Friday Favorites | #2

This week, Alden and I dropped the kids with grandparents and went to Boulder CO for a day. We haven’t had a solo getaway sans children since our family moved to California in 2016, so this was a welcome reprieve. We, true to form, spent most of our time brainstorming and planning for the future but also visited several downtown bookshops (my idea) and did an intensive yoga class (Alden’s idea).

One of many independent bookshops in downtown Boulder.

Here’s Friday Favorites: Boulder edition. A podcast that impacted our life planning discussions, Boulder restaurants and bookshops and the books I perused but didn’t buy (for lent I’m cutting out extraneous purchases to evaluate my relationship with shopping. More on that in the next blog post.)

1. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney — Discovered at Trident Bookstore (see below). I’ve always intended to read Beowulf but have never known which translation to use or where to even start. When I stumbled across this translation and read a few pages, I knew this was, at the least, a way to introduce myself to the epic Scandinavian hero. The dual-translation is interesting if I ever have the time to explore the language (original text on the left; translation on the right) but the translated poetry is beautiful and riveting. I will be putting this one on hold at our library.
2. Foolish Craig’s Cafe — What a throwback to our beloved Austin. Foolish Craig’s is a laid-back cafe serving up brunch, lunch, dinner and drinks. Large colorful paintings of sunflowers and jazz musicians adorn the brick walls. Alden grabbed breakfast tacos and I helped myself to a savory crepe.
3. Crossroads Trading — Hands down, the best clothing consignment store I’ve visited: this location in downtown Boulder has a large selection. I have given up on consignment shopping in our corner of the Bay Area, because the options are pretty dismal. However, after discovering that Crossroads has a large location in nearby San Jose, I will give it another shot.
4. Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug — The blurb on Amazon summarizes this beautiful book: “A revelatory, visually stunning graphic memoir by award-winning artist Nora Krug, telling the story of her attempt to confront the hidden truths of her family’s wartime past in Nazi Germany and to comprehend the forces that have shaped her life, her generation, and history.” I haven’t ventured into the graphic novel/memoir genre to date, but this will be my first pick to introduce myself. (Note: If you love the graphic novel genre, there’s a whole booklist devoted to it in Bibliophile)
5. A Little History of Economics by Niall Kishtainy — Thumbed through this in the Boulder Bookstore. Given my newfound interest in economics inspired by Naked Economics, I want to dive into this next (especially since it is given a glowing review by Charles Wheelan). There are many other well-reviewed titles in the “A Little History” series, such as A Little History of Philosophy, A Little History of Religion and A Little History of Literature.
6. Organic Sandwich Co — We grabbed a quick lunch here on Thursday. Beautiful, well-lit, modern sandwich shop. Think “Subway” but with more creative ingredients. Alden had the coconut lentil soup with a mediterranean sub and I grabbed the turkey, brie and ground mustard baguette.
7. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren — A dense but helpful guide to deep and thoughtful reading. From guidance on “inspectional reading” (careful skimming of a book for quick understanding of the narrative) to “syntopical reading” (reading multiple works of a particular subject to critically analyze and understand the subject matter) to how to get the most out of any type of book (STEM, history, plays/poems, self-improvement, etc.), this helpful book is the intellectually-rigorous read on my nightstand.
8. Downtown Boulder — We spent most of our day together exploring the Boulder downtown. I was enchanted. Independent bookstores, quaint restaurants, surprise alleys, street musicians and college students handing out pamphlets addressing human rights abuses. I wish we had another ten days to explore.
9. Essentialism podcast (hosted by Tim Ferriss) — I listened to this podcast on my own and then listened to it again with Alden. This interview with Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, gave me many practical tools for planning for the future, prioritizing the “essential” in our lives and setting the right kinds of goals (hint: they are about something far greater than your next career move). We used the “quarterly offsite” guidelines laid out by McKeown to plan our priorities for the next six months. (Note: I am a fan of several Tim Ferriss podcasts but do not endorse his work or worldview wholesale).
10. Leaf Vegetarian Restaurant — We are not vegetarians but we do enjoy vegetarian dishes. We grabbed dinner at Leaf yesterday because we were hungry and it wasn’t crowded on a Friday night. The food was so delicious. We split the Mediterranean platter (beet hummus, olives, pita and bleu cheese) and the spaghetti squash noodles with peanut sauce. I have a few new recipes to try out at home.
11. Trident Bookstore — Another downtown independent bookstore/coffee/tea shop. I enjoyed browsing the book selection while Alden holed up in a booth to tackle some computer work.
12. Boulder Bookstore — My second favorite bookshop to date (behind our neighborhood’s gem Keplers). Three stories of books, all beautifully displayed and curated. I got lost for a long while in the children’s section . . . that’s pretty common.
13. Ashtanga Yoga sequence — We try to get in some form of exercise any time we spend the day sitting and planning. It was too sludgy for hiking (I forgot to pack our snowboots) so we checked out a local yoga class. This is our favorite class we have attended. We spent a solid hour working on two poses. The goal is to get lean, strong and flexible with mastery of technique over time. Both Alden and I enjoyed the focus on mastery over lots of different haphazard movements. I can hardly move today (my instructor helpfully told me, as I was shaking with muscle fatigue, that no one typically does the same pose for that duration of time in a regular class setting: thanks for the heads up!) The above graphic shows the primary workout sequence that we are going to attempt to go through on a regular basis: it can take years to get proficient.

I hope you are having a peaceful and productive week. Spring is just starting to peak out in the Bay Area, so we will be shifting gears from lots of nightly reading to regular nature hikes and picnics.