To Be Read Chal­lenge 2009

I think if you are even a some­what reg­u­lar reader, you prob­a­bly have a TBR list of books. TBR stands for To Be Read. I know that I have about 80 books that I would love to read, but I also have a three year old and a 1 year old. Some­times vora­cious read­ing and two tod­dlers don’t always com­bine well.

Last week, I was perus­ing blogs dur­ing the What’s on Your Night­stand car­ni­val from 5MinutesForBooks, and I found the TBR Chal­lenge. The rules for the chal­lenge are that you choose 12 books before Jan­u­ary 1st with a few alter­nates. Then, you read and post about them through­out 2009. You may not change your list after Jan­u­ary 1st, 2009.

After a lit­tle thought and some con­tem­pla­tion, here is my list of books and alternates.

To be read:
1. Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle by Bar­bara King­solver — I heard her talk­ing about this book on NPR’s Speak­ing of Faith one morn­ing on our way to church. I found it very inter­est­ing, and I’ve been wait­ing for this book on Book­Mooch ever since. I may have to give up on Book­Mooch for this one and either buy it or get on the library’s wait­ing list.
2. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tam­met — This one piques my inter­est because of my back­ground as a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher.
3. The Year of Liv­ing Bib­li­cally by A.J. Jacobs — This is another book I heard about on NPR. This one was from Mid­Morn­ing with Kerry Miller.
4. Harry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowl­ing — This is the book I’m least look­ing for­ward to read­ing. I bought it and the next two or three years ago think­ing they’d be good to read with stu­dents while I was teach­ing. I still want to read this to know what all the fuss is about, but I don’t think it sounds inter­est­ing at all.
5. Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards — I read the back of this book one day in Tar­get while I was wan­der­ing around. It stuck with me, and even though I couldn’t remem­ber the name or author of the book, when I tracked it down, I added it to my TBR list.
6. Blue Like Jazz by Don­ald Miller — My hus­band, Jason, got this book for his birth­day, and I’m intrigued.
7. Screw­tape Let­ters by C.S. Lewis — This is another book I’ve had for quite a while and I’ve always meant to read it, but I never have.
8. Cross of Christ by John Stott — Same as #7
9. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb — I’ve thought about read­ing this book for a while now, too. Since Lamb just released his newest book, there’s been a lot of talk about She’s Come Undone on, you guessed it, NPR. I guess it’s time to see what all the talk is about.
10. Nine­teen Min­utes by Jodi Picoult — I’ve only read one other book of Picoult’s. I thought it was fine. I know some peo­ple LOVE her books, so I put this one on my list because I thought it sounded thought pro­vok­ing.
11. Run­ning with Scis­sors by Augesten Bur­roughs — I got this book from Book­Mooch, and it’s just sit­ting on my shelf even though I really want to read it. Now I have a def­i­nite dead­line instead of let­ting it get pushed back fur­ther and fur­ther or even for­got­ten.
12. Moth­er­ing Your Nurs­ing Tod­dler by Norma J. Bum­gar­ner — Since I’m nurs­ing two tod­dlers, this book seemed pretty timely.

Alter­nates:
1. Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son
2. The Kite Run­ner by Khaled Hos­seini
3. Play­ful Par­ent­ing by Lawrence Cohen
4. How to Talk so Kids Will Lis­ten By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
5. What to Eat by Mar­ion Nes­tle
6. The Think­ing Woman’s Guide to a Bet­ter Birth by Henci Goer
7. A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius by Dave Eggers
8. Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse
9. Lord of the Flies by William Gold­ing
10. A Clock­work Orange by Anthony Burgess
11. The Shack by William Young
12. Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

This is a monthly car­ni­val from the won­der­ful peo­ple at 5MinutesForBooks.
You can par­tic­i­pate pretty much how­ever you want as long as your post is some­what related to books. You can post a pic­ture of your list of books to be read. You can review a book you read last month. You can make a list of books you hope to read this month. You can list the books you hope that Santa will leave under your tree or in your stock­ing. It’s really up to you! It’s def­i­nitely one of my favorite posts of the month. I enjoy going through the other posts and read­ing what oth­ers are rec­om­mend­ing and read­ing. Gen­er­ally, I try to visit every web­site listed. I don’t always leave a com­ment, but I think I usu­ally get through all of the peo­ple who leave their infor­ma­tion in the Mr. Linky in the first 3–4 days after the car­ni­val is posted.

So, on to my read­ing list. Since Jaosn and I are not get­ting each other Christ­mas presents, I don’t have a large list of books I’m hop­ing to unwrap in the next sev­eral days. I have a few though that I have been work­ing on for a while and would like to fin­ish. I also have a cou­ple I’ve been mean­ing to start for a while.

