Hey friends and other human beings! This week, I am back with another edition of Five Things Friday. This is a list of five things that have been buzzing around in my head this week — be they podcasts, books, news articles, hobbies, games, whatever. This week, I talk about reading strategies, my newest favorite song and the war in Gaza and Israel.
Without further ado, here are five things for this Friday:
1. One book at a time or many?
How many books do you read at a time? This year, I set an ambitious goal to read 23 books in 2023 (I’m quite behind at the moment). I’ve been trying a lot of strategies to accomplish that goal which I may share in a blog post. At one point, I was reading just based on whatever I was most interested in reading based on my mood. So I was reading, with some regularity, at least four books at the time.
I felt like it was working but only minimally. Feeling engaged is really essential to enjoying the act of reading, otherwise it can feel like a chore. So I did feel like going with my mood and reading a number of things was freeing to a certain degree.
But of course, a friend came along to challenge this tactic. “How can you keep up with so many books?” he asked. Truthfully, the answer is, “Not very well.” My shelves are full of half-read books I’ve been picking up and putting down for years that I look at longingly and think, “Someday, I’ll finish it.”
It was a point of good self-reflection. For the next three to four weeks, I set myself to reading and finishing just the one book. It was a bear of a book — “The Path to Power” — an exhaustive 900-page biography of just the first 30-ish years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s life.
When I committed to reading just the one book, logically, I was able to finish it a lot more efficiently. It also removed some of the friction of deciding what I was in the mood to read. On the con side, it did feel a little confining; no matter my mood, I stuck with the same dry history book.
Right now, I’ve shifted to reading just two books: one fiction and one non-fiction. I’ve found that however broad my reading moods may swing, I tend to circulate around two main types of books; one that's serious and one that's fund. Also I can’t do serious reading before bed. So I’m doing more heady, nonfiction reading during the day, and then I read my escapist, fiction work before bed (”Children of Dune” by Frank Herbert right now).
So I’m curious: Do you read just one book, a couple books or multiple books at a time?
2. Formerly known as Twitter
The phrase keeps popping up in the news, though it’s tapered off recently. I get it. We want people to know what the heck we’re talk about. We can’t just switch straight to “This was posted on X” without people acclimating.
It seems to me, though, that if you have to say, “formerly known as Twitter,” then it’s not really “formerly known as.” It’s still known as Twitter! It’s just some billionaire who wants people to call it something else, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually known that way.
And it’s not just a stubborn refusal to change with the times on my part. In the first days of the change, commentators described how any company would kill for the kind of brand recognition and brand association Twitter has. I mean tweeting literally became its own dictionary entry! Lots of products have become synonymous with the brands that produce them — think Kleenex, Coke, Pyrex. But it takes something unique to become your own verb.
All that to say, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. The “X” branding is clunky, awkward and seems vaguely adult-themed, as opposed to the playful, inviting and light branding of the bird app in its glory days. I don’t know that I’ll ever call it anything besides Twitter. I’ll be curious to see if anyone else does.
3. Israel-Hamas war
I don’t really have the words for how heartbreaking the conflict is. After visiting Israel and Palestine in 2012, and the more time I’ve spent learning about the longstanding conflict, the more complex and impossible it has become to understand, let alone have ideas for a solution.
I do think the bottom line is this: There are three of the world’s largest religions that believe the territory is some of the most holy land in the world and two of them are willing to do anything to hold onto it (though the third one — Christianity — has done their part in the past and present).
I can only pass on two books I believe gave me greater understanding of the depths and complexities of the conflict.
First, “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” by Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is a former Catholic religious sister who writes on the history and commonalities among world religions. This book is an in-depth exploration of the religious history of Jerusalem and its holy land, even before Judaism came to be.
Second, “The Lemon Tree” by Sandy Tolan. “The Lemon Tree” focuses more on the modern history of the land and wraps it in the story of two families. One is Palestinian, who is forced to their home. The second is a Jewish family, who comes to live in the home abandoned by the Palestinian family. The children of the two families connect and discovery their shared history with the home.
4. Song of the week: Medication by the Collection
I knew as soon as one of my favorite bands started teasing their new song that it would haunt me — in ways both scary and healing. Still, I wasn’t prepared for how searingly true it would ring.
Over the years, I’ve had a few people say some variation of, “I just don’t understand being depressed.” They’ve said it as though they can’t comprehend how a person could feel that way, or understand what could make a person be depressed.
Well, this is what it feels like. It feels like stepping out of your happy-go-lucky self and getting stuck in some other ghastly existence and staying stuck there. It feels like having to tell yourself over and over again you can be well, even if you can’t believe it. It feels like taking just a couple steps, and calling that hope.
It feels like being scared of the things that can make you well.
So I don’t know exactly how to make someone understand how it happens, but this certainly helps.
Despite being such a heavy topic, the song is beautiful done and a very fun song. I definitely recommend listening, even if you can’t relate at all to things like depression. It’s the first half of the song that really gets me:
I was scared of what it meant
If I needed medicine
Just to feel like me again and keep my demons in, every now and then
Cuz I remember when I thrived
Now I’m just trying to survive
It’s like I tripped and took a dive into another life that doesn’t feel like mine
But now I'm tired of sitting
Aimless and drifting
Trying to turn off the lights
And only taking off my clothes far from the windows, keeping away from your sight
So now I'm dropping the weight of the Earth
Just long enough to give me a rebirth
'uz I deserve to be well
Yeah, I deserve to be well
And maybe I do not have enough strength For more than a couple of steps in a day But I deserve to be well Yeah, I deserve to be well I'm climbing up outta this hell
5. Quote of the week
No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it. - Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist
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