One Book One Community I love my community. I live in beautiful Northwest Arkansas. This is a unique place to live, because it is not centered around one city but four. Then there are the smaller towns adjacent to those cities. I live in one of those. I grew up about an hour from my current residence, and I consider this entire region HOME. I am a Razorback. I spent 14 years working at a certain retailer that is based in the area. We are truly blessed that our area is thriving and growing. We have a world class art Read More
Tag: Given Context
To Kill a TBR… What’s On Your List?
If you are a book-lover like me, then you can relate – there are so many books and so little time. Listening to audiobooks on 1.5x speed can only help so much. Any faster and I literally start to panic. When I see a book that I want to read, I know it will be a while before I can get to it, so I like to pop the book on my TBR list. You should already know that means “To Be Read.” And you should already have a method for tracking it. If you don’t do this yet, just Read More
Coyote Ate the Stars
I loved this book! My last blog post was about books that don’t make you care about the characters. This was not problem with Coyote Ate the Stars. As a person recovering from obesity and food addiction, I was a little concerned that this book might be triggering for me, but I really wanted to read it. I regret nothing! I hate to say “breath of fresh air,” because it sounds so cliche, but after being up to my neck in non-fiction and the aforementioned I-don’t-care-about-these-characters books, Coyote was, in fact, refreshing. I mentioned in this post that I wanted Read More
Early Spring!
Thank you, Groundhog! As a person diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder and Raynaud’s Phenomenon, I have a vested interest in whether or not my dear friend Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow each year. This year he came through for me and called for an early spring. I immediately went outside and had a picnic. Groundhog Day is the official midway point between the first day of winter (solstice) and the first day of spring (equinox.) Regardless of whether you believe in Phil’s prediction, this means spring is on the way. I find myself simultaneously energized by the longer days and Read More
Nothing to Say
Speechless? ME? It will come as a surprise to most of my friends – and definitely to my family – for me to say that I have recently found myself more and more frequently at a loss for words. How do you write a blog when you don’t have anything to say this week? I believe you do this the same way you do most difficult things – you just do it anyway. Has Trina finally used up all the words? One of my book clubs is reading Vox soon. This is a book where women can only speak 100 Read More
Currently Reading – Are you a Multilegerophile?
To the best of my knowledge, and my Google search results, I just made that word up. Multilegerophile: Someone who loves to read multiple books at once. People who paid more attention in Latin class might have a better term for it, but I’m going with this one. On the sidebar of my blog there is a display of my “Currently Reading” shelf on Goodreads. As I write this, there are eight books on that shelf. How many books are too many to read at once? And how long does a book sit idly on the shelf before one is Read More
2018 Annual Review
Welcome to my year end review of 2018. My first instinct at the end of the year was to go through my journal and make a list of all the cool things I did in 2018. There were so many things! While I was making my list, I received an email from James Clear with his annual review. I decided I liked his format. He got the idea from someone else, and I have seen a few others use it as well. If it works for them, it can work for me, so here goes…. What went well this year? Read More
Not So Empty Nesting
A few months ago, I started a blog post about my struggles with my youngest going to college and leaving me with the proverbial empty nest. I never got around to publishing that blog. Now it has taken me several attempts to hit the publish button on this one. Despite my usual tendency to overshare, something in me doesn’t want to put this out into the world. But here goes…. Honestly, I felt like I handled the empty nest better than anticipated. I was sad, don’t get me wrong, but I had spent months preparing for the sadness. The struggle Read More
Audiobooks I Solemnly Swear to Listen to Once Each Year
My first blog post was about some of the books that have changed my life. I have also made it known that I rely on audiobooks to help me reach my reading goals. (BTW, as soon as I finish my current audiobook, I will have met my goal for the year.) I know there are endless podcasts and playlists and other things that I could be listening to… but I often find myself returning to some of my favorite audiobooks time and time again. Naturally, I love fiction audiobooks. Some of my family’s road trip picks have been Mary Shelley’s Read More
Excellence is Not an Act, It’s a Habit
This adage from Aristotle gets kicked around a lot. We all want to be Excellent, right? Then again, some of us want to spend a lot of our time watching Star Trek reruns. I have to believe that there is space in my life for both. At my previous job, I had this quote posted at my desk. I had that job for a long time, so I am not sure when my fascination with habits started, but I began following James Clear and Gretchen Rubin several years ago. I just finished the audiobook of James’s new book Atomic Habits. Read More