Hello, book-friends! It's been an unusually busy few weeks. The past couple of years, I've observed that January's been a crowded month at the yoga studio (lots of New Year's resolutioners) but a slow month for massages. This made sense to me; January's when we city-dwellers who live in the midst of great shopping meccas all look at our credit card bills from the holidays and gasp and choke and resolve to live more frugally, and culturally we still see massages as a luxury rather than part of a regular physical maintenance plan. Weirdly, though, this January's bucked the trend, at least for my private bookings. This seems to be the confluence of a number of factors - I sold some gift certificates in December, the weather's been so cold and I'm running a special on hot stone massages, a lot of folks who've been to my classes or heard about me through the yoga grapevine are finally taking the time to book something (probably from residual holiday stress, haha). I'm certainly not complaining - Brian and I are heading to Tucson next month for his brother's wedding, and house-hunting shortly thereafter, so we can definitely use the extra income! - but it's been surprising to me.
What I've just finished reading
Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah
I still feel like this book started about seven chapters too early - there just wasn't much that inspired me to invest emotionally in the present-day characters and their problems, so it was kind of a slog to get through. Once Anya gets going with her 'fairy tale', though...whoof. Her depiction of Stalinist Russia, and especially the Siege of Leningrad, is riveting - the hope and terror and small kindnesses and despair these people live through are all gut-wrenchingly immediate. Particularly effective was the way she tells the whole thing in present tense; we know how it shakes out because it's history to us, but to her it's her life, happening in the moment, and nobody knows the whole extent of it or when or how it will end. If there's one major complaint I have, it's that her tale outshines the framing story somewhat - there are a few moments where her interactions with her daughters feel superfluous, there only to give us a break from the difficulties of wartime Leningrad. But the author brings it all to a satisfying enough close, and at that point we're emotionally invested enough that the ending feels earned rather than pat. If nothing else, it definitely inspired me to read more about Russian history, so the experiment was a success on that front.
What I'm currently reading
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've been reading this in snatches, on my Kindle in between appointments or in line at the coffeeshop, so I'm still only a third through. In the way of fairytale heroines, Ella's having a rough time of things, but is still determined to make the best of them as well as to exercise her agency. I'm particularly entertained at the story's use of her finishing school experience - I'd expected this to turn into a schoolgirl tale, but we spend barely a couple of chapters there before Ella's enforced obedience to all the orders drives her up the wall (although neatly, in the interim, solving her issues with clumsiness). She's off to find the fairy who 'gifted' her with obedience and demand that the spell be rescinded, and I'm cheering her on, even though I suspect said fairy will have her own ideas on the matter.
Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes, by Mark Stephens. This book comes highly recommended by a lot of teachers I know, but I'm beginning to wonder if tackling it head-on was the wrong approach. After the introduction, it dumps you straight into...an entire chapter on yoga philosophy and metaphysical theory, including the five koshas (energetic bodies of consciousness) and the progression of a student's yoga practice in tapping into each of them. Which is, as y'all can probably guess, pretty much completely not my thing - I'm far more comfortable teaching to the paradigm of yoga-as-physical-practice than yoga-as-energetic/spiritual-quest. (Nothing against those who do, it's just not my experience.) Still, I'm looking at it like I did a lot of my college reading - the whole point of the endeavor is to expose myself to new ideas, and if it doesn't resonate with me I don't have to worry about retaining the knowledge past the test.
What I plan to read next
After reading Winter Garden, I remembered![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ivy's excellent review of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, so I picked that one up on Audible. I'm looking forward to listening to it!
What I've just finished reading
Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah
I still feel like this book started about seven chapters too early - there just wasn't much that inspired me to invest emotionally in the present-day characters and their problems, so it was kind of a slog to get through. Once Anya gets going with her 'fairy tale', though...whoof. Her depiction of Stalinist Russia, and especially the Siege of Leningrad, is riveting - the hope and terror and small kindnesses and despair these people live through are all gut-wrenchingly immediate. Particularly effective was the way she tells the whole thing in present tense; we know how it shakes out because it's history to us, but to her it's her life, happening in the moment, and nobody knows the whole extent of it or when or how it will end. If there's one major complaint I have, it's that her tale outshines the framing story somewhat - there are a few moments where her interactions with her daughters feel superfluous, there only to give us a break from the difficulties of wartime Leningrad. But the author brings it all to a satisfying enough close, and at that point we're emotionally invested enough that the ending feels earned rather than pat. If nothing else, it definitely inspired me to read more about Russian history, so the experiment was a success on that front.
What I'm currently reading
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've been reading this in snatches, on my Kindle in between appointments or in line at the coffeeshop, so I'm still only a third through. In the way of fairytale heroines, Ella's having a rough time of things, but is still determined to make the best of them as well as to exercise her agency. I'm particularly entertained at the story's use of her finishing school experience - I'd expected this to turn into a schoolgirl tale, but we spend barely a couple of chapters there before Ella's enforced obedience to all the orders drives her up the wall (although neatly, in the interim, solving her issues with clumsiness). She's off to find the fairy who 'gifted' her with obedience and demand that the spell be rescinded, and I'm cheering her on, even though I suspect said fairy will have her own ideas on the matter.
Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes, by Mark Stephens. This book comes highly recommended by a lot of teachers I know, but I'm beginning to wonder if tackling it head-on was the wrong approach. After the introduction, it dumps you straight into...an entire chapter on yoga philosophy and metaphysical theory, including the five koshas (energetic bodies of consciousness) and the progression of a student's yoga practice in tapping into each of them. Which is, as y'all can probably guess, pretty much completely not my thing - I'm far more comfortable teaching to the paradigm of yoga-as-physical-practice than yoga-as-energetic/spiritual-quest. (Nothing against those who do, it's just not my experience.) Still, I'm looking at it like I did a lot of my college reading - the whole point of the endeavor is to expose myself to new ideas, and if it doesn't resonate with me I don't have to worry about retaining the knowledge past the test.
What I plan to read next
After reading Winter Garden, I remembered
ivy's excellent review of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, so I picked that one up on Audible. I'm looking forward to listening to it!
