2015 reading challenge: quarter four.

"You have read 32 of 24 books - 133%!" I'd say the 2015 Goodreads challenge is complete, thanks to three more months of housesitting and a few really nice personal and public libraries.

Here are 4Q results... A "*" means you should TOTALLY read this book.

• Summer House with Swimming Pool (Herman Koch) - if The Dinner (which I loved) was a train wreck, this one was a nuclear holocaust... which I did not love at all.
  
  
• A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby) - my friend put this in her "free" box this summer so I snagged it thinking it would be a fun, easy read. I did laugh out loud quite a few times but hated all the characters by the end of the story. Maybe that was the point?
  
  
• * And the Mountains Echoed (Khaled Hosseini) - I tried to read The Kite Runner several times and kept putting it aside. I'm glad I read this one instead.
  
  
• Postcards (Annie Proulx) - a novel about the non-romantic side of farming? By the author of The Shipping News? Sign me up! Unfortunately, I struggled to finish this one. The characters weren't particularly engaging and story dragged a bit too much for my taste.
  
  
• I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections (Nora Ephron) - I finished it in about an hour. I enjoyed it but I remember nothing (other than "oh yeah she's the one who wrote "When Harry Met Sally").
  
  
• Yak Butter and Black Tea: A Journey into Tibet (Wade Brackenbury) - I hope to never read another self-indulgent piece by an egotistical western traveler who invades a secluded community and then whines that no one is willing to feed or house him.
  
  
• There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say (Paula Poundstone) - I like this lady a lot, but I think I'll stick to listening to her on WWDTM.
  
  
• Angry Optimist (Lisa Rogak) - an interesting view into the man we all think we know, but her writing style really bugged me.
  
  
• * The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese (Margaret Hathaway) - so relevant to our past three years! So inspiring, life- and memoir-writing-wise! So glad Patrick found this at the library!
  
  
• Crazy Enough (Storm Large) - I saw (and loved) her PCS show several years ago. However, I knew that her show was pretty tame in comparison to her real life, and honestly, if I'd run across this memoir in Portland I would've ignored it. Finding it in a Canadian library during my memoir-writing phase meant it was a must-read. Part uncomfortable, part WAY TMI, part heartwrenching - glad I found it.
  
  

I'm well into two books to kick off next year's challenge. What's on your 2016 reading list?

2015 reading challenge: quarter three.

Housesitting in Portland, with its glorious Multnomah County Library system - very conducive to reading!

Here are 3Q results... A "*" means you should TOTALLY read this book.

• * The Dinner (Herman Koch) - if you like train wreck novels, have I got a book for you! I couldn't put it down and I don't care to know what that says about me.
  
  
• Slightly Out of Focus (Robert Capa) - an interesting account of a famous war photographer's WWII experiences. I think I would've appreciated it more if he had not been famous; the situations he was able to get himself into were definitely not the norm and I think it would've been more interesting to hear from the "everyday" photographer.
  
  
• * Dawn (Elie Wiesel) - it feels odd to say that I enjoyed a book about an executioner and his victim, but hey, this is Elie Wiesel. Hoping to find the third book in the series before we leave Portland.
  
  
• * The Air We Breathe (Andrea Barrett) - another one of those fiction-based-on-historical-events tales, this is the story of early 19th century war, romance, and tuberculosis patients in the Adirondack Mountains.  The end dragged quite a bit for my taste but overall I enjoyed the story itself (again, as much as one can enjoy a story about war and TB) as well as how it was written.
  
  
• Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) - I must've been in a very different head space when I read - and immensely enjoyed - The Corrections, because I was very done with every single one of the Freedom characters about 30 pages into the book. If I weren't FUNemployed I probably would have given up pretty early on, and in the end I wished I had just given up because I'll never get those precious FUNemployed hours back.
  
  
• Actors Anonymous (James Franco) - I am just going to paste this Goodreads review posted by Casey because I cannot possibly say it any better: "This James Franco book was really very James Franco. It was the most James Franco sort of James Franco book I have ever read. You can tell that the author, James Franco, really loves James Franco. If you enjoyed my commentary about this James Franco book by James Franco you might like to read Actor's Anonymous by James Franco. James Franco."
  
  
• Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer) - part preaching to the choir, part guilt-inducing for all the bacon I've eaten this summer, and part thought-provoking in terms of whether and how we will be raising farm animals if we ever get to that point. I recommend it to anyone who still eats grocery store meat... but I don't think any of you do that anymore.
  
  
• * Possibilities (Herbie Hancock) - a really engaging look into the evolution of jazz (and the behind-the-scenes lives of jazz musicians) over the decades. How did I live to be 40 without knowing this man's entire repertoire of contributions to music? Shameful! Also, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I never really got the big deal behind Rockit until I read this book. 
  
