The First Apartment Book: Cool Designs for Small Spaces, by Kyle Schuneman with Heather Summerville, photographs by Joe Schmelzer (2012)

Apologies for the lack of posts lately –I just moved!

I’m still living in the same city as before. I’m actually still on most of the same bus routes. According to GoogleMaps, I only moved 540 m, or just over half a kilometre (which is about a third of a mile, for any Americans reading).

But it’s my first-ever apartment all to myself! I’m sans roommate, and all the decorating choices are up to me. This is fun and exciting but also kind of overwhelming. It didn’t help that my previous roommates were actually the owners of most of the furniture, so I had to make a lot of decisions and purchases pretty quickly when I moved in — basically all I owned in terms of furniture was my bedroom set. No couch, no chairs, no tables, no dining room furniture, none of it.

Family members donated a few lamps and bookshelves, along with some other odds and ends. I scavenged a few more items off kijiji, and made some brand-new big-ticket purchases (a couch! a chaise!). Starting to feel like an adult. Well, I’ll feel like more of an adult when my couch is actually delivered and in my living room.

But then there’s still all the other decisions — what colour to paint? How to arrange the furniture? What to do with all my tchotchkes? I borrowed a number of decorating books from the library, particularly focusing on “small space decorating”, and this book was one of the best.

I found that a lot of the books should have been categorized as “small space decorating for people who just built their own house” or “small space decorating for people currently designing their own house”, or just “small space decorating for rich people”. This book was one of the few that really focused on the reality of moving into a 600 sq. foot apartment in a 30-unit building built in the concrete-crazy ’60s where everything is beige and you’re not allowed to knock down any walls or change the light fixtures or do anything permanent. Ahem.

The First Apartment Book had some really novel decorating ideas, and it illustrated them with essentially a bunch of case studies — different people in different size apartments, in different cities, on different budgets, with wildly different senses of style. There were instructions on how to paint patterns on the walls, how to slipcover your boring couch or dye your own fancy curtains, creating your own artwork or art installations with your own collections or a series of found objects. There were lessons on thrifting furniture and decor pieces, refinishing furniture, arranging the furniture in a room, arranging flowers, what to do with odd corners or strange spaces in your apartment. Plus lots of very nice pictures.

I haven’t actually done a lot of decorating yet; I’m waiting for my couch and chaise to show up before painting, which seems counter-intuitive — why not paint when the whole room is empty? — but I want to get a handle on how the colours are going to influence everything around it before I decide what I’m going to paint. (The couch and chaise are bright yellow, by the way.)

But I’m getting there! And it’s all in my little home of my own.

The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun (2005)

At work, I’ve recently been… “promoted” isn’t quite the right word, but… assigned some different tasks from what I had been doing previously. This has, for the most part, been a nice change because the day-to-day labour can sometimes be pretty damn boring. Some of the new tasks I’ve been working on are starting to look a little nearer to project management. The funny thing is, I first picked this book up from the library back in the summer, and this not-promotion happened later in the fall. Prescient!

I’m only a few years out of school, so frankly I wouldn’t expect anybody to trust me with a full project. But last week I was the team lead for a group that rolled out a major new process that affected our whole company (which is more than 500 people). And I think it went pretty well! There were a few hiccups, as there always will be with any new process, but I think it turned out as well as it did for our group because I busted my ass to get us as prepared as possible.

In the months and weeks leading up to the go-live date — this started pre-not-promotion, by the way, so I wasn’t even the leader of our team at this point! We were hierarchy-less — we found we weren’t really getting the support we needed, and we felt our input wasn’t very highly valued. We were making suggestions and asking for templates and posing questions and pointing out issues and and and… About a week or so before launch, our group got together and I sent an email on everyone’s behalf to the project manager with our list of needs/questions/issues. In our heads, this was sort of our final offer — take it or leave it.

And… a lot of it got left, which we expected it would. But we knew that those were things we needed, so we went ahead and did them/found them/built them anyway. In the end, I built the templates for our team. I set up the email structure such that it made sense for our workflow. I renamed and reorganized shared electronic folders in a way that was logical and useful for us. Without these things, we would’ve been toast at launch.

