The Plaid Pladd Blog

2019 Goals Wrap Up

February 3rd, 2020 by pladd

I did surprisingly great on my goals for 2019! The key was aiming low. Or maybe just being realistic about what is doable (see: Steven thinking he could cook 214 recipes in one year)

1. Cookbooks Cook Through: 100%

On January 1, 2019, I went through all our cookbooks and marked the recipes I’d never made but wanted to. There were 71 in all, and I made them! My favorite was probably this cinnamon bread from Bread Toast Crumb. I love it so much:

The taste you can see!

This was a good goal in that it forced me to actually make some recipes I probably would have put off forever, and some of them became favorites! It also inspired me to prune my cookbook collection if I didn’t find many recipes to mark or the ones I tried weren’t great.

2. 50 States of Reading: 100%

See my previous post on all of the books. This was a fun goal that led me to some cool books (and some TERRIBLE ones), but my methodology for choosing the titles could have been better.

3. Read One Book a Month I Already Own: 100%

Here are the books I read and how I reviewed them on GoodReads:

January: A History of Histories by J.W. Burrow (2 stars: “This book needed more analysis and less summarizing.”)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

February: Uprooted by Naomi Novik (5 stars: “I read this in one day and literally screamed out loud at one point. This feels like the spiritual successor to Howl’s Moving Castle. Give me more books where practical, powerful women roll their eyes forever at drama-queen wizards, please.”)

March: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (4 stars: “This book fully lived up to the promise of its premise”)

April: The Saga of the Volsungs trans. by Jesse L. Byock (4 stars: “This would be a good thing for HBO to adapt after Game of Thrones is over”)

May: What If? by Randall Munroe (4 stars: “Really interesting and funny”)

June: The Epic of Gilgamesh trans. by Andrew George (3 stars: “Gilgamesh and Enkidu are just Excellent Friends who hold hands all the time”)

July: Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod trans. by M. L. West (3 stars: I literally wrote nothing lol)

August: The Histories by Herodotus trans. by Aubrey de Selincourt (3 stars: “I wish my edition had included a map”)

Agatha Hetrodyne and the Beetleburg Clank

September: Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank by Phil and Kaja Foglio (2 stars: “This is kind of a weird mess. The story seemed interesting, but our main character is just Cathy from the comic strip Cathy. The art style is annoying, ESPECIALLY when it came to female characters, and all of that was just too distracting for me to enjoy the mad science/steampunk plot that I would otherwise have gotten into.”)

October: Lysistrata by Aristophanes trans. by Douglas Parker (3 stars: “It’s hard to know how to rate this, because the work itself is interesting, but this particular translation is incredibly bizarre. It’s weird to have Ancient Greeks speaking in 1960s slang. I wish there had been more historical notes, too.”)

November: Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley and Roy Adkins (4 stars: “I didn’t realize this was a literal encyclopedia, but I still liked reading it all the way through. I learned a lot, and the diagrams and pictures were very helpful.”)

December: The Secret History by Procopius (2 stars: “I think the translator could have done a better job. Why were the currencies translated into “modern” (1960s) English pounds? This means just as little to me as whatever the original units were. Also some truly yikes-worthy passages about women in the Introduction.”)

Obviously a lot of these are Steven’s. I enjoyed this goal, and I want to keep reading books I already have on my bookshelves, although I don’t know how many Ancient Roman translations I can really read in a row. I learned from this that Steven owns way more books than I do.

4. Transcribe my Grandmother’s Diaries: 100%

I finished this back in October, and am now in the process of going back and rechecking everything, especially things I’d marked as illegible on my first run through. I’m also making a list of all the books, movies, and foods she mentions. In 2020, I hope to scan them all!

5. Take a Picture of Everything I Make: 90.96%

I did pretty well on this goal, considering. There were 17 things in all I didn’t take pictures of, 16 of those being food that got eaten or given away before I remembered. The majority of those were towards the end of the year, when I was making a lot of cookies and just kind of tired in general. Most, but not all, of the pictures are on Instagram. A few I didn’t post because they were Christmas gifts. Overall, this was a good goal, but I did get sick of taking pictures of breakfast bars, which I make like once every 2 weeks.

