My Small Morning Routine, Challenge Updates, and Let Us Dream

 

I'm still thinking about that awful attack on the Capitol, and my wonderful friend and comadre, Diana, passed away after a two month struggle with cancer. Forgive me if I stuck my head in the sand this week, and read and wrote in my journal, and watched birds. 

The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff (YA Fiction)

Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future by Pope Francis (Nonfiction)

The Book of Ichigo Ichie by Hector Garcia Puigcerver (Nonfiction)

Alone by Megan E. Freeman (YA Fiction)

How to Attract Birds to Your Garden by Dan Rouse (Nonfiction)

Remarkable Trees of the World by Thomas Pakenham (Nonfiction)

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Chapter-a-Day Read-along)

Yes, and...Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr (Daily Meditation Reading)

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (Classics Club)

Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce

The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson (Naturalist Book Club)

Good Thing #1: 

I love my Small Morning Routine:

meditation;

yoga/stretching/walking;

creation.

Good Thing #2:

My first post for the new rendition of Wondrous Words,

formerly hosted by Kathy of Bermuda Onion,

now hosted by Elza Reads,

coming on Wednesday.

Good Thing #3:

I wrote my first post for the 2021 Discussion Challenge:

Rereading.

I'd love to have you stop by and share your two cents.

I'm happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

Other places where you may like to link up over the weekend are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.

Rereading

I was not always a rereader. 

I like to read books fast. I like to read books with stories in which I don't know what was coming. I like to read lots of books. 

Rereading is the antithesis of these things. Rereading is slow. Rereading is knowing what is next. Rereading is reading fewer books.

Still, I have come to see the pleasures of rereading. 

I am intrigued with a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2012, "The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Re-Consumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences," by Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney J. Levy. Russell and Levy investigated why people visit the same places over and over, why they watch movies again and again, and, what I am most interested in, why people read and reread the same books repeatedly. "By doing it again, people get more out of it,’ say authors Cristel Antonia Russell of American University and Sidney J. Levy of University of Arizona and Northwestern University. ‘"Even though people are already familiar with the stories or the places, re-consuming brings new or renewed appreciation of both the object of consumption and their self," Russell and Levy write. "The re-experience allows them not only to refresh their memory of the past experience but the recollection is accompanied by the discovery of new details. Therefore, the experience is different, even though it is repeated," the authors explain. "Given the immense benefits for growth and self-reflexivity, re-consuming actually appears to offer many mental health benefits," the authors tell us.

What-to-read-next is one of my favorite daily questions. We are all drawn, I think, to the shiny new books on the shelf. But what about the delights of the worn and closely-read books of the past? I hope to explore those in the time I have remaining here on this planet.

That's what it comes down to. We just have so much time remaining. I have a life expectancy of 81.1 years. I am just a little past 64. That gives me 16.9 years left to read. During the pandemic, I've found myself reading a 300-page adult book each day, though I doubt I will be able to continue that pace once life resumes (assuming it will do so). Let's say I can read a 300-page adult book every third day, a pace that sounds a little more realistic. That's roughly 120 books a year, with a grand total of 2052 books during these last years of my life. I like that number, even if I temper it somewhat by remembering that some of these books I will be reading or rereading will be 600-page or more books, cutting into my numbers. Maybe 100 a year is a good number. I could choose a good number of new books (say, 20-30) as well as new-to-me classics (maybe 20-30) as well as rereading some books I've enjoyed in the past (leaving me with around 40 which sounds ideal). 

I like that plan.

What books would I like to reread? Here's a list, with an asterisk by the ones I plan to reread soon.

All Things Bright and Beautiful*

All Things Wise and Wonderful*

David Copperfield*

Dubliners

A Fine Balance

The Glass Bead Game

The Gold Bug Variations

The Hobbit

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Main Street*

Middlemarch

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Stars My Destination*

The Three Musketeers*

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*

Are you a rereader? Or do you like to stick to reading books you have never read before? Are there books you would like to reread one day? What are they? 

