2015

KonMari Method: Books (Part 1 Revisited)

2015, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Konmari, Memories /

nkotbPoop. I knew it was going to be hard to NOT find joy in every single one of the children’s books, but I didn’t know quite how hard it was going to be for TW.

I felt no real joy for a whole lot of books that I had previously felt joy for. I was ready to let go of all sorts of books. TW was not.

So, I’d guess we maybe 1/4 of our children’s books didn’t bring joy. Maybe a 1/4. I’m probably being generous with that guess.

We have four bags to give to our wonderful former barista, Melisa, who is getting her own 3rd grade classroom next year. And, 11 bags of books to take to the children’s book donation drop off next week.

I stumbled across another problem with this modified KonMari method… The books that bring us joy have to go back on shelves somewhere… and that’s a pain, since our books are shelved by color. I’ve got them just shoved and stacked every which way right now. Not ideal and it’s making me just want to get the adult books DONE so that I can rearrange the shelves properly.

Or, maybe we should just run out and get some book boxes and pack them up in preparation for our move next year? Maybe that’s what we’ll do.

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Gabi, A Girl In Pieces

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction, Women, Young Adult /

We very much enjoyed listining to Gabi, A Girl In Pieces. I loved Gabi, her family and her friends. I loved the honesty in this book. It felt very realistic, to me. I can see teen girls feeling all of these things. I can see teen girls being confused about all of the same things. It was also a YA trouble book that didn’t leave me feeling like the author just threw in all of the possible teen problems just to throw in all of the possible teen problems, as so many YA books do.

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The KonMari Method: Books (Part 1)

2015, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Konmari /

IMG_7943I’ve changed my mind about the books again.

Last weekend, the little girls went through all of the books that were upstairs in their room and in “Michelle’s room” and that was freaking interesting as hell.

RJ has always been a heavy reader. She’s like her mom and me and always had her nose in a book. Always. She wanted to bring her book to the dinner table. She didn’t want to go anywhere or watch TV, she just wanted to read.

Elly read but not like that. I’ve rarely seen her with a book in her hand unless someone was reading a book to her. Turns out, she’s a sneaky reader.

When we were going through her first shelf of books, she swore that she loved all of her books and they all brought her joy. I found that unlikely because I was pretty sure she hadn’t read most of them. Turns out, we were both wrong.

The third book on her shelf, she wanted to get rid of. And all sorts of books I had no idea she’d read — she had. She’s been a closet reader all her life and I didn’t realize the extent of that reading life until we went through about 500 books.

She’s also very much like me and found it hard to discard books she enjoyed reading. She may never read them again but those books bring her joy — so we kept them.

RJ, on the other hand, discarded almost everything. I had to almost beg her to keep some books that I know she loves. I think she was having trouble with the whole keep the things you love part because she’s also heard her parents talk about not storing her stuff in our homes after she’s grown. I thought she understood that while WE (at least) won’t store every piece of crap in her room, we will absolutely store the things she truly loves if she isn’t able to take them with her immediately. But no, I don’t think she grokked that.

So upstairs there are piles and piles of books to discard. I took one bag to the Friends of the Library this week (adult books that were upstairs) but the majority of those books are children’s books. We’d rather donate them to Bernie’s Book Bank and I don’t really want to have to try and just take a couple of bags any time we might drive down the closest drop-off spot. Instead, I’d like to just load up the car and take them all to the main drop-off location and get it done.

So, that’s my new plan. TW and I will go through just the children’s books this weekend and next week when we go to the Navy base, we’ll swing past the donation point on the way.

And, once we finish children’s books, we’ll move to magazines and then we’ll jump to paper while also looking for joy among the adult book shelves over the next month or two.

I’m hoping we have clothes, books, paper and dvds/cds/videos completely done by the end of July… I think we can do it.

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The Freedom Summer Murders

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Daily Dose, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

This is hard.

I read Freedom Summer Murders because it was on the Cybils shortlist. It was a good book for kids who don’t know much about Freedom Summer. I was glad I read it.

I also got sucked down a hole of thinking about education in South Carolina which led me to spend a good bit of time on Wednesday evening looking at articles about the history of education in South Carolina.

All of that caused me to be somewhat amazed by the fact that I had any black teachers at all… growing up in Charleston, SC. It caused me to think more kindly upon a black teacher I had, who really — wasn’t a great teacher. It caused me to think even more kindly about a black high school English teacher that was a good teacher, though I liked nothing more than to complain about her when I was in her class.

It also caused me to spend more time thinking about how people should know more about Septima Clark. We rarely hear her mentioned when we read about the fight to end segregation. It also caused me to wonder if Crosstown in Charleston was ever officially re-named for her. (It was.)

And shortly after all of that wondering and thinking and stuff… I saw the news about the shooting at Emanuel AME and … how can we be here in this time, after all of these amazing people fought so hard. After people gave their lives. How can my home state and our country still be so steeped in racism that this can happen? How?

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I’m a Sucker for Books About/By Bloggers, So I Read Two More

2015, Books in Bed, cookbooks, Non-Fiction /

I am. A very big sucker for books written by/about bloggers. Doesn’t matter if I’ve never heard of those bloggers before, I’m into it.

Which is, how I managed to bring Design Bloggers at Home home from the library. I think I’d only even heard of a few of these folks and only one was someone I’d ever read regularly or even remember reading at all. I enjoyed it quite a bit. There was a nice mix of design styles and regions of the world. I was also amused by the little tips and favorite blogs/sites provided by each blogger. And, as an extra bonus, the section on how to start your own blog was nicely done. I’m glad I read this one.

I reserved Sheet Pan Suppers from the library because a) Sassymonkey was reading it b) my mom owns it and loves it c) it’s written by a blogger. A trifecta of influence over me, haha.

