought at the used book store. I finally finished all of them, the last one last weekend. Here’s a bit about what I thought of them. Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson: I was familiar with Bryson’s work from A Walk in the Woods but had only thumbed through his other books at the store. This one was on clearance so I nabbed it and was immediately fascinated with the book. The book begins with the initial colonization of the U.S. and how the English language was brought over from…
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2800 Miles Ago
Today is April 20th. And in pot smoking lingo it is 4/20. Now, I’ve never smoked pot but I do know some of the lingo and when I saw that it was 4/20 I remembered that we were on a ridge above Watauga Lake in Tennessee, somewhere near the 420 mile mark. I remembered this because there was a hiker named Strider, one of at least two named that, who was young, maybe 18, and had this desire to get to mile 420 on 4/20 so he could smoke a joint—or perhaps a few. He wasn’t anywhere around us on that date, but we were at shelter there and wondered…
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Book Review and a Cold
Patrice had sent me the Barefoot Sisters Southbound and the companion book Barefoot Sisters Walking Home. They were pretty easy reads once I got going and despite her recommendation to read the northbound first, I decided to go southbound since it was their first book and because that part of the trail was still fresh in my mind. Lucy and Susan Letcher, Isis and jackrabbit respectively on the Trail, are sisters who set off southbound in Maine on summer solstice in 2000. From the start you could tell that this was going to be a drama filled adventure and they were definitely hiking their own hike. Sometimes I wanted to…
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Fall Reading
I’m a big reader, or at least I used to be. My nose used to be in a book constantly until I went to college and life took a turn for studying and friends and I remember going to the Galveston Public Library for the first time and feeling so out of place but also like I was coming home. Growing up I was always the kid who checked out as many books on her card as she could. I would also generally read every book I checked out. Anyway, I always come back to reading when I need a recharge and it will usually last awhile and then I…
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The BSC
There is always a book or a series of their youth that bibliophiles cling to fondly. Anne of Green Gables is one of them, but the other is The Babysitter’s Club by Ann M. Martin. One Christmas, I think the year of 5th grade, 1990, I received books 1-4 and 9-12 in box sets. I was vaguely familiar with the series but quite soon they became an attachment. I devoured the series, re-reading them over and over again. My daybed was against the wall that I shared with my brothers room, but not pushed all the way down towards the east wall, creating a cozy nook. I would pile up…