Spare time

I read books, lots of books, even when I really don't have time to read books like when I was writing my master thesis and it had to be finished within a month, I still read books. And I don't mean literature.
Right now I'm reading two books at once. The book of awesome and a book about Adventures in the American suburbs. While I mostly find it annoying to read multiple books at a time, because it doesn't do any of them justice, this combination is rather interesting. The book of awesome tells about all those little things in life that make you really happy, like bubble wrap and rain on hot pavement. The Adventures in the suburbs focuses mainly on dramatizing rather off the point aspects of American culture, making them look absolutely awful, like not staying for a glass of wine when picking up your kid from a play date and play dates in general. While the first makes me appreciate life and laugh about little things that are absolutely true but don't often come up in your brain, like playing in old playgrounds, before everything was cushioned. The latter makes me irritated to even be reading a book like that and is cultivating a small internal hate for the writer while bringing a smile to my face because some things are just absurd. The difference here lies not so much with my own interpretation as with the two writers. While The Book of Awesome is written by an upbeat Canadian, as my chiropractor once put it: a decaffeinated American, that other book is written by one of those down casting Dutchmen. It shows exactly why those cultures are opposites and I love and hate both. (Mind you, I get to because I grew up in both.) I'd rather be upbeat and love to focus on those little things, but a good sarcastic joke can go a long way too!