PeacefulChaos
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Posts posted by PeacefulChaos
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So I had Lolita on my tbr list forever. Decided to give it a go. Put it down after a handful of chapters thinking I can’t read this.
So another abandoned book this week 😅. Idk why I even had it on my tbr list with the subject matter - so yeah.
Started Lagom by Niki Brantmark today instead. Much more my speed, though more ‘how-to’ than I’m used to in this sort of book.
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So I started CS Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet last week but it was feeling like a chore so I abandoned it. Last night I couldn’t sleep so I started - and finished lol - The One by John Marrs.
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23 hours ago, dirty ethel rackham said:
For the last month, I have been listening to Mama Might be Better Off Dead by Laurie Kay Abraham. I'm not usually into non-fiction, but it has been a fascinating but hard read. It is part academic treatise on the history of health care for the poor and part chronical of one poor family's struggle with the health care system. When I took this job at a poor city hospital, one of my school professors recommended it to me. My hospital is featured in it and I drive past these neighborhoods every day. It helps me understand my patients better.
21 hours ago, Kidlit said:I just finished the audiobook of Dopesick by Beth Macy. 😮😭
Adding both of these to my tbr list!
13 hours ago, math teacher said:I am listening to Sold a Story on podcast. Oh my!! If you haven't heard it yet, it's something else!!
What is this? I’m intrigued!
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Our vet would try to figure out if it was related to anything - did she eat anything new? New meds? New exposure to a possible toxin?
if the seizure is a one time thing, that’s the end of it.
to manage a second seizure (which hopefully won’t happen!) - if it happens, seclude your pup somewhere quiet to relax afterward by herself or with an adult only. If you happen to have a way to keep an eye - a video monitor of some sort - that would be a great way to make sure all parties are properly supervised.
after a second seizure, it’s more likely that the vet will consider prescribing a simple anti-seizure med like keppra.
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6 hours ago, Storygirl said:
I am towards the beginning of The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling), the newest in the Cormoran Strike series. I've read all of these and feel like I want to keep giving them a chance. But I think they are generally way too long. I happen to have this one in print from the library and on audio (also from the library), so I plan to use the audio version to zip through some of it faster. Audiobooks are always a faster read for me, because I put them on double speed and can listen while I'm doing other things.
So far this year, I finished:
Conviction by Denise Mina, on audio. When a woman listening to a true-crime podcast realizes that one of the victims has a connection with her own hidden past -- on the same day that her live-in boyfriend leaves her, taking their children with him -- she sets of on an unexpected adventure, which not only peels back the truth of what happened to her friend but also unravels her own secrets. The premise of this one really drew me in, but in the end, it was not my favorite. Too many crazy events unfurl for it to be believable for me, but it was entertaining.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, on audio. This classic is on a Top 100 Books Scratch-Off Poster that I received as a gift and have been working through over the past year. It is only a little over an hour long on audio, so was a quick read. A wise man, ready to set off on a journey, is asked by the townsfolk that he is leaving behind to dispense his last words of wisdom about all manner of life circumstances. Preachy but quotable.
Recently, I also Did Not Finish (DNF) Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six by Lisa Unger and Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I usually read a book to the end, no matter what, but I've decided to DNF more books, if they aren't grabbing my attention. Secluded Cabin is a thriller; I found I really didn't care what was happening to the characters, so I quit about 40% in. Our Wives is a speculative fiction story. I listened to 30-40% but got tired of the characters' wallowing about the unusual circumstances (even though their predicament was troubling) and the lack of action. So I moved on.
I'm currently listening to How the Light Gets In, which I think is #9 by Louise Penny. I'm working my way through this series for the first time. And also recently watched the Amazon Three Pines series about these characters.
A couple years ago I was like ‘why am I forcing myself to slog through books I’m not enjoying?’ and decided that I have more than enough books on my tbr list - why waste time on books I’m not liking?!
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3 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:
Look what I bought! Our honorary daughter is having a baby girl, and we are to baby A, Marmee and Pops, so I am having fun with the idea of having her to sew for, and cannot help myself. I have an online order being delivered tomorrow with three or four prints for her. I am making sundress tops with little shorts for summer. Baby is due in late April which can be chilly here, so I making them in 3 months size which should be perfect for when it is hot. But I am making one newborn size and a little fleece cardigan to go with it, and little flannel pants so she can swap out the shorts if it is cold.
