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Sunday, April 24, 2022

Own Your Morning: Reset Your A.M. Routine To Unlock Your Potential


My mom sent me a link with information from Liz Baker Plosser's Own Your Morning: Reset Your A.M. Routine To Unlock Your Potential as a joke.  I've never liked getting up and have never, ever been a morning person.  But after reading through the article, I decided to pick the actual book up on my tablet (yay Google Play Books!) and give it a read.  I ended up choosing my tablet because a lot of the reviews said the book was structured like a magazine, so I thought it would be better to read there than on my Kindle.

Own Your Morning talks about ways to make your morning better for you.  The book is very aware that everyone's morning will be different because we all have different lives and personalities, which I really liked.  One of the early chapters was all about finding your (current) values, and trying to honour at least a few of them in your morning, which will set a better tone for you during the rest of the day.  From there, it examines various aspects you might want to include, such as exercise and meditation, and talks about some of the benefits of each of these.

Unfortunately, as the reviews that suggested Own Your Morning would be better on a tablet kind of suggested, the book is a little light on details.  While this makes it a very fun and easy read (which was great - I've been having trouble lately sitting down and reading stuff, so having a quick read was perfect for me right now), it does not go into depth on any of these topics.  So if you're looking for a fun overview of things, it's good. But if you were hoping for more depth, you might not be happy with Own Your Morning.

The other feature of the book that I really liked was the interviews with different women who talked about their morning routines.  While this really drove home the idea that everyone's morning is different, the interviews also gave some fun different ideas for what your morning can look like.  

All in all, I really enjoyed reading Own Your Morning.  I'm going to have to look at tweaking my own mornings, especially on work days.  Maybe incorporating some of the tips I learned here will really help me own my mornings, too.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Deep


 I've been wanting to read The Deep for awhile now, but finally sat down to read it a few nights ago.  It tells the story of a mermaid (Yetu) who, as the historian, holds all the memories of her people, of their trauma and how they came to be. While she is gifted, she is also extremely sensitive, and the memories are literally killing her. So when the time comes, as it does every year, to let her people remember, she decides to run and save herself, rather than take the memories back at the end of the ritual (and so die).  While she slowly regains herself and her sense of self away from the memories, she becomes increasingly aware that the memories are killing the rest of her people, and so needs to decide whether to live or to save them all.

I really enjoyed The Deep.  I loved the worldbuilding around where the merpeople came from (they are descended from pregnant African slaves who were thrown overboard - the idea is that in the womb, babies are not breathing air, so what if they were born of the sea and never needed to breathe air? A very interesting narrative that has roots in songs - this article talks a bit about it, as well as the idea that people would like a memorial along the Atlantic trade routes, which is definitely deserved considering how many people died along them)  And the idea of holding all the trauma from generations of your people (and it wasn't just the trauma, it was their actual memories) was really interesting - as historian, Yetu wasn't really living, she was living the lives and trauma of all the people who came before her.  

Definitely check it out if you have the chance (and are okay with reading fantasy)!