Bookish coincidences

(This isn't really a real post but it's something odd I wanted to call out and also hey, look, now I have another post done!)

I started listening to Serial the other day. You know the podcast that was a big thing awhile ago? I am amazing at jumping on trends after the moment has passed. But I was up to date on Freakonomics and wasn't in the mood for Welcome to Nightvale but still wanted to listen to something while working and said "Hey, here's a thing that people like and SNL did that parody and PBS Idea Channel had 2 episodes about it, so yeah, let's try that."

I listened to the first 6 episodes while working and later starting to make dinner. That's something like 3 1/2 hours. Then listened to another hour today while cleaning, so yeah, I am enjoying it.

But I'm not (just) writing to be like "Check out this thing I like that you probably know all about already." I'm also writing because I didn't expect there to be overlap between this podcast about a 15 year old murder and A Walk in the Woods but there is! Kinda!

At one point in the podcast the host is meeting with a law professor who runs an organization The Innocence Project, which reexamines cases where it seems the person could have been wrongly convicted. One of the cases she had worked on (not sure if part of that organization or just a case she had taken) was a guy who had been accused of murdering two hikers in Shenandoah National Park. You know, the hikers Bryson mentions in his book as the ones that were killed a few weeks after he and Katz passed through the park.

There isn't anything more to this other than a coincidence but I thought how strange it was that that was the case she had worked on and referenced during the podcast. And of course I recently re-read the book because I was going to see the movie (which I did, and which does not mention the murders because, you know, why would it?)

Sometimes coincidences are a real thing. Get off your throne, Mycroft. 

Something to take from this? Umm, listen to Serial and read A Walk in the Woods. Just cos those are two very cool things. I told you this was a non-post.

Reading format: How do you choose which to read when you choose what to read

I was looking through my reading stats the other day* and while I knew I'd been reading a lot of ebooks lately, I didn't realize how many. Turns out it's slightly more than half so far (54% to be exact) which surprised me. So then I was thinking about why I select any particular format to read and figured I'd write about it here cos it's my blog and isn't that the point?

#blogging

I hardly read hardback books for the reason that hardback books are heavier than other formats. This year I've only read 1 (Fat Girl Walking) and that was because it was a review copy sent to me and thus I took what was offered. I like what hardback books look like but the last hardback book I actually bought was probably Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu, which I bought because I was at a book signing for the book which had just come out. (I actually bought Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened the day before for the same reason [book signing]).

Audiobooks are rarer than other formats, mostly because I don't drive so I don't have the excuse to listen to them on my commute. I've listened to WWZ a few times while working, but it's more background since I know the story so well. If it's something I really want to pay attention to, trying to do it during work would be a bad idea.

That leaves paperback and ebooks, which by a large margin, make up the majority of my reading.

When it comes to ebooks, I usually select them for one of two main reasons: it's on sale OR  I'm at the airport/on vacation and suddenly realize I have no packed enough books.

It's on sale is the most common reason I read ebooks. Most of the ebooks I have I bought for under $5, usually thanks to Kindle Daily Deal emails or else Book Sliced alerts. I am cheap and easily swayed by deals.

It's not often I find myself at the airport without enough books to read, but that has far more to do with the fact that I'm not exactly a world traveler and definitely not because I'm excellent at planning ahead. I know a few books (Game of Thrones, The Martian) I bought because I was at the airport waiting for a flight and realized I was almost done with whatever my last book was and would need to get something before I was in the air and book-less. Even in those cases, I'll typically look through my TBR list and then buy whatever ebook is the cheapest.

There are a few other reasons I might go with an ebook. Most review copies are offered this way. When it came to the rest of the Game of Thrones books I decided that ebooks were probably the best way to deal with those chunksters.

That leaves paperback, which is my default when the other stuff above doesn't work out. I'm more likely to spend more on a paperback book than on an ebook and I will often deliberately wait on purchasing a newly released book until it's out in paperback. There are a couple books I own both in paperback and as an ebook (Shades of Grey) because one copy when on sale and I really love the book and wanted a copy of my shelves, but this is rare. Because it's hard to justify buying the same book twice and I'm also running out of bookshelf space.

I'm on the road to this

Though Just the Right Book did just send me a paperback copy of Landline which I own as an ebook and I debated keeping the new copy. Until Tom sputtered "What? You're not keeping a book YOU ALREADY HAVE AND READ. They'll send you a new book." and sent them back Landline which they replaced with Black Chalk.

