My Summer Reading List

It is quite hard to believe that the summer is almost over. It seems like just yesterday I was worrying how I was going to make it through these two months with Dan being deployed. I dreaded summer this year, which makes the first time I’ve ever felt that way in my whole life. Starting when I was four years old and ending at 17, summer was when I learned how to be independent and to explore myself and the world around me. Day camps and Sleep-away camps defined my summers from before I lost my first tooth until after I learned to drive. When the time came that I needed to start working during the summer it was like learning how to breathe differently. For so long, just the feel of sun against my skin was synonymous with lying by the pool and protesting against playing sports (I am not athletic, in case you were wondering). And even now, eight years after my last camp summer, I still close my eyes as the sun hits my face and allow myself be transported back to my summers of blissful freedom.

Me, during my last summer at camp.

I may have digressed slightly from the original point of this post, which was to talk about the books I have read over the summer so far. But my brain had made the connection from summer reading to those summer reading lists we were all forced to pick from over the summer. Which reminded me of how much I put it off while I was at camp in favor of hanging out with my friends. Which led to my camp reverie. But now I am back to reality. Summer reading!

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner

Jennifer Weiner is one of my regulars. What I mean by that is when I find an author I like, I go on a reading rampage of all of his/her books until I have to wait for new ones to be written. She is one of those authors. I enjoy her books a lot, I consider them great summer reads. She is the author who wrote In Her Shoes, which came out as a movie with Cameron Diaz back in 2005. That book was fabulous and I believe it was the first book of hers I had read, although I’m not sure what drove me to read it in the first place. It could have been the cover. I am very drawn to books with fantastic covers and I am not ashamed to admit it! That technique has led me to many great reads. Anyway about this book…I definitely thought it was a great read. It circles around the stories of 4 women and how their lives eventually all connect. To be honest, it was very easy to see how their lives would come together once I read a little from all of their different points of view. But knowing how it’ll all end up doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable going on the journey with them. A good beach read, in my opinion. And there are still a few weekends left of some good quality beach time to be had.

Home Front by Kristen Hannah

Another one of my regulars, she was also a victim of me loving the covers of her books. I don’t remember which of her books was my first, but her covers always look so inviting. Not sure what it is. I actually read this book as an audio book. I like choosing audio books that I know I will like because it will make my long drives that much more enjoyable. So when I saw she had a new book out and it was available in audio form, I grabbed it! It actually revolved around military life and how a family has to readjust when a parent goes to war. In this case, the mother went to war, which meant a complete family adjustment, as she ran the roost. I liked hearing about how her husband had to change everything about his life and himself as he struggled to repair a family neither of them noticed was broken. A good read and I recommend it!

The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve

I actually started reading this book many years ago but I found it so boring that I stopped reading it. When I saw that it was on Oprah’s book list, I knew I would be giving it another chance. I was hoping that when I read it a second time (now being older and wiser and an actual pilot’s wife!) I would change my mind. I didn’t. I found it so dull and uninteresting. I believe that it was written in a very dull and muted way on purpose (although I’m sure the author wouldn’t have used the word “dull”) as a way for the reader to feel the grief that the widow felt after losing her husband. The reader goes through the motions, just like Kathryn, and has to feel what she feels. I guess personally I didn’t like that approach. Even when the story gets to the most interesting part, it is still told in a numb and muted way, when I thought there should have been way more build up and some fire and ice. But that’s my opinion. I probably won’t read any more books by her. Which I realize might not be a fair thing to say and I shouldn’t judge the author just because I disliked one of her many books, but there are thousands of other authors out there and I would rather try some of theirs. (Which sounds slightly hypocritical, since the other two books I read this summer are not from any of these thousands of other authors. But still. I’m not going to read what I’m not interested in.)

I am currently in the middle of a book by a new author, actually (Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda). And I am also reading a book on audio, which I had also tried reading in the past and didn’t like. I must say that I am LOVING it now (Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides). More to come when I finish it. And I also discovered a whole line of books by a new author that coexists with one of my favorite new tv shows (Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan series, which is where the tv show 'Bones' comes from). More to come on that when the first book in the series returns to the library!

Have a great summer day and don’t forget to take a minute and enjoy the sun. 

