Tag: family

lifestyle · travel

Highlights of My Busy 2024: Family, Travel, and Reading

kristenLeave a comment

My 2024 was pretty busy, mostly in good ways. 

So. That happened. I am sick to death of politics, so all I’ll say is, I hope everyone gets the year they voted for and deserve. 

New Zealand sister, her husband, and kids came for a good visit. I hadn’t gotten to meet her kids before now, so that was a delight. That whole visit was a highlight of the year, though I feel bad that their schedule meant they had to come in the hottest part of summer. There’s nothing good about summer in Phoenix. Sorry, Z – I hope next time you get to come when it is not a million degrees out. 

A few months after their visit, her younger brother came for a visit as well. He had a few days to kill between arriving in the States and taking his test to get promoted to captain (he works on superyachts – how cool is that?), so he came to visit us. I hadn’t seen him since he was like 8, so that was a fun visit as well.

I took my daughter on a trip to London during her fall break from school. One of my best friends met us there a few days later and we had one epic girls’ trip. I got a new tattoo while I was there; we saw a few plays, including A Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; got to visit my friend’s family during a trip to Kew Gardens and Camden; ate dinner at St John, which was one of Anthony Bourdain’s favorite restaurants in London; saw, FINALLY, the tomb of William Marshal in the Temple Church; and spent hours in a massive 6-storey Waterstone’s, buying books that weren’t published in the States yet because buying books in Britain is more fun, and also I have no ability to delay my gratification when it comes to books in general. 

I hit a major reading slump this year, too, but I still did alright. I read a total of: 

  • 36 books
  • 11,113 pages
  • 12 audiobooks
  • 153:27 hours listened
  • 67% of women authors
  • 33% of male authors
  • 8% LGBTQ+ authors 
  • 19% LGBTQ+ characters (I did really badly in these 2 categories this year; I try to do 25-30% at least)
  • The genre I read the most was sci-fi. Big surprise there. 44% of my reading was sci-fi
  • The month I read the most was December, which is weird
  • I had 8 books that I rated as 5-star reads
  • I had 1 book to which I gave a 1-star rating

My favorite books of this year were:

  • The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (also the audio)
  • The Wild Silence also by Raynor Winn
  • Thorn Hedge by T. Kingfisher
  • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
  • A Closed and Common Orbit also by Becky Chambers
  • the witch doesn’t burn in this one by Amanda Lovelace

My favorite audiobooks of this year were:

  • The Salt Path written and read by Raynor Winn (also eyeball read this)
  • Lost Boy by Christina Henry, narrated by Samuel Roukin
  • Norse Mythology written and read by Neil Gaiman
  • The Gentleman by Forrest Leo, narrated by Samuel Roukin and John Keating. (Some serious, laugh out loud funny moments in this one. The side notes just about killed me)
  • The Shadowed Land by Signe Pike, narrated by Eilidh Beaton, Toni Frutin, Gary Furlong, Angus King, and Siobhan Waring (I waited 3 years for this book to come out and it was so worth it. Probably my new all-time favorite take on Arthurian legend)

I still have a few days left of 2024 so I may get a couple more books read between now and then. But it’s close enough.

My goals for 2025 are much as always – read lots, try new food, go to some interesting places, hang out with friends. I will try to complete my own reading challenge in 2025. For fun, I try to complete The Nerd Daily’s annual challenge as well, though I don’t make myself crazy if that doesn’t happen. And, of course, I try to do the reading challenges by tackling my own TBR in the process. I will post my annual reading challenge in a couple days for anyone who might want to participate. 

Happy Holidays, all!

book review

Artemis the Loyal

kristen1 Comment

61tdlmrcvll-_sx334_bo1204203200_Artemis the Loyal by Joan Holub

I read it as a: paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 288 pp

Publisher: Aladdin

Year: 2011

In Artemis the Loyal, Artemis is on a mission to convince Principal Zeus, King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens, that it is not fair that the Olympic Games are for boys only. She is an excellent athlete and wants to compete, as do many other girls. Artemis goes on a mission to convince Zeus to change his mind and allow girls to have their own girls-only Olympics. Simultaneously, he twin Apollo is determined to take on the Python of Parnassus in a battle of wits. Artemis is concerned because the python can read minds and she knows Apollo can’t tell a lie, so she thinks he will lose. She tries to discourage him from entering the contest and inadvertently causes a rift between them, which is heightened when Apollo utterly scorns her attempts to get Zeus to sign off on a girl Olympics. Artemis has to learn when to lean in and when to let others learn lessons on their own in this latest installment of Holub’s GoddessGirl series.

