Loving and Learning Lately {50} -

Welcome to Round 50 of this little series I started of all the things in life I’m loving and learning lately! Here you’ll find everything from the books I’m currently reading to the products I’m loving to the shows I’m watching (which, spoiler alert–won’t be very many or very exciting, since I’m not a huge t.v. or movie watcher). If you want to check out past editions of the series, click here.

Note: There are affiliate links in this post, which means I may get a small percentage of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

Loving Lately

Lately, as our budget has allowed, I’ve been consciously going through certain areas of our home and doing simple “upgrades” on things that we use daily (or near daily) to versions I LOVE (rather than that just generally serve their purpose). A perfect example of this would be that we FINALLY replaced the sheets we’ve had on our bed for the last 10 years that NEVER fit right — they were constantly coming up every single night and rolling up off the bed, but we still just kept putting up with them because they were there and still technically serviceable (ish). Well, when we had some extra income to play around with, I finally went ahead and purchased this $30 king size sheet set that basically was guaranteed to stay in place, and I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT WE DIDN’T DO THIS SOONER. Seriously, after putting up with super annoying sheets year in and year out for over a decade, I can’t tell you how great it is to have sheets that actually stay on the bed without constantly tugging them down. Revolutionary, people.

As I go along in my journey to becoming a “true” minimalist, I’ve been investing in some carefully considered organizational pieces once a space is fully pared down. One area I really wanted to simplify was our kitchen counters, and as you can see in this post, I actually cleared almost EVERYTHING off them. In order to do that, I had to some serious rearranging/reorganization, and one thing I’m super glad I invested in was an in-drawer knife block. I was worried it would be annoying to not have everything out on the counters while I’m cooking, but I actually LOVE having totally cleared off counters. It makes clean-up a breeze, and I’ve found that my brain literally feels more calm/relaxed having nothing out.

Learning Lately

Because it’s been so long since I’ve done a reading round-up (we’re talking around 9 months!), this list is loooooong. To try and keep it to a (slightly) more manageable size, I’m only including books I’ve read in their entirety and that are not for our family read-alouds or for flower farming. Because I’m so far behind on posting, I’ll keep the summaries/reviews pretty brief so this isn’t a million words long, and I’ll just have to maybe do some book round-up posts in the future featuring some of these so that I can give them the space they deserve (the really good ones, at any rate).

Recent Reads

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

Eh, I really enjoyed my first novel by Hazelwood last year (The Love Hypothesis) and even included it in a round-up I did of “clever” rom-com novels (aka, not just total fluff), but when I read this, I literally felt like I was reading a total rehash of Hypothesis. Not a standout read at all, and heads up for multiple open door scenes. It kind of made me wonder if Hazelwood is a bit of a one trick pony with her writing style, which means I’ll probably give her stuff a rest for the time being.

The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter

Fun fact: I actually went to junior high school with the author and hung out with him a few times, a fact that didn’t register until I had already started this book and knew quite a bit already about it. While not all parts of this were equally interesting to me, the science and research driving the book was utterly fascinating. I’ve thought about parts of this book several times since finishing it, like when I think about how good it is for our bodies to carry things around and bear extra weight (a fact I remind myself of frequently as I heft buckets around our flower farm), as well as how important it is that we somewhat regularly endure some discomfort for our own mental well-being. Really interesting stuff in here, for sure.

How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis

As someone who follows a LOT of cleaning channels on YouTube (because I find that they help me to get motivated to tidy my house when I have zero motivation to do such a thing), I’ve noticed that in certain circles of thinking, people often equate tidiness or cleanliness or house-readiness with someone’s (particularly women’s) worth as a human being. When you write it out like that, the idea seems bonkers, but as someone who has struggled with my cluttered and naturally untidy ways for years (mostly because of how I imagined other people were viewing me and my so-called shortcomings), this book came as a breath of fresh air. Rather than playing the shame game around housework, the author takes the stance that cleaning is morally neutral, which is actually a pretty radical stance in our culture, if you really think about it. In the book, she takes a completely compassionate stance when approaching the idea of helping someone who is totally overwhelmed with their space, and I really liked a lot of the ways that she framed housework and “care tasks” (as she calls them). I’ve found myself using several of her suggestions, such as viewing things like tidying up the kitchen at night as “self care” rather than a dreaded chore. Anyway, this book is not long at all, but well worth a read if you’ve ever struggled with staying on top of housework (and have beat yourself up about it).

