East Bay Bookshelf

Welcome to Friday. Finally! It’s been a long week and I’ve been thinking about everyone who has been impacted by the hurricanes on the East Coast. This week I’m spotlighting an author, explaining why I like to know my “favorite things,” and highlighting just how much of a Millennial I am based on my recent Netflix pick. I’m also diving into book margins and what it means to have life margin.

Check out these spooky shelves at the Walnut Creek Library.

• Author Spotlight •

Last weekend, I opened the monthly newsletter from V.E. Schwab and, as usual, I read every word. Of course I clicked on the video link for her CBS feature. In the interview, she said she wants to convert readers into loving fantasy. I’m still not great at world-building in my mind, but I’m fascinated by the concept of magical realism (especially regarding time), like in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. She said Addie is a book about turning thirty and maybe that’s why I loved it the first time I read it – I was in my early thirties!

• Book Margins •

I watched the MMD recording of “How and Why to Write in Your Books” last week. The first book I truly ever annotated was The Scarlet Letter, which was required reading before my sophomore year of high school. I still have the copy of that book! Since then, I’ve written notes in almost every book I own. Admittedly, my college annotations were much more academic than my annotations these days. Here are my top three annotation types:

1. Underlining meaningful quotes.
2. Brackets around passages that resonate with me along with an explanation related to my own life. I’ve found that if I don’t explain, I have no idea why it was important to me years later.
3. Connections in the world – maybe with another piece of literature, TV show, or song.

• Life Margin •

Any time I hear the word “margin” I think of books, but I also think of life. What does it mean to have margin in your life? For me, it’s time to read, process, and think. Time to create and consume. To rest. Lately, I’ve been building margin into my days a few ways:

• Leaving white space in my calendar. For many years, I thought of planning as being mostly about logistics – just seeing what I could fit into blank space. Instead of trying to fill every available 15 minute increment, now I’m embracing the white space!
• Planning downtime. And I don’t mean just time at home. Over the last few weekends, we have had multiple events on the same day, so I’ve been having “mandatory relaxation hour” where I read, watch a show, or sleep.
• Monitoring my energy levels throughout the day. I’ve been in a pretty good fitness routine the last several months, but the days of intense morning workouts and then laying on the couch the rest of the day are gone. I’m learning how to do a half mile more or just one more rep without compromising my energy for the rest of the day.
• Adjusting. This fall, we overdid it on organized activities for my son. Don’t get me wrong, he thrived and we all made a lot of friends! But we felt…too busy. We also didn’t do our regular family adventures of exploring new places. I think we all missed that, so next season we are going to build a little more margin back into our weekends.

Behold, the notebook that changed my life. Maybe I’ll do a deep dive at some point on how I’ve been planning. (Obviously this was the first clean spread I could find that I haven’t filled in yet. It doesn’t mean we don’t have plans — those are all just electronic right now!)

• Favorite Things •

When my son was three, he asked everyone two questions: what’s your favorite dinosaur? And what’s your favorite color? I finally figured out it was just easier for me to know my favorites so I could be ready for these questions. Answers: brontosaurus and purple. I also found that he started to think of me when he ran across a brontosaurus in his books or saw a purple flower.

These days, everyone asks me what my favorite book is. For any reader, this feels like an impossible question to answer. However, I do have a favorite. I also have a second favorite! Answers: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab and People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. These are the books I recommend to everyone and I do a double take in second-hand bookstores when I see them for a great deal.

I’ve also noticed that when I tell people what I like, they know how to celebrate it with me!

• On the Screen •

Last weekend I finished Nobody Wants This, starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell. Since then, I’ve been seeing Seth Cohen all over my feed. I was a freshman in high school when The OC aired, and I was one of its biggest fans. I still have some newspaper clippings and the boxed DVD set (it even made an appearance in one of my senior pictures). And did you know that Kristen Bell was the voice of Gossip Girl? And Adam Brody is actually married to Queen B, Leighton Meester? That’s right, Seth Cohen and Blair Waldorf got married IRL.

That’s it for this week, have a great weekend and happy reading!