Month: February 2015

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The 2015 Reading Challenge

Ever since I completed the mini BookTubeAThon challenge last December, I’ve been anxiously awaiting the full challenge in July. And I guess I’ve decided I can’t wait anymore, because I’ve just accepted a year-long challenge that I can start right now.

After much back-and-forth about what I should choose as my goal number for 2015, I settled on 24 books. If I kept up my book-a-month pace and finished seven additional books in July for the BookTubeAThon, getting to 24 would only require a little extra effort. Plus the GoodReads page shows your books for the year in rows of six, so I wanted to hit an even multiple.

This was all well and good. I had my goal, I had some books on my shelf and a few I planned to grab at the library. And then the other day my friend Kristina told me about the Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge. Because so many avid readers and booktubers choose 50 books as their yearly goal, Popsugar released a set of 50 challenges for what kind of books they should read. This is exactly how BookTubeAThon works, but on a much larger scale. I asked Kristina if you were allowed to double up on challenges (fulfill two challenges with the same book). She said the recommendation was to do that no more than three times, and she was going to try to get through the list with no doubles at all. I looked at the challenges.

“I bet I if I doubled up on every one, I could hit all 50 challenges and still only read 24 books.”

“You have to try that,” she told me.

Agreed.

So what are my challenges? Here’s the entire list:

  1. A book with more than 500 pages
  2. A classic romance
  3. A book that became a movie
  4. A book published this year
  5. A book with a number in the title
  6. A book written by someone under 30
  7. A book with nonhuman characters
  8. A funny book
  9. A book by a female author
  10. A mystery or thriller
  11. A book with a one word title
  12. A book with short stories
  13. A book set in a different country
  14. A non-fiction book
  15. A popular author’s first book
  16. A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet
  17. A book a friend recommended
  18. A Pulitzer Prize winning novel
  19. A book based on a true story
  20. A book at the bottom of your TBR list
  21. A book your mom loves
  22. A book that scares you
  23. A book more than a 100 years old
  24. A book based entirely on its cover
  25. A book you were supposed to read in school and didn’t
  26. A memoir
  27. A book with antonyms in the title
  28. A book you can finish in a day
  29. A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to go
  30. A book published the year you were born
  31. A book with bad reviews
  32. A Trilogy
  33. A book from your childhood
  34. A book with a love triangle
  35. A book set in the future
  36. A book set in high school
  37. A book with a color in the title
  38. A book that made you cry
  39. A book with magic
  40. A graphic novel
  41. A book by an author you’ve never read before
  42. A book you own but never read
  43. A book that takes place in your hometown
  44. A book that was originally written in another language
  45. A book set during Christmas
  46. A book by an author who had your same initials
  47. A play
  48. A banned book
  49. A book based on or turned into a tv show
  50. A book you started but never finished

For better or worse, I’ve already read one book and started on three more, so my first four books are set no matter how few challenges they meet. So between four books, I only got five challenges (and not very hard ones).imgres

How to Read a Book
A non-fiction book

The Forgotten Desert Mothers
A book by a female author
A book set in a different country

Blue Highways
A memoir

Walden
A book more than a 100 years old

The other night I spent at least an hour looking at the challenges, the books on my shelf, and the books on my To Be Read list. I found a few winners that can hit a number of challenges. The only one that doesn’t hit at least two is In a Sunburned Country. My main reason for wanting to read it anyway is that I’m currently editing my own travel memoir book, and it’s helpful to look at similar books in the genre when making cuts.

imgres-1In a Sunburned Country
A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to go

Wolf in White Van
A book with a color in the title
A book by an author you’ve never read before

Post Secret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God
A book with antonyms in the title
A book you can finish in a day

Midnight Assassin
A mystery or thriller
A book based on a true story

The Best of Roald Dahl
A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet
A book with more than 500 pages
A book with short storiesimgres-2

Monstrous Regiment
A book you own but never read
A funny book
A book a friend recommended

