Book Review

Hi everyone! The hubby and I spent a wonderful weekend in Tennessee. We drove down to Knoxville to spend a couple days with his grandparents and planned to spend a day in Nashville catching up with our college friends. Unfortunately, snow and ice made the mountain roads a little sketchy so we had to forgo Nashville. But we had a ton of fun with his grandparents just hanging out, watching the Lady Vols and seeing the Knoxville symphony.

The long drive and snowy days provided me with a ton of time to plow through some books.

168 Hours: You Have More Time Thank You Think, by Laura Vanderkam 
     Overall I liked the concept of this book. Im a huge fan of goal setting and planning but there just never seems to be enough time to do everything that I want to do! This book presented a new way of looking at your time; in chunks of 168 hours or week-to-week. Thinking about how you only got 6 hours of sleep last night is discouraging. But realizing that you got 54 hours of sleep over the course of the week is way more encouraging. Or that 40 hours of work + 54 hours of sleep + 7 hours of cooking and cleaning = just 101 hours! That leaves 67 hours a week to do everything else you want. Definitely a fun way to think about your time. I still make daily schedules but I'm planning on analyzing my time use on a week to week basis and making adjustments to make the most of my time. I also love her suggestion to fill bits of time with joy.
     However, I mostly just skimmed this book because I often found it really annoying. This book is definitely geared towards working professionals, moms and people with money to spare. I found large sections of this book to be condescending; "Ignoring, minimizing or outsourcing" simply isn't possible for some people. I have spent the majority of my working life in jobs where I have no flexibility and can barely make ends meet let alone pay someone else to cook my meals or do my laundry.

The Billionaire's Christmas, by J.S. Scott 
     This was a super short story. I didn't realize that it's actually a part of a larger series. It was a fun, cheesy romance novel with a decent story. If you're looking for a silly love story you can read in a day or a fun beach read this would be a good one to pick up.

Wild, by Cheryl Strayed 
     This book has been sitting on my shelf for ages and I finally got around to reading it! I loved it! Cheryl is definitely an inspiration. Can you imagine being at complete rock bottom and just taking off for months of hiking all alone in order to find yourself? I loved reading about all the people she met on the trail and her struggle to keep going. I think that is something we can all relate to in our daily lives. I'm eager to see the movie adaptation of this book. I'm also looking forward to warmer weather so I can go for a nice weekend hiking adventure.


P.S. Did you notice the cute little cover my Kindle is sitting on in the above photo? Radio Shack is going out of business and having crazy sales so I scooped that case up for just $2! It is meant for an iPad mini so it's a bit big for my Kindle but I love that. I have space for my Kindle, a small notebook and a pen.