Summer Reading List.

Today is June 1st, which means today is also the beginning of summer! In theory, at least. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that today is the beginning of the summer months… yeah, let’s go with that.

I get excited about summer for a lot of reasons, among the most prominent being the opportunity to plan out what I’ll be reading during the summer months. Who has two thumbs and is still an English major book nerd? This girl! During college I would always make a reading list for myself for each school break, and while I don’t get a winter break or spring break anymore, summer still always feels like a break season even when I’m working and thus I keep making summer reading lists. I’ll probably add more books to this list later, but for now, here are five books I’m excited to dive into this summer.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
I just started reading this a couple days ago, and it’s absolutely enthralling. Skloot digs into the history of HeLa cells, the cells responsible for some of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine, by examining the life of Henrietta Lacks, the young black woman whose cells were taken by doctors without permission and later became the immortal HeLa cells. The craziest part? Henrietta’s family didn’t find out about her immortal cells until twenty-five years after her death, and haven’t seen a dime from the multi-million dollar human biological materials industry that Henrietta’s cells helped create. It’s a story that’s stranger than fiction and one that is set to pose some serious questions about race, class and bioethics that I’m really interested to read about.

The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll by Lewis Carroll
Would you believe that I’ve never read any of Lewis Carroll’s work? Sad, but true. My brother bought me Carroll’s collected works a couple Christmases ago and I’m really excited to finally read Alice in Wonderland (one of my favorite Disney films) and Through The Looking Glass as well as some of his lesser-known works. Summer is a time for magic and whimsy, and The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll should provide just that.

 

Rilke & Andreas-Salome: A Love Story in Letters (translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler)
This collection of letters between poet Rainer Maria Rilke and writer Lou Andreas-Salome spans more than twenty-five years and sheds a nuanced light on a relationship that is part friendship, part literary mentorship, and part love affair. I love epistles (letter-writing is a lost art!) and these letters already hold a special place in my heart because a piece of one of Rilke’s letters to Andreas-Salome served as a cornerstone of the early days of mine and Nate’s relationship, so needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading all of their correspondence.

Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
From Amazon.com: “With a notebook stashed in her diaper bag, Druckerman – a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal – sets out to learn the secrets to raising a society of good little sleepers, gourmet eaters, and reasonably relaxed parents. She discovers that French parents are extremely strict about some things and strikingly permissive about others. And she realizes that to be a different kind of parent, you don’t just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.” Though I’m not a parent and have no designs on being a parent anytime soon, I do find different parenting techniques really fascinating (especially after being an au pair for badly behaved children) and am interested to see if there’s anything revolutionary that we Americans can learn from the French about parenting.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Aside from being one of the most buzzed-about works of fiction in recent memory, everyone I know who has read this book has truly raved about how excellent it is. In what has been described as a blue-collar American epic, Franzen “comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire.” Intrigued? Because I sure am! I’ve only ever read Franzen’s non-fiction work, but I’m excited to read his fiction that has garnered him a place among the most revered contemporary American writers of our time. Go Franzen!

Things I Miss About Europe.

During the six months I spent in Europe, there were lots of things that I missed about the good ole U.S. of A: the Pacific Northwest’s abundance of greenery, self-check out lanes at the grocery store, and Chipotle burrito bowls, just to name a few. Now that I’ve re-acclimated to the AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, there are things I find myself missing about Europe on a regular basis. (You’ll notice that half of them are food/drink-related).

Fanta. Euro-Fanta is not like Fanta in the United States. Euro-Fanta is less like “orange soda” and more like a tart, citrus-y fruit drink that happens to be carbonated. It’s delicious and American Fanta doesn’t compare.

Cheek-kissing. I love the cheek-kissing culture of Spain and Portugal in particular because it’s such an intimate and personal way to greet someone or to meet a new person, and after having experienced that, handshakes feel so sterile and impersonal. I’ve tried to do the cheek-kissing thing in Seattle a couple times, but I get weird looks from people. #boohiss

Euro coins. Having 1 Euro and 2 Euro coins was awesome. I’m not exactly sure why I liked them so much, but they just felt more practical and convenient somehow. I wish 1 Dollar and 2 Dollar coins would catch on in the U.S.

