Five Books to Rule Them All
In my continuing effort to get rid of things, I started going through my book boxes. I don't have any worthless books. At one time or another, each book was incredibly important; vital, even. From that once, long ago, vital need, there now exists some sentimentality for what was. If you're not careful, that turns into a mountain of stuff that you don't actually need. So anyway, I went through ten or maybe twelve boxes of books and I found five – FIVE – books about which I thought, "this should be on my bookshelf."
For a while I've been contemplating where to put some bookshelves. We don't have much space, but this house would feel more like home if I unpacked some more stuff. But how much shelf space do I need? Before spending any money (a shocking strategy!), I decided I should unpack exactly what I wanted to shelve. It turns out I'm just going to stack the books on my equipment rack in my office.
For the record, these five books are:
- Thank You for My Service by Mat Best
- The Apostles' Creed by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
- The Exemplary Husband by Stuart Scott
- Around the World in (More Than) 80 Days by Larry Alex Taunton
- A spiral bound genealogy book of my family that my father made
I don't actually remember what the Around the World book is about, but it sounds interesting, and clearly I thought it was worth buying at one point, so after I figure out if it will ever be worth reading, my pile of books might be reduced by 20%. We'll see.
Also, I like how when I google these book titles and find the Amazon link to use above, that Amazon helpfully shows me exactly how many years its been since I made this purchase and I still haven't read the book.
I wonder if I can start a new habit where I read a book and then donate it. I bet that would encourage me to be more diligent, and less negligent, in reading them.
3 Body Problem
I got started with 3 Body Problem last night. I read chapter one. My initial thoughts from being some fifteen or twenty pages in:
- The paper quality is awful. I can see the print through each page. Is this normal? I just checked one of the books in my pile, and I cannot see through its pages.
- The writing level feels very much like it is firmly around the 5th grade. K (10yo) could easily read this. I realize these books are not suitable for 5th graders. That's not my point. But it does feel apropos given the raving reviews covering the back of the book from the most liberal people and organizations in this country. They probably each read around the 5th grade level.
That aside, I enjoyed the 1st chapter and look forward to continuing it.
It occurred to me that I see lots of comments online about the number of illiterate children who graduate from high school, and I wonder if that might inflate some definition of reading "grade level". So I asked Grok.
10th grade.
That's depressing.
You Tipped Too Much!
I mentioned the other day that K and I went out to eat. He needed to get away, and we found ourselves out past dinner time – so we found the first restaurant that didn't have a completely packed-out parking lot: Bub-Ba-Q. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that was for a good reason. But, anyway. Our waitress and her daisy-duke denim shorts was not overly concerned with waiting on us, but the food prices were so reasonable what with the two of us eating for less than $20, that I left a nice tip ($10). Chase alerted me to this possible error this morning. I kind of appreciate the feature. I'm reasonably certain I've never tipped 53% before. I guess it's easier to do with small numbers.
Hunger Comes and Goes
Ever since my depressing DEXA body scan last week, I've been doing ~18-hour fasts. I'll eat dinner in the evening, and then not eat again until lunch the following day – roughly eighteen hours. That leaves a six hour eating span each day.
I was in the midst of a 2-day-ish fast immediately following that DEXA scan when we had a bunch of boxes to move. It's amazing and a bit awesome the extent to which physical activity can completely distract me from something as nagging as hunger. I'm driving around, loading boxes, unloading boxes, wrangling kids who want nothing more than to stand exactly in my path. Next thing I know it's dinner time and I'm not even hungry.
That's the other thing: the hunger comes and goes in waves. It's like the mid-afternoon sleepiness that sometimes hits me. If you can power through it for like an hour, then you're good to go for the rest of the day.
Ages ago I did the one-meal-a-day thing (I just ate dinner and nothing else). I've contemplated moving in that direction, but that probably works contrary to building muscle. I don't know though.