Books are rated on a 1-10 scale,
with 8.5 and above being a book
that I solidly recommend.
To start off 2026, I've been on a 4-week Instagram fast. Hopefully I can keep going strong in this new year, because I can tell it has made a difference in my focus, my ability to be present, and it has INCREASED MY AVAILABLE READING TIME. This is a note to my future self from my present (in every sense) self. -Bec, Jan 6, 2026
55. The Rural Life (2026.10.18)
By: Verlyn Klinkenborg
Pages: 213
Published: 2003
Genre: Nonfiction / nature / essays /gardening
Bex rating: 8.5
I really enjoyed this collection of essays, shared in month-order. It was like living an entire year of gardening and housekeeping and holidays. Some great snippets below:
Many seeds require a period of cold, called a stratification, before they’ll germinate. Thanks to this storm, residence of the northeast can consider themselves properly stratified. (8)
In America we’ve learned to locate the meaning of rural life in the past, thereby dismissing it. (22)
I have no illusions of obtaining self-sufficiency. The only sufficiency I want is sufficiency of connectedness, the feeling that horses, pigs, bees, pasture, garden, and woods intertwine. (47)
Memorial day is the porch before the house of Summer, (66)
I understood for the first time that there’s such a thing as defensive gardening, that planting corn and tomatoes and onions is also a way of forestalling the spread of unwanted species. If you don’t plant, the Earth will bear anyhow. (122)
We should stick with our lift tomato cages or till ground for next year’s garlic. Instead we’ll sit in the autumn sunshine and enjoy being bone tired, harvesting our fatigue. (168)
A garden is so full of cheap sermons. (172)
There’s something static about a new house, something terminal. (186)
Overtime Thanksgiving has become the holiday that defines the spare season. By the end of the 11th month, the year is ancient enough to have shown us its wisdom. We know what to be grateful for by now, our gratitude is simply beyond us. (195)
54. The Gate of
the Feral Gods: DCC Book 4
By: Matt
Dinniman
🎧
Narrated by: Jeff Hays
Audiobook
Length: 18:03
Published: 2021
Genre: fantasy
/ science fiction / LitRPG
Bex rating: 9 (super crude language and video game violence)
53. Yes Please
(2026.10.12)
By: Amy Poehler
Pages: 329
Published: 2014
Genre:
nonfiction / memoir / humor
Bex rating: 7.5 (this book would be a 9 except it was way too crude)
Favorite excerpts:
So here we go, you and me. Because what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready. This is America and I am allowed to have healthy self-esteem. This book comes straight from my feisty and freckled fingers. Know it was a battle. Blood was shed. A war raged between my jokey and protective brain and my squishy and tender heart. (xv)
I love saying "yes" and I love saying "please." Saying "yes" doesn't mean I don't know how to say no, and saying "please" doesn't mean I am waiting for permission. "Yes please" sounds powerful and concise. It's a response and a request. It is not about being a good girl; it is about being a real woman. It's also a title I can tell my kids. I like when they say "Yes please" because most people are rude and nice manners are the secret keys to the universe. (xix)
You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don't deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice. But it doesn't sound like you. It sounds like a strangled and seductive version of you.
Think Darth Vader or an angry Lauren Bacall. The good news is there are ways to make it stop talking. The bad news is it never goes away. If you are lucky , you can live a life where the demon is generally forgotten, relegated to a back shelf in a closet next to your old field hockey equipment. You may even have days or years when you think the demon is gone. But it is not. It is sitting very quietly, waiting for you.
This mofo is patient.
It says, "Take your time."
It says, "Go fall in love and exercise and surround yourself with people who make you feel beautiful."
It says, "Don't worry, I'll wait."
And then one day, you go through a breakup or you can't lose your baby weight or you look at your reflection in a soup spoon and that slimy bugger is back. It moves its sour mouth up to your ear and reminds you that you are fat and ugly and don't deserve love.
This demon is some Stephen King from-the-sewer devil-level shiz. (16)
Your brain is not your friend when you need to apologize. Your brain and your ego and your intellect all remind you of the "facts." I kept telling myself that the only thing I was guilty of was not paying attention. Sure, I was being self-absorbed and insensitive, but who isn't? Sure, I should have been more on top of what I was saying, but wasn't that somebody else's job? Didn't everyone know how busy I was? Didn't Marianne and Chris take into consideration what a NICE PERSON I was? My brain shouted these things loud and clear. My heart quietly told a different story.
Shame is difficult. It's a weapon and a signal. It can paralyze or motivate. My friend Louis CK likes to say that "guilt is an intersection." Getting out of it means making a choice and moving forward. (71)
I UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE READ SO MANY BOOKS ON DIVORCE. When you are a person going through a divorce you feel incredibly alone, yet you are constantly reminded by society of how frequently divorce happens and how common it has become. You aren't allowed to feel special, but no one understands the specific ways you are in pain. Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air. The process of divorce is about loading up that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands. It's no wonder we want to find answers and comfort. (87)
Fighting aging is like they were on drugs. It’s expensive, does more harm than good, and has been proven to never end. (98)
There is an unspoken pact that women are supposed to follow.
I am supposed to act like I constantly feel guilty about being away from my kids. (I don't. I love my job.) Mothers who stay at home are supposed to pretend they are bored and wish they were doing more corporate things. (They don't. They love their job.) If we all stick to the plan there will be less blood in the streets. (151)
I guess the Buddhists would call this idea healthy detachment.
Too often we are told to visualize what we want and cut out pictures of it and repeat it like a mantra over and over again. Books and magazines tell us to create vision boards. Late-night commercials remind us that "anything is possible." Positive affirmations are written on our tea bags. I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it. Treat your career like a bad boyfriend.
Here's the thing. Your career won't take care of you. It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget your birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much..,
Your career will never marry you.
Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes When you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going" That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug. If you are even a little bit nice to her she will make you feel great and may you cook you delicious food. (223)
My phone is trying to kill me. It is a battery-charged rectangle of disappointment and possibility. It is a technological pacifier. I keep it beside me to make me feel less alone, unless I feel like making myself feel lonely. It can make me feel connected and unloved, ugly and important, sad and vindicated. So what do we do? Well first, we go back to the Dalai Lama. He says, "I think technology has really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion" Man, that's good. That's why he's the Big Lama. (324)