To fin­ish:

Eat. Pray. Love by Eliz­a­beth Gilbert– I find this book inter­est­ing, although I almost exclu­sively dis­agree with every­thing she says in her Pray sec­tion. I started it quite a while ago, and it’s been my slow and steady book for those times when I have a short amount of time to read. Her chap­ters are short and eas­ily manageable.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pol­lan– It seems a lit­tle ridicu­lous that we need to defend food. Pol­lan traces the his­tory of the nutri­tion­ism move­ment and the desire of peo­ple to know exactly what they should or should not eat to a point where it’s bro­ken down into nutri­ents. Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

To read this month:

Some­thing Bor­rowed by Emily Griffin

Some­thing Blue by Emily Griffin

and hope­fully any of the four Book­Mooch books I’ve got com­ing in the next cou­ple weeks!

My first thought is that I love Christ­mas cards! I look for­ward to the week­end after Thanks­giv­ing, because my cousin’s wife usu­ally sends us our first card either Fri­day or Sat­ur­day. I love read­ing the let­ters and see­ing how peo­ple have changed, either their looks or their lives. I also like hav­ing a chance to recon­nect a lit­tle with all of our friends and family.

Then, I started putting ours together. It wasn’t the time or the effort that it took that made me start think­ing about Christ­mas cards. I started won­der­ing just how many resources were used to cre­ate and deliver a card. Then, I won­dered what peo­ple do with them after Christ­mas is over. I keep mine, but I don’t know if every­one else does.

So, I thought back to the begin­ning of our Christ­mas cards, and here is what I came up with. First, I ordered the boys’ clothes off the inter­net for the pic­tures. Of course, their clothes are made in China. Ship­ping to US and to me. Then, we drove 70 miles (each way) to my sister-in-law’s house for the pic­tures. Then, we drove another 140 miles to pick up the pic­tures. That’s almost a tank of gas for us. After that, I drove 20 miles (ten each way) to pick out Christ­mas cards. They, too, were made in China. I am not tak­ing into account the address labels or return labels, because I didn’t make spe­cial trips any­where for them, but using 85 of them on our Christ­mas cards means that we won’t be using them on 85 let­ters in the future.

I know that paper will break down, but if half of the peo­ple throw away the cards, then it seems to me that I have used quite a few resources for just a few days of enjoy­ment. I could send the cards out before the week of Christ­mas, and then peo­ple would be able to enjoy them for 3 weeks, but that’s another topic for another day.

Jason and I were talk­ing the other night, and we have some ideas for changes in our lifestyle for 2009, so don’t be sur­prised if Christ­mas cards are one of the things that we change. I love love LOVE send­ing and receiv­ing them, so please don’t think I’m say­ing any­thing else. I am cur­rently brain­storm­ing ways to make that a more envi­ron­men­tally friendly process.

Through the years, I’ve always loved read­ing. I’ve read more some years than oth­ers. This seems to be a pretty good year for me, but I’d always like to have more time for read­ing. Some day, it will hap­pen, right? Please?? Any­way, for a long time, I found a lot of sat­is­fac­tion in read­ing a lot of books. I read vora­ciously. I read every­thing. I read any­thing I picked out. In the past year, I have found that I don’t find as much sat­is­fac­tion in that as I used to. Now, I’m really look­ing for a book that means some­thing to me. Maybe since my read­ing time is much more lim­ited, I want each book to be an expe­ri­ence. I want to take some­thing from it. I want to be a dif­fer­ent per­son because of it. I want to know the char­ac­ters. I want to appre­ci­ate the style. I don’t sim­ply want to fin­ish it.

This is part of the rea­son that I was so dis­ap­pointed when I spent an evening read­ing a book from our local library the other day. It had the promise to be SO good! When I read the back, I was hooked. I brought it home, and I wanted to devour it. I knew that I would fin­ish it all in one evening. Unfor­tu­nately, after about the first three or 4 chap­ters, I started skim­ming. Then, I started really skim­ming. By the end, I was pri­mar­ily read­ing only the first and last page of each chap­ter with a glance to the other pages. Then, I read the end­ing, and I thought “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!??! That’s how it ended??? Ugh.”

Now, for those of you who are won­der­ing what the name and/or who the author of
this book is, I’m not going to say. What? Yes, I know. The thing is that books are so indi­vid­ual. A person’s tastes are so dif­fer­ent. I don’t want to say that a book is ter­ri­ble and have peo­ple not read it because I didn’t like it. I am per­fectly will­ing to give rec­om­men­da­tions of books I enjoyed and con­sid­ered to be good, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to label a book as “bad” for some­one else. I love books and writ­ing and read­ing too much to do that for anyone.

Check out this web­site! The first 5 peo­ple there will get car­bon neu­tral­ity for the day!

One Day Campaign

I’m sure that almost every­one heard about all the recalls and scares that have been in the news over the past cou­ple years. Too much lead in paint. Parts are too small. Is there any­thing that’s safe for your fam­ily? Some­times it seems like the answer is no. So, in response to the feel­ing that peo­ple were hav­ing, the Con­sumer Prod­uct Safety Com­mis­sion (CPSC) responded. They devel­oped the Con­sumer Prod­uct Safety Improve­ment Act (CPSIA). Great, right? In the­ory, yes. Unfor­tu­nately, in prac­tice, the CPSIA nearly guar­an­tees that many small busi­nesses, arti­sans, and oth­ers will be put out of business.