This is not to say that the rest of our little team didn’t also have great ideas: one member came up with a great system for dealing with all our pending items — an issue we didn’t realize we’d have until we actually launched; another suggested we set our phones on mute and that we all start at 8 a.m. on launch day to sort through any last minute kinks together — normally we work staggered hours. Another person brought Valentine’s lollipops, because sugar is vitally important.

And I think that’s the thing about being a good leader. It’s not just about bossing people around, and taking credit or blame when things go right or wrong. It’s about making yourself heard, but it’s also about listening. It’s about getting people what they need. It’s about being supportive and standing up for each other. It’s about figuring out how and why people do their best work, and to help them to achieve that. It’s about figuring out how and why people don’t do their best work, and to help them tear down whatever obstacles are in their way. It’s about seeing problems when they’re still on the horizon, and doing what you can to prevent them. It’s about making people feel appreciated. If you do it right, you’ll truly appreciate each other.

(And the lollipops. Holy fuck, did we appreciate those lollipops.)

Not That Kind of Girl: A young woman tells you what she’s “learned” by Lena Dunham (2014)

Lena Dunham was only born in 1986. If you’re not so good at math, that means she’s still in her twenties. She’s already written a memoir. Holy hell.

Good thing she’s written it now, though — she’s done so much already that waiting too long would’ve made this book too big to fit in my backpack. Essay titles include: “Platonic Bed-Sharing: A Great Idea (for People Who Hate Themselves)”, “Who Moved My Uterus”, “Emails I Would Send If I Were One Ounce Crazier/Angrier/Braver”, and “Girl Crush: That Time I Was Almost a Lesbian, Then Vomited”.

She’s funny, she’s real, she’s awkward, she’s brilliant. I realize this sounds creepy, but I’d like to be her friend. I realize this sounds even creepier, but I recently got a haircut that was semi-inspired by her current look. (In reality, it’s probably a little closer to Kaley Cuoco’s starting-to-grow-out pixie, with sleek, wavy, or tousled options.)

Not That Kind of Girl has lately been lumped in with Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, which I realize I’m also guilty of doing by virtue of having linked to it, but both totally stand on their own. If they hadn’t been published so close to one another, I’m not sure I or anyone else would make that comparison. They’re very different books, except for having been written by ladies, so, duhhhh of course they’re exactly alike. /sarcasm

Still, it was interesting to read them both within such a short time. It kinda feels like (maybe I’m stretching here) it could be a new era of feminist literature and pop culture. I am probably overly optimistic in this regard, but a girl can dream, no?

This book has gotten a lot of media attention, and for good reason, I think. It’s very good. I already want to re-read it. Lena’s got nice quotes on the back of the book from David Sedaris and Judy Blume, for crying out loud!

I think this is a must-read for anyone who identifies as female, anyone in their twenties or thirties, anyone who pays even the slightest attention to pop culture and Lena’s TV show. Or, frankly, even if you’ve never seen her show, don’t care about pop culture, and aren’t in the correct demographic — as her dad also writes in review on the back cover,

“This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they understand the experience of being a young woman in our culture. I thought I knew the author rather well, and I found many (not altogether welcome) surprises.”

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay (2014)

If you haven’t already read Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, I highly recommend it. I read it just last week, and I incurred a $0.25 library fine so I could keep it for an extra day to re-read the best bits. I believe I fist-pumped in response to at least three different sections. There are even T-shirts!

What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise – and Collapse – of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government by Graham Steele (2014)

I got this book from the library a few weeks ago. I knew it was brand new, and they had it prominently displayed because it was both new and local. Obviously I scooped it up right away.

I only found out the next day from a friend who was at the book launch that the launch was actually happening while I was at the library! My local library is on. the. ball.

Anyway, this is a memoir-ish account from the former finance minister of our previous provincial government. It was the first time the NDP had formed government in any of the Atlantic provinces! Exciting stuff. And then they sort of crashed and burned.

This book has lots of interesting anecdotes and little bits of inside information. Steele does a really good job, I think, of making a book about backroom politics clear and captivating and easy to follow.

I think it’d be neat for someone to read this book who isn’t from Nova Scotia and isn’t aware of this government’s legacy. I’d be interested in hearing what they thought about it.

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach (2013)

If you’ve never read any of Mary Roach’s books, I highly recommend them. Her use of footnotes is excellent. (They might even be the best part of her books.)