  
• * Palisades Park (Alan Brennert) - I snagged this at the library because I loved Moloka'i and I'm still on a fiction-based-on-reality kick. I finished the last half of this in one sitting because the characters and the story were so accessible and enthralling. I'm not a big LA Law fan but I'll read a Brennert book any old day...
  
  
• The Taste of Tomorrow (Josh Schonwald) - the first third (!) of the book is about lettuce. Yes, LETTUCE. Then there's a significant amount of anti-GMO bashing followed by a look at in vitro meat development, some preaching for land-based fish farming and finally an exploration of nanotechnology. I did walk away with some questions about my own understanding (and critique) of GMO foods, but generally speaking I found this to be a pretty hoity-toity, long-winded, name-dropping diatribe on the "future" of food. And 2035 (the year he keeps referencing) isn't really the "future"... it's pretty much already here. So meh.

One more to go for the 2015 Goodreads challenge, and three months of housesitting ahead of me... Better start thinking of another goal.

Wednesday five.

Today I ran across this blog post from a fellow Portland blogger. It appealed to my goal-making overachieving observant self, but I really had to think about my reply to her question at the end of her post.

Who am I now? Who have I been in the past? Who am I, consistently? 

After much deliberation (probably too much deliberation - word #6: OCD! - if that counts as a word), my five words were "learn, help, create, connect, explore."

Probably in that order, too - those are the words that guide how I live every day of my life, at least these days. I'm bored when I'm not learning, I'm frustrated when I'm not helping, I'm disappointed when I'm not creating, I'm lonely when I'm not connecting, and I'm stalled when I'm not exploring.

I deplore all of those feelings, so I try to employ those verbs in my everyday life to make it more enjoyable.

What are your five words? And why? (Word #7: curious!)

2015 reading challenge: quarter two.

Camping - well, the way we do camping - is not as conducive to reading as one might think. By the time we rolled in, set up, made dinner and settled down, it was almost dark. Hiking days were usually too long and I was too tired at the end of the day.

I'm still ahead of schedule for my Goodreads 2015 reading challenge though. Here are 2Q results... A "*" means you should TOTALLY read this book.

• * Indian Killer (Sherman Alexie) - Interesting mental prep for heading across the southern US and seeing so many examples of the white man taking things that didn't belong to him. It's not my favorite of Alexie's work but it was definitely memorable (and sadly, still relevant over 15 years later).
  
  
• The Witch of Portobello (Paulo Coelho) - I loved The Alchemist so I was excited to find this at one of our farm gigs. The story is told through many voices and Coelho does a really good job pulling everything together - I just didn't really care for the main character and in the end I just wanted to finish the book.
  
  
• * Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Lynn Truss) - A fantastic, funny, easy read for this self-proclaimed grammar/editing nazi. I still don't know how to properly use a ; though.
  
  
• Australian Short Stories (Karryn Goldsworthy) - We found this in Alice Springs and schlepped it around for months; I finally got through it on the camping trip. (See? Did I use that ; right?) I enjoyed most of the stories but I definitely think spending 3 months there helped me to appreciate them.
  
  
• Rose Madder (Stephen King) - one of his best jobs at storytelling and one of his best portrayals of women, and then he had to ruin it with a goofy supernatural ending. Luckily, I found this in Kanab, UT for $0.50 so I wasn't too upset about it.
  
  

For the next ten weeks I'm back in Portland where the library rocks but the heat is baking my brain. We'll see how 3Q goes...

Fairweather flightless bird fan.

if they hadn't lost
i would spend the next six weeks
pretending to care

2015 reading challenge: quarter one.

I signed up for Goodreads' 2015 reading challenge and will be posting results here.  To avoid a ginormous list like this at the end of the year, I'll try to do this on a quarterly basis.

So!  Here are 1Q results...  A "*" means you should TOTALLY read this book.

• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murikami) - as noted on the other list, I wanted to love this but I didn't, it was just too weird.
  
  
• You Suck: A Love Story (Christopher Moore) - a quick, amusing read.
  
  
• * Anthill (Edward O. Wilson) - Wilson is a biologist, not a novelist, and this really shows in the stark differences between parts one, two, and three of the novel.  Part one read like a Mark Twain story, part two was an absolutely FASCINATING view of life from an ant's perspective, and part three reverted to Dan Brown tactics.  If you read nothing else, read part two.  You'll never look at ants the same again.  (You'll still kill them when they invade your kitchen every spring, but you'll never look at them the same again.)
  
  
• * Food Rules: An Eater's Manual (Michael Pollan) - this really shouldn't count toward my reading goal.  It really shouldn't.  But I'm counting it.
  
  
• We Are Water (Wally Lamb) - sigh.  You know how sometimes, you do that ill-advised thing of watching an entire season of Dexter on a rainy Saturday, then you feel really sick about humanity afterward, and then you totally forget about it the next day? That's what every Wally Lamb novel has felt like to me...  I don't want my rainy Saturday back as much as I did after reading the others, so there's that.
  
