Weekly Goals 1-8-22

 The next couple of weeks are going to be nuts with wrapping things up at my job and the film festival starts on Thursday, so there go my evenings and weekends for two weeks.  Not that I'm complaining.  I love the film festival!

Plus I'm still not 100% done with the reading I'm doing for my friend, so I have to find time to squeeze that in too.  Not to mention all the regular, day-to-day stuff that still needs to be done.

Busy, busy!

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 29-7-22

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be a busy one and I actually need it not to be.  I have been flat out at work and it doesn't look like that's going to stop until I finish up on the 10th. Luckily I have a few days after that to relax before I start my new job.  And it's the film festival, so I plan to spend most of those five days at the movies.

What are you celebrating this week?

 

Books I've Loved: In the Wild Light

 

I'm not ashamed to say I love Jeff Zentner.  Every one of his books have kicked me in the feels and left me mourning after reading the last page just because I'm so devastated to be finished.  And this book was no different. 

It's about Cash, a damaged kid living in small town Tennessee.  His grandparents have taken over bringing him up since his mother OD'd in their trailer when Cash was 13.  He adores his grandparents and they adore him which makes it harder that his grandfather is slowly dying from emphysema.

Equally damaged is Cash's best friend, Delaney who he spends all his time with when he's not mowing lawns to help out with the family finances.  The pair of them spend a lot of their time on the river in Cash's canoe.  And it's on the river that Delaney discovers a fungus that may change modern medicine.

Off the back of this discovery, Delaney is offered a scholarship to an exclusive New England private school.  And somehow she manages to get Cash one too so she doesn't have to go alone.  On the one hand, this is an opportunity of a lifetime for Cash, but on the other, how can he leave when he can't be sure his Pawpaw will still be alive when he returns?  But how can he allow Delaney to go so far away on her own?

This is a remarkable book about the resilience of the human spirit. Cash's life has broken him time and time again, yet he somehow manages to keep going.  And to keep loving despite the pain this obviously causes him.  He's my favourite kind of character - a damaged boy who somehow manages to remain a good person who does his best to make things better for the people he cares about.

Very recommended indeed.  

But don't just listen to me.  here's the blurb:

Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He’s been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen.

But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind.

From the award-winning author of The Serpent King comes a beautiful examination of grief, found family, and young love.

Weekly Goals 25-7-22

 I have another crazy work-week ahead of me, so I'm keeping my goals small.

My friend who I go to the gym with in the mornings is isolating this week, so I'm going to have to motivate myself to go to the gym in my lunch breaks.  Not entirely ideal when I'm this busy, but it will have to happen this week.

I have reading to do for a friend.  I've started, but did not get as far into it as I would have liked so that's my other project for this week.

And I worked with my son over the weekend on his essay, but we didn't finish, so this week I need to help him with that until it's finished.  It's due on Friday.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 22-7-22

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It has been a crazy week with so much work to do, so I am grateful to have absolutely nothing planned for the weekend.  Apart from helping my son with an essay for school.  And cooking dinner for my folks on Sunday.  And...

Okay, I have a few things planned.

But I also plan to do some sleeping and reading and relaxing because next week is going to be just as busy at work, if not more so.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Last Night at the Telegraph Club

I kept hearing about this book and how good it was, so I was pretty thrilled to find it at the library so I could read it and find out if all the chatter was true.  

It is.

Set in the 1950s in San Francisco's Chinatown, this is an important and fascinating story about a first generation Chinese girl struggling to come to terms with the various facets of her identity.  She's American.  She's Chinese.  And she's pretty sure she might be a lesbian as well. Being a lesbian in the 1950s was hard enough without the added layer of cultural expectation that comes from being both Chinese and an immigrant.

This book balances all these things against a backdrop of the Communist scare and increasing hostility toward Chinese who might be sympathisers.  Lilly's fear of being outed as a lesbian is echoed by others in the neighbourhood who are equally terrified of being accused of being Communist sympathisers.

The relationship between Kath and Lily is organic, growing from tentative to bold an back again as the realities of being queer in this time and place contain and constrict their movements and activities.  I also really enjoyed the ups and downs of Lily's friendship with Shirley, her best friend from childhood who she might just have outgrown.

The titular Telegraph Club is based on several real-life clubs that existed in San Fran at the time and is described in such a way I could feel the heat of too many bodies pressed together, smell the smoke and sense the mixture of fear an excitement that must have touched everyone in the room.  That sense of doing something slightly dangerous and forbidden, yet being fascinated by it to the point of obsession.

So I would definitely recommend this one.  It's a great story set in a challenging time period and offers a glimpse into a culture we rarely get to see.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

A story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the Red Scare.

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Weekly Goals 18-7-22

 The next few weeks are going to be a little nuts as I try and wrap everything up at my current job, so I'm not going to push myself as far as goals go.  I have some reading to do for a friend, so I'm going to prioritize that over my own writing for the next wee while, mainly because all the things I need to finish up at work are writing things and I know I'll be written out by the end of the week.

Other than that, I don't really have any goals for this week.  Just getting through it, I guess...

What are your goals this week?