the week in which i read a book

september is a month pregnant with pauses - the big, changed-my-life kinds. it creeps in quietly enough, and by the second week, i remember why it marks the year's turning point, like everything resets after a few dates.

last year i started tutoring and started teaching eighth grade.  this year, i am no longer teaching anything. at all.

i've been thinking a lot - too much - about who i am and what makes me "me". what happens when the activities, traits, moments that defined you no longer apply?

i don't, for example, take joy in reading a book the way i used to before college.  i've been struggling not to gloss over patches of text. i managed to get through one memoir, yes, chef, by marcus samuelsson. 

i've read a few other chef-centered memoirs, but really didn't enjoy yes, chef as much. for one, marcus does not have the same way with words that gabrielle hamilton and ruhlman do. to be fair, both are "writers" and marcus is not. marcus's life is nothing if not eventful, but his tone was too self-congratulatory in the initial chapters - how great of a soccer player he was, how he always wanted to outshine the others around him (with the exception of his friends), how his competitive streak lead him through one kitchen and into the next on a mission to be "the best", relegating his personal obligations to be picked up when he was "ready".  this is an ambition and a sentiment that i do not share, so these kinds of narrators/authors/memoirists leave a bad taste in my mouth.  i enjoyed the memoir more as marcus matured and finally took responsibility for meeting his (then-adult) daughter.  on the whole, really wanted to like this book more as i had admired marcus for his stance on global cuisine and through all of the positive media portraiture he's received in the last decade.  

the other in-progress read is friendfluence: the surprising ways friends make us who we are by carlin flora. so far, pretty interesting. my taste has shifted from fiction to non-fiction since college, so books like these are more up my alley. third book is tbd but i'm sure i'll finish it within a few days.  

we're off to bed bath and beyond to run a few errands and check out a few of these gems at barnes and noble. yes, all cookbooks. sorry, not sorry.