Month: January 2025

Books Read in January 2025

*book group selection | bolded means favorite

Picture Books

*Just What to Do by Kyle Lukoff and Hala Tahboub

Young Adult

6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did] by Tess Sharpe
*The Wilderness of Girls by Madeline Claire Franklin
*Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

After Life by Gayle Forman

For whatever reason, Forman is at her best when death is involved. A slim book with bits that mesh perfectly.

Grownup Fiction

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
Goldenseal by Maria Hummel
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

The Strangers on Montagu Street by Karen White

It remains to be seen if the cardboard nature of the characters will outweigh the fun ghost stories and if I will finish this series.

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

I marvel at how many points of view Hilderbrand managed while never making the story seem jumbled.

Youth Nonfiction

*The Painter and the President: Gilbert Stuart’s Brush with George Washington by Sarah Albee and Stacy Innerst

Grownup Nonfiction

Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes by Jennifer Taitz
Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents by Alexandra Petri
Black Friend: Essays by Ziwe

The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream by Stefan Al

Good thesis, and Sefan Al really won the lottery with the cover. So stylish.

Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal by Samantha Dion Baker

Given that the author is a graphic designer, artist, and has studied typography at Cooper Union, I’d call this “pretty” rather than “inspiring.” There’s no way any sketch journal I kept would come close to looking like hers. There also not much how-to other than “draw every day” (which is good advice).

Brothers by Alex Van Halen

This memoir is clear about one topic: Alex Van Halen really misses his brother. Written in a conversational style (or perhaps dictated and very lightly edited), this book provides insights into the Van Halen brothers (Ed, and Al, apparently) upbringing and their time in one of the greatest bands on the planet. It is not a cradle to grave account, things mostly drift off around the time David Lee Roth leaves the band. But to hear about the scrappy up-and-coming Van Halen, this is your book.

Perspective in Action: Creative Exercises for Depicting Spatial Representation from the Renaissance to the Digital Age by David Chelsea

Chelsea lives in Portland, and on page 97 you can see the Keller Auditorium and the Keller Fountain in a equrectangular panorama. Plus, there are some Benson Bubblers. There are some good instructions too, but first I must master one, two, and three-point perspective.

Move Quiz Results

Battleship Cinematic Universe was a team of two this month, but we had a great movie quiz! We got 12th place! I think that might be a record.

The team names were fun as usual. I enjoyed A Complete Known and also the three plays on Nosferatu: Yesferatu, Nosferatu Fast 2 Furious; Nosfera3 Tokyo Drift

Matt was a big contributor to the score. It turns out the only time travel objects I can identify are the time turner (though I wouldn’t have known from which Harry Potter movie it came; Matt knew) and the magic mailbox that allowed Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, I thought the name of the movie was the Beach House, not the Lake House, so we missed that one anyway.

Got my Year of the Snake Badge

I did some activity on a holiday I don’t celebrate, and Garmin rewarded me with this pretty badge.

There is also a Lunar New Year’s Eve one; I earned that one too.

I smugly thought that I had earned a badge every year, but I see I missed 2021. January 25, 2020, I did not yet have my Garmin watch.

Here’s to the new year.

SKS: Postal Boxes

Look at this fun postcard! Post boxes are one of those things I’m not aware that are not universal. I mean, I am, because of Postcrossing and travel, but it’s one of those utilitarian things that seems to be more about function than form.

Sara reports that she ordered this set from an Etsy shop (based in Eagle, Idaho!) and that it’s was her first official day of the semester. The semester has started off well.

She also commented that she needed more postcards like she needs a hole in her toe and, looking at my 12 inches of shelf space dedicated to postcards, I can relate.

I Discover Time Guessr

Hank Green, of the Vlogbrothers, was killing time on a video (for algorithm reasons?) and so played through some of the games he plays. One of them was TimeGuessr. I was intrigued.

In this game, you are given a photo and then must guess when and where the photo was taken. It’s quite fun.

And I did really well my first time out, like here where I was only 241.4 meters off! (Though 5 years off.)

And like this where I was only 4 years off, but amazingly 12.1 miles away even though I had no idea what I was looking at except it was somewhere in Asia that used a lot of English in their signage.

I don’t have a lot of room in my schedule for daily games, but I would like to dip into this one now and again.

SKS: Hello California Local Produce

This is a fun card, and the second in a row with the word “hello.”

Sara reports that she just opened my Christmas present and loved it. She correctly observed that I probably will know this by the time I get the postcard because she sent me a Marco Polo of her opening it.

She’s also still recovering from the flu, which she caught as she came home from Coeur d’Alene.

American Son at Twilight Theater Company

Matt and I bought tickets for our first outing to the Twilight Theater Company. That’s our neighborhood theater; it’s an 11 minute walk.

Jeri Haile was great as Kendra Ellis-Connor. She is apparently new to Portland. I look forward to seeing her in more things.

The play gave us a lot to talk about on the walk home. It was a good evening at the theater.

Matt Has Attended 500 Classes

Matt came home with an exciting prize from his gym:

We took the official picture and then both realized, “Wait. It’s been way more than 500 classes that he has attended at MeFitness.”

We concluded that he had attended 500 classes since the switch of the scheduling system. Well done, Matt, for attending 500 classes beginning from a random point in time.

SKS: Just Saying Hello

Sara added some stickers to this postcard. It made for a fun presentation. Fun fact: I have a duplicate of this postcard (sans stickers) displayed on my wall. You can see it in this post.

The Spokane postmark tells me that this came from Coeur d’Alene. Sara reports that they are doing some cleaning and organizing and that she found some Christmas stamps back from when stamps were 37 cents. She put two on my postcard.

Two Terns at a Bike Rack

I was at Kaiser getting some imaging done, and had fun comparing and contrasting my Tern bike to the one already parked.

I observed that the other bike did not have the folding handlebar mechanism and that the light was down on the front fender rather than on the handlebar.

I also checked out the locking method. I use three: a front-wheel lock, a U-lock and cable, and a U-lock on the back wheel that also holds my helmet.

The other bike used wo U-locks and two cables. It looked like it worked well and was fast to set up.