12/30/2014

Review: A Lady Awakened


A Lady Awakened
A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I'm not much of a romance reader these days, but the review of this one at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books caught my eye. The conceit was interesting: a widow attempting to circumvent the primogeniture laws in England by paying a notorious rake to get her pregnant in the wake of her husband's death.

It was a sweet, unredeemable little confection of a book. I think, from looking at other reviews of this book on Goodreads, the author could have offered a little more background information about why our heroine needed to conceive a son or lose her home. I've seen a lot of reviews that assume this is because of some meanness of spirit on the part of her husband, which is too bad. It might be a lack of careful reading, but I don't think so. I don't think I saw anything that more than roughly sketched out the law in question that provides the bulk of the obstacles our heroine faces.

Terrible cover. If I'm going to read anymore romances, I really need them as e-books.



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12/28/2014

My Favorite Things of 2014*

*Actual release dates may vary.
As 2014 comes to a close--and to be honest, it's been a pretty fucked up year--I've been mulling over what I read and watched that delighted or changed me this year. I've tried to be thorough, but there are two caveats:
  1. I didn't take great notes as the year went by, so I might miss some things that I loved as the year progressed.
  2. I am sometimes (often, even) a little behind the zeitgeist, so some of these things may have actually been released earlier than this year.
I am going to go ahead and call the year's media consumption at an end a couple of days early, too. It's busy at work, and I'm not likely to finish anything else before the year ends.
Without any further ado, here's my (in-no-particular-order) list of my Favorite Things Consumed (Media Edition) for 2014:
  • Red Rising--it's a little Hunger Games and a little Ender's Game, but a lot more graphic and brutal than either, which is no small accomplishment. It's YA with the emphasis on A, but it's tense and tightly plotted and I couldn't put it down. Its sequel is coming in 2015, and I can't wait to read it.
  • Rainbow Rowell's writing, but particularly Eleanor and Park and Attachments--These two really are outstanding novels that deftly achieve what they set out to do. They aren't high art or literature by any stretch of the imagination, but each is a beautiful jewel of contemporary fiction for its target age group. Reading Rainbow Rowell is a lot like hanging out with a girlfriend, or revisiting a crush from high school that you have no bad feelings toward in adulthood. I've been reluctant to recommend them for their "lack of depth," but in retrospect I'm applying the Ebert Rule and judging them on how well they achieve what they set out to do. That makes them awesomely good.
  • Everything written by Roxane Gay but especially An Untamed State and Bad Feminist--her Twitter feed is also often funny and thought-provoking all at once. Gay has a sweet, funny voice in her essays and her Twitter feed, and An Untamed State proves she can do raw and dark as well. She's uncommonly talented, and I want to be here when I grow up.
  • Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened--I don't remember when I first found Allie Brosh's web comic, but I read it religiously for most of law school, and then I fretted during the times when Brosh would go silent. Her comics on the subject of her depression are some of the most truthful, accurate, and yet still-funny I have ever read. The book adds content the site didn't have, and Brosh can count on me to buy all her future endeavors.
  • Saga--I think I technically read the first of these in late 2013, but I'm squeezing it in here since I read most of it in 2014. This series of graphic novels are hard to truly describe, but it's a space opera love story about soldiers from two warring cultures who fall in love, go AWOL, and have a cross-species baby. It shouldn't work at all, and yet it totally does. I'm wait-listed at the library well in advance of every installment.
  • Dusted--Podcast veterans Alastair Stephens and Lani Diane Rich (of StoryWonk) have started a re-watching of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the same time they've started an episode-by-episode analysis of them in podcast form. It combines StoryWonk's love of nerd culture and well-constructed stories with the genius of Joss Whedon. But for the other podcast entry on my list, this would be the best new podcast of 2014.
  • Serial--I already loved This American Life and Sarah Koenig when they announced this new podcast they were undertaking, called Serial. I set it up to download to my podcast app--Stitcher--and eager anticipated the first episode. Since then, I've been well and truly addicted. I've blogged about it. I've pushed it on friends. I've wished my parents knew what podcasts were in enough detail that I could share it with them. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but if I haven't tried it, you should. It's really that good, and once you've seen it, we can talk about it!
  • Outlander (TV)--I'm still not caught up with Ronald Moore's Starz adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's wildly successful novel, but so far, I've been impressed by the production values and the amazingly engaging adaptation of what is actually a pretty uneven novel. Starz hasn't scrimped in bringing the show to the screen, and I'm loving the hell out of the first half of the first season. They'll finish the novel when they come back from hiatus, and Starz announced after the huge acclaim that greeted the first episode's airing that they had already renewed it for a second season to be based on Dragonfly in Amber.

