BOOK IT! Vol. 6
The slow creep of summer.
I anticipated a slower summer—looked at my calendar, saw July, and told myself I would have ample time to write, to take photos, to read, to swim. Assured myself, in the midst of the chaos of June, that the next month would bring more empty space, a blank canvas. A mantra I often tell myself as I’m drowning in commitments: Next month you’ll be able to breathe. It was like walking into a theater and yelling “Macbeth” as loud and as long as my lungs would allow.
I skipped my June “BOOK IT!” post because I finished one book that month. I resolved to make up for it in July. I read all of two books last month. A far cry from the summer I envisioned.
My husband looked at me yesterday in the car—as I lamented that I ruined my streak, that I had been doing so well at the beginning of the year—and said, “Maybe that wasn’t a sustainable pace.”
He’s right, though I would prefer he weren’t.
“I’ve found myself wanting to check out more,” I told him. “At the end of the day, I don’t even have the energy to read.”
Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the storm of loss we’ve weathered this summer. Maybe it’s the continued collapse of America around us. Maybe it’s that life has its own ebb and flow that is unpredictable and uncontrollable, much to my dismay. Whatever it is, I find myself struggling to take in any more information, rather am pulled toward the anesthetizing nature of social media.
It works, briefly. Until it doesn’t. Until I find myself spending more and more time watching videos of people I do not know nor care about, unable to pull away, bargaining with myself that it’ll just be 10 more minutes each night, and then 10 more, and then another 10, which becomes more fodder for my brain that likes to berate me for wasting precious time!
It’s led me to fantasizing about remote cabins with no access to technology. Daydreaming about being forced to sit with my thoughts, about having nothing to do other than stare out at nature, read a book under some trees, and pull a cardigan tighter around my shoulders while standing by a body of water.
If I am learning one thing as I fully enter my mid-thirties this year, it’s that the rhythm of my life has never naturally brought space. I must carve it out intentionally. Life will never do it for me.
I kept waiting to learn more about the author with each passing page, documenting her journey caring for the baby hare (the leveret) she found on her rural property in the UK back in 2020. I have a sense the author is well-known—the blurb on the cover of the book is by Angelina Jolie—though I have no reference point for who she is or the work she’s done. And I really did not learn more about her, except a brief reference to the fast-paced nature of her work that, I believe, is in politics. I did learn a lot about hares. More than I wanted, truthfully. It felt like a missed opportunity, this book. There was so much, particularly in the time frame this was set in, that could be tied into her experience of caring for these animals. Those early pandemic years, fraught with anxiety and uncertainty, were largely left out and glossed over. I really felt this book was rife for exploration about her own identity separate of work, but that never really happened. This book left me wanting so much more than what it offered.
🍕🍕🍕🍕 4/8 Pizza Slices
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
“Four Thousand Weeks,” the predecessor to this book, was one of the more transformative self-help style books I’ve read in the past few years. I don’t read too many, despite (or, perhaps, because of) my profession. I find many self-help books overly simplistic and focused on optimization in a way that is unattainable for most. I think of “Four Thousand Weeks” as the antithesis of all other time management books. Its focus is simple: You do not have infinite time in this life, so you will not be able to do everything. And with that understanding, how do you prioritize what matters most to you? This book, “Meditations for Mortals,” is a series of brief chapters meant to reorient and ground you in that fact. It is designed to be read over the course of four weeks, but I checked it out from the library and had to read it in two. It’s a book I would go back and buy, however, just to be able to pick it up and use as a tool when I find myself spinning out and feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands.
🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕 6/8 Pizza Slices
Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die by Arianna Rebolini
I tore through the first 80 pages of this book in a few days tops before I found myself stalling out. This book looks at the author’s experience with chronic (oftentimes passive, but still very present) suicidal ideation. I appreciated this book because it deviated from the typical narrative arc of books about mental health, it did not tie up neatly with a bow and asked more questions than it had answers. But at the same time, I think this book would have benefited from better direction and succinctness, sometimes becoming repetitive and circular in its writing and conclusions drawn, the author seeming unsure herself of where she stands in the midst of these symptoms and experiences.
🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕 5/8 Pizza Slices