One of the things I try to do when I write mini-reviews is find a way to tie the two books together. I don’t think this is necessary, but I think it’s a good challenge. It took me awhile, but I realized yesterday what the two books I’m going to write about today have in common: I picked them up because of recommendations by the other contributors at Book Riot. As I noted on Twitter yesterday:

The best part of writing for @BookRiot is getting book recs from other writers on the BR back channel.

— Kim Ukura (@kimthedork) January 13, 2015

I picked up MERMAIDS IN PARADISE and THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY at the library today based on other @BookRiot contributor recs. Excited.

— Kim Ukura (@kimthedork) January 13, 2015

(No, this post is not about either of those books… but I’m excited to read them soon!). In this case, I’m going to share some thoughts on a book that I loved and a book that I’m glad I tried even though it didn’t work for me.

Sweetland by Michael Crummey

For twelve generations, when the fish were plentiful and when they all-but disappeared, the inhabitants of this remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement, and each has been offered a generous compensation package to leave. But the money is offered with a proviso: everyone has to go; the government won’t be responsible for one crazy coot who chooses to stay alone on an island. That coot is Moses Sweetland.

While the marketing summary goes on after that brief paragraph, I wanted to cut it off there because some of the joy of this novel is in discovering where it goes and following along as the story builds. One of the blurbs I read for Sweetland describes the novel as a kaleidoscope, which is exactly right — although the plot of the resettlement drives the story forward, it’s the beautiful, small details about the history of these families and this place slowly coming together into a coherent whole that makes this book wonderful. Sweetland is a beautiful book about loss and family and the ways in which the past affects each of us. I was so moved by this book — I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Descent by Tim Johnston

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines or seen on TV. As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination. Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know?

So… Descent. I did not really like this book… which is weird to me, because lots of people loved it (That’s What She Read and Beth Fish Reads, to name a couple). Descent is what I’d call a literary thriller — it’s clearly a plot-driven novel, but the writing style is definitely elevated over a mass marker thriller story. But for me, that style didn’t really add much — it felt like the author was trying too hard with the prose, which bogged down everything else. Maybe it was just that this was not a great book for me to read in December, I’m not sure, but overall I found it pretty tedious.

What books are you excited to read this month? What are your go to sources for book recommendations?

Credit: Jaime Fearer via Flickr Creative Commons

One of the things that started to bug me in 2014 was my contribution to the “cult of busy” or “the busy trap” – the way people have of lamenting how busy they are in such a way that it becomes a kind of humblebrag, a complaint disguised as a boast to show how important they are to those around them (thanks, Puritan founders). I’ve come to embrace the idea that being busy isn’t inherently a good thing, and neither is thinking that we need to pretend we are more busy than we are because relaxation is thought of as laziness.

This became apparent to me over the last few months as I thought more about how I talk to people. I noticed that instead of engaging people in a conversation after being asked “How are you?” I was constantly defaulting to “Good! Busy. You?” And while sometimes that was true, often it was just a hedge, a way of deflecting conversation away from anything substantial like talking about what I’m actually working on… or admitting that my life was not as “busy” as I wanted to make it seem.

All things considered, I live a remarkably un-busy life. I don’t have kids. I live in a small town where my home is less than 1.5 miles from my job. I don’t keep an especially pristine house, and I don’t spend a lot of time cooking. Yet for most of this year I felt constantly harried and well, busy, like I was constantly behind on the things that I wanted to accomplish. It was frustrating.

How Do You Use Your 168 Hours?

Enter 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, a look at time management that doesn’t rely on time-saving tricks, but instead asks the reader to think carefully about priorities and how to make them stick. As Vanderkam notes in her preface, “Once we see how much time we truly have, we start realizing that time management isn’t just about saving five minutes on the margins … true time management is about filling our lives with things that deserve to be there.”

For me, 168 Hours served as both a manifesto for how to use time better and an outline for how to get there myself. Vanderkam opens the book with an argument that thinking about time over a course of a week – 168 hours – rather than a traditional 24 hour day opens up more possibilities to see time for what matters. After, she looks at different ways to manage and prioritize time at work and at home to fit the things that matter into every week (focusing on the things you are best at – your core competencies).

