The Lazy Genius Way (CBR16 #20)

My coworker and direct supervisor who is also a friend saw that I was spiraling a bit this past year and decided to get me The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi for Christmas. Between work and personal life things all hitting the fan in what felt like a non-stop no-time-for-breathing pattern I was losing it a little. She had read it and it spoke to her and she had begun implementing pieces of it into her personal and professional ethos and while she and I don’t always agree on books, we have gotten better over the years about finding common ground.  

To peel back the curtain a little bit my life took some substantial changes over the last year and change. I knew going into 2023 that I needed to take a small sabbatical from Cannonball Read’s Book Club based on some personal scheduling things (things that were good!) but I also got walloped by some not-good things in the same season both personal and professional. When I was getting my feet back under me last summer, I found out that some water work had to be done to my apartment and I would need to vacate for a week, which turned into a month last August. While that was happening, I was informed that I might have to move apartments permanently as potential HVAC work would change the use of my apartment. In November, I got word that it was happening and was offered another place about 40 minutes away, but closer to my social circle and the same distance to work. But then there was a roof leak at the new place that I discovered in December right before the Christmas holidays which delayed the actual moving by three months. As of today, I am down to one box of things that have not been unpacked two and a half months after moving and I have started putting art on my walls. I finally am beginning to feel at home in my new (more expensive) space and am writing this review at my desk, and not hunched over the laptop on my couch  

A few weeks ago, I finally opened The Lazy Genius even though I had specifically kept it out of the many boxes and bags of books while packing so I could have ready access to it and started working my way through. My quick review (she says after having typed 400 words already) is that this is a good book for framing an ethos about finding the healthy middle ground and staying connected to your own needs and motivations to stay away from the shoulds and the fads and live your life in a way that healthily suits you. 

For my longer thoughts, it is more about the value in the framing Adachi uses in The Lazy Genius. Her core concept, which spoke to me, is that too often we get stuck on either end of the spectrum of getting stuff handled – we either “genius” it by setting unrealistic goals with multi-stepped plans that we are not likely to be able to achieve or maintain. On the other end is the “lazy” mindset of fuck it (which, it should be noted is NOT how Adachi would frame it as the is a capital C Christian and I am not. That may be a barrier to entry for others, but her religious beliefs being intertwined into the narrative did not bother me as they could be excised without losing her point, and I grew up Catholic so there was enough common ground for me to feel comfortable extracting her meaning, even if I don’t function the same way she does in faith). There was not a ton of new ground for me here, but it was a good reminder of things I had already picked up from books like Unfuck You Habitat, How to Keep House While Drowning, The Sad Bastard Cookbook, therapy, and The Nap Ministry. Sometimes you need someone to pull all those things into one tidy 200-page grouping with practical examples and summarized, bullet pointed conclusions to help your brain remember that you know how to cope and the things you did not know or realize can be added in.  

I’m a single lady with zero intention of having children or marrying, so lots of her examples aren’t direct parallels to me since she is a wife and mom and many of her examples reflect that lived experiences, but she is mindful of that fact, and that she is writing from a place of privilege as a white middle class woman. Adachi outlines 13 principles to build a system that works for you, and possibly only you (she reiterates many times that everyone’s right choice is unique to them and is not based on what is right for others). Some of them are less impactful for me personally than others but Decide Once (are there annoyances that you can make one big decision for so you don’t have to rethink it and relitigate it every time it comes up?) and Ask The Magic Question (what can I do now to make life easier later?) are already having a big impact for me as I’m trying to be intentional about the reset this past year has introduced in my life. The one I wasn’t expecting is Let People In which is a big growth possibility for me because it focuses on both emotionally letting people in to your life – both the big things and the small things (look at me practicing by sharing what’s been happening even though it doesn’t feel big enough to be a thing that needs to be discussed) – and also physically into your spaces (which is a thing I have not been doing for the past many years and it has drastically impacted my relationships). 

I am going with three stars because there are things that I do not like about this book, but it feels genuinely helpful for me, and it may be for you as well.  

Green River Killer (CBR16 #19)

Reading Doomed sparked a push for more true crime reading and I hit up my TBR and put in a slew of library requests. First in was another Read Harder choice, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case. Before this year I was unfamiliar with the existence of this book, or the decades long investigation it chronicles. But such is the reward of hitting up library lists for challenges, particularly banned books. (The challenge task was specifically banned comics and I chose from a list on BiblioCommons which has a pretty extensive one.) 

This one jumped onto my personal reading list because I recognized and trusted the author. “Doc” Jeff Jensen wrote for Entertainment Weekly for years and years and made his name covering Lost. He has gone on to do work in movies and television, but I had not realized he was also a published author. This Eisner-winning 2011 work tells the story of the Green River Killer case in King County, Washington from the perspective of his father, the only detective who was assigned to the case from the time the task force was created in 1984 until the arrest of Gary Ridgway in 2001 and the nearly 200 days of interrogation that went into unraveling the mystery of what happened to the 49 women he eventually pled guilty to murdering.  

I was pulled in from the moment go with this one, which is in part due to the way Jensen structured the narrative, jumping between important moments in his father’s history and the case, but also in the stark art of Jonathan Case. It is a real achievement to capture the atrocities of the crimes while also achieving the stylized format of pen and ink work. Beyond the subject matter, my gut instinct is that it is the unflinching art that caused this book to be banned in some locations. As is the case with banned books I was curious as to where the banning had occurred. In the case of Green River Killer, it was banned in Missouri and in Orange County, FL schools.  

I’m glad to have read this book, and glad for the closure the process of hunting and interrogating Ridgway gave to the victim’s families. When I’m consuming True Crime content, I am very aware that I am, as Michelle McNamara put it, “choosing to be a consumer of someone else’s tragedy” and that requires that I be conscious of that choice, and only suggest to others works that I feel treat the topics covered humanely and center the victims. While the perspective of this story is centered on the investigators, it is clear from the choices made in the case and the narrative that pursuing a proposed deal was only accepted to provide as much closure as humanly possible, even though it remains imperfect. There are still missing women associated with the case and King County Sherriff’s Office has more information about them on their website.