What's your preference? How do you choose which type to go with?

*Thanks to my handy-dandy tracking sheet.

How far can a person hear?

Following up it's less-than-successful selection of Still Life with Bread Crumbs comes Bird Box. Never let it be said that Just The Right Book gets stuck in a rut picking the same type of book over and over.

Bird Box is a strange story, but it's a horror-apocalypse so yeah, I guess strange is par for the course. There's...something out there. There are rumors of murder-suicides occurring in distant countries. Slowly rumors give way to news reports and the threat is getting closer. Yet no one knows what it is. It's difficult to provide much information if everyone who sees the thing is dead. Society quickly devolves into chaos* with people covering all windows, only going out blindfolded, and btw, that includes driving.

The story flips back and forth between the present day when our protagonist and two small children travel down a river, seeking safe haven, and flashbacks that explain how we got to this stage.

The present day scenes are tense. We know something is out there. Or at least, we know that they think something is out there. It's hard to really say if there's anything there or if this is mass hysteria on a global scale. What we know for sure is that most people absolutely will not look outside, will not venture outside without blindfolds on, no matter what. That includes Malorie, who has been living in a house for years with two small children and diminishing supplies. The kids are barely old enough now (only four) but they can't keep waiting. And besides, the children have been trained since birth to rely on senses other than sight, so they can help when it comes to navigation. Of course, it seems that there is something following them. Was it really a good idea to leave the house?

The flashbacks are fairly typical of what you can expect to find with an apocalypse story, with a bunch of strangers who find themselves banded together, trying to do what they can to survive when the world they've always known is gone. Malorie finds herself at the home after her own world collapses. She finds out she's pregnant the day the new stories start to pickup and her own life shatters.

The flashback scenes are mostly concerned with people trying to figure out how to get by, day-by-day, as well as some minor attempts to understand exactly what is going on. And of course, the characters have to decide who can they really trust.

The book is no doubt creepy and there are a lot of tense moments, but it doesn't really build to much. It has good moments and a very interesting premise, but I think it would have been better as a short story.

GIF rating:

*WWZ has sort of ruined this for me. I get that you sort of need everything to have gone to hell in order to tell the story but getting from "fully functioning society" to "living hell" always feels a bit like the underpants gnomes. I need phase 2 explained better.

Title quote from page 16

Malerman, Josh. Bird Box. Ecco, 2014.

I should really pay more attention to web traffic

I was going to write a blog post about why I select whatever format (ebook, physical book, etc.) at any given point and I was looking for an old post I wrote about how I wasn't sure if I'd ever want an eReader (past me is so dumb) but I couldn't find it. So I decided "Google knows all. Let's ask it for the link to that post." I searched something along the lines of whatredread "should i buy" Kindle. Google did not turn up this post but instead turned up a Buzzfeed list 21 Things Men Should Never Be Ashamed Of.

Which...OK, that's odd. Then I look in the little description and my blog link is in there.

I click on the link and turns out Buzzfeed used one of the GIFs I use during our How To Be A Girl readalong in their list. Huh. Interesting. It's also on the Spanish version of that post.

So then I decided to just search "Whatredread" but that didn't turn much I didn't already know about. Instead I decided to start searching whatredread buzzfeed and see what turns up. Turns out that wasn't the only list.

A GIF from one of the Franzen readalong posts made its way onto a list of 20 Socially Unacceptable Things Everyone Wishes They Could Say and on a list of The 24 Completely Irrational Stages of Having an Internet Nemesis.

So there you go. I have no idea if that affected traffic. I probably should pay more attention to things like that. I feel like if some people at work read that last sentence they'll have a minor heart attack*.

Now I'll go back to trying to find that earlier post. Or, you know, not.

*Paying attention to web traffic is one of those things we're supposed to do.

There had been bees in her brain, a whole hive, no honey

For the most part Just The Right Book has nailed sending me books I enjoyed* but perfection would be a lot to ask for. I was a little skeptical when I saw the cover for Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen and wasn't feeling any better when I read the summary, but you know what? Euphoria didn't seem like my thing and I enjoyed so HEY, let's give it a try. How bad could it be?

This was an early reaction to the book:

So yeah, not a great first reaction. But I was hopeful. Maybe it would get better. Maybe the main character has to be super annoying and say insufferable things only to later grow and change and get better.

Or she could keep being the same. That's an option too.