Sex, Happiness, Gymnastics

Sex

I'm sure you can all guess what trilogy I am referring to! I actually finished the Fifty Shades trilogy way back in May, but I really wasn't looking forward to talking about my opinions. I still have mixed feelings about them. On the whole, I really enjoyed the plot and the characters. Downloading the first book onto my Kindle, all I knew about the series was the term "Mommy porn" and that there would be S&M. When I finished the first book, I was thoroughly surprised about how much I enjoyed reading it and how much I was looking forward to downloading the next one, which I did the second after I finished the first one. The characters were mysterious, the plot was exciting and intriguing, and the "intimate" sections weren't as scary as I was lead to believe. The second book was my favorite, but by the time I reached the third, I was getting more and more annoyed with how bad the writing actually was. The repetitiveness of various phrases, the frequent use of ridiculously placed SAT words (how many times can an author use the word "mercurial?") and the sixth grade reading level (peppered with the SAT words) were making it hard to focus on the story. Now, I don't claim to have any sort of qualifications when it comes to critiquing a person's writing style and I know the way I write probably won't get me into any literary magazines (I do love run-on sentences and flipping tenses). But I love to read and have been reading for a long time and I have never read an adult book that was written in the same style as the Baby Sitters Club series. I can honestly say that I hope the movies are better than the books, because the story itself is interesting!

Happiness

I have been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin for a while, actually. It was an impulse buy at Target because I was drawn to the cover of the book. My name is Samantha and I do judge books by their cover. I have been reading the book quite slowly because I am thoroughly enjoying it and I want to take in all the advice that I can. I have been working on trying to elevate my level of happiness for many years and this book seems to be what I've been looking for. I am amazed at how much reading and research this woman did just to be able to put all the happiness knowledge available into an accessible book. I am practically hanging on every word this woman is saying and quoting and I am going to re-read and highlight the book so that I can really talk about the profound conclusions she has made and how much it has affected my way of thinking. Because of this book, specifically the section on friendship and how important it is to just "be present" and "make the effort," I ended up doing something that I would never have done, had she not spelled out the importance of showing others how much you care. This was a big deal to me and not something I want to talk about in a brief paragraph, so look for the explanation in a coming post :) Bottom line: I highly recommend this book if you are looking to make some change in your life.

Gymnastics

When I was in middle school, I became obsessed with a famous gymnast, Dominique Moceanu. I had this biography of her childhood and being part of the "Magnificent Seven" in the 1996 Olympics and it was filled with pictures and fun facts. It was a relatively short book, as she was only fourteen during the Olympics and it was a book written for young adults. I never forgot her over the years and in college I started looking up videos of her performing on YouTube. I think I spent hours pouring over various videos from the Olympics and other events. A couple months ago, when coverage of the upcoming Olympics was starting, I started looking up videos of her again. I found a very recent interview with her, talking about an autobiography that she had written called Off Balance. In it, she tells very personal stories about her childhood and all of her behind-the-scenes training for the Olympics, as well as how she felt during everything. And the biggest shocker: that she had another sister, a secret sister, that her parents had given up for adoption because she was born without legs and was never told about. It really is an incredible story and if you are a lover of gymnastics like myself, I would recommend reading this book.

 

Quarter Century Crisis

I love everything about birthdays.

I love giving gifts (even though I stress out over finding the perfect one), attending parties, singing Happy Birthday, watching the candles blow out, celebrating that another person I love has been in my life for another year.

June is my favorite month. It's my mom's birthday, my sister's birthday, one of my oldest and dearest friend's birthday, Father's Day, the anniversary of when I first laid eyes on my husband, the beginning of summer...and of course, my birthday. I have always loved June 5. I love the month, I love the day, I love that I share a birthday weekend with my mom and that my sister's day is right around the corner. I truly do feel special on my birthday, no matter where I am, because I have an amazing and loving extended family and every year we all call each other on our birthdays, and I look forward to those calls every year (and in the last 8 years, the Facebook posts!) Last year I got to do something really cool on my birthday and celebrate the coming birth of my honorary nephew at a good friend's baby shower. I love birthdays.

So why am I not excited about this one?

25 is a slightly notable birthday. I can rent a car without hassle. So that's cool. And it's a quarter of a century! That's pretty neat! But I spent last night tossing and turning, wondering why I was not excited for my birthday this year. As I write this blog post, I still can't really put my finger on it.

