Category — Uncategorized

I like to read books right when they come out. I stay on top of soon-to-be-published lists and put myself on the holds list at the library as soon as the book is added. I read the book right when I get it so I can be in that first wave of people who consume the book.

Why do I do this? Why does it matter when I read or watch or listen to something?

I mean, yes, spoilers. I hate accidentally hearing or reading spoilers, so getting to a book early lessens the chances of that happening. But lots of books do not have a big reveal therefore spoilers are unimportant. For instance, I felt like I had to grab Becoming right when it came out, but no one was going to ruin Michelle Obama’s memoir.

I am in the middle of a bit of a book deluge. A few weeks ago, I was trying to balance three books at once, and when I finished the final one, I said never again. I would read one book at a time. Two at most. Never three. And then new book after new book came up on the holds list, and I somehow found myself with four—FOUR—at once, frantically trying to read the three library ones and just dragging the paper one I own from room to room.

It doesn’t feel good. I don’t get to enjoy the story when I’m reading this quickly. I wake up in the morning and think, “I need to get through at least 50 pages today or the book will be due and I’ll miss out.” I would have delayed the hold, but they were all popular titles. So. I was sucked back into the bad habit.

Do you feel like you need to read, watch, listen to things right when they come out, or do you put off for months books/shows/music you’re excited about, getting to them whenever it fits into your life?

Carolyn Hax has a way of putting things that is so simple and straightforward that you know you can put the advice into action. The question was about taking someone’s last name during marriage, but the advice applies to all of the invasive questions that accompany infertility or family building.

She writes:

The answer to your question about sharing “without getting into all the reasons” is actually the easy part of this whole thing: You never owe people an accounting of your private thoughts. “This is what works for us.” Done and done. Intrusive questions aren’t invoices.

“Intrusive questions aren’t invoices.” That is BRILLIANT. You don’t have to answer every question just because someone asked it. I know this but I clearly don’t know this because I often feel anxious when I feel like I’m being pushed to answer something that I don’t want to answer. I need to stop thinking of every question as an invoice that needs to be paid in full so I can move it to the done pile. It’s also possible to move the question to the rubbish bin. Or just file it away, unanswered.

Not counting the meals cooked by people I know (with the exception of the last entry) because that food is infused with love and has an unfair advantage:

1. The grilled red pepper burrito at Bueno y Sano: It has since been removed from the menu, but I ate one every Thursday for four straight years. (Plus extra weekly burritos when I really really needed one.) I got it with rice and lettuce and mild sauce at first. I added sour cream once I started eating dairy later in grad school.
2. Passion fruit vinaigrette salad: I ate it on my honeymoon. I begged the waitstaff for the recipe. They wrote it out without any amounts. I’ve never been able to recreate it. It was so salty and fresh and I still dream about this salad.
3. The wonton soup at Apropos: You have to understand as a vegetarian, I saw a lot of foods that I couldn’t try in the US. But Israel has always been vegetarian-friendly with tons of vegan options. The soup consisted of one or two massive fried vegetarian wontons with tons of other veggies in the bowl. Amazing broth. I loved that restaurant so much.
4. Vegetable egg rolls in Shepherdstown, WV. This is the only time I’ve ever seen a vegetarian egg roll that was truly an egg roll and not a fried spring roll. They were so good that I’ve dragged many people out there with me for egg rolls—as in, a whole meal of just egg rolls.
5. Jo’s meal of Linda McCartney sausages: I got off the plane in Ireland, jet-lagged and hungry, and Jo made me a meal of Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages, toast, and tea. We can’t get Linda’s sausages in the US, and for years, I’ve tried to make something that tastes similar. There are plenty of vegetarian sausage options, but none are as good as Linda’s, which tasted amazing after a long flight while we picnicked on his apartment floor. The new Beyond Sausage breakfast links are a close re-creation, and we’ve been having Jo dinners: sausages, toast, and tea.

What are the best things you’ve ever eaten?

I love Goodreads when it helps me make reading decisions. A book with a 4.1 average rating and tons of good reviews? It’s a quick decision to move ahead with the book if it’s already on my massive TBR. A book with 3.2 rating? Maybe I should hold off and read something else first.

The issue is that everyone has their own star system. We don’t give four stars for the same reasons. Knowing that, I generally glance at the stars but read the first few reviews. Are people saying the same thing?

The issue, of course, is that I often enter Goodreads excited to read a book only to find that other people have said negative things about the story. It clouds my experience of the book, generally making me feel lukewarm about it before I’ve begun the first page. How can a book recover from that when you’ve already been told that it’s boring?

It happened with a book recently—I wanted to read it because the description sounded great. But then the reviews were all over the place, so I kept delaying taking the book when it came up on my holds list. And now the e-book is gone from the library system. E-books, unlike paper books, are purchased with a certain number of downloads or time on the license.

It’s a hard line to walk: Using reviews to use my reading time wisely but not having reviews move me away from things I may have enjoyed if I didn’t know how anyone else felt.

I’ve always leaned hard on the IF community for emotional support because… you get it. I don’t need to provide a big backstory or how something makes me feel or put a bunch of disclaimers in place. You get it. We have a shorthand. I can say that I still walk out of my way to avoid the baby department at Target, and I do not have to explain why.

But Carolyn Hax had an interesting column last week where she explains that people outside the experience are sometimes the best listeners. She writes:

I’m not sure you need empathy to be a good provider of sympathy. There’s a case to be made that not going through the emotions yourself enhances your ability to listen patiently and provide a shoulder. Some of the best caregivers are the ones who maintain enough detachment to keep their heads, and keep listening through what would be, for others, an exhausting level of duress.

In other words, my story brings up feelings about your story, and then we’re both feeling duress. Whereas in this other scenario, talking to someone who has never experienced infertility, they can hear and support me without it draining them.

Of course, you can have hyper-empathy without the experience, but it’s food for thought on why people outside the experience are sometimes the best listeners.