Things I Love

Do Not Go Gentle – this New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen made me weep.  As in big, fat tears bouncing off my desk as I read it. His writing is glorious, but his point also resonated with me in a deep way.  I had been thinking about how I feel both sorrowful and beaten down by this year, but also a strange, sturdy sense of joy as an undercurrent underneath all that grief.  His piece helped me understand why.

Hillbilly Elegy – I finally read this book, about which I’ve seen rhapsodic reviews.  Matt just read it over Thanksgiving.  Super interesting, and the second half in particular riveted me.  I’m reminded that the United States is a vast and varied place, and that I live in one small (blue) corner of it.

I Won’t Let Cynicism Win – This piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams gutted me.  Yes, yes, and yes.  Amid all the wreckage of this year – and she describes her family’s personal challenges, as well as the ones in the larger world – there is so much grace.  I love this piece, which brought me to tears.  I won’t let cynicism win, either.

Best Books of 2016 – I love this site by NPR for its easy navigability as well as for the ways it lauds some of my beloved books of this year (Lab Girl, The Underground Railroad, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Girls).  A wonderful way to poke around some of the best reads of this past year.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

Stronger Together – this open letter in the Harvard Crimson gave me goosebumps.  The Harvard women’s soccer team, famously described and derided in the men’s soccer team’s “scouting report,” addresses the situation.  They are named, and they speak for themselves.  I love what they say about learning to work hard, move past challenges, and that we are stronger together.  I very much appreciate their ackowledgement that there are a great many good men in the world. I’m sorry to see their acknowledgement – which resonates with me – that the reduction of women to their looks is still common in the world.

30 Best Young Adult Books of All Time – Thank you so much for Hilary & T for sending this along – what a marvelous list!  I of course love seeing my favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, on here, as well The Giver.  But I also love the way this list isn’t the same as all the others, and includes several titles that are new to me.  I will be exploring these books for sure.

Love Warrior – I am finally reading Glennon Doyle Melton’s book (thank you, Pam, for sending!).  Oh. My. God.  It’s like a freight train of glory already, heading at me at a million powerful miles per hour.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

The best chocolate sheet cake ever – This is not an overstatement.  This recipe, from the Pioneer Woman, is incredible and I make it a lot (we always seem to have too much buttermilk).  I leave out the pecans.  Cannot recommend more highly.  This cake looks humble but is absolutely delicious.  A classic weeknight treat around here.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead’s spectacular book is, as of now, my favorite of the year.  This extraordinary story manages to be both excruciatingly raw and violent and luminously beautiful at the same time.  I can’t stop thinking about Cora.  Run, don’t walk, to read this.

Want to Raise a Tail-Blazing Daughter? – I’m so grateful to my friend Gale for sending this marvelous piece to me.  Every piece of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s advice resonates, and of course I love that fostering a love of reading is #1.

24 Great Books that show Empathy and Kindness – I adore this list, which I found on twitter when my idol Michael Thompson re-tweeted it. Such a terrific list.  Grace, Whit, and I have read some but not all of these, and I’m madly ordering from the library.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

 You Don’t Need An Extreme Bucket List to Find Happiness – I loved this piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams.  “I hope someday to see Machu Picchu. I fantasize about getting my master’s degree. There is a big world full of spectacular things, and I have so much I still want to experience within it. But today, I can make that fried chicken recipe I bookmarked three years ago…There is nothing standing in my way – no money to be saved up; no calendar to clear. Life is happening now, and the whole big lesson I got out of almost losing it far sooner than I ever planned is to not put off anything that catches my curiosity or moves my heart.”

A Year Without Oliver Sacks – Sacks is one of my favorite writers, and I think often of his legacy, share his writing, and return to his words myself.  This remembrance by one of his best friends made me ache for his loss, as well as swell with gratitude for his life.  His contribution was enormous (I also had no idea he knew Robin Williams, though it doesn’t surprise me, when I read it.  I hope they are together somewhere now, laughing hard).

American Crime.  I am not a huge TV watcher, but WOW.  I watched Season One over the summer and Season Two just a week or so ago while Matt was immediately post-surgery.  I loved Season Two even more than Season One, but found both incredibly riveting.  So, so, so good.

Matt has been reading a lot, since he’s mostly immobile.  He has recently read and enjoyed Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger, Valiant Ambition by Nathanial Philbrick, Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez, and Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.  These are somewhat different than the fare I usually write about here, but if you have any books that you think he might like, we’d both love to hear about them!

I read a lot this summer, and I shared the rundown with brief thoughts on each book last week.  I am interested to hear what you have been reading.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

Seven Signs You’re Overparenting – I don’t generally love instructive posts about parenting, but I find this one illuminating.  Helicoptering is so pervasive as to be almost passe now, but I love the concrete behaviors this writer identifies to help us parents understand what it really means.

Unsolicited Advice I’m Sharing with My Three Sons – Agreed on the coffee!  Also on the notion of collecting words, the power of being self-deprecating, the mentors, the truth, and having children.

My Favorite Vacation: Summer Camp – Dominique Browning on the power of summer camp made me both smile and wipe away tears.  Anyone reading here knows I worship(ped) camp and enjoy watching my children there now.  “And this is being a grown-up camper in the world, forever young enough to wonder at the mystery and magic and pleasure of it all.”  Amen. May we all stay forever young (Forever Young is a song that reminds me, incidentally, of camp).

Before the Fall – I can’t put Noah Hawley’s book down.

Grace and Whit are off to camp tomorrow. There are some pre-drop-off jitters at our house.  I’m thinking back to Michael Thompson’s Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow and reminding myself this is precisely why they go.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.