  
• Hoot (Carl Hiaasen) - a friend recommended Hiaasen and this young adult novel just happened to be in the book exchange at our farmstay.  It was fun, quick, completely unbelievable and yet totally predictable at the same time.  I enjoyed it and I'll definitely be checking out some of his adult fiction.
  
  
• * My Story (Ingrid Bergman) - I LOVE THIS LADY.  That is all.
  
  
• * Mokoka'i (Alan Brennert) - another one for the "sorta true stories" file, since it's based on real events and several real people.  A young native girl is sent to a leper colony in Hawaii in the early 1900s.  This is her story of how she copes throughout the next seven decades.  I honestly could not put it down.
  
  

I'm still three books ahead of my goal so I'm taking a little hiatus to catch up on some movies.  Pee-wee's Big Adventure counts as research for our upcoming road trip, right?

And you can do the same about my typos.

i refuse to read
more posts by bloggers who use
"peak" instead of "peek"

Friday five.

We have a pretty sweet kitchen at our current farmstay and I've been going a bit nuts with the homemade meals. Last night I accidentally recreated the Whole Bowl's Bowl:

Or something like it, anyway. Their version has brown rice, red and black beans, fresh avocado, salsa, black olives, sour cream, Tillamook cheddar, cilantro, Tali Sauce and "trace amounts of attitude."

Mine had local ingredients (parsley from the garden, local Hawaiian onion and sea salt, kale and a jalapeno pepper from the U-Pick garden up the road) and not quite local ingredients (1.5 cans diced tomatoes, 1 can tomato sauce, 2 cans black beans, 3 cloves garlic and 4 chopped carrots from California, dried oregano from Australia, generic black pepper, brown rice from somewhere, frozen corn from I-don't-want-to-know-where).

I had a bad day yesterday so there were definitely "trace amounts of attitude" in my version as well.

Here's what I did, in five easy steps:

1. Saute carrots and onion until the aroma permeates the kitchen.
2. Add garlic, jalapeno pepper, kale, salt, pepper, oregano, and everything canned and frozen.  
3. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20 minutes or until you can't wait any longer.  Throw parsley in during the last 5 minutes or so.
4. Serve over brown rice with a blob of shredded cheese on top, along with a simple side salad of local greens and palmelo from the backyard.
5. Top bowl and salad with this amazing dressing (backyard avocados and lemons, of course!) and crushed tortilla chips.

My main goal was to use up all the veggie bits and pieces in the fridge and all the canned food we'd bought when we got here 10 days ago and hadn't touched.  My secondary goal was to make something that would last as long as possible so that we could prolong the 5-mile-return walk to the supermarket until next week.

Pretty sure I succeeded on both those fronts - we'll get four meals each out of this "bowl," which works out to roughly $1/person/meal, which by Hawaiian cost standards is pretty remarkable.

I totally winged the recipe.  It's just chili, so it wasn't rocket science, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  I also think mine was better than Whole Bowl's.

See?  Attitude!  (But just a trace...)

Book-o-rama.

I loves me some goals. (But you know that already.)

It's been a while since I did quarterly goals. It's now 2015 and I just keep pushing out the completion date for these, at least until we are back in the Pacific Northwest. They all still apply and I still practice them on a fairly regular basis, so it's all good.

But the strangely addictive Goodreads put out a 2015 Reading Challenge. And I loves me some challenges. (But you also know that already.)  So I signed up to read 24 books this year. I'm at 8% of my goal already - hooray for lazy afternoons after a hard day at the farm!

In light of this exciting new goal, I was inspired to give a rundown of the books I have read over the past 650 days of our trip. We were really fortunate to pass through dozens of hostels, guesthouses, and WWOOF accomodations offering book exchanges so I found some real gems I probably would never have picked up otherwise.

So without further ado...  I didn't track every single book I read over the past few years on my Goodreads list, but if they aren't listed here they are probably forgettable to me.  An * means I really, highly recommend checking it out.