OMG how cute!
I esp love the bunnies! ❤️
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My kit came in! I’m excited!
the goal is to finish it by the end of January.
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My favorites were #4 and #5. I have no real opinion on the shoes lol - I'm one of those people who lives barefoot or in flip flops pretty much all year. I own a couple pairs of boots but never really bother to put them on. 😅
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I finished Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May this morning. I wasn't expecting it to be a sort of memoir, but I was here for it. I gave it 4 stars.
I really enjoyed the way May writes - some favorite lines from the book:
Quote"Winter is a quiet house in lamplight, a spin in the garden to see bright stars on a clear night, the roar of the wood-burning stove, and the accompanying smell of charred wood. It is warming the teapot and making a cup of bitter cocoa; it is stews magicked from bones with dumplings floating like clouds. It is reading quietly and passing away the afternoon twilight watching movies. It is thick socks and the bundle of a cardigan."
Quote"Snow vanquishes the mundane. It brings the everyday to a grinding halt and delays our ability to address our dreary responsibilities. Snow opens up the reign of the children, high on their unexpected liberty, daredevil and impervious to the cold."
Quote"Singing with others is a kind of alchemy, an act of expansive magic in which you lose yourself and become part of a whole."
Quote"...we are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again."
...and that's just a few I loved lol. I really love "Life meanders like a path through the woods."
In the same way, May kind of meanders through the book with her thoughts and the happenings around her. I hate the cold but she made me crave it lol - it was a very cozy book to read, just right for the beginning of January under a warm blanket, which is where I was this morning!
I've also always been tempted to try swimming in the cold - the polar bear plunge type thing, or like they do in some countries where they are in the sauna and then the water and then the sauna again. I've never found a way to do it - Ok, truthfully, it's never been particularly important to me - but this book made me curious about it again. Hmm...
I also started LeGuin's Finding My Elegy, which is my poetry for the month. So far so good!
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Got to the library yesterday and picked up my reads for this month! I started Wintering: The Power of Rest and retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May last night. It seems like I'll get through it relatively quickly.
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I'm not much help, but I would look at eShakti for something to wear. I also like the dresses they have at Baltic Born, though I've never gotten one; it's probably the first place I'll look when one of mine gets married lol!
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6 hours ago, TexasProud said:
Gentle and Lowly by Dane C OrtlundThis is the last book I finished last year! A friend sent it to me.
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On 12/31/2022 at 10:02 PM, KeriJ said:
Does it mean that you end up washing dishes with filtered water? I can't get past feeling like it's a waste.
Ours is hooked up to the cold only, so washing the dishes doesn’t use much, if any, filtered water.
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Also not an authority on the subject, but what are they doing just prior to feeding time? Resting or playing or exercising?
just wondering if they are more tired out (like from exercise) if that would calm them a bit automatically. 🤷♀️
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Joining in!
I’m thinking about trying out the method of sowing seeds in milk jugs in the winter. Has anyone here ever tried that?
As far as my garden this year, I’m thinking I want to try to keep as many of my usable plants - herbs, veggies - in containers as possible. They’ll just be easier to get to.
Then the plan for the rest of the beds I have (and then some lol) is to rip out the alien plants and replace them with natives.
I’m always so excited about growing season but it’s like every year a wrench gets thrown in. Here’s to an uneventful (at least when it comes to that sort of thing) 2023!
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One of my goals this year is to do something art/craft-y every month, so I’m going to join in, if that’s ok!
I don’t really know how to sew, but I do have some basic knowledge on cross-stitching, so I ordered a cross-stitch kit of a peacock - all yellow and orange, kind of a 70s vibe - to do in January.
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I finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (which, I must admit, I started toward the end of December) and overall… meh. It came so highly recommended and parts of it were lovely, but I was mildly disappointed, particularly with the 1978 portion.
