Category Archives: read

Read With Me : The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

by Sarah | Leave a comment

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

Hey, hey, back with another Read With Me post. If you remember from A Year in Readview, I mentioned Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, was on my list. My Pop actually gifted me this book for Christmas, which we finally celebrated two weekends ago.  Once I opened The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I finished it in two days.

Funny, well-written, and easy to read, this book gives some great advice and introduces a few new give fewer fucks concepts that are surprisingly easy to digest. I was surprised at how counter-intuitive some of the advice seemed to me, but sure enough, by the end of the page, Mark had me nodding along in agreement. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck provides concise, rational arguments for caring a little less. I will certainly be incorporating some of Mark’s tidbits into my meditation practices and classes.

You’ll Enjoy Reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck If :

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Read With Me : The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

by Sarah | 3 Comments

Want to know something neat? Each time you click through to Amazon from our website, we are kicked back a few cents from each purchase with no extra cost to you. If you ever feel like going wild on Amazon, click through from our site and you’ll be supporting us at the same time! Thanks, yo.

A couple weeks ago, a cool cat gifted me The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book is freaking stellar, interstellar? Should we talk about McConaughey movies all day? No. Books! Although there was a movie made about this book. I haven’t watched it and the ratings look pretty low, so admittedly I not going to.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adam’s and is actually a trilogy (which ended up turning into quintet), which sold more than a million copies in his lifetime. It’s science fiction doused in humor that is suspense driven – so totally quick, easy, and hilarious to read.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminded me of works by Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut. Here’s the set of Hitchhiker books and a list of books similar to Hitchhiker’s Guide if you’ve already read it.

 

You’ll Enjoy Reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy If :

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Read With Me : The Nature Fix

by Sarah | Leave a comment

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If you dislike reading, tune out now because this is the third post about books in two weeks. #Nerdalert OR get into it man! Now’s the time. Okay, I’ll shut up. Last week I touched on the positives of reading and clued you in on the books I was reading. You can see them all on our sidebar to the right and just FYI anything that you buy from Amazon by clicking through from our website kicks back a few cents to us at no additional cost to you. Pretty cool, huh?

I mentioned in my Year in Readview post that I was working on The Nature Fix : Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative – a neuroscience read but written by a journalist, not a scientist, so equal parts informative and entertaining. That sounded like a dig on scientists, it wasn’t, but geez their books can be a little heavy and hard to get through. Once I really focused on reading this book, I flew through it in three days.

Florence Williams does an excellent job of setting the scene for each city, park, and wilderness space she spends time in. She also lays out the scientific process and experiments as well as potential knowledge gaps in an understandable and often comedic manner. It’s easy to process without being bogged down by too many details and yet she’s not just skimming over the science stuff. She’s not skimming at all actually, this entire book focuses on our mental and physical health and yet it doesn’t read like a textbook. Ahem. You can also tell that Florence is doing her due diligence to not just feed you the success stories. She’s honest and she mentions the less than perfect results of some studies, again I point to the background in journalism. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I was learning something page after page, positives about spending time in nature that I could share with my Schu Tours adventure groups and friends alike.

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2017 : A Year in Readview

by Sarah | Leave a comment

A year in Readview, get it? Of course you do. I’m so clever and it’s absolutely because of the books I read this year. I’m always asking other peeps what they’re reading and so I figured I should share my booklist from this past year as well. Below are most of the books I read in 2017 and a few I listened to. Unfortunately, I usually give away my books after i finish them and I am quite forgetful so there are bound to be a few books I’ve left off the list. Oops.

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Teachable Moments : Beach Reads

by Katie | Leave a comment

Teachable Moments is a relatively new series on the blog, you can find the archive here. You can learn more about Saxis in this selection of posts, and here are more beach book recommendations for adults and kids. If you’d like to see our favorite sun gear for toddlers, click here.

beach time = reading time. #amiright

When we start planning for our time at the beach, my mind immediately turns to the books I’ll read. Hours sitting on the beach provide the uninterrupted reading time that we just don’t seem to find elsewhere in life. Wait, if you’re a parent reading this, that statement is laughable. Who sits still on the beach with two kids? And to that, I say, touché. That’s when you teach your kids about the joys of the beach nap.