10/23/2014

Review: A Death-Struck Year


A Death-Struck Year
A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This read as younger than I expected, and would be totally appropriate for even late elementary school children. For me, the seams on her research showed a little, as I have read a couple of the books she used to prepare this book, and in several places I recalled the passages in the non-fiction work she was drawing on for particular plot points. That said, it was a charming novel set in Portland, OR, during the Spanish flu. It hit a lot of my sweet spots, and I did enjoy it.




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10/18/2014

Podcast to Catch: Serial


I'm not alone in raving about this particular offering, but if for some reason you ARE a person who likes podcasts and you have not yet checked out Serial, you really need to do so right away. I'm aware that raving about an NPR-related podcast like this is squarely in the

The first spin-off from the consistently good, rightly beloved This American Life, Serial has been buffed to a high sheen by one of my favorite TAL personalities, Sarah Koenig, as well as the paragon of men, Ira Glass, and it's really wonderful. It is a discussion of a fifteen-year old murder case, and one of the strengths of the writing and the format of the story line is that it continues to raise valid questions for both the defense and the prosecution of Adnan Syed. I am up-to-date, and while I do have an opinion (a strong one!) on the case now, I do occasionally waver in my certitude as Koenig unspools what she's learned in digging deeper into the murder of Hae Min Lee.

The only downside I can think of for picking it up right away is that they are still in production, so there will be no chance to binge-watch these. In fact, the Serial site has a statement up currently in the face of what I can only assume were strenuous calls to release all the episodes at once for binge-consumption:

We’ve been getting lots of questions about why we’re only releasing one episode per week instead of the entire season all at once for those of you inclined to binge-listen. The reason is: We're still making them. As I write this, in fact, Sarah is re-writing Episode 5. 
I guess you could say we didn’t get all our work done ahead of time. We’re reporting this story as we write it. We’re still pinning down information, doing interviews, following leads. So when you listen each week, the truth is that you’re actually not all that far behind us.
 I sympathize. If all the episodes had gone up on iTunes all at once, Orange Is the New Black style, I would have made it to the end already. I love it, and I really need some people I know to watch it so I can ~talk~ about it.

Anyone seen it? What have you thought so far?

If you haven't tried it yet, you can find it here.

9/27/2014

Review: The Goldfinch


The Goldfinch
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Dark and sad, but beautifully written. Like The Secret History, a lot of this is people behaving badly, but it's impossible to turn away from.

Weighty and serious, it expects attention from its reader, but it rewards a close reading.



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8/25/2014

Hundred Days of Happy Day Two

A small thing today, but my lunches at work are really short: just thirty minutes. I'm learning how to bring quick things that let me get a goodly amount of reading on in that time, as well as get a healthy-ish meal that staves off the hangry. Today, it was a Santa Fe Chicken salad dupe, a Coke, and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.

8/24/2014

This prompted my decision to do the 100 Happy Days Challenge

My 17.5-year old cat, Calamity Jane. She's old, strange, and willful as hell. I love her more than I knew was possible when I got her all those years ago.  I was reading this morning, and she came and stretched out over my arm, between me and my book.

Isn't she cute?

As she's gotten older, she gotten really insistent about being able to sit right on me or my husband, even in summer time. The only thing that makes an acceptable substitute for sitting on her people is the heated cat bed we bought her for wintertime, and sometimes she still prefers a quilt-covered human lap to the sheer bliss that is the cat bed.

She's been with me since just a couple weeks after I got my first place alone. I've had her now almost as long as I hadn't had her. She's outlived two other cats I got not long after I got her, and she really loves being an only kitty. I promised I wouldn't get any other cats until she's gone. I can't imagine a life without her in it. 

I'm glad she's healthy for her age; she's a huge part of my daily happiness.

