I feel like I started to get some of my reading groove back near the end of September. I’m not sure what clicked, but something must have because I finished eight pretty great books (and only one of them was a comic book!). I’m still struggling a bit with reviews, but getting over slumps is a process. At any rate, here’s what I finished last month:

1. O’Malley, Brian Lee: Seconds (fiction/comic book)
2. Atwood, Margaret: Stone Mattress (fiction/short stories)
3. Tanner, Adam: What Stays in Vegas (nonfiction
4. Galbraith, Robert: The Cuckoo’s Calling (fiction/audio book)
5. Beukes, Lauren: Broken Monsters (fiction)
6. Kim, Suki: Without You, There Is No Us (memoir)
7. Richtel, Matt: A Deadly Wandering (nonfiction)
8. Biss, Eula: On Immunity (nonfiction)

As you can see, I’m still a bit behind on reviews, especially of the nonfiction. I’m working on freelance reviews for What Stays in Vegas and On Immunity, so I’ll link to those when they go live. I’ll post a review of Without You, There Is No Us nearer to the publication date in October, and I’m working on some thoughts for A Deadly Wandering, so maybe I’ll be caught up soon.

I think my favorite reads of the month were Stone Mattress and On Immunity. They were both super smart and super great. And for those counting (mostly me), I’m at 75 books for the year — right on track to hit my goal of 100 books by the end of December.

A Look to October

Since October is Halloween month, I’m trying to sneak some creepy or scary books into my reading plans. I’ve got a couple of good nonfiction books on the pile that will fit the bill including Tinseltown by William J. Mann (Oct. 14 from Harper) and Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek.

My other favorite bookish event of the year takes place in October, Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon! This year I am going to be really ruthless about only picking up short books, so hopefully I can fly through several of the over my 18 or so hours of reading on Oct. 18 and 19. I’ve got a pile started that I plan to share later in the month.

But before all of that, I have a chunkster out from the library that I need to finish — The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. This book, you guys, is so enormous, but 100 pages in and I know it’s going to be stellar.

What books are you most looking forward to reading in October?

I would describe myself as, at best, a casual fan of the Star Wars universe. I’ve seen the original trilogy a couple of times and I fondly remember going to each of the prequel movies with my family when I was a kid, but that’s about as far as my familiarity with the franchise actually goes. I do, however, love fan culture and learning more about the things that other people can become obsessed about.

Chris Taylor’s How Star Wars Conquered the Universe starts with almost that very question: How did a space fantasy become one of the most ubiquitous and lucrative franchises of all time? Or, put another way, how has Star Wars become so ingrained in our collective memory that even people who have never seen the original films know who Yoda is or the big reveal that Darth Vader really is Luke’s father?

While I’m not sure that the book definitely answers that question, it’s an absolutely wonderful, meandering, encompassing, engaging look at the history of Star Wars and the many ways that fans and creators have latched on to this film and made it’s stories and characters their own.

Quite a few of the reviews I skimmed on Goodreads critiqued the book for being disorganized. And while I get where that’s coming from, I happened to love the way the book spun off in different directions. This book is not a straight history of the franchise, starting with a young George Lucas and ending with speculation about the upcoming Episode VII film. Instead, that timeline provides a backbone for Taylor to spin off other stories about the fans who make up a real-life drone army legion of Storm Troopers, build their own droids and believe in Jedism as it’s own religion.

I loved that because, to be honest, George Lucas is not that interesting. Although the story of Star Wars is his, the franchise is a cultural touchstone because of the people who love it so much. And, as Taylor points out, the most successful of the films are those where Lucas invited in collaborators and co-writers to help bring in levity and keep the stories from spinning out of control.

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe is really just an engaging, fun, interesting book. There is a ton of gossip about the movies and what life was like behind-the-scenes, as well as astute commentary on where some of those films went wrong. And it’s a thoughtful portrait of George Lucas that doesn’t tear him down or raise him up unfairly in his position as creator of the franchise. I just adored this book and plan on pushing it on anyone who expresses even a passing interest in Star Wars.

Disclosure: I picked up a copy of this book at Book Expo America. 

Time and Place | I’m writing this at about 9:15 p.m. on Sunday, but it’s scheduled to go up Monday morning. I’m interpreting “currently” a little lose this week.

Eating and Drinking | After a month of super clean eating (thanks, Whole30) I went a little bit off the rails this week, first with pizza for lunch with my coworkers and then for a night out with my high school girlfriends that started with pink drinks and went from there. I definitely noticed that these foods weren’t making me feel good, so I’m refocusing on a mostly Whole30 diet this week.

Reading | I had a quiet reading week, but it was spent with two excellent books so I’m not complaining. I’m really close to finishing On Immunity by Eula Biss (Sept. 30 from Graywolf Press), a look a fear, vaccinations and motherhood, and not-at-all close to finishing The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. My library copy is due back soon, so I splurged on the hardcover at Barnes and Noble. New books!

Watching | I went down a rabbit hole with the sixth season of Castle and loved every minute of it. The theme song has been playing in my head almost constantly.

Listening | Since I had long-ish drives to and from the Twin Cities this weekend, I dove into a new audio book, The News: A User’s Manual by Alain De Botton.

Making | I picked up a cross stitch project I’d abandoned for awhile and made some progress. I’m considering starting a ripple afghan with some of my loose yarn.

Blogging | It was a good week on the blog! I spent some time last Sunday night getting my categories cleaned up and managed to share two posts this week: some books in my mailbox this month and my experience with the Whole30 program.