Total: 98.19%

Good job, team!! I am skeptical if I can maintain this high percentage rate in 2020.

Previously: 2018 Goals

Tagged: 2019 goals

Posted in Uncategorized |

2019 Books

January 13th, 2020 by pladd

I read 315 books in 2019, so I’m going to just do one wrap up post instead of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of previous years. Here’s the genre breakdown:

Best Fiction: The Dead Queen’s Club by Hannah Capin

This is a modern day YA retelling of Henry VIII set in a high school and it goes so much harder than you would ever expect. PEOPLE DIE, okay. A lot more historical references than I expected; I loved it. I wasn’t the only one either: it made NPR’s Best of 2019 list!

Best Nonfiction: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

I read this book back in June, but I still think about it all the time. The medical chapters, especially, are infuriating, but I can see the evidence all around me.

Best Fantasy: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

Hard call between this and Return of the King, but I think I enjoyed this more because it was stories I didn’t already know. I read a lot of good fantasy this year, but it’s pretty hard to compete with the defining work of the genre. Plus, The Silmarillion has a surprising amount of badass lady stories.

Best Historical: The entire Clash of Eagles trilogy by Alan Smale

Is it cheating picking an alt history series for “best historical fiction”? I don’t even care; this was way more interesting and well-researched than any other historical novel I read this year. It takes place in the 1200s, when the Roman Empire, which never fell, tries to invade North America, and gets its ass handed to it by the Native Americans, specifically the Mississippian mound builders of Cahokia.

Best Cover: The Tea Dragon Society by Kate O’Neill

This book (and its sequel) are so adorable and imaginative! I love the art and, of course, all the tea.

Worst Cover: A Mermaid’s Kiss by Joey W. Hill

I read this for a book club whose theme was “terrible cover” and I found it by googling “romance novels with bad covers”. It was also a fairly ridiculous book, about an angel and a mermaid finding love despite what should be insurmountable physical and environmental problems. Luckily she can shape change. As you do. Steven refers to this as “the mermangel book” and it prompted me to go to book club in costume:

I would say that’s me set for Halloween, but you know I could never compile just ONE costume a year

Worst Book: Dying to Decorate by Cyndy Salzmann

This book definitely suffered from the expectations it built based on the cover and title. DYING to Decorate?? Clearly this is some kind of interior decorator-themed murder mystery, right? NO! NO ONE DIES! There isn’t even a mystery! A group of moms renovate an old house, remind each other about Civil War history facts, and debate whether the Underground Railroad was a good thing because “slavery was wrong, but so is disobeying the law”. BIG YIKES, Cyndy.

Anyway, it was a good year in books, overall. Here are some more charts because I keep a book spreadsheet that just spits them out for me anyway:

All the half-star spots are blank because I DON’T DO THINGS BY HALF MEASURES, okay

To the surprise of literally no one, the majority of my books come from the library. The “Free” category is mostly Project Gutenberg, and “Owned before 2019” is so popular because I specifically had to read at least one of those a month as part of my goals. Most of them were Steven’s about Ancient Rome.

I read a total of 4 books over 700 pages: a guidebook to Japan I got at the library book sale (904), The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (827), The Histories by Herodotus (716), and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1474).

The percent of digital books seems high to me, but I suppose I usually have at least one checked out on Libby from the library for reading when I’m waiting somewhere.

I don’t know what happened in March, but the August-September lull is definitely when I was trying to finish A Suitable Boy, the nearly 1500-page monster.

I wasn’t especially trying to read mostly female authors, but I’m pleased with this result.

Excited for another year in books! If you too would like a bunch of ridic charts about your reading, check out Book Riot’s Reading spreadsheet. I’m never looking back.