8/17/2014

Review: Red Rising


Red Rising
Red Rising by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




If we define young adult novels as those with an absence of graphic sexual encounters, I will agree that this is YA. Otherwise, there's a lot more rape, murder, pissing on people, and dirty dealing than you would find in any other YA novel, including the ones referred to on the cover of the book. I'm not sure I would recommend it for younger teens as a result.

That said, I LOVED this book. It hits a lot of my sweet spots: hidden identities, revolution, the underdog striving to better the life he (and his people) have been dealt. There are several sad plot developments, but this book does occupy (and knows it) a space where Ender's Game overlaps with The Hunger Games.

I'm already looking forward to the next one in the series.



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8/15/2014

Review: Eleanor and Park

Eleanor & ParkEleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A sad book, but one that is age-appropriate, lacking in a love triangle (Thank god!) and that's paced in a way that hums along when a lot of this genre tend to wallow in the emotions of its protagonists. I didn't expect to love this like I did, but there it is. I thought Fangirl was okay, but this one was deeply enjoyable.

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8/05/2014

Letter for the man at my polling place on primary day


Dear dude with the “When the people fear the government, that's tyranny; when the government fears the people, that's freedom.” bumpersticker at my polling place:

You're parked in the fire lane.


Kisses, Kristen

7/29/2014

App Review: SleepBot


I have been in a perpetual fight with the stock alarm app for the iPhone. I hate it. It's terrible. I can turn it off before actually hearing it enough to wake up, more often than not, and as a person who gave up the stand-alone alarm clock years ago to be cellphone-only, that's decidedly inconvenient. I've downloaded a variety of free apps, and even paid for one that I thought was going to be THE upgrade, but none of them has made me as happy (Or well-rested!) as the app I wanted to review for you all today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the one. The app that has started to change the way I sleep and the way I wake up. I give you SleepBot for both iOS and Android.  How nice that you can have it no matter what phone tribe you belong to!

It's got a clean, easy-to-learn interface, with just the right kinds of bells and whistles to do its job and do it well. You hit the Start Sleep button when you hit the hay, and it starts logging. When your alarm goes off the next day, the timer stops and it compiles the data and gives it to you in graph form. It has several pleasing (or jarring) tones for the alarm to choose from, from classical music to a klaxon reminiscent of an incoming air raid.

It has settings to customize how much sleep you need to get each night, so you can tell it what works best for you. It will show you the last fourteen days on a graph, so you can see if you're mostly hitting your target or not, and adjust accordingly.  When you set an alarm for the next day, it will tell you how long you have until that alarm, so you know if you've left yourself enough time to get the sleep you need.

It has been three nights that I have gone to sleep and awakened on time, without fail, relying on this app. It tracks sleep as well as time until the alarm, so you know how realistic your bedtime is in relation to when you want or need to get up the next day.  It logs your cumulative sleep credit or debt, so you have an idea why the hell you're so tired when you've shorted yourself on one night or several in a row. It's full of data, if that's your thing, but if it isn't, there's still a great reason to use this app: it has a predictive alarm.

"Okay," you say, "...but what does she mean by that?"

I'm so glad you asked! Let's say that I go to bed at midnight, and I set my alarm for eight the next morning. I put my phone on the edge of the mattress next to me so that my phone's accelerometer will be able to tell how deeply I am sleeping, and it adjusts my alarm accordingly. So my alarm could go off anywhere between 7:30 and 8:00, but at the time that I will be sleeping the lightest. This means that the alarm will happen at the time that it will be the least painful to wake up, and I will feel more refreshed than I would have if it had simply gone off at 8:00 as another alarm would. This, for me, was the feature that sold it over every other alarm scheme I had tried. I feel better waking up this way

I will report back if my love affair with this handy app comes to an unfortunate end, but right now I can't imagine that happening.

It's the first that hasn't had obvious problems or necessary features to distract from the essential functions I need in an alarm app.

7/12/2014

Slow Cooker Butter Chicken



So not too long ago, Everyday Indian: Slow Cooker With Curry and Indian Spices was available for free for download at Amazon, and I jumped at the chance. I've been collecting digital cookbooks just for their space-saving wonderfulness.

Now, I have a complicated, mostly unsuccessful relationship with the slow cooker, and my previous attempts at butter chicken have been similarly goofy, but hope springs eternal. I decided to give this a try anyway.