I won’t go into all those tips here – if you’re interested, read the book – but I do want to say that one important caveat is that much of the work-related advice in 168 Hours is targeted towards a certain demographic, I’d say mid- and upper-level professionals with moderately flexible work schedules or who supervise other people. Her suggestions about optimizing time at work don’t make a lot of sense if you’re, say, an hourly worker in retail or run a home daycare. I don’t think any of it is bad advice, just not entirely applicable depending on your work situation.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the two initial activities Vanderkam suggests for readers looking to better use their time, since they were both very helpful for me.

Keeping a Time Log

The first thing Vanderkam suggests doing is keeping a time log. For an entire week, check in about every 30 minutes and write down what you’re doing. This assessment is important because it gives you actual data about how you’re using your time. As Vanderkam notes, most people over- and under-estimate the time they spend on tasks, depending on how they want to be spending time. And more importantly, we don’t often think very hard about how we spend time until we are forced to do so. My favorite paragraph from the entire book gets at this:

“We don’t think about how we want to spend our time, and so we spend massive amounts of time on things – television, web surfing, housework, errands – that give a slight amount of pleasure or feeling of accomplishment, but do little for our careers, our families or our personal lives. We spend very little time on things that require more thought or initiative, like nurturing our kids, exercising, or engaging the limited hours we do work in deliberate practice of our professional crafts. We try to squeeze these high-impact activities around the edges of things that are easy, or that seem inevitable merely because we always do them or because we think other expect us to. And consequently, we feel overworked and under-rested, and tend to believe stories that confirm this view.”

Keeping a time log for two weeks was an instructive exercise for me. It forced me to be honest with myself and realize that I do have time for things that matter. The problem, it appears, is that I’m not using some open blocks of my time productively and, as a result, I’m pushing high-energy or high-impact projects (and self-care like exercise) into times of the day when I’m inevitably exhausted. These two factors meant that I ended each day feeling like I wasted a bunch of time and feeling too exhausted to use the time I did have for things that matter.

Making a List of Dreams

The second task of 168 Hours, after keeping at time log, is to make a list of 100 dreams. This list can be just about anything, it should just include things that you wish that you could do someday. Then, go back to the list and figure out why you haven’t done it yet. If there are things that are easy, find time to just get them done. And then start making plans for how to try the things you haven’t. The point of the exercise of two-fold – do things that make you happy, and figure out which of the dreams on the list you aren’t passionate about by giving them a try.

I haven’t gotten very far with this part yet, I think because it intimidates me. Setting down dreams in writing means you have to start thinking about how to make them happen, and I’m weirdly scared of that. But I’m going to do it because the only way to make your 168 hours feel more valuable is to fill them with things that matter.

Thinking Ahead to 2015

Trying to think about how to work through these issues – particularly how to revamp my morning routine to be more effective – also led me to another one of Vanderkam’s books, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (which I mentioned in my post on my One Little Word for 2015). This paperback is a combination of three short ebooks that addresses some more practical examples of what “successful” people do to make the most out of their time in the morning, their time at work, and their time on the weekends.

I liked this as a companion, since the book went deeper into examples of how other people use their time better. They’re more immediately practical than 168 Hours, but didn’t help me ask some of the big questions that I need to work through first – I wouldn’t recommend it over 168 Hours, but definitely as a companion if Vanderkam’s style works for you.

Anyway, this is an awfully long way of getting around to saying that I got a lot out of reading 168 Hours, and I think it’s a great start for looking at how to manage and use time better. While I haven’t quite found answers to the many existential questions the book raised for me – what are the things that matter to me? What are my core competencies? How am I supporting those skills, and how am I addressing my weaknesses? – but I at least feel like I have a start.

One year later, and I think what I said about the idea of One Little Word still rings true: Anyone who is a bookworm knows that words have power. Words matter and the words we choose in our lives can make such a difference in how we see the world.

This is my second year participating in One Little Word, a year-long workshop hosted by designer/blogger/memory keeper Ali Edwards. In One Little Word, participants choose, well, one little word to focus on for the upcoming year. As Ali explains, “You live with it. You invite it into your life. You let it speak to you. You might even follow where it leads. There are so many possibilities.”

My word for 2014 was curate, and my vision for the year was to cull back the unnecessary things in my life to make space for the things that mattered and, in the future, give myself the mental and physical space to grow.

This idea, picking a word and focusing your energy into what that word means, worked for me. I didn’t do everything I hoped to do, but I felt like my year had a sense of direction I’ve been missing. We moved and I got rid of a lot of stuff. I focused, for a few months, on not buying new things. I read a lot of my own books. I did a Whole30. I committed to a task management system (Todoist) and worked on systems for keeping organized. I feel mentally lighter now than I did last January.