Maybe it is because I'm starting a new quarter of life and it is going to be drastically different than the first quarter. (Which is silly, because it's not like there's a guarantee I'm living until 100! I can't possibly know what year of my life is the first of a new quarter!) Years 0-24 were all about growing, changing, figuring out who I am, a real big giant focus on me. Years 25-50 are going to be very different and maybe I'm just worried about messing them up. I have a lot of regrets in my first 25 years and I don't want that for me this time around and I'm scared that I won't be strong enough to make the changes that I really want to make. It's a good thing I have a life partner this time around :)

On my birthday tomorrow, I plan to do a couple new things I have been putting off for months and months because of fear, but I plan to make my 25th birthday the start of some new changes. I also promise to wake up tomorrow with a smile on my face as I start, what I consider to be, a new phase of my life's journey. Because if I'm not trying to move forward, then I am just swimming in place. And that is incredibly exhausting. And as Walt Disney said, "If nothing changed, there'd be no butterflies."

High Five for May 4

It was definitely easy to find 5 great things about this week!

1.) In a spur of the moment decision, I bought these cowboy boots! I was in Philly with a friend and she was actually looking for a pair of cowboy boots and I went inside with her, not interested. The second I saw these boots, I knew they had to be mine, even though this is totally not my style. They called to me and I had to have them. And now I do! I am now totally ready for Oklahoma (should we end up back there!)

2.) I bought this cute little book! I am actually reading the book this is based on, The Happiness Project, and this book is like a little side project, if someone wants to start their own Happiness Project. It is a 5 year journal, but there is only enough room for a few short sentences. It is the perfect amount of space to describe what I did that day, and see the difference in the days over the years. There one page per day, with 5 sets of paragraphs, so that I can see what I did on that day over the years. I think everyone should have one!

3.) My husband sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers this week. He is in Spain right now, so it was very nice to receive these. Even though they are no substitute for the man, himself. They sure do smell nice :)

4.) My friend Jess, an aspiring photographer, asked me if she could take pictures at my wedding and I said OF COURSE!! She gave me the disk of all the pictures the other day and they are beautiful. Here is an example of her work. If anyone is interested in a photographer to capture those special moments, let me know and I will give you her contact info!

5.) I'm in CT for the weekend and I went out to dinner tonight with my sister and my parents to this AMAZING All-You-Can-Eat sushi restaurant. The food was amazing, and for only about $20 per person, it was totally worth it. I absolutely love sushi!

Hope you all had a great week, as well!

A couple months ago, a fellow military wife shared a link on her blog to From My Grey Desk. On Fridays, this blogger makes a list of her five favorite things from that week. I happened to think that was a very neat idea and yet I wondered how a person could actually find 5 different favorite things every week. I decided to try that for this week and after the horrible day on Tuesday, I couldn't imagine finding anything happy about this week.

The thing is...if you don't want to find the positive in anything, then you won't. If you decide that you WILL find 5 great things about a week, you realize that they have been there all along. And here are mine:

1.) I was going to wait until it was my turn to check out the book from the library, but I decided to cave and download Fifty Shades of Grey onto my Kindle. I'm only on chapter two, so nothing sexy has happened yet, but I am very interested to see what all these women have been chatting about!

2.) There is a trail by my parents house called a "Rail Trail," which means it was converted from an actual railway track. It's about 2.3 miles from end to end and it's actually a beautiful path with woods on either side and during a 2 week period in the summer, wild berries grow along the path and are absolutely delicious. My mom and I took the family dog and walked it from end to end, a total of over 4 miles. It was exhausting, but a good time :)

3.) Dan manages to buy a ridiculous amount of clothes from Kohl's and the last time he went, he got $20 in Kohls cash, which he gave me (because he loves me!). I went to Kohl's this week and bought a super cute dress, which I am dying for an excuse to wear! And yes, it is from the Lauren Conrad collection.

4.) I took my third Piloxing class this week! It's exhausting, but a lot of fun! I love how fast paced it is, as well as empowering and upbeat. It is a Pilates class mixed with Boxing and I recommend it to everyone!

5.) My dad had taken my wedding bouquet and dried it out for me! I had completely forgotten about it until I was home this past weekend and he showed it to me! I wish there was some magical way I could have perfectly preserved the beautiful bouquet forever and ever, but alas. I'm not exactly sure if these will be able to last like this in the open, so I may see if I can find an appropriately shaped shadow box to preserve it in.

I look forward to finding the positive in next week!