It turned out wonderfully, so here is the recipe, with a couple of photos, and my modifications. I'll definitely be making this again.
It didn't last long after this.

Ingredients:

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 4 T butter
  • 2 pounds chicken thighs (I used 1 lb breast and 1 lb thighs)
  • 2 t garam masala
  • Salt to taste.
  • 6 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1/2 t cayenne
  • 15 cardamom pods
  • 1 cup+ plain whole milk yogurt
  • 1 can coconut milk (8 oz)
  • 2 t curry powder
  • 2 T lemon juice
  • 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
  • 1/2 t ground ginger
Directions:
  1. Bundle the cardamom pods together in cheese cloth or a sachet, so they do not separate in the dish.
  2. Place the chicken on the bottom of your crock pot and then top with the onions, spices, and garlic.
  3. Add butter and tomato paste.
  4. Add the coconut milk and lemon juice.
  5. Turn the crock pot on low and cook for nine hours.
  6. During the last 15 minutes, remove the lid (if you haven't already) and stir in the yogurt. Add a little more, if you like it creamier. Salt to taste.
  7. Remove the cardamom pods and serve.
  8. Serve over basmati rice.
There is never enough mango lassi, no matter how much you make.
Suggestions:
  • I removed the lid about three hours before the end of cooking time to let some of the water cook off and the mixture thicken a little, rather than waiting until the last 15 minutes. I suspect that's always going to be necessary.
  • I fixed a simple pilaf with basmati rice, peas, and carrots to serve this over. I recommend this, as there's no veggies, otherwise.
  • I served it with a mango lassi, one of my other favorite Indian foods.


6/19/2014

Not much to add to last night, except more words...


The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words: 393
Total Words: 1528/15000ish

Calling this a victory. I didn't want to, but I did it anyway, and I got more than 250 words. 

6/18/2014

First you have to write, and then you have to finish


With apologies to the eloquent Neil Gaiman for butchering one of his lovely quotes on being a writer....

In that way that the human brain is very strange, a short story roared to life today while I was reading a non-fiction book over lunch at a sketchy, local, fast-food Mexican place. A passage on bear-baiting in London in the 1600s, and I was suddenly wishing I had a pen that wrote well on pulpy napkins so I could take enough notes to keep it fresh until I got to someplace where I could start getting ideas down in a more formal medium.

Lacking a suitable pen or a notebook with which I could get started, I headed home and put fingers to keyboard to start roughing this idea out. I won't say that I set a personal best for words produced, but it was a respectable day of writing.

Now, to keep this ball rolling tomorrow!

The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words:  1135
Total Words:  1135/15000ish

6/17/2014

Review: Tenth of December


Tenth of December
Tenth of December by George Saunders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I picked this up after reading George Saunders commencement speech about the biggest regrets in his life were the failures of kindness from his past, when he could have reached out to someone and did not. I also remembered that radical empathic Cheryl Strayed spoke warmly about Saunders at a talk of hers that I attended.

These short stories are technically excellent, and I enjoyed them, but my hope and expectation was that the philosophy of the commencement speech might shine through the other work, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I would recommend this collection as displaying technically superior short story work, but if you're looking for more things like Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness, it isn't this.





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6/12/2014

Review: Fangirl


Fangirl
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I think I would have liked to have read a book like this before I left for college. It would have made some of the challenges of my freshman year a little more comprehensible.

This book is all right. It's smaller in scope and stakes than what I tend to read, and it might be...75ish pages too long. It started stronger than it finished, and as a result ended up feeling pretty uneven.

For anyone interested, this is set in Nebraska, in both Lincoln and Omaha, and it felt like I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been able to recognize the places she referenced.



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5/30/2014

Review: Me Before You


Me Before You
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




I'm so sad my stomach hurts. I read the last 50ish pages with my hand clapped over the lower half of my face, holding in the denial I could feel building inside of me at the ending of the book.

You can see it coming, but there's nothing you can do to stop it.

This is a marvelous, moving, and tremendously sad book that doesn't shirk from the hard questions regarding assisted suicide and a patient's right to self-determination. I recommend it, but one shouldn't finish reading it in public, or anywhere where there's no ready access to facial tissues.



