I’d definitely classify myself as a snacker. I like eating too much to only do it three times a day and I opt for the mini-meal approach to eating (5 – 6 mini-meals a day)… but sometimes I seem to just graze the day away!
That appears to be what is happening today.
I snacked when writer’s block hit…
(Uncle Sam strawberry cereal)
I snacked when I finally finished my article…
(Two clementines, plus tons of unpictured granola…)
I snacked when I got up to let Sadie out…
(Cheese + jelly bagelwich)
And by the time lunchtime rolled around, I was just finishing my bagelwich (I guess that was lunch?) and wasn’t all that hungry.
I grabbed some leftover Brussels sprouts and sautéed onions from the weekend to get some kind of veggies into my diet and am just waiting for the next snack attack to hit me.
It’s a snacky kind of day! Anyone else experiencing a never-ending snack attack today? I’m doing my best to keep my snacks mostly healthy, which is often quite difficult when a snack attack hits.
January Book Club
It’s time to vote on the book we’ll be reading for the PBF Book Club in January! As always, I selected three books from the recommendations you guys made on the PBF Facebook page at the end of December.
Please vote on the book you would most like to read below and I will announce the winning book tomorrow. On Wednesday, February 1, I will post my review of the book and discussion questions for everyone to participate in through the comments section.
Blogger Link Up Alert: Additionally, a clever blogger, Mattie, emailed me with a great idea! If you participate in the book club this month and let me know that you posted a review of the selected book on your blog or website sometime during the month of January or (ideally) on February 1, I’ll be sure to include a link to your review at the bottom of my post. This way we can all “blog hop” and see what others had to say about the book of the month! Fun, huh?
Time to vote!
Here are the options:
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
- Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Little Bee is a Nigerian girl who has learned to talk like the Queen. She’s a refuge who has been detained in an immigration detention center forty miles east of London for two years.
Little Bee’s life is entangled, by accident, with the life of another woman, Sarah, a white British magazine editor who lives in Kingston-upon-Thames. Sarah has just had something terrible happen to her, and she can’t figure out how to feel. Sarah and Little Bee knew each other briefly in other terrible circumstances. Sarah was on vacation. Little Bee was in the middle of her real life. Now she’s in the middle of Sarah’s real life. Sarah has a young son who always wears a Batman costume, so he’s always ready to fight baddies. There are a husband and a lover in the mix. Little Bee is in Britain illegally. Sarah’s life has lost its meaning. Cleave works his magic throughout: the two women learn how to help each other. Their relationship feels perfectly natural.
Don’t forget to vote! 
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That’s a hard choice – all the books look good!
I always eat too much granola – half the bag is gone before I know it!
I highly, highly recommend “The Immortal Life”. I just finished it and it is an amazing book! More amazing is that it is based on a true story!
I picked Little Bee because I have the book but haven’t read it! Haha
I am such a snacker! Sometimes I feel like I would rather snack my way through the day than eat any meals at all … although I suppose that I should make the snacks healthy if I am going to do that 🙂
Oh man, I’m having such a difficult time deciding between Henrietta and The Night Circus. I’ve wanted to read Night Circus for a while (it’s on my kindle wish list), but the scientist in me has wanted to read Henrietta too. I think whatever the winner is I will be happy. I haven’t participated in the club yet (thought all your choices have tempted me!), but I may have to stop lurking:)
The little bee was the most over rated book I read in 2011. 😉
I definitely have days where all I want to do is snack! I think if I worked from home I would have a hard time avoiding it, for sure!
My sister was required to read ‘The Immortal Life’ before she went to college in the fall. It’s supposed to be a great book!
I am definitely a snacker too! In the summer when I’m home more I definitely make lunch/dinner spread out over 5 or 6 snacks. Sometimes more… 🙂 I try and make sure most things at home are healthy enough that I don’t feel guilty for snacking so often.
if i worked from home i would be a diet disaster. I would HAVE to leave the house!
OMG–
I have been snacking all day!! I guess being 7mo pregnant has a bit to do with that! Asiago cheese-its are my new love thanks to a coworker today!! Oh–and the Christmas Dots (yes-those chewy candies that normally I wouldn’t go near!.
Little Bee was an excellent and touching book IMO. I voted for Night Circus as I am dying to read it, but haven’t had the chance to go purchase it yet. Snacky? Yeah, I am snacky all right. I feel like I have an endless pit in my stomach. I think it’s more comfort eating, as it is a cold gray day where live.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is one of the best books I read all year! I am usually not the biggest non-fiction fan, but I got so sucked into this one- for non-science geared minds, it’s extremely readable, and Rebecca Skloot does an amazing job of telling Henrietta’s and her family’s story- I found myself tearing up at their tragedies and cheering at their triumphs! It was a fantastic read- even if it doesn’t get picked for the book club I highly recommend that everyone read it anyway!