I have set a crazy goal of 70 books this year (I’ve never read that many since I’ve kept track!) - but I’m excited about it! I didn’t meet my goal of 20 in 2022 so it seems extremely far fetched, but oh well. Part of my goal is to read poetry for one book per month.
I based my 70 books on the moons each month- if I counted correctly there are 69 and I just rounded up.My planned books for January, the month of the Wolf Moon:
Wintering by Katherine May
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng OR Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis
L …. I haven’t decided yet lol
Finding my Elegy by Ursula LeGuin
I love these threads bc I always find more books to add to my ‘Want to read’ list lol!
also, if anyone is wondering:
January: Wolf
February: Snow
March: Worm
April: Pink
May: Flower
June: Strawberry
July: Buck
August: Sturgeon
Blue (this year anyway)
September: Harvest
October: Blood (this year)
November: Frost
December: Cold
happy 2023!
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On 12/28/2022 at 7:07 PM, Elizabeth86 said:
Anyone have one? Curious what brand. The cost? Was it easy to install? Does it improve the taste of the water? All the details please!
We do. I love it. It's just the regular Filtrete one from Walmart but works well for our purposes!
I think the original set up was $50 and the replacement filters are $30. My husband installed 2 - one under the sink and one for the icemaker in the freezer. He's a maintenance guy so he found it totally easy - I'm assuming it's easy overall though. It takes away the chlorine taste, which is horrible where we live (we have town water, not well water).
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They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff, which I read over the summer after I bought it for DS17 to read this year for school and got curious. It’s about writing a persuasive essay with examples. I enjoyed the examples.
eta: forgot to say - shelved by 2 other people.
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Ope, two more.
Stop snacking when I’m not hungry
take a one day stained glass class
That puts me at 22!
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Things to stop doing.... ugh unfortunately it's one that I know is necessary but is going to be SO difficult for me...
Snacking when I'm not actually hungry.
🤣
Seriously though, I always regret it because afterwards I have the gross 'I just overate' bloated feeling but I still just. keep. doing it. Blah....
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4 hours ago, Kidlit said:I haven't been participating this year, just mostly lurking. I never got the hang of the challenges! I did want to share the book I finished yesterday. It is so good! Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng is my first book by her, but now I want to go back and read her backlist. Here's the publisher's summary:
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.That's on my list for 2023! I haven't read anything else by her yet but this one looked like one I'd enjoy the most!
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20 hours ago, PeacefulChaos said:
Thought of some lol!
go to the zoo
go to the botanical garden
get chickens
get ducks
plant some herbs & veggies
plant flowers
tear out some alien plants
get a rug for our entryway
get family pics taken
plant 1 houseplant
do monthly decor on my one shelf I've set aside for that purpose (did most months this year)
blog 6 posts
make a new dessert
study herbalism some more (informally)
So that's 14 so far.
Added some more:
retro Christmas decor next year (it's 100% normal for me to already be thinking about this lol)
read more than I did in 2022
dehydrate and pickle more than I did in 2022
eat fruit in one way or another once a week
go camping
go to the beach
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Mine was abundance; strangely enough, every year it plays out and fits, but never quite the way I expect!
This year it was definitely the fact that we were so surrounded by people when my stage 4 diagnosis came and then after surgery; both times, there were meals coming, there were people coming by and bringing food and gift cards and just doing all they could to help us. It was a definite abundance of support and an outpouring of love for us.
I haven't decided for sure, but the word hope keeps coming to me. So that's a likely pick for 2023.
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January 2023: What are you reading?
in The Chat Board
Posted
Today I finished Finding my Elegy by LeGuin as well as Lagom, which I started yesterday. It was a laid back day lol, plus my library now does hoopla, which is GREAT! We live in a rural town and I get books from the library, but hoopla really widens the available selection!
Lagom wasn’t my favorite. It was very much a ‘how-to’ book written from one woman’s perspective after living in Sweden for 13 years.
I did enjoy Finding my Elegy. Some of my favorites are Coast Range Highway, November; Every Land; and Navna: The River-running, by Intrumo of Sinshan.
That sums up the first 4 books of my year:
W: Wintering
O: The One
L: Lagom
F: Finding my Elegy
so I’ll be starting on February’s Snow moon next!