Only in New York!
A chill weekend with family, and a lot of books
We spent the weekend with family in New York, celebrating my father-in-law’s 70th birthday. The party was on Mother’s Day, so I celebrated early on Saturday, taking the opportunity to do whatever I wanted while being close to but — and this is key to a successful Mother’s Day — not responsible for my family.
I have an unusually busy week coming up with a somewhat unexpected trip, so I got ahead on work and did some leisurely studying. Did you know larger Japanese numbers are organized on a whole different system that uses as its base 10,000 rather than our 1,000? I didn’t until Saturday and am seriously reconsidering whether my 40 year old brain is capable of learning something this new. But after putting my old brain through its paces, I recovered with a solo brunch and bookstore outing, so it was, on the whole, a pretty perfect weekend that left me without a single parenting hot take.
The little parenting I did generally involved watching my son spend time with his cousins.
Jose is not just an only child — for years he was the only member of his generation on either side of the family. Luckily, while he’s still cousin-free on my side, he now has two wonderful younger cousins we get to see whenever we’re in New York. There’s a three-year age gap between him and the older of the two, though, and for a long time Jose loved but could not particularly relate to or play with her. But now that they’re older and both in elementary school, he genuinely looks forward to spending time with her on visits.
And for me, these visits are a rare chance to experience simultaneously the joys and ease of travel with an only child and a version of what I imagine Jose would have with a sibling. It’s delightful to see the ways in which the two of them are somehow both so alike (verbally precocious and kind and a bit temperamental) and so unalike (she’s strong willed, while he tends to go with the flow). Parents of siblings obviously see this every day, but watching Jose learn to navigate mingling feelings of affection and annoyance in a way he never really has to with friends is a novel experience. It makes me extremely happy, and I think it’s also very good for Jose.
While I was on my Mother’s Day eve outing, I picked up Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s brief novella Kappa. I’ve been making my way through a reading list based on the literary prize named for him, but I’ve never actually read anything from Akutagawa himself. I’m saving it for a flight later in the week and hoping this will get me back on track with the list. I’ve had The Mud of a Century in my bag for two weeks now and haven’t even cracked it.
Making it through the prize list was one of two reading goals for this year. The other was to either finish books that I start or stop reading them within 50 pages, and I’m pleased to say that this one is actually going well. Until this week, I’d finished every book that I started (technically, I always have multiple books going, but everything I’m currently in the middle of was started within the last two weeks). And I’m feeling quite proud of myself because earlier this week, after reading just three pages of a book, I decided it was absolute trash and I had no reason to make myself read any further. I feel like too much of an asshole panning someone’s work, even in a newsletter hardly anyone reads. But it was a jointly written cozy British murder mystery set in the early 20th century, and you should feel free to ask me in person if you think you might be in danger of ordering it.
That was a long update about books I didn’t actually read, but I did make it through three this week that I really enjoyed.
After several months of mysteries, I feel like I’m back in the romance swing of things. Neither really blew me away, but I liked both Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story and Cat Sebastian’s You Should Be So Lucky. How to End a Love Story was a little heavier than my ideal romance, but well written and enjoyable despite those elements. And I like this particular series of Sebastian’s because nothing bad or dumb ever happens — she always skips over the part, three-quarters of the way through a romance, where the protagonists have a thoroughly predictable misunderstanding that they both handle poorly because they’ve only achieved three-quarters of the narrative’s personal growth. But in these, there’s never much in the way of conflict that can’t be sorted out in a single conversation. I can see how this could feel dull, but I find it soothing.
I also read Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time. Sci-fi and romance are my favorite kinds of genre fiction, and I’ll read almost anything that involves them both.1 I felt like I’d seen this one pop up everywhere, but had been avoiding reading anything about it. And I won’t say too much about it here, because the odd premise is part of the fun, but I think I was hoping it would be… stranger? Which is perhaps an odd thing to say about a novel that involves roommates from different centuries, but reading it, I kept thinking about This is How You Lose the Time War.
There are some obvious genre crossover similarities, but I was more struck by the differences. The first time I read Time War, I was a bit put off by its more poetic tendencies, but when I read it a second time (for book club last year), I just let it wash over me and really loved it, mostly for the way it fully committed to its strangeness. And I felt the opposite reading The Ministry of Time. I loved Bradley’s prose, which was biting and modern without veering into that breathless, extremely online register,2 but by the end, I just wasn’t that interested in how things were playing out. That said, I’m still thinking about it a day later and would probably be willing to read it again, which is telling.
I have not followed through on getting someone to help me do a better, heavier leg day, but I did put in three solid days in the weight room this week, plus a Pilates class.
I also realized, finally, after months at this Y, what I’m struggling with when it comes to lifting. Or rather, what I’m failing to struggle with.
My old gym was a training gym, so there were only ever a handful of people there at a time, each working with a trainer. And the levels of intensity varied hugely, but there was always at least one other person who was trying, and occasionally failing, to pick up something really heavy. I felt completely comfortable working at a weight where I would make embarrassing noises to get through reps 8-10 or even sometimes have to drop the weight. As long as you weren’t the kind of asshole who was clanging things around all the time, no one cared.
But no one at this Y seems like they’re struggling, and I feel embarrassed by the prospect of trying something that might turn out to be too hard. People are certainly lifting heavier weights than me, but I rarely see anyone lift something that is noticeably at the edge of their range. Everyone is quietly, diligently putting in their reps with their working weights.
And I know if I keep doing this, the weight will eventually go back up. But I really loved trying hard, even if I sometimes failed, and seeing meaningful progress most weeks. I’m adding this to the list of reasons to find someone (and somewhere) to help me push myself. But in the meantime, it makes me feel a little bit better to know that this is not just me slacking… it’s a different kind of place, and I think I’m mostly just trying to fit in.
On that note, my book club was mixed on it because it didn’t stick the landing, but I loved Prophet and would highly recommend it, especially if you were an X-Files fan.
I’m not sure if this is a real thing or just something I’ve made up to be mad about in my old age.