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5/28/2014

Review: Dreams of Gods & Monsters


Dreams of Gods & Monsters
Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




This is a trilogy that I knew I had to read as soon as I skimmed the blurb here on Goodreads. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor was recommended by the magical algorithm of You'll Like It, I think because I loved Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. I'm not sure the algorithm has ever gotten a recommendation for me so RIGHT before.

I love this trilogy. I love Laini Taylor and will read anything she writes from here on out.

But let's talk about this book.

There's a skill that Taylor possesses in rendering the fierce, funny love between two girlfriends that I am not sure I have seen in any other author I current read. In the face of grimness, there's Karou and Zuzana fighting for one another...and making each other laugh. Actively seeking that good feeling you get when you make your best friend LAUGH. It's just true, and perfect, I don't think I've seen it from anyone else in recent memory, at least. (Upon reflection, I think part of the shiny of this is how effortlessly the book passes that dreaded Bechdel test.)

This trilogy is wonderful and inventive and sweet and funny. If you haven't read it yet, I'm jealous.

Because now you can read it for the first time!



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5/21/2014

Me, in one photo.

Red shoes!

So, I hate having my photo taken. The prevalence of the phone as a cultural presence makes this awkward, but I am AWESOME at dodging the pocket phones of friends and family. To be honest, I don't have much of an explanation for it. I'm not in denial about what I look like: I'm zaftig but kind of nice looking despite it, I guess. Decent haircut and passable makeup, most of the time, which is all that most of us can do to look all right in the moment.

I'd look better if I were thinner, and I'm working on that, but GOD I hate having my picture taken. I go all tense and weird when the camera comes out, and it shows every time. But I was walking in Lawrence, KS, the other night, on our way to see my friend Dave who was visiting from Boston, and I snapped this photo of my feet. No weird tense face, just red Chucks and boyfriend jeans. My feet, which I kinda like, in shoes and out of shoes. This is my newest pair of shoes, and they're still a little stiff and shiny.

I can't say I'll be posting my face anytime soon, but I DO love this shot. It probably tells you more about me than just about anything other than a shot of my face.


5/10/2014

Stuck

I'm feeling cranky and wheel-spinny and stuck. I want something, so many things, but I can't tell you what they are. I think I better go to yoga tomorrow.

5/04/2014

Review: The Host


The Host
The Host by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



And so ends the only Stephenie Meyer book currently in existence that I think I can finish.



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4/17/2014

Review: Landry Park


Landry Park
Landry Park by Bethany Hagen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars




I wanted to like it, but it really doesn't live up to the giants of the genre at all. It's Kansas City setting is just incidental, and there's a troubling anti-Asian thread that made me uncomfortable at nearly every mention.

There are better books for nearly every aspect of this novel, and a lot of the plot here left me rolling my eyes.

Unfortunate.



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4/10/2014

Review: My Story


My Story
My Story by Elizabeth Smart

My rating: 0 of 5 stars




I can't bring myself to give this a rating using stars. I have seen and heard Elizabeth Smart interviewed multiple times since she's reached adulthood. I have found her to be smart, thoughtful, and very composed when she speaks about what happened to her when she was 14.

That said, this book is not very good, which should probably be laid entirely at the feet of the ghostwriter. I hope it made Elizabeth a lot of money she can put toward her foundation: she's doing the real work of changing minds and lives there. This book isn't likely to do much of that on its own.



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Review: Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery


Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




As a book that explores how women can be sucked into the world of Craigslist sex work despite its obvious risks of disease, pain, and in the case of these women: death. The book struggles in the last third because of the lack of leads/suspects in the case, and there's no satisfying conclusion to the book because there's never been an arrest or even a likely suspect or person of interest. Attempts to make one of the residents of Oak Beach appear like the killer are pretty flat.

It's a well-written book, but it almost feels like it came before it's time. So close in time to the deaths of these women, and without a lot of the answers that a coherent investigation/prosecution would have provided, it's ultimately unsatisfying. I think it would have been better edited down to a piece of long-form journalism.



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4/02/2014

Review: Panic


Panic
Panic by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




This book is probably the best one that Lauren Oliver has written to date. It has a marvelously evocative setting: in many cases the scene descriptions will hint to you what is going on in a scene long before the action or dialogue take you there. It's believable and yet dark, and the realistic tone grounds what could have otherwise become a silly story. This is the Hunger Games without the fantasy setting. It's a story of poverty, desperation, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood. I really liked it a lot. The only thing that keeps it from five stars is that it either ended too quickly or not quickly enough. The last chapter felt tacked on in a way that either should have been expanded on or excised completely.