Contemplating | In the spirit of minimalism and curating and simplifying, I’m really curious about the idea of a capsule wardrobe. I love this one from Caroline at Un-Fancy, and think her steps to get started sound really simple.

Surprising | I stopped by our library book sale this week — they leave the books out for a month after the sale for people to pick through — and found the most amazing little book, Keys to Happiness: A Reader’s Digest Guide to Successful Living. This 1955 guide has essays like “Turn Your Sickness into an Asset” and “Danger — Gossips at Work” — amazing.

Loving | I’m in love with spending time with old friends.

Anticipating | The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy, but then I think I will have three weekends at home in a row. And one of those weekends is Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon!

One of the things that has stuck with me from Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project is the idea of moderators versus abstainers. Rubin posits that some people are happiest when they moderate their behavior by allowing small indulgences every once in awhile. Other people, however, are happier when they abstain entirely from certain things – the constant debate about whether it’s a good time to indulge is more taxing than just taking it off the table.

I’ve always thought of myself as a moderator. My experience over the last month with the Whole30 program, a nutritional approach developed by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig and outlined in their book It Starts With Food, taught me that I’m actually better off as an abstainer (at least when it comes to what I eat or don’t eat).

Why read It Starts With Food?

I was inspired to learn more about the Whole30 after following another blogger through her experiment with the program. Her description of life before doing the Whole30 (feeling out of control with food, low energy, consistent headaches) sounded very close to how I was feeling about what I ate and it’s impact on my health. She was so positive about the results, and honest about her experience, that I decided I wanted to learn more.

While you can find a lot of basic information about how to do a Whole30 on the website, I wanted to read It Starts With Food because I was curious about the whys of the program and some of the science behind food and nutrition. Knowing that helped me stick to the program even when I wasn’t feeling motivated because I got the point of doing this in the first place.

What is a Whole30?

I’ve been describing the Whole30 as either a “nutritional reset” or a “weird diet,” depending on who I’m talking to and how much detail I feel like getting into with them.

Basically, the program asks you to cut out all sugars and added sweeteners, alcohol, seed oils, grains and legumes and dairy for 30 days. This means focusing on a strict diet of proteins, fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats for a month to let your body reset from the impacts that those eliminated foods can have. The foods you keep in your diet are foods that meet four good food standards:

• The foods we eat should promote a healthy psychological response.
• The foods we eat should promote a healthy hormonal response.
• The foods we eat should support a healthy gut.
• The foods we eat should support immune function and minimize inflammation.

The foods that are cut out during the Whole30 all fail at least one of those good food standards (often several of them).

How was My Whole30?

I officially started my Whole30 on August 24 and finished on Monday. Overall, I think it went really well.

The Whole30 website has timeline of common feelings and physical reactions people have throughout the month. This was probably the most helpful page on the whole site — I visited it pretty often. My reactions tracked pretty closely with this timeline, although my early hangover symptoms (headaches, fatigue, general malaise) seemed to linger for quite awhile.

I also never really got to the “Tiger Blood” state – super energy, feeling amazing – but I do feel much healthier than I did a month ago. I lost about 9 pounds and seem to have more consistent energy throughout the day (no slumps at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. like I used to have). I feel less bloated, and I know my clothes fit better even though I didn’t take measurements before I started. I also know that my taste for sweetness has adjusted in a pretty significant way (I actually enjoy unsweetened iced tea, something I thought was bitter and undrinkable before).

Although I didn’t deliberately cheat and eat foods I wasn’t supposed to (until one moment of weakness on Day 29), I also wasn’t as diligent about avoiding some foods (seed oils, mostly) when I went out to eat as I could have been. I think that may have impacted my overall results, but it’s ok. During my Whole30 month I was traveling for two weekends and hosting my in-laws for another weekend. It’s hard to eat out and be perfect, so I’m not beating myself up about that.

Missing and Not Missing

The one thing I craved every single day of my Whole30 was good dark chocolate. I also missed sugar in my black tea in the morning (I can’t quite get there) and, once in awhile, warm, flakey biscuits. I had other minor cravings, but those were the most persistent.

I thought that I would miss dairy, cheese and milk in particular, but I didn’t crave that much. I also didn’t miss grains as much as I thought that I would, although I am kind of excited to go out and get a big plate of pasta sometime soon.

One thing I did realize is that it’s possible to have bad eating habits even when eating healthy food. The program discourages snacking, but I still wanted to eat between meals and at night while watching television – even when I wasn’t hungry. That’s something I am going to have to continue to watch carefully.

Going Forward

The Whole30 includes a reintroduction schedule that slowly adds in new foods and gives you time to see how you react to them. I’m being a little bit loose in following it, but I am trying to test just one or two foods at a time so I can try to figure out which foods were making me feel bad (I’m almost positive it was all the sugar and grains, but we’ll see).

And I’m hoping to stick to a mostly Paleo diet going forward. Since I’m apparently an abstainer when it comes to food, I think adopting an approach that keeps certain foods out of my life most of the time will be easier and more effective than reverting to how I approached food before.

And really, I like the way eating this way makes me feel and I like feeling good about the food I put into my body. I still need to work on incorporating more vegetables into my diet and on doing meal prep on weekends to make weekday night meals easier. And I need to keep working to battle my sugar demon… I still have a pretty big sweet tooth. I have a lot to learn, but I feel like this reset helped get me closer to where I want to be.

Whew! I feel like I wrote a lot there without really even getting close to sharing all of my thoughts on this program and my month of super clean eating. If there’s anything else I can share, feel free to let me know in the comments!