The CPSIA bans lead and phtha­lates in toys (obvi­ously a good thing) but it man­dates enor­mously expen­sive third-party test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for all prod­ucts intended for chil­dren under the age of 12. It’s the ridicu­lous expense of the third-party test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that will close busi­nesses and make it ille­gal for work-at-home moms and dads to sell their hand­made goods.

5 Min­utes for Mom

If this passes, basi­cally, all we will be able to buy will be prod­ucts from stores and big busi­nesses. No more home­made baby blan­kets, no more home­made dolls or doll clothes, no more home­made baby car­ri­ers or cloth dia­pers. It will be a big change, and I don’t think it will be for the bet­ter. I under­stand the inten­tions are good. Truly, I under­stand that. How­ever, let’s not pass some­thing just to do it. Let’s get a good, effec­tive, and imple­mentable law in place from the start.

Let your voice be heard. Here’s what you can do:

• Write your con­gress­peo­ple. Find your Rep­re­sen­ta­tive here and your Sen­a­tor here.
• Write the CPSC.
• Post your con­cerns on your blog, on Face­book, or on MySpace.
• Send an email directly to the CPSC or con­tact chair­per­son Nancy Nord at 301–504-7923
• Twit­ter: Search using the #CPSIA hashtag
• Join the CPSIA Face­book Group
• Join these Etsy folks and send a hand­made toy to Con­gress­man Rush.

Right now, I’m sup­posed to be work­ing on our Christ­mas cards. I am slowly mov­ing through our huge list of names to get the cards put together and later add the pic­ture to the cards. For some rea­son, it seems like this year the cards are much more labor intense than usual. Maybe I’m just slower. That could be it.

I keep think­ing of more and more peo­ple I’d like to send the cards to. If you were expect­ing a card and didn’t get one, can I blame it on the fact that A woke up at 4:45 this morn­ing? He went back to sleep, but I didn’t. No per­sonal offense intended.

Does nurs­ing too long some­times hurt the case for extended breast­feed­ing? That’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing about lately. I will not wean my chil­dren because of what other peo­ple think, and they aren’t ready to wean, so they will nurse on. But… Could I put off a new mom from nurs­ing because I am *still* nurs­ing my 3 year old or because I’m not only nurs­ing a 3 year old, but I’m also nurs­ing a 17 month old, too?

I remem­ber read­ing some­thing like this on another blog quite a while ago. Some­one had sug­gested to another extended nurs­ing mom that maybe it was best not to be too “out there” about nurs­ing her tod­dler. I found the com­ments to be very encour­ag­ing and insightful.

Lately, we’ve had a few friends who have had babies and I’ve also had the chance to visit with some moms who have new babies. Some of them have not men­tioned the fact that my chil­dren nurse, but one of the moms asked me what my hus­band thought of me still nurs­ing K. Hon­estly, I don’t think that Jason thinks much of it one way or another. It just is for us.

I didn’t wake up one morn­ing and think ‘hmmm, I should try nurs­ing a 3 year old.’ I did wake up every day for three years and think that he still needed nurs­ing so I would con­tinue. He didn’t get too old overnight, but he has grown grad­u­ally day by day and week by week. He doesn’t pull on my shirt. He does ask for milk though. I’m sure there are peo­ple who won­der when will I EVER quit nurs­ing, and I can truth­fully say to those peo­ple that I don’t know how old K or A will be. I do know though, that I will stop nurs­ing when I am sure that it is their choice and because they no longer need or want milk from mommy.

I hope.

My plan is to get back on the tread­mill tonight. The last few weeks have been hard on my run­ning. Well, actu­ally, it’s been fur­ther back than a few weeks. I guess I’d have to say it’s been about a month and a half since I really had a stretch of good runs. First, I got sick, and I couldn’t run for about three weeks. Then, I real­ized that maybe my colds were some­thing more than just a cold. After talk­ing to my doc­tor, I did some pul­monary test­ing, and I have been diag­nosed with mild asthma. I’ve been tak­ing an inhaler this week, and I’m hop­ing that will ward off another cold and cough­ing episodes like the ones I had in through almost all of November.

I had pretty much com­pleted the Couch to 5K plan, but I think I’m going to jump back into that. From what I could tell before, it’s much eas­ier to run when you have a plan and it’s not just an arbi­trary dis­tance or time. I’m also hop­ing to be able to move past the plateau where I stalled last time. I’m hop­ing that this asthma med­i­cine will also help me while run­ning. I had noticed that when I was run­ning, I was never phys­i­cally tired enough to need to stop, but I was often so out of breath that I couldn’t keep going. I didn’t feel like I could get a good deep breath in. It was quite frustrating.

Sorry that I haven’t been post­ing as often as usual. I am cur­rently orga­niz­ing a fund raiser for our local MOPS group. That has been tak­ing up a lot of my time, and even more impor­tantly, I’ve been think­ing quite a bit about it. This leaves less time to think up all my super-interesting blog posts. I’ll try to be back to nor­mal after tomorrow.