Mid-year updates

I feel like a broken record since I keep saying "wow, I can't believe it's been x months since I last updated..."

Or "I'm still reading... but nothing really jumped out, so dodn't feel like blogging."

Except both are still true.

So far I'd read 12 fiction and 12 non-fiction plus a bunch of books in Chinese. So not to bad for effort now that I have an almost 3 years-old (about half of what I used to read prior to kid). If you want to see what I'd read so far, see here, and if you are interested in any of those books, I'd write about them more.

All the fiction were just okay. Three memoirs I read were more interesting as I learned something new (The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson, My Brief History by Stephen Hawking, and The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida).

  

The most thought provoking is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, Cathy Hirano. If you haven't heard about this, just goggle this book or Konmari. It's not your typical decluttering book. After I read it, it just makes so much more sense. My friends thought she sounds hokey after I told them about it, but completely changed their mind once they read it. It explains why other traditional decluttering doesn't work for me (may stay clean for a week, then back to its original mess... sigh.) I'm almost done with my closet (and have donated 8 full bags of clothes and I wasn't even that ruthless about it!!) I really can't wait till I'm done with the whole house (she said it may take 6 months... I can see why.)



I think I'll also use her approach when it comes to this blog:

Blog when it sparks joy.*

I'm also on a book tour on August 24th about Hurricane Katrina - can you believe it was 10 YEARS AGO??? It's called Aftermath Lounge: A Novel in Stories by Margaret McMullan. Haven't started reading it yet, but will do so closer to the date so it's fresh in my mind. I've become quite picky about tours nowadays because I want to give it my 100%. Given my schedule and sporadic blogging, I just don't think it's fair to accept the books and not deliver.

Oh and for fun, I'd bought these 3 writing books. Sometimes it may be more fun to write on paper than type on a keyboard...

1. 712 More Things to Write About
2. My Future Listography: All I Hope to Do in Lists
3. The Line-A-Day 10 Year Journal: Blue Jacket

  

I am going to start the 10 Year Journal on my son's 3rd birthday. I'll jot down something I want to remember about him or say to him that day, and give it to him on his 13th birthday. I have started a couple of entries in 712. Sometimes it's hard to write it in a fictitious way rather than a memoir sort of way... or I suppose it doesn't really matter one way or another as long as I write. I already have lists of things I want to do or read or experience in my head, so it'd be nice to finally write it down, and then look back later on to see how many I'd done.


* There is more to her methodology that that, but this is the essence of it.




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