Greetings from the lab, where I am sitting bright and early, waiting to be stuck with a needle for some routine bloodwork. This week has felt endless, rows and rows of hoops all lined up awaiting my leap. Some are smooth. Others I tumble over clumsily before belly-flopping out the other side with a smack. But there are people here around me with much bigger problems. Perspective is everything.
I’ve heard from a few folks about the list of books that I posted last week. More than one asked how I read so much. Honestly, much of it is time I had spent scrolling the news, which it turns out was…a lot. Anyway, this week, I read The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (fantastic) as well another book by Jennifer Haigh, Heat and Light. (I have only recently discovered Haigh and am now racing through her backlist. I love finding an author with several titles out!) Now I am onto the The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits, the latest release from Jennifer Weiner, which I have been hoarding as treat for myself. Jenn is one of my Always Buy, Always Read writers. I’m loving this one so far.
This week my daughter took the AP Chemistry test. She was so super stressed. I took Chemistry in high school and remember exactly nothing (sorry, Ms. Jones!). This is not the advice someone studying madly wants to hear, as it turns out. But what do you say about how life will look like in 30 or 40 years to someone just starting it all? In the end, it will be a story she tells, drawn like a card from a deck full of them. So I don’t remember a single equation. But I can still see my lab partner as she told me how my then-broken heart would heal, because she’d been dumped too and survived it. Then she did the experiments for both of us. Thanks, Hannah B., wherever you are.
And now, an appreciation for Adam Scott. Before we started Severance about a week ago, I knew him mainly from Parks and Recreation, which is one of my favorite shows. (He was also in Party Down, a hidden gem worth checking out.) His role on Severance is SO different, intense, with the camera following so closely you feel like you’re breathing along with him. Normally science-y futuristic shows aren’t my thing (see the use of the term science-y, not even a word) but this one has me riveted. Although when it freaks me out, this is a nice break:
If you haven’t experienced the joy that is Ben Wyatt, you must. The end.
It’s now been hours since I began this Five. I’ve been to Trader Joe’s (insane, it’s graduation weekend here) the library, a second grocery store and then to get gas. Now I am at home, on the couch, with a dog on either side of me. Chloe chewed her hammer toy energetically for a while (we make endless jokes about her hammering in the morning, a truly dated reference) before collapsing against my leg with a sigh. Now she’s snoring. A good lesson. The world won’t stop these days. But sometimes, you have to.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
To those wondering how some of us read so much, I'd like to remind you that it doesn't matter how much or how little as long as you are reading. It also doesn't matter if you read physical books or ebooks or listen to audiobooks, as long as you are consuming books. Whether you read a book a day or a book a year, we are all readers. 💕
My tenth grade chem teacher scared us. He thought we were silly and stupid. We were too scared to ask him which chemicals we were allowed to put down the drain. Luckily we didn’t accidentally blow up the lab. But we probably messed up the drains. This was 1978 so we couldn’t google it!!!