I admit, I can judge a book harshly if the character starts of doing or saying something obnoxious. Wait, that's not quite right. If the character starts doing or saying something obnoxious but being obnoxious is NOT the thing the author is going for. If the author means for the character to come off as obnoxious or dense or oblivious or whatever, we're good. But when the character says something like this

But for her family, which she had felt when she was a child hardly deserved the name, being composed of only a father, mother, and a single child, the trips were never pleasant.

Sorry, only children or couples without kids or single-parent households, YOU'RE NOT REALLY A FAMILY! I wonder what the optimal number of people is. Oh, and if you're wondering what trips were never pleasant, she's talking about her family taking vacations to places like "the shores of Long Island" (does not say, but implies the Hamptons) or "the occasional foray to Provence or Tuscany". If you're wondering if some terrible thing happened during these vacations, it boils down to her family didn't like nature that much. Her dad had allergies and her mom hated bugs, so they spent a lot of time not camping. THE HORRORS. No wonder she feels they were never really a family.

So here's the basic plot. Rebecca is a photographer. She was a successful photographer, so much so that she made a lot of money essentially off a single photograph, titular "Still Life with Bread Crumbs" which she took after one of her husband's impromptu dinner parties, that she had been living a pretty nice lift for awhile with a fancy Manhattan apartment** living off the residuals of this photo. She had some success with a follow up series, extreme closeups of her then-infant son, but not much since. She's divorced, her son is grown, and money is getting tight so she decides to rent out her NYC place and rent something smaller out in the country. She has an offer for a temporary teaching position down the road, but for her now her plan seems to be just spend less on rent. Which again, probably not the worst idea, but not a lot of "and HERE is how I'll improve my income".

While out there she meets a roofer name Jim Bates who takes care of a raccoon stuck in a trap in her attic and eventually helps with odd jobs around the cottage. There's a romance there, and it develops exactly as you'd assume it would (including a misunderstanding that could be cleared up in about 30 seconds) but it wasn't totally the focus of the story. At least not as much as I assumed it would be. Instead we get some flashbacks of Rebecca's life with her comically terrible husband or her talking about how mean her mom was before she was in a home (and was mean to other people) and in general Rebecca learning to find herself. There's a bit of a mystery with these crosses that show up in the woods that seem to be memorials, except it's not really a mystery because she doesn't to much with it. She sets it up, mentions it a few times and then brings us to the BIG REVEAL about what they are, except by that point they haven't really been a plot point so you're sort of like "Oh, right those."

Scanning through the reviews someone mentioned that the characters were either good and kind and wonderful people or they were ridiculously evil. No one seemed like an actual person, just the outline of one.

A few people have had good things to say about Quindlen so maybe this is just a misstep. Most of the negative reviews I saw on Goodreads seemed to indicate that they were expecting something else from her. The writing itself wasn't bad. It was just a boring and predictable story that made me eye roll a LOT.

GIF Rating

*Past successes: The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty, Euphoria by Lily King, Bird Box by Josh Malerman and The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion. They also just sent me Landline by Rainbow Rowell which is only not a success because I already own it. So I mean, they still nailed it.
**I was recently reading a piece about average home prices and if you're wondering, according to NYTimes the media cost for a an apartment in Manhattan is $980K. That's the median price. I realize fiction takes a lot of liberties with how much things cost (hello there, Monica & Rachel's apartment) but just to give you an idea how much money she's used to operating on, she had a fancy Manhattan apartment in a world where $1MM is the median price.

Title quote from page 173

Quindlen, Anna. Still Life with Bread Crumbs. Random House, 2014.

I'm bored and lazy so IT'S SURVEY TIME

So sometime back in August (which I only know cos that's when the original survey is from [thanks, Brie!]) I saved this survey as something to do when I'm bored/not motivated enough to write a review. Or like, if the next book I'm supposed to review is allllllll the way over there and I'm sitting in a beach chair cos we still don't have our couch and beach chairs are not easy to get out of. It's been awhile, so hey, survey time!

A - age: 31. I'm only sort of in denial about it

B - biggest fear: deep water? Or maybe specifically the ocean because OMG so many things in there can kill you and I am useless in the water. I'm useless on land too but soooo much worse in the water. I sort of love sharks though. But I love them while I'm over here. On land. And they're in the sea.

Also watch out for tough guy belugas

C - current time: 9:33. PM. Eastern Time.

D - drink you had last: lemonade

E - easiest person to talk to: Umm Tom? Both easiest cos I tell him all the things and also easiest cos he's normally right there. Well not now cos I am watching Project Runway and he is watching baseball because yeah, we need to fulfill some stereotypes. Apparently.

