That Whole 30 Update I promised. Whoops!

I had originally reviewed It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole 30 and Change your Life in Unexpected Ways by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, back in December 2015 (you can find the original review here). My plan was to start the Whole 30 January 1 and then post an update on how it went. So first of all, sorry that this update is late. I totally forgot I was going to do this.

Looking back 60 days after finishing the Whole 30, it doesn't seem so bad. The time did go pretty quickly, (I actually started Whole 30 on January 2 in order to observe our Italian family tradition of making ravioli and drinking wine on January 1).

What was easier than I expected: black coffee. It's bitter, but it really wasn't that bad. I immediately went back to having doctored coffee afterwards.Kicking the sugar habit. It was actually kind of nice knowing I couldn't have ANY of that stuff and it made it easier to avoid things I KNEW had sugar in it. That said, avoiding items with sugar in it was almost impossible. Breakfast sausage? Sugar. Packaged Tuna? Sugar. Lunch meat? Sugar. It was extremely frustrating.

What was harder than I expected: snacking. It's difficult when you have an on the go kind of family like we do to make sure you have some things prepared ahead of time. If I needed a quick snack, I tried to grab fruit etc., but if I was on the road or out of the house, I'd try to find a Larabar or some nuts (not peanuts). It became kind of an odyssey on some day. The diet can be extremely restrictive sometimes and in rebellion my tastes veered toward having three Larabars in a row in revolt.

What was unexpected: I have an issue with dairy. I know this now because I had no dairy whatsoever for 30 days and the first day after having coffee with some milk in it, my entire plumbing system was not pleased. So I've switched to a plant based protein supplement for after my workouts.

Pleasant discoveries: Cauliflower makes an awesome rice substitute. I use my cuisinart to shred up the cauliflower and then just plop it in my wok with a bit of coconut oil. It gets all toasty and glistening. Very good stuff and my toddlers even like it. Larabars. I basically lived on these in a very bad way so now I remember them with the fondness an ex-smoker probably has for cigarettes, but they are very very good. Dried, unsweetened coconut. I don't know who looked at dried coconut and thought, I need to put some sugar in this, but that person is crazy. Coconut is so good without all the sugar added.

Unfortunately three days after finishing my Whole 30, I contracted a wicked stomach bug that kept me vomiting and in distress for about 24 hours. The good news is that I met my goal weight after the first day. The bad news was that I had to eat saltine crackers and ginger ale the entire time therefore wiping out all my Whole 30 lessons. It also messed up my usual food discipline so when I started eating normally again, I ate larger quantities than I used it.

I'm glad I proved to myself I could do the Whole 30, but I'm also not sure I'd do it again. I'm glad I learned that I have a bit of a dairy intolerance though. And I'm glad I'm more conscious of what has jaw dropping amounts of sugar in it.

The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare

"Shakespeare is timeless. He's classic. His words and messages resonate today." Well full stop. That must be said about other plays, because Taming of the Shrew does not hold up. Sorry Will. 

The title character, The Shrew, is Katherina. An older sister to sweet beautiful Bianca. Kat is quick witted and even quicker tongued. She fires back at would-be suitors and her family alike. She's actually quite funny and her dialogue is some of the best. But Kat has a problem. She has a younger sister who is itching to get into the dating game and a father who declares that Bianca may not date until Kat is wed. (Sound familiar? You're thinking of the 1999 movie with the amazing Heath Ledger, 10 Things I Hate About You - the story was based on Shrew and has a way way better message than the original work).

So Bianca's suitors, Hortensio and Gremio call up a friend Petruchio and convince him that Kat is a good find. She's got a sizeable dowry and.... Well that's all that Petruchio seems to really care about so he's in. 

Petruchio convinces Kat's father that they love each other, even as Kat yells that she cares nothing for the man. Then Petruchio shows up at their wedding dressed like a beggar and hastily whisks Kat away after the ceremony so she doesn't even get to go to the party portion of the wedding. Then he keeps her at home without sleep and food until, essentially, he "breaks" her. Nice huh?

Meanwhile, Lucentio, a young student from Padua has also fallen in love with Bianca. He trades places with his servant who poses and Lucentio and gets Bianca's father's agreement to wed Lucentio to Bianca. Lucentio, in disguise, poses as Bianca's grammar teacher, and she falls in love with him. The two marry in secret while Bianca's father is still hashing out the details with Lucentio's servant, posing as Lucentio. Oh great comedy ha ha.

I'm sure this all plays better on stage. In the end, Hortensio discovers he wants to marry someone else and the three couples, Petruchio/Kat, Lucention/Bianca, Hortensio/Widow all are together and Petruchio bets the other men that he can command his wife more ably then the others. He does. And Kat gives a rousing speech about how women are meant to be commanded by men. 

Ouch. 

I tried to give the story the benefit of the doubt and to understand it as people in the 1600s might have, but even with taking the other parts as pure sarcasm, the end speech by Kat leaves any stretch in that direction impossible. So, I'd much rather stick with the 1999 version in my brain rather than this outdated sexist comedy. Besides, Heath Ledger running around the stadium bleachers was hilarious. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julia Stiles and Gabrielle Union - How 90s was this movie?!



3/5 Stars. Because it's still Shakespeare.

Ploughshares - Winter 2015-2016

So after a month of reading Dune, it took me about 24 hours to completely devour my newest Ploughshares volume. So many great stories in this one, so I'll just hit some highlights.

