BOOKS: THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING

Despite the fact that I used to read a lot, I didn't branch out into many genres. The idea of a non-fiction book about one woman's experience with grief likely would not have appealed to me much at all, and to be fair I actually was only introduced to this book through school. We were supposed to read this book in my medical anthropology course I took in my first year of university, and I vaguely remember skimming through it so I would be familiar with it for the exam but I didn't actually grasp anything specific from it. I picked this us right after finishing Marabou Stork Nightmares and yet it took me over six months to read its two hundred and twenty-seven pages but it was a heavy read so I felt like I needed to keep putting it down.

The story is told through a series of anecdotes about the past and present all surrounding the life and death of Joan Didion's husband and her process of understanding what happened the year following his death. I cried, and I smiled but what I really enjoyed about it was reading about how Didion was trying to explain the insane thoughts in her brain, while knowing they were irrational and being unable to stop them just the same. I really connected with that aspect of the book and of course it doesn't hurt the she is a wonderful writer with an incredible attention to detail.

Would recommnend? Absolutely

BOOKS: MARABOU STORK NIGHTMARES

I used to be voracious reader, like in high school I was the kid never paying attention because I would be reading a book hidden beneath my desk. Once university came around, reading for pleasure fell by the way side and minus a few bursts of binge reading I have never really been able to make a habit of it again. Well 2015 is going to be the year I change that and I started off with an interesting choice as my first book finished of the year: Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh.

This book was so out of my usual comfort zone for books which I think is what I needed. Generally I read trashy crime novels, YA fiction with several other miscellaneous genres in which the plot generally revolves around people who feel lost and disconnected from the world...I'm very predictable. Marabou Stork Nightmares still focused on an oddball character Roy Strang but the story is mostly told through his subconscious and just in general a very different style than I am used to. I am not sure how much I enjoyed the book for the book itself but I really enjoyed the fact that I had no idea what was going to happen and I liked the unreliable narrator point of view. This book was brutal and difficult to read at points (the Edinburgh Scottish accent) but I do recommend it, and I will definitely be reading it again at some point when I get my own copy.

Would recommend? Yes, but not for the faint of heart.

** Instead of ranking by stars which I think is super arbitrary I will just say if I recommend a book or not.

THE SIMPLE LIFE: PURGING

The thing about moving (almost) halfway across the world is that I have to decide what does and does not come with me. For the past five months I have been making mental checklists and filtering through my belongings and deciding what I am keeping, storing or selling...in my mind. Now with five weeks before my departure date I realized mental lists are not going to make the task of purging my belongings any easier. 

I have been reading several blogs on minimalism, simple living, and mindful living, initially to adopt some of their principles to make relinquishing my worldly possessions easier but a lot of the ideas expressed by these individuals have really resonated within me. 

My first task was to get rid of the unnecessary, the non-useful and  the just plain ugly. Using this guide, I weeded through my entire wardrobe and at least half of what I owned is now piled in three large garbage bags beside my bed, awaiting pick up for donation. Clothing was the easy part, becoming a mother has necessitated a wardrobe change anyways, my books however were a different story. My once overflowing bookshelf is now more empty than filled, and even though it broke my heart to do so I filled two large cloth shopping bags of books for donation and curated the remaining titles until I had selected the forty-ish books that I had decided I could not bear to part with.     

These are just my first steps in the direction of more simple living, and they have been liberating. I am excited to implement the "less is more" philosophy into all facets of my life but it is definitely going to be a difficult process, but I think this move is the big push that I needed to get started.