Walk Two Moons
A book from your childhood
A book with a number in the title
A book that made you cry

Beloved
A Pulitzer Prize winning novel
A book with a one word titleimgres-4

Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant
A Trilogy
A book written by someone under 30
A book set in the future
A popular author’s first book
A book that became a movie

The Wizard of Seattle
A book by an author who had your same initials
A book that takes place in your hometown

On the Road
A book you were supposed to read in school and didn’t
A book you started but never finished
A book that scares you

After working my way down the list, I suddenly found myself staring at a set of nine challenges I could fulfill with a single book. Might not be the best choice, But I couldn’t resist.

Twilight
A book with nonhuman characters
A book at the bottom of your TBR list
A book with bad reviews
A book with a love triangle
A book set in high school
A book with magic
A banned book

A few things have been left undecided. I found three good contenders for a book published the year I was born (Ender’s Game, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, and Contact) however that would be the only challenge any of them fulfill. Ender’s Game would be worth it for the cultural knowledge, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman was already on my To Be Read list, and Contact is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ll leave it undecided for now.

This leaves me with nine challenges and only five books to capture them all:

  • A classic romance (what exactly does this mean anyway?)
  • A book published this year
  • A book your mom loves
  • A book based entirely on its cover
  • A graphic novel
  • A book that was originally written in another language
  • A book set during Christmas
  • A play
  • A book based on or turned into a tv show

Will I manage to hit all 50 without going over 24 books? It’s possible, but unlikely. Then again that’s not really the point. Part of the reason silly reading challenges like this are fun is that they force you out of your reading comfort zone. Let’s face it, if left to my own devices I was probably never going to read a book like The Wizard of Seattle, but now I’m actually excited about it.

So while I’ll do my best, I don’t intend to stress about this challenge. I probably can’t get them all. Or maybe my mother has a favorite book that’s a classic Christmas romance originally written in another language and made into a TV show. Either way, I’m reading more, and that’s got to be worth something.

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Sit Up Straight Part Two: Anterior Pelvic Tilt

Here’s a fun fact: it turns out fixing years of terrible posture is complicated.

I told you a month ago about my big posture realization and my resolution to fix it. After a lot of research and trial and error, I’m realizing that it’s not enough to say I have bad posture, because there are a lot of ways one can have bad posture. So rather than throw everything at you all at once, I’m splitting this subject up into several posts, each on a different problem that I’m researching. Today’s topic is:

Anterior Pelvic Tilt

The Problem:

At the top and front of your hips are two bony protrusions that signal the edge or your hip bones (the iliac crest). Below them and in the center is your pubic bone. If the way you’re sitting right now these three bones form a triangle that’s perpendicular to the floor, congratulations. Your pelvis is just fine. If your triangle is tilted with the iliac crests further forward than the pubic bone, then you’re in Anterior Pelvic Tilt.

The Cause:

Muscles can become tight and short by being kept in a shortened position too often. So if the muscles on the front of the hips are shortened, they are inclined to constantly pull your thighs and belly closer together to keep themselves shortened. This is most commonly caused by sitting too much.

In addition to shortening muscles, sitting all day can force some muscles to start slacking while other muscles are overworked. If your abs and glutes aren’t doing their fair share, the back muscles might try to compensate by working too hard in ways they weren’t designed for. You end up tight and stretched and weak and tense in all the wrong places, and the more you reenforce the position with sitting the more your body fights to stay in it. After a while your pelvis tilts every time you sit, then when you stand, then when you walk, and eventually the tilt is there all the time.

The Treatment:

To fix Anterior Pelvic Tilt you have to retrain the muscles through both strengthening and stretching exercises. The primary muscles to stretch are the psoas (which runs along the front of the hip) and the quads (the front of the thighs). Just reading about Anterior Pelvic Tilt makes my hips feel like they’re encased in cement, so I’ve decided to stretch all the muscles in the hip area. My favorite video for this is from The Yoga Solution with Tara Styles. It’s only five postures so you can do it really fast, but you can linger in them for a long time if you want to get a deeper stretch.