Previously: 2018 in books

Tagged: 2019 books, books, charts

Posted in Book Reviews |

50 States of Reading

December 23rd, 2019 by pladd

This year I decided to read a book set in each state. And I did! Here is the genre breakdown:

My selection process was not especially intense. I mainly searched the library catalog for the state and chose from what was available, heavily biased towards ebooks I could download to my phone. I tried to only read fiction, but ended up with memoirs twice (Hawaii and Utah) when they seemed like the best option by far. Here’s my Goodreads rating breakdown:

It definitely skews lower than my overall Goodreads ratings. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t have read the vast majority of these books if not for this project. In the list below I include the average rating on Goodreads in parentheses next to my reading. As you can see, I didn’t like the romance novels as much as the majority of their other readers. The book descriptions are straight publisher’s copy so don’t blame me for how cheesy some of them sound. I’m also including whatever review I wrote on Goodreads at the time, primarily because I’ve forgotten a lot about some of the duller books I read towards the beginning. Unfortunately, I tend not to write detailed reviews unless I really hated something! Here are the books, in alphabetic order by state:

Alabama
Book: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 4 (4.28)
Description: It’s first the story of two women in the 1980s, of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women—of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I really liked this: the way it was written, the way it was structured, and the characters were all really engaging. Definitely not what I was expecting, in a good way!

Alaska
Book: Alaskan Holiday by Debbie Macomber
Genre: Romance
Rating: 2 (3.58)
Description: Before beginning her new job as sous chef at one of Seattle’s finest restaurants, Josie Stewart takes on a six-month position cooking at a lodge in an Alaskan lake town. It’s only temporary–or so she thinks, as she becomes a valued part of the local community, falling in love with the people who call the Klutina Lake home. But one man, in particular, stands out among Josie’s new friends: Palmer Saxon, a quiet, intense sword craftsman, whose very existence forces her to question whether her heart wants to return to Washington at all.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I don’t know, maybe I’ve read so many of these for this project that my standards have changed, but this didn’t seem AS ridiculous as I was hoping from the premise.

Arizona
Book: Breathless (Old West #2) by Beverly Jenkins
Genre: Romance
Rating: 3 (4.15)
Description: A strong-willed beauty finds herself in the arms of the handsome drifter from her past, in this second book in the sizzling series set in the Old West, from USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I thought the pacing of this was a little weird, but I really liked the intersectional feminism.

Arkansas
Book: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 4 (4.09)
Description: Every first Sunday in June, members of the Moses clan gather for an annual reunion at “the old home place,” a sprawling hundred-acre farm in Arkansas. And every year, Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed young preacher, brings his beloved wife, Willadee Moses, and their three children back for the festivities. The children embrace the reunion as a welcome escape from the prying eyes of their father’s congregation; for Willadee it’s a precious opportunity to spend time with her mother and father, Calla and John. But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core: John’s untimely death and, soon after, the loss of Samuel’s parish, which set the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would from reading the description. It was well-written, and even though it was set in rural Arkansas, certain parts definitely reminded me of visiting my own grandparents in rural Tennessee.

California
Book: Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2 (3.52)
Description: For fans of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It comes an irresistible novel of a woman losing herself . . . and finding herself again . . . in the middle of her life.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: I liked the unconventional format of this, but I saw the twist coming from the very beginning so the supposed suspense seemed tiresome. Plus, I kind of loathed the main character.

Colorado
Book: Angel’s Rest (Eternity Springs #1) by Emily March
Genre: Romance
Rating: 1 (4.03)
Description: Gabriel Callahan has lost everything that mattered. All he wants is solitude on an isolated mountain estate. Instead, he gets a neighbor. Vibrant, no-nonsense Nic Sullivan is Eternity Springs’ veterinarian, and she has an uncanny plan to lure this talented architect back to the world of the living. First with a dog, next with a renovation project, and, finally, with a night of passion that ends with a surprise.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: At first I was pleasantly surprised that this book decided to deal with PTSD a little more realistically than typical romance novels, in that sex didn’t ~magically~ cure it. But realistic trauma recovery is not really what I’m looking for in a romance novel, so it wasn’t enjoyable at all. Also, the hero is a huge asshole who uses his mental health as an excuse to treat everyone around him like crap. Not hot.

Connecticut
Book: The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 (2.91)
Description: Betty Weissmann has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by her husband’s mistress, she and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. In Schine’s playful and devoted homage to Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the impulsive sister is Miranda, a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister.
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This book was fine, but forgettable.

