Jes Lee

Book reviews

A list of sorts

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Things I have learned:

  1. I am enjoying listening to the audio book ‘The Art of Asking’ by Amanda Palmer much more than I ever thought I would. I have enjoyed her music for a long time, gone to her concerts when I could, and followed along on Twitter and everything else. For many insignificant reasons, I stopped following not very long ago. This book came through a list of suggested audio books available through my library’s website, and I decided to give it a try. It has been amazing to listen to, and today, I find myself following her again on social media.
  2. Meditation is really good for me. It has taught me a lot about myself already. I do very well with guided meditation in my yoga classes, but I am working on meditating alone as well.
  3. I love traveling.
  4. The act of traveling, being sick, going back to work without feeling 100%, and still trying to be creative, makes me more of an introvert than I usually am. Which is why I do not have more photos from our last amazing trip up here yet…but they will be coming soon.
  5. My favorite thing currently is when John and I have both gotten sucked into really good books, and go to bed a little earlier on the weekends just so we can lay in bed together and read.
  6. I successfully developed three rolls of slide film at home and did not blow anything up and I’m pretty sure I could try this again with the same results.
  7. John and I have started planning a pretty major house project together and it has become this wonderful blend of his ideas and my ideas and we are both excited to start it. We have done projects together in the past, but this somehow feels like the most collaborative one yet. I have learned a lot already from it, and I am paying close attention, knowing I will learn so much more by the time it is done.

It will be a busy week, filled with a few art related things happening, as well as work and home things. I will have much more to blog about next week!

My new photo-a-day project is still happening – I have not missed a day yet! I will share photos from that soon. I just developed the first roll of film from it today (see list item #6)!

I will leave you with this:

black and white 11 small

A little book review

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I have had a hard time picking out books to read lately. I have just had a really hard time getting into reading anything I have picked out.

Milkweed Books announced that during Northern Spark if you tweeted a photo of yourself out working after midnight, they would send you a book for free. I often pour over the shelves of books that Milkweed has published (they sell them in the gift shop at MCBA where I often find myself killing time before a meeting or waiting for a print to dry before I can go home). Since I was working at MCBA all night during Northern Spark, the photo opp would be easy. So I tried it! A few days later, I got an email from Milkweed asking if I prefered Fiction, Non Fiction, or Poetry. I picked Fiction and hoped for the best.

They sent me a book called Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles. The cover art alone was enough to intrigue me! I decided it was time to set aside the copy of Gravity’s Rainbow I was slogging through and give this a shot.

I finished it in 3 days. I have not been that pulled into a book in a long time! All I wanted to do was read!

Orion is a mystery about puppets and shrimp and a group of investigators who are also actors or want to be actors. The story is told through a lot of dialogue as well as the inner ramblings of Finley who wants to be as thorough as possible with her reports about the puppet case she has been assigned to. She can’t remember her past, but is slowly starting to. To tell you anything else would just seem silly. You should just read it!

I have never read a book written in this style before. Kira Henehan has a very choppy, fragmented way of writing this story, and normally I wouldn’t expect to like that style. But here, I love it! I am curious about her other work, and plan to hunt down more of her poetry and short stories. This is her first novel, and I hope to tears that she writes more soon! She is definitely an author I would like to follow.

*I did actually buy an extra copy of this book to give as a birthday present to a friend. I hope she likes it as much as I did!*

Being that I haven’t had the best of luck picking out books on my own lately, and Milkweed did such an awesome job picking out one for me, I asked them on Twitter what they would recommend I read next. They answered! They sent two suggestions: Things That Are by Amy Leach and In Red by Magdalena Tulli. I plan on buying both, and hopefully I can keep getting book recommendations from Milkweed and possibly a few other local publishers around the city! Maybe these little book reviews will become a semi regular part of this blog!

If you read any of the books mentioned here and want to chat about them a bit more, please feel free to leave questions, comments, feedback, and short reviews in the comments! No spoilers please!!!