Literally literature

• * The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) - completely mesmerizing.  Can't believe I didn't read this sooner.
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) - I really wanted to love this but it just got too weird.  I'll try another of his novels when I run across it, but in the meantime I recommend I Am a Cat (Natsume Soseki) instead.
• * The Wonderful World of Oz (Frank L Baum) - one of those books I re-read every few years, along with A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I  always see something new in the story.
• The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) - probably would've appreciated this more 20 years ago, but it was definitely engaging.
• * Dracula (Bram Stoker) - any story about vampires is a good story, no matter how many times I've read it already.
• * What the Body Remembers (Shauna Singh Baldwin) - beautifully written.  The first book I read in ages that I actually couldn't put down.
• Please Don't Kill the Freshman (Zoe Trope) - ehhh... very Portland, very high school, very tedious.  I didn't quite finish it.
• * Tales of the Unexpected (Roald Dahl) - perfectly dark and twisted!   And I have a whole new appreciation for Royal Jelly now that I've worked with bees.  Anyone who loves Hemingway's short stories will love these too.
• * The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga) - edgy, fast-paced, very well written.  I really liked this one.
• * Last Man in Tower (Aravind Adiga) - and I liked this one even more, especially because the plot translates to almost anywhere in the world right now.
• Great House (Nicole Krauss) - I need to remember that I like her ex-husband's novels much more than I like hers...  As with History of Love, I ended up skimming the last several chapters due to lack of interest coupled with a need for closure.

Beach chair books

• The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) - I finished it in, like, a day, and then promptly forgot about it.
• Everything by Kathy Reichs - to be honest, I am ashamed to admit how many of her stupid books I have read on this trip.  If her characters were vampires I would probably suck these up like I did the Twilight series and the True Blood series... but after one too many "OMG SERIOUSLY WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?" exclamations, I finally had to call it in Hawaii.  I will never pick another one of her books up.  (Unless, yunno, it's just sitting right there and I'm on a beach somewhere.)
• You Suck (A Love Story) (Christopher Moore) - definitely teenage vampire pulp fiction.  A quick, fun read and I loved all the references to familiar San Francisco places and things.   
• The Gunslinger (Stephen King) - an oldie but a goodie.

True stories

• * No Picnic on Mt Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb (Felice Benuzzi) - the title really sums up the plot.  A really engaging read that I enjoyed very much.
• * Riding the Iron Rooster (Paul Theroux) - Theroux is my favorite travel writer, my hero in that sense.  This is the story of that year in the '80s that he spent riding the rails in China. I wanted to re-read it as soon as I finished it.
• * Booby Trap (Allison Bially) - anyone who knows Allison will love this book.  
• Point to Point Navigation (Gore Vidal) - I had no idea he knew so many famous people. I had no idea I would be so enthralled by stories about famous people. I later tried to read Palimsest but barely made it through a few chapters.
• * Daughter of the Killing Fields (Theary C Seng) - stunningly heartbreaking. And then we actually went to Cambodia and my heart broke again and again.  One of those only-available-locally books, so next time you're in SE Asia definitely pick it up.
• * Night (Elie Wiesel) - stunningly heartbreaking. And then we actually went to Auschwitz-Birkenau and my heart broke again and again.  Must find Dawn and Day.
• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (Ruth Reichl) - a fascinating look into the life of a food critic.  This book made me never want to eat in a hoity-toity restaurant ever again.
• * Me: Stories of My Life (Katharine Hepburn) - written as you'd imagine her talking.  She was an amazing lady.  Just look at all these awesome things she said...
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Jonathan Haidt) - Interesting thoughts mixed with too many words, too many examples, too many external sources.  He had me... Then he lost me with all the fluff... Then he quoted a bunch of studies from Flow and Influence (which I've read) and he really lost me with the simple regurgitation of ideas.  I liked the Geography of Bliss (Eric Weiner) a lot more.

Sorta true stories (where I got on a roll reading stories about true terribly depressing historical events set in fictional settings)

• * Burial Rites (Hannah Kent) - a beautifully written but terribly depressing story of an Icelandic woman charged with murder who lives her last days with the local sherrif and his very begrudging family.  
• * Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks) - an enthralling but terribly depressing account of a woman who saves her local village from the Black Plague.  
• * The Lazarus Project (Aleksandar Hemon) - a thoughtful (yep, and terribly depressing) tale of a writer exploring the questionable murder charges of an immigrant from the prior century.  Honestly, I never could figure out if this was based on an actual historic event but it had the same feel as the two above.

Our next life (where I sifted through thousands of permaculture and design books at our last Tasmania host's house - these are some of my favorites)

• * The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Ben Falk) - definitely the most accessible book on permaculture that I've come across, plus the author is in Vermont so a lot of the climate tips will be similar to Oregon.  I hardly ever get inspired to buy books anymore but I really want to buy this when we get back.
• * A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder (Michael Pollan) - anything this guy writes is golden.
• * Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre (Brett Markham) - another really accessible book, very relevant to how we want to start small.
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Christopher Alexander) - lots of  interesting design theory, much of it was over my head but I still enjoyed perusing the concepts.
• And then these just had lots of pretty pictures and good design ideas:
• Sticks Stones Mud Houses: Natural Living (Nigel Noyes)
• Small Spaces (Terence Conran)
• Building of Earth and Straw Structural Design for Rammed Earth and Strawbale Architecture (Bruce King)
• The Beauty of Straw Bale Homes (Athena Swentzell Steen)

So that's my 2013-2014 summary.  What's on your plate to read this year?