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

In general, a pleasant read that shows how several different people all reading the same book can have vastly different experiences with the material. Like most bibliophiles, I always enjoy a good book about books, and this was kind of a fun little take on how the act of reading is so different and deeply personal for everyone. This book wasn’t life-changing or anything, but I did enjoy it.

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin

It literally took me years to get through this book, but not because it was bad — I just lost my love for “foodie” memoirs when I had to start getting much more restrictive about what I eat due to my autoimmune disease. However, if you’re into foodie memoirs, you would totally love this laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays from the writer’s experiences in the kitchen and at the dining table (and you would also love the round-up I did of other food-centric novels and memoirs HERE).

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfield

Eh, I had a hard time getting into this one. A lot of the humor didn’t land, and I didn’t feel a strong connection to either of the main characters, or their relationship with each other. This was just okay for me, although a lot of people really loved it.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

I’ve always loved Patchett’s writing style, and this was no exception. I especially enjoyed the farm scenes in this, considering what we do for a living 🙂 The one thing I consistently mark down her books for? The endings. While the ending in this one was hardly surprising, I still found it disappointing.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

So highly readable–an easy page-turner, for sure–but unfortunately, it grated more and more the further into the book I went due to the protagonist being extremely anti-religion and basically thinking everyone else besides herself to be an idiot. I can see why a lot of people enjoyed this, but this ended up getting a pretty low star rating from me.

Happily Never After by Lynn Painter

Ugh, you guys, I almost NEVER give a book only a single-star rating (largely because I usually would refuse to finish a book I disliked so much), but I just kept hoping and hoping this one would get better because I’d quite enjoyed the two YA romances I’d read by her. I don’t know if this was her first ‘adult’ romance book, but it just…was not good. Dialogue was awful (one of the main characters thought the f-word was the only way to express any kind of feeling whatsoever), there was almost no build-up or tension throughout the book, and I just kept having to push myself to pick it up. Definitely shouldn’t have bothered, and definitely not a recommend.

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Did this need to be an entire book? No — it definitely could have just been boiled down to a long essay. But nevertheless, the main idea behind this book will stay with me forever, which is all about why certain brands consistently rise to the top (because they know and stick to their “why”), and other brands come and go.

Funny Story by Emily Henry

A delightful rom-com, and my favorite Henry novel yet. A highly bingeable read off my Summer 2024 Reading List.

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

I’m not usually one for thrillers (like, at all), but as this is more of a “quiet” thriller and had been getting a TON of buzz by readers I follow, I decided to pick it up. And I quite liked it! In fact, it’s even gotten me looking at other titles the author has written, which is always a good sign.

The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud

This is officially on my “Top 10 Books of All Time” list. Yup. It was THAT good, and THAT paradigm-shifting for me. While this is meant as a parenting book (and definitely helps on that front), I found that the strategies and science that it talks about were just as helpful for me to manage my own emotions and motivation. High, high recommend.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Excellent five-star historical fiction read. Hannah can be really hit or miss for me, but I thought this one was very well done. It wasn’t perfect (and you have to accept that her protagonists will always have ALLLLLL the terrible things happen to them, always), but I was SO satisfied at the end. This actually displaced The Nightingale as my favorite Hannah novel, which is impressive, indeed! I was not surprised in the slightest to hear that this one is by far the highest selling fiction book this year, by a landslide.

From the Blog Archives

Just for fun, I like to link back to past posts that were published around this time in previous years. Having blogged for over 13 years, I have a LOT of back content, so I like to share some of the oldies but goodies every now and then in case you joined the blog more recently!

Here are a few: