2017 in Books

Starr4 Comments

My books resolution last year was 15 books, and I used Goodreads to track my progress with that resolution as I have the past few years. I was reading very long and hefty books this year, which was sometimes very frustrating with hitting a certain number of books (versus pages, I guess) because the 14th book I started reading this year was super dense and fairly technical. I loved the book but it was frustrating to read for hours and only have progressed 2% further than when I started that day. If I hadn’t started other books before finishing it, I would never have hit my goal of 15. I also read most of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, aka the Game of Thrones books, which are very, very long. The longest book I read this year, according to my Goodreads Year in Books, was A Storm of Swords at 1,177 pages. For reference, the average number of pages of the books I read this year was less than 500.

Without further ado, here are the books I read this year:

2017 in Books

  • In Other Words – Jhumpa Lahiri
  • A Storm of Swords – George R. R. Martin
  • Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby – Sandi Metz
  • The Inkblots – Damion Searls
  • A Feast of Crows – George R. R. Martin
  • A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin
  • China Rich Girlfriend – Kevin Kwan
  • Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
  • The New York Times: Footsteps
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
  • Rich People Problems – Kevin Kwan
  • Modern Lovers – Emma Straub
  • Spark Joy – Marie Kondo
  • Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
  • everyone’s an aliebn when ur a aliebn too – jomny sun
  • The Comic Book Story of Video Games – Jonathan Hennessey & Jack McGowan (review coming soon!)
  • Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
  • The Pragmatic Programmer – Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
  • The Gene – Siddhartha Mukherjee

I already have some titles loaded on my Kindle Paperwhite and I’m very excited to get reading this year! Here’s hoping I can make good progress with some easier to manage books and avoid pedantic fictions that make me so nervous about checking out new fiction titles…

Do you have any book recommendations for me going into 2018? Read anything good last year that you’d suggest? New titles, classics? Fiction, non-fiction?

What’s your reading look like? What are your 2018 reading goals?

Previous years: 2016

Winter Break Hiatus?

StarrLeave a comment

I leave for China tomorrow (let’s hope I didn’t forget to pack anything) and had originally planned to have all of my posts queued up and ready to go.

… as you could probably surmise from my use of “originally”, this plan has fallen through. I know exactly what posts I wanted to share, too! But a combination of a hectic schedule, episodes of extreme low energy, and poor time management on my part, if I’m being honest, means that it’s not happening. I don’t have weeks worth of blog posts ready before leaving.

Because I don’t know what the Great Firewall situation is with WordPress and the other resources I planned on using to complete these posts is, I am going to tentatively go on hiatus until I come back the second week of January. Fingers crossed I can get some posts up while I’m away, though! If I don’t, I’ll try to up my frequency because it’s that magical time of year where I do my year-end reflections and recaps and new year’s resolutions and those definitely need to get published ASAP.

In the meantime, please have happy holidays and I’ll see you in 2018!

The Big Easy: A NOLA Guide

StarrLeave a comment

I have had the amazing opportunity to do a fair bit of travel in my time, and a lot of it has been very international-focused and thinking about what places abroad I’d like to visit. For the past few years, I’ve been thinking about the amazing American cities that I haven’t yet visited, and at the top of that list has been New Orleans. So imagine when, at the end of RubyConf last year, I learned that this year’s conference would be held in NOLA! While I spent most of my time at the conference, I was still able to explore part of the city and Ben was able to join me for the weekend to explore as well.

DSC05601

Based on my short time in the Crescent City, here is little guide to how I enjoyed New Orleans on this particular trip!Read More »

Birthday Break

Starr1 Comment

I’m letting myself off the hook a little bit for today’s post as a birthday break and because I’ve been running around a lot as we approach deadlines at work and I try to push to take care of some things for my parents before meeting up with them in China next week!

Can you believe December is halfway through? It’s going to be 2018 before we know it, definitely before I realize how quickly the new year is approaching. I have a few posts planned before we ring in the new year. There’s the New Orleans recap/guide that I’m working on and then my usual trio of end-of-year posts.

December is a crazy and frazzled time for a lot of people as the year draws to a close and the holiday season hits its peak, so please take the time to take care of yourself and your needs. Take breaks, breathe deeply, apply hand lotion and lip balm liberally, sleep in soft pajamas, drink comforting beverages.

What are your favorite self-care/treat yo self things right now? I am enjoying going through as many steps of my skincare routine as I can remember, with a mask at the end to seal it all in, and holding and sipping a hot cup of tea with a small pastry or cookie. (Sometimes this turns into 15 cookies.) I also like going for walks, if it’s not painfully cold, or even just opening a window to let in some fresh air and let out the stale air, and if it’s too cold even for that, I’ll just take my tea to the window and look outside. I don’t have a great view from my window (it faces another building in my complex) but sometimes I see people walking their dogs and sometimes I just get lost watching the wind blow in the trees.

Gift Guide: Fun w/ Amazon Prime

StarrLeave a comment

(Note: I am working on a slightly different format for my New Orleans recap but in the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of gift curating lately and wanted to share some guides in a timely manner while we’re all scrambling to find presents for the holiday season!)

Happy Chanukah! Are you remembering that Chanukah involves gift-giving and you are scrambling? Do you have a White Elephant gift exchange coming up? Maybe you need to find something for a Secret Santa you don’t know very well?

I was recently tasked with finding some fun gifts to raffle off at a holiday event, with my only real constraint being that it had to come with Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping. While I am conflicted about using free 2-day shipping when it’s not necessary, the holiday season is one of the better times to use it for those of us who procrastinate or haven’t found the right thing in stores.

Without further ado, a list of gifts that were available on Amazon Prime for no more than $20, whittled down from perusing a lot of other online gift guides.

Note: Some of these items may no longer be in stock by the time you go to purchase them. The links included below are affiliate links.

For the doughnut lover: Set of 6 doughnut candles (also comes in a few other varieties!) $14

For the skincare fan who sends you silly face selfies: Elizavecca Milky Piggy Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask (super fun and effective face mask I personally love!): $11.80

For the low-maintenance self-care fiend: Set of 16 Korean face masks (enough to last a few weeks or throw a spa party) $11.99

For the land-locked mermaid: Mermaid tail blanket $14.99

For the cat + food lover: Pusheen plushie! (this one is holding an ice cream but there are other variations of food for this lil’ cat to hold at different prices!) $19.15

For the taco lover: Dinosaur taco holder, ’nuff said! $8.64

For the adventurous eater: Miracle berry tablets (you eat them and sour food tastes sweet!) $14.99

For the home cook with a soft spot for design:
Basically anything from the brand Fred & Friends
Known for things like Manatea tea infuser ($6.74) and the nested hen and egg measuring cups ($12.99)

 

For the on-the-go audiophile: Super highly reviewed earbuds (almost 52,000 reviews and a nearly 5-star rating!) $7.99

For the chef with a naughty sense of humor: Fifty Shades of Chicken parody cookbook $15.99

For the seasonally-appropriate sweet tooth: Bag of “reindeer farts” (cotton candy) $10.95

For the plant parent: Set of 5 succulent plants! $13.99

Let me know if you buy any of these gifts and what the reaction is!

Do you have any requests for gift guides? It is late in the year to be asking but I’ll do what I can for you! (And if all else fails, I’ll have it ready for you by next year, or at the next gift-giving holiday of your choice…)