Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

I’ve started a public Instagram account for my embroidery, as I debate about whether I want to move it from a hobby to an Etsy shop. Come! Follow @daily_floss_ for works-in-progress and finished projects.

I am reading Richard Powers’ Overstory and it is absolutely amazing. I am a tiny bit biased, since I have a definite thing for trees, but his writing is stunning. I read one of his books back in college, and all I remember is that I liked it, but nothing more specific. I’m looking forward to getting into his catalog in the future.

This weekend my husband and I watched the documentary Meru on Netflix, about a group that climbed the Himalayan mountain with the same name. I am such a sucker for these kinds of stories, and I can’t wait to see Free Solo (my husband saw that last week and said was amazing). I actually just bought Alex Honnold’s memoir, which I am looking forward to reading first.

Speaking of movies, who’s going to see the new LEGO movie this weekend with 3948395783 children???? These are actually some of my favorite kid’s movies, so I’m sure it will be good. I’m just admittedly not a fan of going to the theater to see family films.

I went to the Elton John concert last year and it was incredible. He is by far one of the best performers I’ve ever seen live, if not the best. I can’t believe he’s in his seventies! He sounds like he did decades ago and still plays the piano with such intensity. He does move around a lot slower, thought, but who can blame him? The crowd spanned from people in their early twenties into senior-citizen territory and there were some great costumes. Also interesting to note is that I’ve never smelled that much pot at a concert in my life,  which I thought was particularly amusing. When we were done, we promptly wandered around The Forum parking lot for a really long time in a cold drizzle, since the venue is a perfect circle and even if you are really confident you know where you came in at you probably do not. Luckily my friend and I were happy to get some steps in, so it worked out. Also, I must note, that she and I have never been to a concert together and she was the best person ever for this event. 

We have a had a lot of rain, considering it’s Southern California, and it has really made me quite confident that I could never survive in somewhere like Seattle. It makes me feel so lethargic and depressed after a day or so. I don’t think I have SAD or anything like that, I just need that boost that sunshine provides.

I started the essay collection Can We All Be Feminists a few months ago, and my reading of it has stalled big time. And I mean “stalled” as in I only got through the introduction… I don’t even know why! I found myself highlighting and tabbing things in those first pages and thinking how great it was. I guess it’s a classic example of needing to be in the right mood for something, I guess. I am really going to try to commit to ten or so pages a day this month, though, so that I can finish it. I want to! It’ll be like my daily devotional or whatever, fired-up feminist style.

Sawyer is very slowly learning to read. I mean like BABY steps- we have been working on the _at and _it CVC patterns right now, just to practice learning how to sound out words. It’s so exciting and he is feels so proud of his success. We just sit down and do five minutes a night, so it’s not overwhelming and it’s been so fun seeing him transition. I have bought a few of those leveled readers as well, and I do the reading but we stop and sound out the easy words together, just to practice.

While essays are never exactly a joy to read (I initially typed “job,” haha), my students have been showing a lot growth in their literary analysis lately, which is so nice. I have been nagging them to expand their analysis and they’ve finally started connecting elements of style, say tone and diction, to elaborate, and, low-and-behold, it’s working. Scores are going up. While I love an amazing essay as much as the next English teacher, improvement is really where it’s at.