But in all seriousness, as the boys have grown, I’ve started to think more intentionally about their beach reads. These boys love a good adventure, and when we’re traveling I find that they fully immerse themselves in the new environment. They aren’t sitting around thinking about Colorado and the mountains; instead, they’re exploring!  And what better way could there be to teach them about the place they’re visiting, and the animals and people that live there, than to read books?

I’ve made an effort over the years to stock the beach house with good ocean and bay-related books for the kids. It’s nice to have these books there rather than at home because the stories really come alive when they’re reading about animals that they just saw on the beach and in the marsh. And I know that they can relate to crabbing and fishing adventures when they’ve just spent the afternoon on Poppop’s boat putting bait in the crab pots and casting out their finishing lines.

Below is a list of our current favorites (for reference, the boys are 2 and 4). Admittedly, I’m particularly smitten with books written and illustrated by local artists, so you’ll see quite a few on the list. They add an intimate feel in their descriptions of the place that could never be achieved in a generic book about ocean/beach life.

live seasoned beach reads

The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library

I know opinions can vary when it comes to Dr. Seuss. The wording can be awkward and leave you tongue-tied, which is not the best for reading aloud. But it rhymes, and I’m a sucker for a good rhyming text, especially one that’s educational.  Each book flows really well after one or two readings.

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Beach Reads : Beautiful Swimmers

by Katie | Leave a comment

Teachable Moments is a relatively new series on the blog, you can find the archive here. And you can learn more about Saxis in this selection of posts. And if you’d like to see our favorite sun gear for toddlers, click here.

We just bought the tickets for our big annual trip to the East Coast. We’re so lucky to be able to take this big chunk of time and spend it visiting family both in PA and VA. In addition to that quality time, what I really love is being able to expose the boys to activities and ideas that they may not have at home in Colorado. Isn’t that what traveling’s all about?

Many of our days are spent at the beach, but that’s just a snippet of how the boys spend their time on the island.

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Whenever Poppop’s in town, they spend many quality hours on the boat. There are one to two trips a day to check the crab pots in the bay. Sometimes they stay out longer doing a bit of fishing or line-crabbing, but our primary prey is the blue crab. Their scientific name is Callinectes sapidus, and it has the most perfect meaning : calli = beautiful, nectes = swimmer, and sapidus = savory!

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Summer Reading!

by Katie | Leave a comment

Did you have a fun weekend? Sarah and I had a blast, albeit, doing very different things in different parts of the country. Her weekend started with a celebration of her birthday, complete with an adventure with Ca$h that deserves to be shared. My weekend involved our first every family road bike ride up the mountain to Maroon Bells.

Today we’re taking it easy and planning for the week ahead. One thing we’re thinking about is Friday’s post. Rather than our semi-regular links post this Friday, we’re going to discuss our first summer read, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood.

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Did you have a chance to read it yet? Sarah and I both loved the book, definitely not because it was a fairytale, but because of its amazing power to transport us to a time, place, and situation that we’ve never experienced.

If you haven’t read it, we strongly encourage you to pick up a copy and join us on Friday. The Kindle version is under $8.00, and totally worth it.

If you have or are reading the book, here are some discussion questions that we came across and thought would make for an interesting discussion:

  • Given their dangerous surroundings in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia and a long streak of what young Bobo describes as “bad, bad luck,” why do you think the Fuller family remains in Africa?
  • What do you think of Fuller’s mother and father? How would you describe them? Do you think they were good parents?
  • Animals are ever present in the book. How do the Fullers view their domesticated animals, as compared to the wild creatures that populate their world?
  • Consider Fuller’s interactions with black Africans, including her nanny in Rhodesia and the children she plays “boss and boys” with, as well as with Cephas the tracker and, later, the first black African to invite her into his home. Over the course of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, how does the narrator change and grow?
  • By the end of the narrative, how do you think the author feels about Africa? Has the book changed your own perceptions about this part of the world?
  • The back cover calls the book “unsentimental and unflinching”. This is especially true of her description of the racial attitudes of white settlers: she does not apologize for them nor explains them away, but neither does she justify or excuse them. Do you find this this unsettling or do you appreciate the honesty. How do you react to this choice?

We hope you’ll join us on Friday! And until then, we have some good stuff planned for this week.