Music, Books, Miles, and Looks of March

Music:



Pachelbel meets U2 by Jon Schmidt and Steve Sharp Nelson - Pandora introduced me to this gem of an instrumental song.  As the song title implies, it's Canon in D meets With or Without You.  I think it's beautiful and genius and when I listen to this song, it calms me down, which is pretty important these days as I am quite stressy.

Books:
I had another strong reading month, on top of completing 72 hours of studying.


Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer - I really struggled through this book and would not have kept with it if I wasn't reading it for a book club.  It's about a boy struggling to come to terms with his father's death on 9/11.  The last 100 pages were good, but it was just a little bit too 'weird' for me I guess you could say.  I am glad I stuck with it, but it's not something I'd recommend. I do want to check out the movie, though.


The Violets of March by Sarah Jio - This is another book that I read for a different book club.  I really enjoyed it!  It's about a woman who is struggling through the aftermath of a divorce.  She travels to Bainbridge Island to visit her aunt.  She stumbles upon a diary and finds out all kinds of family secrets.  This is a fast, engaging page turner.  I can't wait to read her next book, The Bungalow.

Bond Girl by Erin Duffy - This was a total chick lit book. I usually avoid these kind of books because the mindless characters make me want to throw the book across the room.  But this book is about a girl working in the same industry as me.  It was fun to read, but the character definitely made some horrifically bad decisions - mostly in regards to dating.  Not something I'd recommend unless you really like chick lit.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - Many people on twitter had raved about this book, so I had to check it out.  It did not disappoint!  It is young adult, but I think any adult would enjoy reading it.  As I said on goodreads, the conversations between the main characters sort of reminded me of the dialogue on Gilmore Girls. Odd connection, I know. But it's that fast paced,  intellectual without being pretentious kind of dialogue that I love!

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson - I think I saw this book on a Barnes and Noble best of 2011 book list.  It's not my typical genre as it's sort of a mystery/thriller type of book, but I decided to check it out anyways.  It's about a woman suffering from amnesia - every day she wakes up not knowing who she is.  Memories begin to re-surface, so she begins to keep a journal of these memories.  I ended up staying up until 11 pm on a week night to finish this book as I could not put it down.  It's disturbing, but a great book.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - This is technically children's literature - but it's a huge 500 page book so I felt like it qualified to make the list of books I read.  There are many pages of beautiful illustrations, so it's a very fast read, but, in a word, it's delightful.  It's about a little boy who lives in a train station in Paris.  The movie Hugo was based upon this book, so I wanted to read the book before watching the movie.  I've heard great things about the movie and can't wait to check it out!

6 books.  That's a lot.  But as I've said before, my free time is split between running and reading.  There's not much tv or movie watching happening in my house these days!

Miles:
This was a good mileage month with me.  Running club has resumed, so I usually do one week night work out and the long run on Saturday mornings.  It's so good to be back running with this group!  I logged about 75 miles this month which is way more than I have ran any of the prior months.  I expect my mileage to stay around this point until after the CFA.

I also biked 26 miles, 11.25 of which were on a bike I am borrowing from a co-worker's husband who restores bikes.  I'm thinking about buying a road bike so I can bike to and from bike club on week nights.  Haven't made a decision yet, but I think it would be nice to own my own bike (I'll still use the nice ride biking sharing program, though).

Looks:
For a change, I actually liked some of the outfits I wore this month!

Nothing too exciting about this, I just like the clean look. The shirt is from J. Crew, pants are from banana, and cardigan is from Target.  I've had the J Crew shirt since 2007!  Goes to show that it's worth it spend money on classic, higher quality clothing as they last for a long time.

Of course I had to include some stripes.  I wore this outfit to a friend's baby shower. 

This is my favorite outfit of the month - and yes, that is a dressing room photo.  I am not used to wearing fitted pants so had to send this photo to Nora and Amber to get their opinion.  They both liked it, so I went with it.  And I am glad I did!  It's definitely my new favorite outfit!

72 hours of studying... 75 miles of running...  It's no wonder this month was a blur that has left me exhausted.  2 more months and then CFA studying is behind me, though - can't wait!  :)