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3/09/2014

Review: Defy

Defy (Defy, #1)Defy by Sara B. Larson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was sort of shocked that this book was categorized as juvenile literature by my library, given how cavalierly it drops ideas like a "rape house" and the ease with which it kills off characters. It started strong and plays with one of my favorite girl-disguised-as-boy tropes, but it bogs down quickly in the particulars of the love triangle, which isn't particularly interesting.

Not sure if I will read on. There's some good here to grow on; I hope that Larson can keep that trajectory and improve as an author.

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3/08/2014

Wet-shaving and me

This is part of a new, regular green living series I'll be adding to about changes I've made in my life to be more green. If you can think of a topic you'd like me to write about, don't hesitate to let me know!

For the last several years, I've been looking for ways to make me day-to-day existence greener. I switched from o.b. tampons to flannel reusable pads, and then to a Diva Cup for my menstruation management. I made a concerted effort to switch to organic soaps and shampoos, with varied degrees of success.

But shaving my legs remained a decidedly resource-intensive activity, and it was expensive to boot while using my cartridge razor. I'm a pretty much hippy-feminist, so you'd think I'd be able to give up shaving and be liberated and furry, but I actually really enjoy the feel of shaved legs on clean sheets a great deal.

Giving up shaving wasn't an option for me.

My husband, G., had switched to wet-shaving several years ago, and while I was supportive of that for him, the safety razor scared the crap out of me when it came to shaving my own body parts. But we hit a really tight financial patch while I was in law school and I couldn't afford to replace my Sensor cartridges at the rate I needed to for a good shave. In a pinch one day, I used G's safety razor and a fresh blade from his sizeable stash of razor blades. He'd bought a sample pack when he'd started, then settled in on a blade he preferred pretty quickly and ordered more of those, so we had a lot of spare blades from which to pick.

It wasn't a great shave: I cut myself pretty badly in the exact place I did the very first time I shaved my legs, in fourth grade. One inch-long strip of flesh right up the side of my ankle. It felt in many ways like being reintroduced to the skill, complete with the ointment and the big bandaid strapped over my ankle bone.

That year, on my birthday, he bought me my own safety razor so we didn't have to share: his blade was too heavy for my hand (I have carpal tunnel). I used that, with my own sample pack of razors, for months until I figured out that my birthday razor was too short and maybe still a little too heavy for leg shaving. I read up a lot about wet shaving for women at the reddit sub r/wicked_edge, and deduced that the ideal razor for my leg shaving needs was a Lady Gillette.

Now, the Lady Gillette's production was stopped before I was born, but there's a reasonably good secondhand market in them on eBay. I bid on several, and eventually got lucky and won one in good condition. I sold my birthday razor (with my husband's blessing) to someone on r/Shave_bazaar, and so helped another person make his first foray into wet-shaving with a minimal initial investment.

After some trial and error, I've found the razor and blade combo that works best for me. A couple of weeks ago I ordered what will likely be two years worth of blades and yesterday they arrived. For about a quarter (or less) what I would have paid to keep using the Gillette Sensor, I've been able to switch to a greener alternative that will last me the rest of my life. I'm not sure why more people don't take this route, except that maybe it requires a little experimentation to discover what works for the individual.

Once you've found your combination, though, you'll never have a better shave with the junk you buy at the drugstore. If you're interested in lady wet-shaving, you should take a look at this Beginner's FAQ.


2/21/2014

The Year of Finishing Things


I have made this year a year for clearing out some of my long-term to-do lists. In specific, when it comes to reading, I want to try authors I have always meant to, and get read some of the books that my friends swear by that I haven't tried or failed to get into when I did try them in the past.

When I was in law school, there were books I simply couldn't bring myself to read. I knew I didn't have the spare brain power to read truly demanding things, and I had a strong hankering for happy endings and tidier stories at that time. I passed on a lot of things I knew I simply wouldn't be up to parsing. But it's left strange gaps in my reading, and I know there are authors and stories I will like that I haven't so much as dipped a toe in. There are also a few series I'm behind on because I knew I couldn't give them the attention they deserve.