I’m a little surprised that after a year of curating, I don’t feel compelled to start adding things back to my life. I thought I’d be ready to reverse course, but I think the idea of being deliberate and thoughtful about myself and my space and the people around me is sticking.

That revelation led me to my One Little Word for 2015: nurture.

I resisted nurture for a long time – it was one of the first words I thought of, but a word I initially couldn’t accept. The idea of being nurturing is challenging for me. I don’t feel like the kind of soft, warm person who is in a position to nurture others… and I’m not always great at nurturing myself. It reminded me of caring for children, which I don’t have and don’t know how I feel about. It felt like a word for a better, more generous version of myself that I’m not sure I can ever achieve.

One of the things that Ali has talked about when it comes to finding your word is just listening, seeing what words come up and repeat and seem to settle in. Nurture spoke to me, as you might expect, through a book — Laura Vanderkam’s book What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. In the book, Vanderkam argues that the most successful people spend time before breakfast doing important, but not urgent, things – nurturing their careers, nurturing their relationships or nurturing themselves. Those are all things that I want to do too.

I think that was my word speaking to me, of showing me that my preconceived ideas about this word weren’t fair. While one definition of nurture is to take care, nurture can also be about encouraging growth and development, or helping to grow and expand and succeed. I think those are ideas that can guide me to what I want to accomplish in 2015.

In 2014, curate provided me with a sign post, an idea that I could look to when I felt uncertain or needed a reminder to get back on track.

In 2015, nurture is going to provide me with a challenge, a push out of my comfort zone to grow and expand and develop the things in my life that matter most. Bring it on.

“Be one who nurtures and who builds. Be one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart, who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” – Marvin J. Ashton

Briefly | Cheers and Happy New year! It feels like forever since I sat down and wrote a Sunday morning post — lots to catch up on.

Time and Place | About 8:30 a.m. on my couch with my new Asus Chromebook, one of my Christmas presents. My old laptop was on it’s last legs and a Chromebook seemed like a reasonable replacement. It’s slim, light and does nearly everything I need from a computer on a daily basis even if it’s not as powerful or feature-filled as a traditional laptop.

Eating and Drinking | At the moment, Christmas cookies and water. But I’m thinking about the awesome fruit bouquet my mom got for Christmas — pineapple stars!

Reading | Over the holidays, I finished up a re-read of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy — The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. I loved the parts that focused on people, but felt like I was trudging through the parts on religious theory. Overall, probably a 4 of 5 stars for the series.

My first book of 2015 was Sweetland by Michael Crummy. And you guys, this book is beautiful. I’m still trying to process all of the feelings it gave me. This week I’ll be working on a big biography, The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport and jumping into a book for Jazz Age January, Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell.

Reading | I loved this New York Times profile of Laura Hillenbrand that ran last month. There are some really interesting bits on the state of narrative nonfiction as well as background on how Hillenbrand, who is largely confined to her home due to illness, does her writing.

Watching | I finished rewatching season six of Parks and Recreation and decided to just start over at the beginning. I am going to miss this show a lot — there’s nothing on television that’s quite as funny and quite as kind. And of course it’s Wildcard Weekend, so I’ve been watching football.

Buying | I went on a bit of a book buying binge at the end of 2014 — Lyra’s Oxford and Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman, Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman, Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey, The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios, and Sweetland. I added several more books to my online shopping cart on Friday, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.

Blogging | In case you missed it during the holidays, here are all of my end of the year posts: Favorite Nonfiction of 2014, Favorite Fiction of 2014, and 2014 in Bookish Stats. I also posted about my goals for 2015 (and my plans to take on the 2015 TBR Challenge).

Changing | For the last several years, my Goodreads Reading Challenge number has been 100 books. It’s a nice round number, and I like that I can often beat it. Initially, I set my goal for 2015 at 105 books, but after some consideration I dropped it down to 96 (eight books per month). This is largely irrelevant, since I don’t really read to hit the goal, but it feels like it matters.

Loving | I’m late to the party, but I loved this SNL Digital Short — Hobbit Office.

Avoiding | I need to get moving to make breakfast and get to the gym… but I’d rather cuddle up under a blanket.

Anticipating | Starting on Thursday I’ll be in the Twin Cities volunteering with Youth in Government, a YMCA youth leadership program where students participate in a mock legislative session. I was a program participant in high school, and have been an adult volunteer ever since. It’s an amazing program, but a very tiring weekend — I’m so excited!