F - favorite song: I have no idea. It used to be Rx Bandits but I haven't listened to them in awhile. And I'm pretty sure this is the first time in ever I couldn't come up with a favorite song. Let's just say Green Day's "When It's Time" because that was our first dance song, so I sure do like it.

G - grossest memory: I'm sure there are grosser things that I've blocked out, but last weekend Tom and I were wandering around NYC and were in Time Square (OK, it was in part to see what's going on with the painted ladies that are causing so much ruckus recently) and I'm roughly 98% sure this guy was peeing on this map (like a mall directory) in the area and...yeah, that was special.
EDIT so since writing this answer there was some loud crash in the house but we can't figure out where it came from so I was checking the utility closet and walked into a spider web and while I'm sure that's not the grossest memory ever, I FEEL LIKE I HAVE SPIDER WEBS ALL OVER ME GAAAAAAAAAHHH. So yeah. I'll go with that for now.

H - hometown: This town in NJ that whenever people ask where I'm from I just name towns in the area because yeah, you're not going to know it. And then people go "No, just tell me the one." And I do and they're like "Oh wait, I don't know that one." It's near Morristown. People have sometimes heard of that one.

I - in love with: Lotsa things. Tom. My friends. My family. A bunch of TV shows. Way more material possessions than is probably healthy.

J - jealous of: people who don't burn if they think about the sun for more than 12 seconds. People who can speak other languages (how do you do that?? I hardly have this one figured out).

K - kindest person you know: I know a bunch of kind people, even if that kindness is hidden under levels of snark. DON'T THINK I DON'T SEE IT HIDING UNDER THERE.

L - longest relationship: With Tom cos it's been like 10 years? 11? I actually think our dating anniversary is coming up soon. Sometime. I dunno when. (Because I'm terrible.) But that's the one I like to count cos dude, 10 years. I put in the time, I'm getting the credit. I dunno who the credit is from, but I'm getting it.

M - middle name: Marie. Isn't that boring? Celebrities may come up with ridiculous first names but middle names are where you can go nuts cos who cares.

N - number of siblings: Just the one lil' brother. Who is awesome and does things like install surround sound and go see Straight Outta Compton with me.

O - one wish: Like genie-wise? Can I know ALL THE LANGUAGES? In part I guess so I can communicate with the world, but mostly so I can eavesdrop on people and then if they're talking about me I can be like 'OH WHAT NOW?" Except in their language.

P - person you spoke to last on the phone: Some wrong number that called my cell. Yes, that is the number you dialed. I've had this number since like 2001 so yeah, I'm sure whoever you're trying to reach is not here.

Q - question you're always asked: Is that your real hair color? It is, isn't it? You're Irish, aren't you? (Yes, yes I already said that, I'm not you lose.)

R - reason to smile: I just remembered there's a carmalita bar in the cabinet. They are these bars from Whole Foods that are usually just wrapped in saran wrap and in some bin by the bakery and they're made with oats and caramel and pecans and dark chocolate and probably crack given how much I love them. Oh also and like the love of friends and whatnot.

S - song you last sang: I'm sure it was something ridiculous. Something from a musical? Likely. I had "Anaconda" stuck in my head before so maybe that? Could be!

T - time you woke up: 6:20 this morning. Stupid work, being all far from where I am. I need more sleep.

U - underwear color: how apropos as ProjRun is doing an underwear episode. ANWAY green and white polka dots

V - vacation destination: like vacation I'm going to go on? recently went on? I dunno where we'll go next (I guess we'll see who is getting married next and when cos IT'S THAT AGE) but last vacation was to Chicago where we got to hang out with Alice (woooo!)

W - worst habit: nail biting? I do that a lot.

X - x-rays you've had: It was either x-ray or xylophone, wasn't it? I had my face x-rayed when I was like 8 and got hit with a baseball. I mostly remember it being very late and the x-ray tech guy was like 'OK little girl, why don't you sit in this giant scary room while I turn on this large machine and run out of the room, because obviously it's dangerous to be in here, k bye!" Not that I was that scared, more just "What the hell is happening to me right now?" I've broken bones since then but it's been my pinky finger and a toe, and an x-ray seemed unnecessary.

Y - your favorite food: that carmalita bar is pretty awesome. But also burritos. Or noodles. Plantains. Dumplings. So much food.

Z - zodiac sign: aries, which I'm pretty sure means angry?

So hey, you know you wanna do this to, right?