Hello! Welcome to The Monthly Brew - formally known as Coffee Break. We're one day away from Friday - which means we're one day away from the weekend!
The weather has finally warmed up in Ohio and I cannot wait to get outside and just enjoy the sunshine! They're building a new ice cream shop right next to the library, which has an amazing playground too. Joe and I have already planned to fill our summers with library-ice cream-playground trips!
What I'm Doing
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| via Sherwin Williams |
Painting! Well, not yet - but I will be!
Now that we've finally finished putting in the floor of the three season room it's time for me to paint! I love painting and would paint every room in the house if necessary. However, it is not necessary to paint every room but there are definitely rooms that are in need.
Painting is such an easy way to make a home yours and insert your own style into each room. I tend to move toward neutral colors on walls because I can always add pops of color through my decor - and it's easier to change your throw pillows than the wall color when ready for a change.
I picked out a few paint chips from Sherwin Williams's Liveable Luxe collection (above) the other day and not it's just a matter of picking out the right color for each room.
What I'm Watching
You already know that my taste in TV shows range from Victoria to Teen Mom and everything in between. So this should come as no surprise to anyone, but my favorite show right now is Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. I actually watch in the night it airs - pretty unheard of for me.
Jersey Shore was my gateway to reality TV. I didn't watch season one, but started halfway through season two as Joe was an avid watcher and we'd started dating around that time. He tapped out after season two, but I was hooked!
What I'm Reading
Two nonfiction novels going at once - not the norm for me!
I am a huge fan of Allison Pataki. Normally she writes historical fiction, but this memoir is one of heartache and truth. I just started Beauty in the Broken Places last night so I'm not too far into it, but I can already tell my emotions are going to be put through the ringer!
You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, especially recently. I have had this book on my list ever since it was first published back in February, but given the recent events OF HIS CAPTURE I couldn't wait any longer.
A deeply moving memoir about two lives that were changed in the blink of an eye, and the love that helped them rewrite their future
Five months pregnant, on a flight to their “babymoon,” Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange, and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave—a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident—had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night.
When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come.
As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation for this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again.
This is a manifesto for living, an ultimately uplifting story about the transformative power of faith and resilience. It’s a tale of a husband’s turbulent road to recovery, the shifting nature of marriage, and the struggle of loving through pain and finding joy in the broken places.
You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, especially recently. I have had this book on my list ever since it was first published back in February, but given the recent events OF HIS CAPTURE I couldn't wait any longer.
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.
Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.
At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.
I actually just finished this yesterday and it's masterfully done - full review to come! It is a little heartbreaking that Michelle put so much of her time and effort into this novel and passed away before he was caught. But caught he was and I believe I'll Be Gone in the Dark helped play a part of his capture.
Send me your recommendations! What are you doing, watching, or reading?
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