What I'm Reading in the Winter Break

I want to thank everyone who wrote me messages of encouragement and shared their own stories on my last post. I am so touched and grateful that you joined in the conversation. In talking about my fears of diabetes openly, I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Clearly, a lot of us are in this together. I do believe that 2015 is going to be a big year of small changes for the better. 

It is cold and dreary here and I've spent most evenings this month reading or quilting. I took up a rather challenging (for me) quilt this year, making a couple of squares each month of 2014 and shocked myself by finishing it before year end!

As for reading, my three favorite books this month were all about questions and answers. 


What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe (of xkcd comics fame) is the most delightful book I've read all year. Munroe is a physicist. Readers of his website posed absurd questions to him and he answered them as thoroughly and seriously as he could, using principles of science, math and logic.

If you have a curious nature, if you've ever wondered, "How much physical space does the Internet take up?", or "What would happen if you made a periodic table out of cube-shaped bricks, where each brick was made of the corresponding element?" or "How many unique English tweets are possible?", you'll find this book hilarious, entertaining, illuminating and very very clever.

I disagreed with a couple of his answers to biological questions. I would have answered them a completely different way. But that is the point of absurd hypothetical questions- they make you think and there is rarely one right answer, just a range of plausible ones. If science was taught this way, more kids would find themselves in STEM fields.

Big Questions from Little People: And Simple Answers from Great Minds compiled by Gemma Elwin Harris. Kids ask the most baffling questions from morning to night, and this book collects some such questions posed by kids ages 4-12 and gets experts to actually answer them. The questions range from "Why is space so sparkly?" to "Why do wars happen?" to "What should you do when you can't think what to draw or paint?" to "Who is God?". The resulting collection is a delightful collection of quirky wisdom and some very profound thoughts. I think any grown-up would enjoy leafing through this book, and if you have a child ages 5-12 (or so), it would be really fun to read some of the questions and answers with them. 

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. This is an unusual sort of book. Strayed used to be an anonymous advice columnist on a website. Readers would submit questions on love and life and the answers are compiled in this book. Reading a bunch of advice to strangers seems like a weird thing but this book is a powerful compilation of authentic and raw human emotion. This book made me "feel all the feelings and think all the things"- my litmus test for a worthwhile book. I'm very glad I read this masterpiece of heartache and hope. 

On to some fiction...

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym. I have to thank Arpita for introducing me to this author. Pym has a knack for commenting on the tiny details of everyday life with wit and humor. This is a book about two men and two women who share an office and who are all approaching retirement age. This is not a plot-driven novel but a character-driven one. It is a quiet book, sad and funny in its way, as it comments on human nature. 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is a gentle, sad yet ultimately uplifting story. This is a story both literal and metaphorical about the journey that we humans undertake. Harold Fry is recently retired, living with his wife in a tense and bitter marriage in their home at the Southern-most tip of England. He gets a good-bye letter from an old colleague who is dying in a hospice at the Northern tip of England. Harold sets out to the corner mailbox to post a reply, then somehow, without planning or preparation, keeps walking for weeks (!) to see her in the hospice. “The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.” 

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was on my to-read list for a long time. When I finally picked it up this month, I did not "get" the story at all. It was tedious, not fun and I returned it without finishing the book. Oh well.

Meanwhile, here's what we have been reading with Miss Lila...

Otis by Loren Long. Lila borrowed this book from her school library and she can't get enough of it. It is the sweet story about friendship between a calf and an old tractor. Lila loves to say "putt putt puddety chuff" and those sort of tractor noises from the book.

The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle is so hilarious and endearing. The ill-tempered ladybug doesn't want to share a breakfast of aphids with the friendly ladybug and looks to pick a fight. When the friendly ladybug agrees to the fight, the grouchy ladybug says "Oh you're not big enough" and goes off to find progressively bigger animals to fight with.

If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond. Boy, we've read this one so many times that Lila and I both know the words by heart. This is completely ridiculous story about a young boy who offers a muffin to a visiting moose. One thing leads to another as the easily distracted moose jumps from activity to activity making a complete mess in the process.

All by Myself by Aliki. Nothing exceptional about this book except that since the title is Lila's all-time favorite phrase, I could not resist picking it up at the library. The book goes through a busy day in a child's life, highlighting the everyday actions he learns to do by themselves, such as buttoning his shirt and brushing his teeth. 

What are you reading these days?