Review: Shine Shine Shine

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



What a great surprise. The first 50 pages in I really wasn't feeling this book. I was confused to why there were robots in it and why everything was in the 3rd person. 150 pages in I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. This book is a love story, a bizarre, twisted love story about how to love others but most importantly yourself. While that may sound ridiculously cheesy in execution it really wasn't.

The mechanical husband Maxom is going to the moon with robots to help prepare for human colonization, he's leaving his pregnant bald wife Sunny at home with their autistic son Bubber. Nothing is going according to plan. Sunny is trying to fit in with her wigs and being the perfect mother. Maxon is unable to express his feelings and lives by science and Sunny as the only things in his life that make sense. Without giving away spoilers this is the story of their past and future. And I want more! I want to know what happens next, I'm not invested in this relationship and want to know what goes on next.

Fave Quote-
“There are three things that robots cannot do," wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote "Show preference without reason (LOVE)" and then "Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)" and finally "Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”





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4 months in BCS

How have I already been here four months? And what the hell do you mean it's only been four months it feels like a year.  I got back and forth daily between loving this place and hating it.

Going home for break was of course great but two weeks in SA was both too long and way too short.  I was looking forward to coming back but really only for work reasons.  I'm trying to stay here till my birthday and not go running home before then, but I don't know if I'll be able to make it.  I have visitors coming in February which is nice but I wish some of them were coming this month instead cause my apartment is cold and lonely.

The cats are crazy and super frisky with the cold weather.  They have ridiculous amounts of energy and I have a cold.

There have been more days...
123 days ago I picked up my life and moved to BCS
121 days ago I started my amazing new job at TAMU- love it.
68 days ago I went home for the first time to watch Isaac with mama
56 days ago I went home for Thanksgiving and spent 5 glorious days in SA
27 days ago I went home for 14 days
20 days ago my divorce was finalized
13 days ago I came back to BCS
12 days ago I went back to work- yay
8 days ago I moved into my permanent office- double yay
1 day ago the students returned
2 days from now daddy is coming up for a visit (well work but he'll visit too)
16 days from now I have my first visitor of the year
23 days from now mama is coming to visit
72 days from now I go home for the first time this year (hopefully I'll be strong and wait)

One day I'll stop counting days I'm sure...

Review: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I don't even know where to begin with this damn book. And it's impossible to review without pulling my own failed marriage into my thoughts and opinions of it. I started reading this book back in July when my marriage was flailing horribly. I had to put it down cause it was pissing me off. This book is a historical, anthropological, sociological and biographical look at marriage. This book is what Liz Gilbert wrote after Eat, Pray, Love that tells her journey of how she got married again to her brazilian man from Bali even though she had never wanted to get married again. This book shares her journey through travel and research about the history of western marriage. That being said, she does eventually convince herself to get married again, whereas this book has continued to support my idea that marriage is dumb and unnecessary (again ask me in 3 years how I feel and I'm sure it'll be different). This book also has a great story about women in relationships, women as wives and women with the choice to be mothers or not. I found the section about motherless women to be particularly moving because I go back and forth daily about ever wanting children and again this book makes me feel like it's totally okay not to.

Overall I wont say I liked this book at all, I found it very interesting and well researched, but I could have read this book without Liz Gilbert's story just as the research she provided, because I found it all so very interesting. I originally picked up the book because I loved Eat, Pray, Love, but this was no Eat, Pray, Love.



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