Space Station Mir

Happy New Year! I'm starting off with a roundup of my reading from 2017! 2017 Reading Stats As usual, borrowed and modified from Boston Bibliophile. How many books read in 2017? 64, 12 more than my goal of 52! How many fiction and non fiction?  40 fiction, 21 nonfiction (who am I???), and 3 books of poetry.  Male/Female author ratio? 40 women, 21 men, 1 multi-author poetry collection, 1 multi-author short story collection, and 1 book by a husband/wife team Writers of Color/Minority Writers? 17 writers of color/minority writers, 14 of whom are Jewish, including one African American Jewish author ( my former Hebrew school teacher, Michael Twitty) Favorite book of 2017?   The Magician King and The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman . After taking such a long break since reading the first book, which deeply and painfully affected me, it was incredible to see the development of Quentin as a character and of  The Magicians itself as a world.  ...

This year, I hit not quite 29k. Better than last year, but no 50,000 word win. I'm not feeling as disappointed as last year, however. As opposed to last year, I didn't restrict myself only to the novel, and so I've written a number of shorter pieces that I could edit and publish. Plus, I've learned that I need more research, and have a better idea of the details I need to finish.  NaNoWriMo has been helpful in getting me to just write, and I realize that, even if 1, 667 words a day is unrealistic for my life right now, 500 or so daily words are achievable.  I'm looking forward to writing more for the rest of this month and in 2018. The adventure continues. 

This year, I decided to get a subscription to The Economist.  It felt  important to me this year especially to stay on top of national and international events (although things have been happening faster than I could have anticipated...). In the past, keeping up with a weekly subscription has been too much for me, but I got the idea from Gretchen Rubin's  Better Than Before  that "we manage what we monitor," so I created an Excel spreadsheet to track my magazine reading since I couldn't find any on the interwebs. Also, I've previously used this blog to keep track of my reading, but now I prefer to use it to reflect on my reading (and life). Instead, I've (finally) joined Goodreads to track reading. I wish one could track magazine, article, short story etc. reading as well--does anyone know of a website/app for that? Let me know if you find one! Anyway, I'm reading The Economist weekly now and I feel much better informed about the world--I keep telli...

Hope Jahren's Lab Girl was a surprisingly apt follow-up read to Helen Russell's The Year of Living Danishly.  Not only did I stick with the nonfiction female memoir trend, but the mood stayed Scandinavian (or 'Scandi' as Russell frequently abbreviates in what I'm not sure is magazine-speak, Brit-speak, or her own argot). Jahren describes her Minnesota childhood and immediately evokes the type of winter that Russell observes, except without the cozy sense of  hygge . As Jahren puts it, she traded the icy exterior for a different type of iciness when she entered her home. The writing in Jahren's memoir has a strong sense of place, grounded literally by her interpolated chapters on plant life. It reminds me of the best attributes of scientific writing--the ability to say a lot in a short space and to be precise where it matters. Jahren's goal also exemplifies the truest goal of scientific writing today, to inspire research, by way of grants. As she s...

I've started off my new year's reading very similar to what became my go-to books last year: nonfiction memoirs by female authors. The last book I read last year (November and December reading will be up, er, soon-ish), was Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster, and the first book I read this year was--dum dum dum-- Jeneration X by Jen Lancaster. But seriously. My fiance doesn't even know her name, but he's like "Oh no, are you reading that person who makes you laugh all the time again!?" My second book this year was The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. I'm interested (me and the rest of the world) in the Danish concept of hygge ( I first saw it on the Konmari Instagram feed). It fits since winter is my least favorite season, and I'm sick of being somewhat sad for 4-5 months of the year. This winter has been mild, although there's currently an inch of snow and it's well below freezing. Still, the concept of making winter a "co...