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney J. Levy. "The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Re-Consumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences" Journal of Consumer Research: August 2012 (published online October 28, 2011).

https://press.uchicago.edu/pressReleases/2012/February/1202_JCR_Reigniting.html

Snow and Ice and Fall Color in Sedona

My husband and I went hiking with my sister and her husband in Sedona, Arizona last November. 

We were delighted with the fall color. We don't get any fall color here along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

It was icy on one hike.

One day it began to snow while we hiked.

 

A Shiny New Readerbuzz: Resolutions/Hopes for 2021

LIFE

I'm making some resolutions for 2021. Using Kendra Adachi's Lazy Genius Way to guide me, and focusing on what matters, I'm making the resolutions small and routine.  

So I've created a small morning routine. Depending on how much time I have available, it can last one minute (who can't do a one-minute routine each morning?!) up to an hour and a half. What does it consist of? 

(1) Quiet meditation

(2) Stretching/yoga/walking

(3) Creation time (writing, drawing)

I'm focusing on the word play. Thinking about play reminds me to take life lightly, to stay in the moment, to reframe whatever seems amiss so that it's a positive, to make and do things.

I'm (and this is the hardest thing!) trying to respond to everything that happens---the good, the bad, the in-between---out of love. I'm pausing to draw upon the light that is within me. 

READING/BLOGGING

I've taken on several challenges that will guide my reading this year, including the Nonfiction Reader Challenge and the Back to the Classics Challenge. I want to read a little more slowly and carefully this year, and I hope to reflect a little more on my reading. I also am taking on the Comment 4 Comment Challenge in which I plan to reply to every comment left on my blog this year.

Any challenges for you? Any thoughts about my challenges?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

The Guest Cat: Get Well Soon; and a Birthday Pie for My Dad

 

I don't like to talk politics, but if Wednesday had gone on much longer, I think I would have had a nervous breakdown. I am angry with the lies and deception and naked grasping for power that have led to the awful events of that day in our capital. Two more weeks? It can't come too soon for me.

One of the books I finished this week was a crazy-ride-of-a-book. You'd never guess that from the title, Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them, but author Jennifer Wright could do standup with material from this book, oddly, and I'd be first to buy tickets. Thank you, Jen, from Introverted Reader.

I am a few chapters in, and I'm enjoying Miss Benson's Beetle so much. Thank you, Mareli from Elza Reads!

And that's why I love blogging. I get the best recommendations from other bloggers.

POSTS LAST WEEK

Books I'm Awaiting for the First Part of 2021

Sedona in Winter

CHALLENGES

I made progress in four of my challenges last week. 

For the 2021 Nonfiction Reader Challenge, I read 2/12 books. In the category of self-help, I read The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done, and in the category of disease, I read Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. 

I finished one book for the 2021 Back to the Classics Challenge, a humorous or satirical classic, Selected Stories of O. Henry. 

For The Japanese Literature Challenge 13 and The Books in Translation Challenge, I read two books, an adult fiction book, The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, and a children's picture book, Every Color of Light by Hiroshi Osada.

GOOD THING #1:  I used a recipe from Pie Academy to make this birthday pie for my dad's 94th celebration last week.

GOOD THING #2: All Creatures Great & Small (original series) and The Queen's Gambit. Both of these are excellent. I'm looking forward to the new All Creatures Great & Small series on PBS that starts Sunday night.

GOOD THING #3: Project FeederWatch. I watch and report on birds at my feeder (and nearby) two days each week now. So far, I have seen goldfinches (13 at once on one day); bluejays; mourning doves; red-bellied and downy woodpeckers; cardinals, pine siskins; Carolina chickadees; tufted titmice; crows; one hummingbird; house finches; and yellow-rumped warblers. 

I'm happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

Other places where you may like to link up over the weekend are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.

Sedona in Winter

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.