So 2014 is the Year of Catching Up. First up, Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Also in the immediate future: catching up on Michelle West's House War series, and reading my first China Mieville. I'm looking forward to all of them very much.

2/20/2014

Review: Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories


Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories
Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories by Francesca Lia Block

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I loved Wasteland when I read it several years ago, and I always meant to pick up another of Block's books when I had the chance. When one of the short stories in this collection came up recently in a Dear Prudie column at Slate.com, I decided to return to see if the rest of her fiction had the same raw, poetic beauty that took my breath away in Wasteland.

And I'm sorry to say the answer is "Not so much."

There are good short stories here: "Blue" and "Dragons of Manhattan" (the short story mentioned in the Dear Prudie column) were both memorable and good, but in many cases the other pieces felt more like mediocre writing exercises more than conventionally structured stories with something to say.

I might have loved them to pieces when I was younger, but most of the collection left me pretty cold.



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2/19/2014

Review: The Republic of Thieves


The Republic of Thieves
The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




I cannot say enough good things about Scott Lynch's wonderful third installment in his Gentleman Bastards series. While I love a well-written fantasy novel or series, I have typically avoided the thief/assassin subgenre as being not for me.

These books are for everyone.

They are George R. R. Martin meets Ocean's Eleven. They are sly, smart, profane and completely entertaining.

This book in particular strikes a vital balance that I wasn't sure if Lynch would pull off. At last, we have an appearance by Locke's absent beloved, Sabetha, who has only been referred to in previous books. She has to be something special to be worthy of Locke's fixation, and Lynch risks her worth by making her the opponent in a game of election rigging that comprises most of the action of the book. Locke has to be bested by Sabetha as often as he bests her, or this little contest risks shredding the audience's disbelief in one way or another.

But Scott Lynch absolutely nails the dynamic between the two in a way that is both exciting and rings true. Sabetha is more fully-formed than I had dreamed she would be, from the hints in the first two books.

I am not sure how I will wait for the next installment of this series.



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2/13/2014

For what it's worth, my Reading Challenge at Goodreads is on track:

2014 Reading Challenge

2014 Reading Challenge
Kristen has read 8 books toward her goal of 75 books.
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I will try to make all subsequent reviews propagate over here, even if it ends up being manually.

Book Reviews and some random thoughts about life and Livejournal.


Irked to find that my book reviews at Goodreads aren't propagating over here as promised.  Now, I'll end up trying not to care, then wrestling with it for hours when I should be doing something else more productive.

I'm still job-hunting and working as one of those under-employed people you hear about on the news if you watch MSNBC.  I think the worst part of a job like that is how unchallenging it is, inherently, and yet so very draining. Sometimes I come home and I feel like I'll never have a single intelligent thought ever again because I'm so numb from a day at Major Box Retailer.

I miss LiveJournal. At it's heyday, it was a really good platform for amateur blogging, and some of the friends I made there are with me still, on Facebook/Twitter/elsewhere, but it's just not quite the same as refreshing my Livejournal feed.

Break over. Time to be actually productive for a bit.

1/05/2014

Review: Stitches : a handbook on meaning, hope, and repair


Stitches : a handbook on meaning, hope, and repair
Stitches : a handbook on meaning, hope, and repair by Anne Lamott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




As with most of Anne Lamott's non-fiction, this is a wonderful, comforting read, even if you aren't much for the God-stuff. This particular slim offering is full of warming stories about how communities like Newtown can mend in the wake of inexplicable tragedies that seem to be the face of evil in the world. As with much of Lamott's work, the answer has to do with faith in something larger and the bonds shared between individuals.

It's faith, but it's the kind of faith that rolls up its sleeves, brings a casserole, and offers a little free babysitting when necessary.

2014 goal: 2/75

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1/03/2014

Review: The Shining Girls


The Shining Girls
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




I'm wavering between a four and a three on this one. I really liked the protagonist, and the idea was out of this world for originality. On the other hand, the antagonist was sort of flat in his misogyny and his murderous motivations, so I found his sections a lot less interesting than the rest of the book. It's an interesting period piece in places, and the author's decision to root the 'modern' part of the story in 1993 instead of today removes the complication many thrillers have that everyone has a cell phone these days.

2014 goal: 1/75



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