Speculoos. Speculoos is made of Dutch cookies that are processed into a peanut butter-like paste, and it’s insanely delicious. I ate speculoos almost every single day that I was in Amsterdam. The good news is that I’ve recently discovered that Trader Joe’s sells speculoos, and even though it’s not quite as good as speculoos from Holland, it’s an acceptable variation on the cookie butter I love so much. Nom nom nom.

Riding a bike everywhere. The bike culture in Amsterdam was kind of scary at first, but once I got used to it, I loved riding a bike.  It was really fun to navigate a new city on two wheels instead of four, and riding a bike just made me feel healthy and awesome. I’m excited to buy a bike that I can cruise around Seattle on, but it won’t be the same as the magic of cycling in Holland.

Cheap flights. Since everything in Europe is so close together and there are multiple budget airlines, it costs next to nothing to fly from country to country. I think the most I ever paid for a round-trip flight was $200, and that’s only because the budget airlines didn’t fly to Sweden. I probably couldn’t even make it to Denver for $200 roundtrip, and that’s not even halfway across the country! I miss those cheap flights, and so does my wallet.

The way Guinness tastes in Ireland. I kid you not, it’s amazing. And it tastes completely different than it tastes anywhere else in the world. I’ve been told it’s because the Irish double-pour (the way Guinness is meant to be poured), which allows for a more rich flavor and creates a delicious velvety head of foam, and also because they only export the inferior brews and save the best for themselves. Whatever the reason, it’s a drinking experience that can’t be replicated elsewhere and that’s why, despite my love for Guinness, I will never drink it again unless I find myself in Ireland. Which, I guess, just means I need to find myself in Ireland sometime in the future.

12 Things in 2012.

YOU GUYS. It’s May 2nd, which means that 1/3 of 2012 is already gone. What the what?! Crazy. 2012 thus far has been a year unlike any other for me, so when I saw Liz‘s list of twelve things she’s learned in 2012 so far, I thought hey! that might be a good way to preserve some of the magic that this year has shown me and to share some of the knowledge I’ve gleaned from January to present. Some of these things were hard-learned, some of them I learned by accident, and some I’ve always known but haven’t been able to accept their truth until now. But I’m still learning all the time, and that’s not nothing.

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01 /// That most of the American stereotypes held by Europeans are not entirely untrue.

02 /// That curiosity is one of the best qualities to have, and that there are generally great rewards when you exercise it.

03 /// That I can get by on a lot less than I thought I could.

04 /// That I will probably always be having an internal dialogue with myself about whether to cut or grow out my bangs, and that I will probably always be unhappy with whichever I choose.

05 /// That when it comes to searching for employment, it’s not what you know but who you know.

06 /// That Seattle springtime is a beautiful thing, and reminds me why I choose to call this city home.

07 /// That South Park is one of the funniest shows ever.

08 /// That sometimes it’s more important to honor your own happiness above the commitments you make.

09 /// That people and their stories are my truest passion.

10 /// That trying to overcome old habits without making a clean break from the environments that fostered them means setting yourself up for failure.

11 /// That language is a miracle, and “YES” is a way more fun word than “NO.”

12 /// That I want to be Malcolm Gladwell when I grow up.

The Year in Music 2011: 10-1.

10. Allen Stone – Allen Stone 9. Tom Vek – Leisure Seizure 8. Gillian Welch – The Harrow and the Harvest 7. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy 6. Bon Iver – Bon Iver 5. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation 4. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake 3. Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost 2. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
1. Feist – Metals

The Year In Music 2011: 20-11.

In years past, I’ve gone to great lengths with my year-end music lists: I’ve employed ratings systems to rank albums, I’ve written a great deal to validate my opinions about my choices and I’ve spent far too much time obsessing over the final product. Perhaps it’s because I was too busy looking forward to a vacation, but this year, all of those great lengths seemed needless somehow. It’s simple enough to say “Here are some albums that I really enjoyed listening to this year, and you may or may not enjoy listening to them too” without tacking on hyperbolic embellishments, and it’s just as effective, too. So, here are some albums that I really enjoyed listening to this year, and you may or may not enjoy listening to them too.

20. Cave Singers – No Witch 19. Death Cab For Cutie – Codes and Keys
18. Jens Lekman – An Argument with Myself 17. Washed Out – Within and Without 16. James Blake – James Blake 15. Adele – 21 14. Cults – Cults
13. Charles Bradley – No Time for Dreaming 12. Wild Flag – Wild Flag
11. Decemberists – The King Is Dead