Delaware
Book: Hope Never Dies (Obama Biden Mysteries #1) by Andrew Shaffer
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4 (3.51)
Description: Part noir thriller and part bromance novel, Hope Never Dies is essentially the first published work of Obama/Biden fanfiction
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This was a quick read, and pretty funny. It delivered on the promise of its cover.

Florida
Book: Florida by Lauren Goff
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2 (3.78)
Description: The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center
Review I wrote on Goodreads: This book let me down hard. A better title would be “Stories that are tangentially related to Florida”. A few of them reminded me of home, and a few descriptions were really on point, but mostly I was bored and wondering why so many of them were set in France. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: 2019 books, 50 states, books

Posted in Book Reviews |

2019 Goals: Halfway

June 30th, 2019 by pladd

1. Cookbooks Cook Through: 90.14%
I only have 7 recipes to go! Some of those are waiting for seasonal produce. One of my favorites I’ve made so far this year is this cinnamon swirl bread:

The taste you can see!

If you’re curious, Steven is at 23% lol

2. 50 States of Reading: 78%
Since my last post, I’ve been through 17 states, and I’m currently working on South Dakota.

The most unexpectedly good one was:

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin

It’s a modern YA retelling of Henry VIII set in a high school, and it goes HARD. The best book set in Indiana? Probably.

Here’s everything else I read for this since my last update:

3. Read One Book a Month I Already Own: 50%
In March I picked:

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

I got this as a gift when it first came out, and can’t believe I waited so long to read something so obviously awesome!

In April:

The Saga of the Volsungs (13th cent. Icelandic epic)

Steven has kept a lot of his texts from different college courses, and I’ve been taking full advantage with this project. This one was a soap opera, and I wish HBO would adapt it right now.

In May:

What If? by Randall Munroe

Another book that it’s weird I didn’t read when it first came out.

This month:

The Epic of Gilgamesh (2100BCE Akkadian poem)

I’ve read excerpts of this before, but never the whole thing–or as much of the whole thing as we currently have access to. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are Excellent Friends, if you know what I mean.

4. Transcribe my Grandmother’s Diaries: 78.33%
I’m currently in 1988. Here’s a quote from An Historic Day:

September 26, 1981
Cleaned. Put up summer shoes. Washed hair. Frances by say “pot” growing on their land. Red up there with shot gun–foolish.

5. Take a Picture of Everything I Make: 100%
ALTHOUGH not all the pictures are on Instagram, since some of them I made as gifts and don’t want to give them away. Here’s my fave of the things I can share:

I know it looks too big, but my ears will be happy about that next winter.

Total: 78%

Ahead of the game, for once!
Previously: February

Tagged: 2019 goals

Posted in Uncategorized |

2019 Goals: February

March 6th, 2019 by pladd

February is the shortest month, but I haven’t slowed down on my yearly goals. Which is good, because you know I’ll slow down come summer, when I plan to spend all my time lying on the floor under a fan.

1. Cookbooks Cook Through: 46%
This month I made 10 recipes I’d marked. I’ve really gotten into making my own bread, so I’ve completed all the recipes I marked in my bread book this month! These cinnamon biscuits were probably my favorite:

They would be your fave too

If you’re curious, Steven is at 10% and has 194 more recipes to go.

2. 50 States of Reading: 37%
After a strong start, I only completed three states this month: Georgia, Florida, Alabama

I’ve been trying to put the dot where the story is actually set

Next stop: Tennessee

3. Read One Book a Month I Already Own: 17%
This month I read:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

It had been on my TBR for a while when I saw a nice copy at a library book sale, so I got it and continued to not read it until right now. Why did I wait so long?? It was so great! Basically the emotional successor to Howl’s Moving Castle. Give me more books where practical, powerful women roll their eyes forever at drama-queen wizards, please.

4. Transcribe my grandmother’s diaries: 50%
This month I got through 1963-1970. Here is An Historic Day:

July 20, 1969. Sunday. Up late. Washed and cleaned–put up table and put things back in place. Man landed on moon tonight. Watched T.V. until 11:00PM.

Unimpressed, as always.

5. Take a Picture of everything I make: 100%
This has been the hardest one to remember to do. I’m hoping soon it will become a habit.

