#14 Books, books, books

Life peek: Books, books, books

Since the start of the year, I haven't made much time for reading. I guess I just couldn't find a book that really hooked me — a book that I was looking forward to going back to. I finally found it this last week.

It is called Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. I had never heard of it before, never read anything about it, and simply began reading it with my company book club. I was sucked in and finished it in a few days time.¹

Another book that marked this week is The Witches by Roald Dahl. In the evening, I put on some background music, turn on some warm lights and Robin and I take turns, reading the book aloud to each other. We used to do the same with Le Petit Nicholas by Jean-Jacques Sempé, a series of French children's books — that are also great for adults.

One last book-related update: I have finally imported all my books from Goodreads to my own personal bookshelves. It feels liberating to completely own my book data for the first time in a while!

Read & Watched

Girl, Woman, Other (2019)

Beautifully written in a stream of consciousness style. We jump into the lives of 12 girls, women — others — in England. From one mind to the next, we get to know and understand them through each other's perceptions, discovering how it is never as simple as it seems.

Strong recurring themes are feminism, politics, sexuality and otherness. The characters are “othered” by society for their skin color, sexuality, gender — sometimes even othering one another.

Do the right thing (1989)

I am almost ashamed to say that we chose to watch this movie because it had a pizza theme. Our Pizza Week brought us many joys, and Do the right thing was definitely a surprise hightlight.

Spike Lee directed it in the 80s, but its topics are still — sadly — very relevant today. For me, this movie was fluid. Everything glides and moves, up, up, keeping you in your seat until the end. One recommendation: choose your movies based on what you eat.

Food for Thought

Environmental Impacts of Food (2020)

This might be the most thought-provoking article I have read in the past few months. Environmental Impacts of Food was written based on the largest meta-analysis on global food systems to date — with data from 38, 000 farms and 119 countries.

From the analysis, it is pretty clear that what you eat is much more important than how local the produce is. Transportation and packaging account for a very small percentage of the food emissions. What surprised me most is that this is also the case for low-impact meat producers. As a rule of thumb, it is usually better to buy vegetables from across the globe, rather than meat and dairy produces from your local farm.

T(W)IL

To bake an amazing banana bread

Robin lived in London for one year and introduced me to this amazing tea-time snack: banana bread. It is warm, slightly toasted, topped with a slice of melted butter.

This weekend, I tried baking some banana bread, following the recipe a friend from work shared with me. We don't have baking powder at home and made a sourdough version instead. Conclusion: 5 stars of deliciousness that will certainly become a kitchen-regular.

My first steps with D3.js

November last year, I gave into the Cyber Week craze and got a discounted version of the D3.js & Firebase MOOC. For context, I knew almost nothing about JavaScript at that time and realized that the course was way above my level.

I started the course this last week and now understand all of it without much difficulty. It is incredible to see how far I've come since the end of 2020. I am quite excited to finally learn more about creating dynamic and interactive data visualizations! ⊙