The next step will be to strengthen my glutes and abs, two muscles that should be doing more work than they are currently. I haven’t set up a routine yet, but unsurprisingly there are a million suggestions online for how to tone your butt and give you great abs. I’ll probably start with the basics like lunges, leg lifts, and crunches, and maybe move on to others as the routine gets boring.

After the first post a lot of people told me they also struggle with good posture. So, do any of you think you might have Anterior Pelvic Tilt? Is your tilt bad enough to join me for several weeks of bicycle crunches?

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A Holy Waste of Time

This piece was written last summer while I was on retreat. As we speak I’m staying at an isolated retreat village several hours out of town, the first vacation I’ve taken since that weekend trip and the first long vacation I’ve had in 16 months. It seemed like an appropriate time to post this.

View from St AndrewsAs I write this I’m sitting the the freshly refinished deck of St. Andrew’s Retreat Center on Hood Canal. I have a view of the water, a warm breeze, and the surprisingly comforting smell of fresh paint. I’m here as part of a retreat weekend for young adults called “A Holy Waste of Time.” The point of the weekend is to simply relax. There’s activities to do, but all are voluntary. There’s a hike to go on if you feel like it, and a movie tonight if you want. Right now I’m choosing not to play dominos with some of the other young adults, and in a little while I’ll choose to go to an evening chapel service with them.

In the last few years I’ve developed a real fixation with doing things. I have trouble unplugging and relaxing. I’m always working, always moving, always searching for that elusive secret to perfect productivity. I feel guilty when I sit around doing nothing for too long. I feel bad when items on my to-do list linger. I chastise myself all the time for minutes wasted and activities left undone.

It’s one of my favorite phrases, “left undone.” I know it from the written confession used by the Episcopal Church, the same church that’s putting on this retreat. In the confession we confess that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, “by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” The congregation I grew up in didn’t say the confession much, which is a liturgical policy I support. But I always loved that phrase, I suppose because it reminds us that living a good life isn’t just about refraining from the so-called evil temptations, but also about proactively doing good in the world.

I spent the first few years out of college getting rid of the bad in my life. I got rid of unnecessary spending. I got rid of eating junk. I got rid of so many unneeded possessions. And in that way I took care of the sins I had done, and was left with what I had left undone. I had the writing I never got around to. I had the languages and instruments I wanted to learn. But what I didn’t realize was that I had placed myself on a hamster wheel. There is no limit to what has been left undone. Because every inch of the world may have been explored, but not yet by me.

This is not what is intended in our confession, and it’s not what I intend for my life. But the focus and drive that allows me to do so much of what I want also blinds me to the world as it goes by. I’m rarely able to casually waste time anymore. Wasted time is a productivity sin. If I want to sit back and enjoy myself, I have to define it clearly as free time. I have to proactively tell myself to stop being proactive.

AltarAnd that’s why I’m here, wholly wasting time. I might normally feel guilty about not playing with the other people, but not today. I wanted to use this time to write. Granted that’s because I still feel the need to keep up my 200+ day streak of writing every day, but the sentiment is there. I want the freedom to watch the movie later, which means finishing my writing now.

I know that I push myself harder than I need to, but I also know that the road to my goals is paved with my accomplishments. I keep working because I still want the things that only work can provide. And intellectually I understand the value of taking breaks, of letting go, of closings one’s eyes. But it’s difficult to stop the wheel once it’s turning. It may be hard to keep running, but it’s harder to jump off.

But I try. Right now, I’m trying. The deck is getting a little dark and a little chilly. The house caretaker showed me how to turn on the fireplace earlier. Perhaps I’ll go sit by the fire. Perhaps I’ll read a book. Maybe I’ll take a nap, and not feel bad about it at all.