February, March, April

In my last post back at the end of February, I was still working at my job and counting down the days until my very last. I worked at the manufacturing plant for 8 months and it took me about 6 months to have my epiphany: I won’t be happy going from administrative job to administrative job. The question then became, Well, Sam, what do you want to do that will make you happy? In a very soft, timid voice, I heard the words form in the back of my head: Guidance Counselor. Since then, that voice has been steadily becoming louder and more prominent in my head, and has now started spreading to my heart. I can keep trying to convince myself that it isn’t the right decision, that it’s too hard to go that route being in the military, that I won’t be able to help anyone and, therefore, I will fail. Mostly that last one. But now that those 17 letters have taken up space in my heart, it has been a lot tougher to ignore them. My question is now: How the hell do I start this process? I will report back on that when I have an answer to that question and have formed my next one.

In the book world, I convinced myself that I really wanted to tackle a classic, and I knew which one it was going to be. I was very excited to check out Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and it wasn’t a hard book to start. It is becoming a hard book to continue reading, though. It has nothing to do with the story, I am very interested in what is happening so far. And that language isn’t too…classic-y. I know it is practically sacrilege in the world of literature to say that I can’t get through a classic novel because I have a hard time navigating the story through all the curves and twists of the classic language. But it is true. I have difficulty enjoying the story if I can’t relate to the words and dialogue, no matter how much I may relate to the story itself. Example: Little Women. I fell in love with the story when I was a kid, because the version I read was written for kids. I then fell in love with the movie. But when I tried to read the original version, I found that I wasn’t loving the characters as much as I know that I do and I didn’t like that. I have since returned Anna Karenina to the library because I realized I could download it for free on my Kindle and not have to worry about renewing my library book. I truly hope to finish it before the movie comes out.

While at the library returning Anna Karenina, I picked up Celebrity in Death by J.D. Robb, the new book in one of my favorite series. Blew through that in a week and then picked up Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich, a new book in a different series., and finished that in a few days. I highly recommend both!

In the meantime, I finally caved and bought Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James for my Kindle, instead of waiting on the long list for it to be my turn to get it from the library.

I look forward to reporting, on Friday, my favorite things about this week J

What Happened To The Best Of Me

I was slightly disappointed in The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks. I'm not saying that I thought it was a bad book, by any means, but I just found it way too predictable. I love a good twist, and while many people would say that there was one, I found the "twist" way too obvious. Now, I am fully aware that I tend to make judgements about the books I am reading based on many different emotional and personal factors and not on the actual quality of the writing, but I feel like that's how many people base their opinions, anyway. I know that many die-hard Sparks fans would disagree with me here, but I just never felt fully invested in the story line or the characters, which makes me sad considering how incredibly connected I have felt to many of his other characters (especially Noah and Allie). I never really cared about Amanda or Dawson, didn't appreciate the journeys that they had to take, nor did I think either of them tried hard enough at anything. Harsh, I know. But it's my blog.

At any rate, when I finished reading, I decided to go back to Oprah's list. Admittedly, I did take the safe route, choosing a book that I had already read and knew I would like to read

again. I picked She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, which I had read in high school. After reading it again, I have to say, I definitely do not remember it being that depressing and heartbreaking. Maybe it didn't seem that way to me back when all I did was read, write, and watch that kind of material, but all I just wanted this girl's life to get better! And it was just blow after blow, heartbreak after heartbreak, it was just so difficult to see how much one person can endure (although after reading Unbroken, this was really just a ride on a carousel, comparatively). Don't get me wrong, though, it's a great book and I definitely recommend not only the book, but also the author (I've read his other books and they are equally as powerful). But I definitely picked my next book with care...something not as intense...something a little more carefree. Enter Sarah Dessen.

I just picked up What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen, my favorite young adult author

and the only one whose books I still read, last night. And I just finished it about 5 minutes ago. Yes, it was a good book, but the only reason why I was able to read it so quickly was because my boss stuck me down at the engraving machine for the last 2 days at work. All I do is program the machine to print new tags and then I had nothing else to do but sit there and read until it finished printing and I had to reset it. I spent last week and this week training my replacement at work and my boss wanted to see her do everything alone, without my help, so he stuck me on these machines. It really hasn't been to terrible, since I was basically getting paid to read all day, which was fantastic, but I still have one more week left in this soul-sucking environment. I wish I was exaggerating. But that is one of the many reasons why I quit. But I digress.

Ridiculously excited that I have the whole weekend to NOT be at work, I will head to the library tomorrow to choose my next book. Not sure what it will be yet, but I am quite excited at the possibilities.