Gulp is about eating and digestion. Her other books cover sex, death, and space travel, among other things. Roach has done a tonne of research and seems to revel in asking experts the way-out-there questions. She’s funny without sacrificing accuracy and scientific principles, and she has no qualms about grossing her readers out (lucky for me, as I like gross things and find them endlessly interesting).

As an aside — did you see this story from earlier in the week on a kid who had 232 teeth removed?! I was disappointed that there were no pics, but fortunately a kind person on twitter sent me a shot of the x-ray.

That aside is why blog posts need footnotes. Anyway, this was an A+ book and your kids (or inner kid) will probably appreciate all the poop jokes.

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison: A Memoir by Piper Kerman (2010)

I had already seen the Netflix series based on this book, which is strange for me — I almost always read the book first. But I really had no choice, as I basically mainlined the whole first season in a single day. This book is a memoir, mostly based on real-life events (some names and details were changed), while the series is kinda sorta based on the memoir.

Orange Is The New Black. photo via: http://comingsoon.net/nextraimages/orangeisblackheader.jpg

Many of the scenes that take place in the first season of Orange Is The New Black appear in the book in some form, and a lot of the characters are identifiable as pieces of characters in the book. I suppose you want to make the TV version as big a hit as possible, so you include the most provocative and intriguing personality characteristics, amalgamating them into bigger/better/bolder/brasher characters, and you leave out the stuff that’s a little more run-of-the-mill. A+ on making the Netflix adaptation as entertaining as it is, while staying true-ish (emphasis on the ish) to real life.

If you like reading non-fiction, sociological studies, or memoirs, you’ll probably find this book interesting. If you liked the show (and you’re excited out of your mind that the new season is out next week! I know I am!), you’ll probably find this book interesting. The book and the show are both interesting in totally different ways, if that makes any sense.

Sam Saboura’s Real Style: Style Secrets for Real Women with Real Bodies by Sam Saboura; illustrations by Bunky Hurter (2005)

Saboura is the guy from the old Extreme Makeover reality show, where they had plastic surgeons and cosmetic dentists and all these people make over so-called ‘ugly’ people. This book isn’t really about that; the focus here is really just on clothes and dressing to suit your body type. (I am a ‘half-pint’, apparently.)

It’s just funny — this book isn’t even quite a decade old, but some of the information is so out of date… No mention at all of skinny jeans! Nothing about Spanx. Patterned tights are super uncool. There’s a backlash against pashminas! Just get used to having to haul up your strapless dress and wiggle back into it… Strange.

The Specialty Shop: How to Create Your Own Unique and Profitable Retail Business by Dorothy Finell (2007)

I picked this book up from the library, since I’ve been labouring under the impression that I will eventually learn to sew using a sewing machine and become rich and famous selling pajamas. Right now I’m at the point where I can sew enough to repair or make minor changes to things, but only when sewing by hand. The machine scares me for some reason.

Anyway, this book profiles a bunch of specialty shops that the author likes and that, in her estimation, are doing well for themselves. I don’t know, I thought her parameters were kind of odd. She gave BIG points for how pretty the actual shop was, and seemed pretty down on advertising… and it’s not like the book was written pre-internet. She suggested making newsletters (like actual physical paper newsletters) for customers using CLIP ART, fercrissakes. So excuse me if I don’t put a lot of stock photography in your ideas.

Also she was inconsistent when talking about the size of the shops — you can use square feet OR square metres, but not both. That bothered me too.

Maybe I’ll get some books about Etsy instead, on the off-chance I ever get my shit together and sew something someone might want to buy.

Knit Your Socks on Straight: A New and Inventive Technique with Just Two Needles: 20 Original Designs by Alice Curtis (2013)

This book would’ve been more accurately titled: ‘Knit Your Socks on Straight: A New and Inventive Technique with Just Two Straight Needles [and a crochet hook, not that I know how to use one of those because if I did, I’d have picked up the book called ‘How to Crochet Some Goddamn Doily-Looking Socks]: 20 Original Designs [That Even Your Great-Grandmother Would Never Make or Wear Because They’re So Ugly]’.  A pointless book if you’re the sort of person who can’t figure out how to knit with one stick once you’re used to knitting with two (like me).