|
|
||
 Year of Yes – 154
My goal for May was to get real ids and to figure out what to do about painting the house. We went to the DMV today and hopefully the real ids are on the way. And I signed a contract for painters who will start mid-July. My goal for June is to set myself no new goals. I need a break so I am taking one. Let’s see if I can manage to pull it off. Yes to getting things done and yes to not setting new goals. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 153
Little boy was bored this weekend and created a project for himself. He thought of the project, researched it, built prototypes and then executed on it. It was pretty awesome to see. It also reminded me that it’s fun to get lost in a new project for a while. Fun to jump with both feet in. Yes to fun, yes to creative ideas, yes to jumping in! #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes  Year of Yes – 152 So much of life is the stories we tell ourselves. There are so few “facts” and we spend all our time weaving stories out of those facts, trying to make them make sense. Except that none of the stories are true. Because by definition they are stories. We rarely even know why we did something we did let alone why someone else did or didn’t do something. So once you put it all together, there’s more story than facts in the picture. All this is to say if I’m writing stories anyway, I might as well write stories that make me happy. Stories that empower me and make me the best version of myself. Because whatever you think, you’re right. Yes to making up more positive stories. Yes to looking for the good. #yearofyes #karenikayearofyes
““The reason they’re morons is they spend years, decades, hell, their whole lives regretting or apologizing for things nobody else even remembers. They carry those things around like bags of sand that keep them from going to all the places they could’ve gone and would’ve gone if they hadn’t been so busy thinking about the goddamn sand.” This is a unique book. The blurb mentions “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Breakfast Club” and in fairness, I do see elements of both of them though thinking about either of them too much might take away from enjoying this book itself. I read the whole book in a single sitting. I loved the way it was diary entries mixed with dialogue and narration. “Soldier didn’t need to show me all the time that he loved me. He knew it and I knew it and that’s that. What he was doing was giving me a safe place to put my own love. It’s like he was saying, I’m never going to leave you. I’ll wait for you. I want you to know that I’ll always wait for you, that it’s safe to love me, that you have a place to put all the feelings you can’t give to anybody else because it’s too dangerous, because you’re worried they won’t understand, and they won’t wait for you. I’m here. I love you. And I will wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.” I loved each of the characters and I loved their unique perspective of life and why they had decided to be where they were and what they were grappling with. I loved that most of them seemed real to me and I loved how they were thrown together and the one thing they had in common was enough to bind them. “And if you’re wondering why no always trumps yes, it’s because when you’re married it takes two to say yes but only one to say no. Besides, there’s no risk in saying no. No means everything stays the same, you’re in control, and you don’t feel like you’ve lost out on anything.” This is a great story with some profound insight about life, how painful it can be and what it means to respect each others’ choices and what it means to love each other (and ourselves) just the way we are, with pain and all. with gratitude to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
3.5 stars This book was an unexpected surprise. It starts out as a light, funny read and then evolves into something touching and lovely. It’s about Wren who finds out that her childhood (and still) best friend has died. She is asked to clean his apartment and has to deal with all the people who are circling his friend’s belongings. She’s finding out all the things she didn’t know about her friend and finding out some things about herself in the process.
This is a real and touching story about a well-loved Shakespeare teacher a Columbia who gets early onset Alzheimers. It’s also a story about a complicated family with ex-wives and step-children and abandonment and love and belonging. It’s also a love letter to New York City and its people. I’ve lived in New York for all of my twenties and the characters in this story jump off the paper and are real and textured. They try, they fail, and they try again. They let each other down, they love each other fiercely. They take care of each other. They stand by each other. They show up for each other. Each character in this book is unique and familiar and it’s not possible not to fall in love with them. with gratitude to netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is definitely not Weiner’s typical type of book. It’s not light and a beach read. Which is totally fine but I do wish they would change the covers so it doesn’t look like it’s a light and breezy book. I wasn’t expecting the plot to be what it was and while I did like the book, I would have liked to know what I was getting into.
3.5 stars. Somehow this book ended up being different than what I thought it was going to be. It was a lot longer than I thought it needed to be and it was serious with a lot of serious subject matter and yet a romance, sort of, maybe in between genres? I did like it but I somehow didn’t love it. I sort of knew where it was going and lost patience in the middle when it took way too long to get there.
I loved this book. It reminded me of “Plainsong” which was my favorite read from two years ago. I was quiet and sad and also beautiful. Even though it was a “mystery” there wasn’t much mystery to most of the story. It was character driven and each of the characters was textured and layered and i loved them each a little bit. 
I decided I would marry Martin one day because I believed that someone who would spare you from having to watch the world take its course had to be the right person. It took me forever to read this book. I started it and then there were so many characters that I just couldn’t get into it. They were each interesting but none of them were interesting enough to keep my attention for some reason. Maybe because I was distracted and my attention kept wavering. “No, Selma, I mean as a couple,” my mother had insisted. “I mean have you thought of being a couple with the optician?” Selma had looked at my mother as if she were a cocker spaniel and said, “But I already had my couple.” But I wasn’t willing to give up on it. I put it down and then picked it back up many, many times. I grew frustrated with myself. I grew frustrated with the book. Why couldn’t i just read it and enjoy it? He loved Alaska. My father saw him only rarely, which made love much simpler, because those who are absent can’t misbehave. Each of the characters had their own story and then slowly they started intertwining. And slowly I found myself falling in love with each of the quirky characters. Enough that I didn’t want to let them go. “Hello, Luisa,” Frederik said, and because it was so obvious, he understood right away that I didn’t have an opening sentence. In the blink of an eye, he took over and simply pretended he had called me. And the story enveloped me into a lovely cocoon. I was transported into their town, into their lives. I cared about their stories, their pain, their joys. The author had slowly managed to make me fall in love with each of them. You can live for years with a gnawing question, you can let it hollow you out, and then have it disappear in a flash, in a single moment of waking with a start. My mother left my father; the fact that he had left her already some time before didn’t change a thing. My mother was in a different time zone and so, from her point of view, she had left him first. The characters in this story are real. They are quirky and they are real. They have real pain, dreams, joys, and they care about each other deeply. The writing is exquisite. This story has incredible heart. It’s the closest I’ve seen a writer get to Fredrick Backman. So I’m going to tell you now: When the time comes, when the question arises and you can’t find an answer right away, then remember that you made your grandmother and me very happy, you brought us enough happiness for an entire life from beginning to end. The older I get, the more I believe that the two of us were only invented for you. And if there ever was a good reason to be invented, then it’s you. In the end, I loved this book so much. I do wish there was a way for the beginning to be a little less slow but alas it takes time to fall in love with people, even in books. with gratitude to netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. |
|
|
|
Copyright © 2026 karenika - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||
