Between Mouth & Mind

2021 was by far the year that I finished* more books than ever before in a year. I am self-imposing that asterisk on 'finished' rather than using the word 'read' in that sentence. In 2021 I finished 75 books (not counting children's books). However 2021 was the year of the audiobook for me. I may have listened to one or two audiobooks in the past, but this past year I cut a lot of the podcasts out that I had been listening to, and turned to audiobooks. I enjoy the audiobook format, but as someone who previously really only liked reading physical books, something about it doesn't seem like reading. Probably because it's not reading, it's listening.  I suppose I could go back and tally how many books I read versus listened to, but I might not remember on some of them. In any event, I really enjoyed finishing  a crapload of books last year. Incorporating audiobooks really helped me pad my stats. In October, I started a new job in Philly. For my commute, I d...

Once upon a time, I used to write blogs on a regular basis. It was a fun (and free) hobby that allowed me to continue my creative outlet of writing. Over the span of somewhere between 10-15 years, I wrote about 700 blog entries on this page. I don't know why I stopped, but hopefully this is the restart.  When I finished grad school in 2006, I moved from Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama for my first full-time job. I started sending some long emails to family and friends as a way to stay in touch, and eventually transitioned from those emails (from my Hotmail account, which I still use thank you very much) to this blog, which may be an underused and outdated platform, but hey, you're reading right now, aren't you??? Anyway, writing is something I enjoy doing and need to reconnect with. My undergrad major was Journalism. Despite never working a day in my life as a journalist, I felt that writing a blog helped me keep that skill somewhat sharp. And over the last few years, I jus...

2015 has not been a great reading year for me. For a long time, I have said that I need to get back into it, and still I am struggling. Maybe I needed a down year, and I'll kill it in 2016. Regardless, I read a book this summer that changed my life, called  The Rhythm of Life . This book was a gift from a friend, but had sat on a shelf for probably 6 or 7 months before I picked it up. Why did I start reading it when I did? I'm not sure, but it was  EXACTLY  what I needed to be reading at that point in my life. Funny how things work sometimes. I've referenced the book on here a few times, and was recently talking to a student about it. I'm going to lend it to a student, but before I did, I went to browse it and type up some of the things I highlighted in the book, and then decided to share that in a blog. This book is full of color now, thanks to the alternating pink and green highlighting I did while reading. Worth noting that the book is over 300 pages long, and th...