I haven’t tried any of the recipes from this one but it did something that very few cookbooks or blog posts about food can do — it made me want to cook something. Not kidding. That’s a pretty big deal because I almost never want to cook. I don’t even mostly care if anyone else cooks. I’ll have some nachos or a sandwich and call that dinner every night, no problem.

So yea. I’m going to cook a few things from this and if it goes well, maybe I’ll even buy this cookbook. (Totally amusing since we are in the beginning stages of Konmari’ing our books right now, lol. Maybe I’ll buy it on Kindle lol.)

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Citizens Creek

2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I was between books and TW said Citizens Creek is really good so I gave it a try. It was really good.

The story of Cow Tom, born into slavery and sold to a Creek Indian chief. How he bought his freedom and the freedom of his family, became Chief Cow Tom and then the story shifts to those of his children/grandchildren after his death.

Chief Cow Tom was a real person and novels around real people can be problematic. Luckily, in this case it worked well. I’m really glad I read it.

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The KonMari Method and Why We’re Doing It

1 Comment / 2015, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Konmari, Reading /

If you are friends with me on Facebook then you know my new obsession is with Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The thing is, this book came along at exactly the right time in my life.

Last year at about this time I created a timeline of things to do to prepare for our move in June of 2016. I had planned for us to begin clearing out rooms and stuff, starting in May of 2015. We have so much and we’re busy, not young, and also kind of lazy so there’s no way we could wait til next spring and get rid of things + pack + move. It just would not have worked. We need the full year to prepare.

One reason the KonMari Method is really speaking to me is that I remember what it was like to get rid of a ton of stuff in order to move here. It wasn’t fun. In fact, it was the exact opposite of fun. It was painful. It’s still kind of painful now, seven years later. We left behind things we should not have. We left behind things that brought us joy. We did that and moved to a place that we absolutely did not want to move to. We were leaving behind the big kids who weren’t moving with us. We should have brought as much joy with us as possible, and we did not. It was a hard move.

This time around, we’re moving to a place we DO want to move to but once again, we’ll be leaving kids behind. The little kids won’t be going with us. At all. They’ll be at college, or off living their lives, or doing whatever it is that grown-up kids do when they don’t live with their mommies. And, this is the last batch of kids. The last time we’ll do this. This time — that’s it. HUGE life change.

We are not going to make this move any harder than it’s already going to be. We’re going to bring as much joy into the process of moving as we can. We’re going to bring as much joy with us as possible. We can’t bring along the kids who bring us joy, but we’re sure as hell NOT bringing any “stuff” that doesn’t bring us joy. Nope. Not happening this time.

We’re moving with joy.

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Serendipity Market

2015, Books in Bed, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I have no idea how Serendipity Market landed on our library cart. It was YA so I assumed it was a Cybil. Nope, it wasn’t a Cybil. No idea.

Anyway, it was super short and very quick to read, which was good since I started it late in the evening and was able to finish it before I went to bed.

I really liked the retelling of the fairy tales but the way they were connected to the Serendipity Market and bringing the earth back into balance was never really clear. You just had to go with it and accept it as the way of things. Another 50 pages to really connect the dots would have been awesome.

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99 Poems For the 99 Percent

2015, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Poetry /

Way back in April, I picked up some books from the library that I thought Elly and her boyfriend might like since they were going to join us for #readathon (turns out they joined us for #readathon practice, but it was still awesome.) 99 Poems For the 99 Percent was one of the books I picked up.

I’ve been reading a couple of poems every day or two, usually when I sit down to have lunch or something. They’re not bad. Some of them are really very good. I’d have never picked this up if it hadn’t been for “N” joining us so yay for that!

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Konmari Problems: Books

1 Comment / 2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Favorites, Konmari, Non-Fiction /

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen me talking about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up aka the Konmari method.

Much of what I typed was just me being silly. It’s a little overwhelming but very interesting and much of it makes sense. My real problem though is her method of managing books. I don’t think she understands my relationship with books.

From the beginning of her section on books…

We have to take all of the books off of the shelf and put them on the floor. I understand her suggestion to do this, in general. It makes a lot of sense to see your collections of items as one big THING. It also makes sense to touch each item to determine which bring you joy.

Since I already know I have an ass ton of books, shouldn’t I be able to just pick up each book from the shelf, hold it and then either return it or discard it? Do I really have to move thousands of books into one room in order to determine joy? I think not.

Also, since TW and I co-own these books, how do we decide together which books bring joy. If one brings me joy, but doesn’t bring TW joy, does my joy outweigh hers?

She also talks a lot about imagining A bookshelf filled with books you love.

I, however, picture a good half dozen bookshelves filled with books I love.

Also, she does not understand that my books are arranged by color. Therefore dozens of bookshelves of books sorted by color DO make me happy. Those books DO have value just by being on the shelf. They are beautiful. They do serve a purpose by just being there. Books are not only valuable for the information they provide to you when you read them. Or even by the pleasure you get from reading them. They bring me pleasure simply by BEING there.

I suspect she doesn’t understand this. Or, I wonder if she’d tell me that my books are not in fact books, they are komono or sentimental items so they should be managed differently. Maybe?

One last problem is that I’m not sure I buy into the idea that “sometime means never” as in “I might read that sometime.” I do sometimes read the books from my stacks, though she is right — I rarely re-read books.

I also don’t think I buy into the idea that the perfect time to read a book is when it first comes to you and if you don’t read it at that moment, then you’ve missed your opportunity and you should simply let that book go. I’ve read books from my stacks years after I first acquired them and I’ve fully enjoyed reading them.

I’m not giving up, I’m definitely going to give this a try — even if I have to do some sort of modified version of Konmari. Totally fascinating.

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