Collectors by Joan Murray - a woman gets roped into an art selling scheme and realizes she's both been duped, and used as a prop to help dupe others. Best quote: "He was close to my age - in his late forties - which always seems older when it's someone else." 

Bajadas by Francisco Cantu - a really great look at new recruits who become border agents in the Southwest. Glimpses of banal cruelty and compassion alike.

Here I am Laughing with Boers by Laurie Baker - an American teacher working in South Africa at the end of apartheid grapples with being one step removed from cultural outrage while still benefiting from the position of privilege it affords her.

Ghost by Meng Jib - the story of an amputee who's missing limb seems to have a mind of its own. Haunting prose which is fitting given the title of the story. 

Always One More Way by Alison Wisdom - an excellent look at a soldier living with PTSD in the form of a very present dead friend.

Restitution by Jerry Whitus - a man who has been bullied his entire life takes his revenge. 

The poems I liked best in this one were Stutter by Adam Giennelli and Way Above Illinois by George Bilgere. 

I even really enjoyed the LookTwo Essay profiling Uruguayan author Felisberto Hernandez who's signature style seemed to be giving inanimate objects a point of view in his stories. While he takes some influence from Faulkner (who I really really have tried to like but don't), he definitely is a voice of his own.

Dune - Frank Herbert

This book took a supremely long time for me to read. It was challenging. Herbert's cadence is unique, and certainly the universe he creates is completely foreign. Typically with this type of book, it takes me about 100 pages to get familiar with the world and accept the normative structures relied upon by the author (see my review of A Crown for Cold Silver here). This did, in fact, occur for the most part while reading this book. However, afterwards, the sheer amount of information provided in each chapter was a bit overwhelming and I was unable to read large portions of the book without stopping. 

With that said, the story is rather epic. House Atreides has been granted a fiefdom over Arrakis, a stark and barren planet that is the sole producer of the universe's most valuable mineral, melange (spice). House Atreides is taking over the fiefdom from House Harkonnen, which has held reign over Arrakis for 70ish years. 

Duke Leto, his companion Jessica, and their son Paul arrive on Arrakis with their advisors in tow. Paul has been specially trained in combat, but also in mystical learning by his mother who was brought up under a teaching called Ben Gesserit. The Ben Gesserit have been focused on breeding a specific person through various bloodlines in the empire. Paul is the accidental culmination of this attempt. 

Well, as can be expected, the House losing control of the universe's most profitable and valuable substance is not too ready to leave and House Harkonnen attacks the Atreides with help from a treacherous insider - leaving Paul and Jessica wandering through the desert and Leto dead. 

However, the Harkonnens have underestimated Paul, Jessica, and, as it turns out, the entire population of native people living on Arrakis, the Fremen, who take in Paul and Jessica from the desert. Paul proves himself in combat and becomes a prophet as well as leader of the Fremen. His training have prepared him to create a master army out of the Fremen, who have been subjugated and harassed by the Harkonnens and are prime for revolution. 

Ultimately, I think there's a certain narrative distance with which the story is told that made it extremely enjoyable but also made it lacking in a certain development which would have improved upon the entire experience of reading this book. I'll be continuing the story at least through the fourth book, which I'm told is the last episode in the series that is worth reading. I'm interested to see what happens after this first book lets off because it certainly ends abruptly.

4/5 Stars.

Two for the Dough - Janet Evanovich

Here I was ten minutes from finishing my long run on Saturday and the book ends. No more distraction. And really, these books so far have been a wonderful distraction for me as I train for yet another half marathon. 

Two for the Dough begins where One for the Money left off (read my review here). Stephanie Plum is not quite such a novice bounty hunter, although she still has a lot of room to improve. She kind of bumbles around irritating criminals and police alike. Detective Joe Morelli is back and the chemistry between him and Stephanie has increased. It's fun to anticipate these two getting together. They fight, they flirt, he left her handcuffed to a shower curtain last time around, this time she leaves him pantless on the side of the road. You know, tit for tat with these two. 

Ranger makes a few small appearances. And Grandma Massur is back and doing ride alongs with Stephanie. I did miss some of the people I got used to being around in the first book, like her cousin's husband Eddy Gazarra, but LuLu is back and she's working with Stephanie now and keeping her in the books was a hugely wise move I think. She may have been a hooker in the first book, but now she's a file clerk for the bond agency and she's the only one there with street smarts. This all made much more sense to me because once upon a time a few years ago I read #15 in this series and while I don't think I needed to read all the previous books to understand the plot, reading these does have a lot more payoff with character development over such a long series). This book actually made me laugh out loud a couple of times and I found it funnier than the first, even if the plot didn't move quite as briskly. 

In this one, Stephanie is looking for Kenny Mancuso (I apologize for mispelling any names here, I don't know how they are spelled since I only listen to the audio books). Mancuso is Morelli's cousin and just happened to shoot his best friend in the knee cap. Stephanie wants to find him because it means basically a month's paycheck for one guy. As Morelli says, she does have a knack for running into her marks. She happens upon Kenny several times. 

The story weaves in some conspiracy with coffins and some missing guns. I can say that I put this one together pretty quickly so I felt a bit smarter than Stephanie in the end. So the mystery part of the story could be a little tighter. However, for a running distraction, this book was the perfect fit.

4/5 Stars.