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks is a great book…but I do have a personal problem with it because HeLa cells are a pain to work with! We had them at my lab at grad school, and they were not my favorite! Yep, I’m a nerd.
Thanks for the shout out! I am excited for the link up! can’t wait to find out what book we will be reading.
Snacking began with bfast and just ended post-dinner… Def one of those kinda days 😛 Lunches lately have been snack plates- love it, little bites of anything and everything I want!
I’m excited to read either The Night Circus or Little Bee. Either sound great! I just finished up Committed and absolutely loved it!
I just wanted to say that Henrietta Lacks was the book of the year at my school (Northwestern) and I really recommend it! It got a full campus of college students talking– and the book of the year normally does not pull that off
Oh man, when I voted it was almost exactly split evenly between the 3. I’d definitely recommend putting at least one of the two that don’t get picked up for February’s vote again, as they all seem popular!
Ah I always love finding new blogs! I’m already following so freaking many hahaha.
Little bee was intense but great. I could not put it down
I’m such a snacker too…food is too yummy to only be enjoyed thrice a day!
So happy you posted those Brussels sprouts! I am such a big fan but always forget about them when I’m in the grocery store.
I love your book club idea! I am such a huge reader, I am working on posting a page with all my favorite books. Hopefully it will be up soon. 🙂 I will definitely write a book review of the chosen book as well!
i could not put little bee down. that one caught me by surprise!
I’ve read Little Bee and Henrietta Lacks, and definitely have to vote for Henrietta on this, it’s an amazing (true) story. I’m probably biased because I’m a scientist, but it is 100% enjoyable even if you don’t have a science background.
I read Little Bee last summer. It is an AMAZING book. It is one of those books that after reading you feel like you really know the characters and take a piece of the book with you.
You MUST read The Night Circus, even if it’s not your book club pick this month. It’s such a gorgeous book, the prose is really lush and descriptive. I could barely put it down.
I am so glad you wrote about working from home and snacking. Yesterday was one of those days that I felt hungrier (probably due to the fact that I’ve been exercising regularly, but had not really changed my food intake) so I ate two breakfasts. I thought my second protein/fat/carb packed breakfast would be enough and then I just couldn’t feel satiated. I had snack guilt almost all day. Not fun… I work from home about 50 percent of the time. I get snacky when I’m in the office too, but I guess the guilt is worse when I’m at home? I have no logical explanation!!! I just felt better after reading your post so thanks 🙂
My book club read The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks when it first came out about a year ago and it was amazing! Its not just an entertaining read it is really really important to know what is going on in the science/research world with cell ownership. Its pretty scary stuff!!
….I just read your description of the book and unless I missed it you didn’t mention that it is a NON-FICTION book. Its not even a novel based on a true story its actually written by a science/medical writer, not an author. Kind of an important point.
I echo all the “Little Bee is over rated” comments. Henrietta Lacks is so compelling and really, really interesting. I might be more interested in it because I live literally across the street from one of the places important in the book. Lots of good points for discussion, for sure.
The immortal life is AMAZING!!!!!! I actually read it for one of my anthropology classes…one of the first assigned texts I’ve enjoyed reading 🙂 I thought little bee was amazing too…
All three of these books are on my Must Read in 2012 list! If I have to choose, then The Night Circus!
I voted for Hela, mainly because I just watched an episode of Law & Order that was about the same thing and it was fascinating :o)
a fav passage from Little Bee:
On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
I have heard excellent things about the Night Circus.
The circus book sounds amazing! I loved Water For Elephants and have been craving a book that centers around a circus-y theme again. That’s my vote!!
Is that one of those mini wheat bagels? I love those things now that I am trying to shed these last 30 pounds!
The Pepperidge Farm mini bagels? I love those, too, especially the cinnamon raisin ones.
And they are perfect for dieters! But, of course, Julie doesn’t need them for weight loss.
I wanted to put The Night Circus, because I just read that and it is so gooooood and I want to spread the word, but like I said I just read it so am crossing my fingers for Little Bee.
Little Bee is one of the best books I have ever read. From the storyline to the brilliant writing, even though this book wasn’t chosen you must read it Julie! I’m not just sayin this either..I’ve heard it from many others as well! Its a must read! 🙂