Total: 50%
Previously: January

Tagged: 2019 goals

Posted in Uncategorized |

2019 Goals: January

January 31st, 2019 by pladd

The theme for my 2019 goals is “Aim Low” after what happened last year. This year you’ll notice that most of them can be accomplished from my bed lol and that is BY DESIGN

1. Cookbooks Cook Through: 23%
This is the stretch goal. On New Year’s Day, Steven and I went through our cookbooks and marked all the recipes we’d never made but wanted to try this year. In all, it was 29 books, and I marked 70 recipes. Steven marked 215 lol. So far I’ve made 16 recipes (see below) and he’s made 11 (5.12% complete).

You can probably guess that Steven’s are yellow and mine are pink

2. 50 States of Reading: 31%
This is a project I actually started in 2018: Read a book set in each US state. I’m doing it like a legit road trip where I started in Maine and headed South. Here’s the map of what I’ve done so far:

I also stopped in Washington, DC because I’m into the DC Statehood Movement

And here are the books I’ve read:

3. Read One Book a Month We Already Own: 8%
We own a lot of books I’ve never read, mostly because Steven. So I forsee a lot of really bad sci-fi in my future. But in January I found one I’d gotten at a past library book sale!

A History of Histories by John Burrow

It wasn’t as good as I was hoping, but whatever.

4. Transcribe my Grandmother’s Diaries: 37%
My grandmother kept a diary for SIXTY YEARS, y’all, (1941-2000) and this year I’m going to transcribe them all. Right now I’m in 1963. No thoughts on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I do have a window into how much time our foremothers spent ironing (hint: A WHOLE HECKIN LOT). Here’s a sample entry from An Historic Day:

August 14, 1945. Stayed here and did work all day. Went town at noon and bought suit. War over at 4:00PM

5. Take a Picture of Everything I Make: 100%
Last year I had all these goals that involved making things but never had photographic evidence. No longer! Here’s everything I made in January:

Mostly baked goods, I guess

Total: 40%
Not bad for January!

Tagged: 2019 goals, books, things I've made

Posted in Uncategorized |

2018 Goals: Wrap Up

January 1st, 2019 by pladd

Lol what even was this year. I’m pretty sick, so the only goals I accomplished are ones I was able to do from my bed.

1. Hike Every Trail in Umstead: 43%

Oh yeah, I did nothing on this between now and the last time we talked. I am WAY out of shape and would not trust myself to make it out of the woods. Honestly, I get dizzy on light walks with Olivia now.

This is all I did

2. Learn to Juggle: 5%
I’m giving myself a few points for actually buying juggling balls and watching some tutorials. But I can’t juggle. I want to be a person who can juggle, but not enough to actually put in any effort. This was the stretch goal.

3. Review every book I read on GoodReads: 100%

All 177 of them

This is definitely a habit now, so I hope I will continue it!

4. Send everyone in my penpal club a birthday postcard: 58%
Yeah, I gave up after 7 months and 184 postcards. Respectable, still.

5. Give to a different charity once a month: 67%
Literally forgot I was supposed to be doing this. Sorry, charities. It is back to haphazard, spur of the moment donations for me.

6. Cook or discard everything in my recipe binder: 100%
Despite being pretty incapable of eating most foods, I somehow managed to complete this goal? Probably because I threw away A LOT of recipes, but the binder is cleaned up, and that’s what matters.

7. Make Pageapalooza a Success: 100%
Wow, the secret to padding these things is making a goal that will end before the halfway point in the year.

Total: 68%

More than half! I’m kind of shocked. Sure, I only advanced 1 percentage point from the last update in August, but considering I spent MOST of those 4 months lying on the floor in pain, it’s surprising I managed to do anything else at all. It’s been a shitty year, friends.

Previously: 2/3 of the way there
Next: 2019 goals -or- Aim Low

Tagged: 2018 goals

Posted in 2018 Goals |

2018: The Pretty

January 1st, 2019 by pladd

Since I feel bad for making fun of the ugly covers, here are all the best book covers from the year! A lot of them are graphic novels this time around, and a bunch showed up on my The Good list(*)!