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Currently | Gone Girl and Underground Girls

currently october 26 2014

Time and Place | 8:20 at my desk

Eating and Drinking |  Blood Orange Cranberry Black Tea and Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Speculoos Cookie Butter Cups. Real breakfast is coming soon, I promise.

Reading | After last weekend’s Readathon, I had a little bit of trouble settling into a book. But then The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg came on Thursday and I have been absorbed since. The book is about young Afghan girls who spend part of their childhood pretending to be boys, a relatively common but secretive cultural practice in that country. It’s absolutely fascinating.

Watching | Gone Girl finally came to my town! We have a one screen movie theater, which I love, but sometimes it takes a few weeks for new releases to arrive. The boyfriend and I went to see Gone Girl last night and man, did I absolutely love it. It was just as bonkers as I remembered, and really effectively translated to film. Both Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike were just great. I want to read the book again.

Cooking | I didn’t cook much of anything this week, but the cooler weather arriving does make me want to start digging out my soup recipes. I have one for minestrone that I just love.

Blogging | This week I reviewed a great memoir, Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim, announced our two picks for Nonfiction November readalongs, and shared my plan to read all nonfiction by women next month.

Sharing | Over at Book Riot, Josh Corman writes about the paradox of reading choice. I love his solution to having too many books sitting around unread — use a random number generator to choose what book to finish.

Loving | This week was my grandma’s birthday, so I made a point to call her (I’m not great about that). My grandma loves to knit — one of the best gifts I’ve ever received is the green knitted blanket that shows up behind a lot of my book pictures. I cuddle up with it constantly.

Avoiding | My sister and I have been challenging each other to not spend any extra money in October. This means I haven’t bought a new book all month! Instead, I’ve been compensating by going to the library constantly… I have a bunch of chunksters out right now.

Wanting | I can’t wait until the election is over. The barrage of negative ads and general nastiness showing up in the letters to the editor (which I have to read and edit…) is tiring me out.

Anticipating | I got all of my around the house chores done yesterday, so I think I will get to spend most of today reading, writing blog posts, and watching football. I’m excited.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Bryan G. Robinson October 26, 2014, 9:33 am

    My wife is involved with a campaign here, so unfortunately I know about the negativity with politics, and I remember as a newspaper editor those letters. I don’t miss that part of the job.

    I know I’ve probably said it before but I’m so jealous of you and your boyfriend getting to see Gone Girl. We just haven’t had time to go see it and probably won’t see it until it’s out on DVD.

    And as I might have mentioned (only a hundred times over on Twitter and on my blog) I am a library assistant so I naturally love that you’re using your local library. Hope that despite the lack of an app, you are enjoying it.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:21 pm

      Oh of course, I absolutely love my local library. We have great librarians, and a wonderful library system to expand the number of available books. I love it.

  • Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader October 26, 2014, 9:51 am

    Campaign nastiness is so disheartening. I’m involved in some Wisconsin campaigns and it’s hard to wade through the noise at times 🙁 I don’t know what I would do if I had to read all of those letters. No thanks!

    Gone Girl was bonkers and fun! The movie made me want to re-read the book too.

    I just finished Underground Girls. Fascinating book.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:20 pm

      I’ve been working on developing a sense of humor about all of them, but it does get draining. No one is as good or as bad as the letters make them out to be.

  • Vasilly October 26, 2014, 10:20 am

    I bet the letters and everything else is draining! I can’t wait until it’s all over.

    Underground Girls sounds similar to a book I was going to read for Bloggers Recommend a few months ago. It’s called I Am a Bacha Posh. It’s about an Afghan woman who started dressing up as a boy when she was little. Now she’s an adult and wants to keep her freedom by “staying” a man. You’re reminding me to read it and Underground Girls!!

    Happy Sunday!

  • BermudaOnion(Kathy) October 26, 2014, 10:44 am

    I’ve seen Gone Girl in the theater twice now and thought it was terrific. I want to revisit the end of the book.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:19 pm

      As soon as I got home the first time I picked up the book to re-read the ending. It’s so twisty!

  • Allison @ The Book Wheel October 26, 2014, 4:17 pm

    I just finished Underground Girls and couldn’t put it down because it’s so riveting!

  • Monika @ Lovely Bookshelf October 26, 2014, 5:27 pm

    The paradox of reading choice has been getting to me lately. Thanks for sharing Josh’s link!

  • Sandy October 27, 2014, 6:09 am

    Hate politics. The local campaigns down here are nasty, and the national ones are even worse. Florida always seems to be a hot spot and there is no peace here. I almost can’t watch debates anymore because they are so ugly. Glad you got to see Gone Girl…Fincher is a freaking movie god I swear. One year I was in a reading challenge where you DID use a random number to pick your next read. Uh, that didn’t last long. Inevitably I would manipulate the results to read what I wanted! LOL

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:18 pm

      That is funny! I probably wouldn’t do well with that as a challenge, but it seems like a good idea if you’re trying to choose between a bunch of good books 🙂

  • Leah @ Books Speak Volumes October 27, 2014, 8:40 am

    Yay, Gone Girl! I thought they did a great job with the movie.

    Oh dear, reading political nastiness does not sound like any fun.

  • Jeanne October 27, 2014, 8:51 am

    Love the photo of Hannah!
    I want to see Gone Girl again, just to wallow in the sights (and sounds–those eternal crickets!) of my home town, where the movie was shot.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:16 pm

      I went to see it a second time (after rereading the book after my first viewing). It was awesome — so detailed and weirdly funny and creepy.

  • Trisha October 27, 2014, 10:41 am

    My phone calls should decrease by about 30% once the election is over.

  • Sarah @ Sarah's Book Shelves October 27, 2014, 1:41 pm

    I’m planning to read Without You, There is No Us for Nonfiction November – glad to hear you liked it! And I also just read great review of Underground Girls at The Book Wheel – seems to be a powerful one.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:15 pm

      I’ll have to go read Allison’s review — I’m sure that I will agree with her!

  • Jenny @ Reading the End October 27, 2014, 7:53 pm

    GOD I can’t wait for the elections to be over. All the negative ads showing up in my mailbox every day are making me want to punch a wall. I’m ordering books I don’t need from PaperbackSwap just so the negative campaign ads won’t be the only thing I’m coming home to in the afternoons.

    • Kim October 30, 2014, 9:14 pm

      That sounds like the very best idea for combating negative election e-mail.

  • Jennine G. October 27, 2014, 11:42 pm

    Yes, scenes from Gone Girl are stuck in my head. They did an excellent job.

  • susan November 1, 2014, 1:25 pm

    Yeah Gone Girl movie is as bonkers as the book. Good way to put it!

  • jillora November 4, 2014, 9:39 pm

    Totally agree about Gone Girl. I usually hate to see movie adaptations, but a friend who’d read the book talked me into going, and we both loved it. And then it was fun to compare the book to the movie afterward. I thought Ben Affleck was perfect for that role…although I didn’t think there was any chemistry between them in the beginning, despite the crazy sex scenes.

    • Kim November 9, 2014, 10:03 pm

      Yeah, their chemistry was strange, even in the beginning, but Ben Affleck was great. Just sort of smarmy and dumb enough to be convincing.