This was a fun and quick read with my daughter at night for a bedtime read. It was a little more progressive and feminist than the other books in the series thus far in that it had a lot of focus on gender equality. I also liked the theme of figuring out when it is ok to be pushy and try to help and when you need to back off and let others figure things out for themselves. That is something a lot of people need to learn.

I still think the books in general are too focused on what other people think and on hetero-normative crushes, but it wasn’t AS big a focus in this one as in others and it provided a couple times to have a good chat with my daughter about a few things.

book review · books

Ellie’s Story

kristenLeave a comment

22238177Ellie’s Story by W. Bruce Cameron

I read it as a: hardback

Source: my daughter’s collection

Length: 208 pp

Publisher: Starscape

Year: 2015

My daughter and I read books together at bedtime, and we take turns picking which book to read. Last time, I chose The Hobbit; this was the one she chose to read. It is a cute story for little kids about a search and rescue dog named, surprisingly, Ellie. The narrative takes us from the time she’s a pup with her littermates to her first trainer, Jakob, learning how to do her job, and on to her second and presumably final trainer, Maya. Jakob teaches Ellie how to be a search and rescue dog, what it means to Work, and Find, and Show in relation to lost people. When Jakob is shot in the line of duty and retires, Maya takes Ellie and becomes her new partner. They work together for many years until an injury forces the police department to retire Ellie herself. Rather than not having any job for her dog to do, Maya convinces the PD to let her use Ellie as an outreach program dog, teaching the community about the important work search and rescue dogs do every day.

My daughter ate this book up. It took a while to get through it since we only read it together at night before bed, but it was sufficient to keep her engaged. It is definitely written for much younger or less skilled readers; I mostly found the stories of the rescues to be repetitive and a little boring after a while, but the basic story was good, and since it is for children, that’s just fine.

One thing I particularly liked was that there was room for discussion with my daughter about some of the bad things that can happen. When Ellie and Maya went to the site of an earthquake to search for people, there were a lot of casualties. It was not a gory or very upsetting scene, likely because the narrator is Ellie herself and she didn’t quite understand that the people she found were dead. She only thought they smelled odd and they weren’t happy to be found like normal, so that was upsetting to her. But I thought it was important to include a scenario in which not everyone was found, or wasn’t found alive. That’s real life and I think it’s important not to shelter children from that. We talked about that a little bit so that she could understand that sometimes bad things happen, but I also took that opportunity to remind her about Mr Rogers and the helpers.

Something I think was not at all well done was the way body image was addressed with regard to Maya. It is written in a way that makes her sound inadequate compared to her male counterparts who are also out of shape. She is described as being unable to keep up with Ellie or with other officers out in the field, huffing and puffing and often in pain, whereas the men are rarely described as such. It was particularly gross when her mother told her now that she got certified to be Ellie’s handler, she needs to eat, making it sound as though she was starving herself to lose weight. Not a good message to send to young children. The only good thing about it at all was showing how hard Maya worked to get in shape, but even that has some drawbacks in that it highlights how her body was somehow imperfect or not up to par the way it was. It was obviously good enough to be a patrol officer, so she can’t have been too terribly out of shape to begin with given that there are physical fitness requirements for that position, but it made her sound like she belonged on My 600-Pound Life or something. This could have been handled better.

Overall, Ellie’s Story was a cute book to read together with my kid, and it offered some decent material for discussion with her. She had read it before on her own, which is fine, though I am glad I could read it with her so we could talk about some of the things I felt were important to address.

Uncategorized

The One Who Knows

kristenLeave a comment

I am not by nature a sentimental person. I would generally rather shave my eyeballs than talk about my feelings. I am a quiet, self-contained person, I try not to emote, and I truly believe one should never, ever make a spectacle. Continue reading “The One Who Knows” →

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Apple Pie

kristen1 Comment

At Thanksgiving, my grandmother taught me how to make pies. It was always her thing to bring to the family feast. Now, that she can no longer stand to be on her feet that long, the job falls to me, and has done for a number of years now.

The below is a short piece of creative writing I did, in memory of the first time we made pies together.

Happy Thanksgiving! Continue reading “Apple Pie” →