Reading, Watching and Listening for the Weekend

Welcome to my new weekly list of things I have been reading, watching and listening to over the past week. If you have any recommendations please do link to them in the comments and share with everyone else. I’d love some new places to explore!

Without further ado…

Reading

I can recommend newish author R F Kuang who has written The Poppy War series, Babel and her newest book Yellow Face. She is one of my favourite authors, although I have found the ending to each book a little disappointing. Once started though, I can not put her books down. I particularly recommend Babel, which for me was one of the best books I have read this year. I love books which have the power to change my perspective on something. She completely rerouted my thoughts about translation, which as a Christian who takes the word of God as, well, gospel, is massive. Go read it, you won’t regret it!

I’m re-reading The Circadian Code by Dr Satchin Panda, this time making notes. This powerful book is a must read if you struggle to sleep (the bane of my life) or you struggle to lose weight (the other bane of my life). According to Panda, they are intrinsically linked by your circadian code. Get that sorted and all sorts of other issues will heal all by themselves. He has made it his life work to figure out sleep, and as such it is steeped in science and backed up with research (albeit much of it on rats 😬). It’s still very much worth a read though.

Listening

I love listening to podcasts whilst I’m walking, doing housework, hanging out the washing, cooking…literally I take every opportunity to learn and grow. And podcasts are a marvellous way to do this. Most last for 30-45 minutes which is perfect for tackling a job around the house or cooking dinner. Habit stacking extraordinaire!

I listen to lots of podcasts throughout the week. Elizabeth Elliot is my choice when I am walking the dog each morning. It is my way of getting in some Bible teaching first thing in the morning. I often come home and then go back through the session and write some of her words in my common place book. I think she is a great teacher, humble, wise and very straight forward.

The second podcast I listen to regularly is Andrew Huberman’s The Huberman Lab. Oh. My. Goodness. If you can get past the fact that he looks like a body guard of sorts, and that someone who looks like him should not also be as intelligent, well spoken or such an incredible teacher (yes, I know that sounds prejudice against men that look like him, but I can’t help it – he is so good at what he does but he does not look like he should be doing what he does!!). He is a professor at Stanford, which he does not look old enough to be (again, yes, I know, I’m now being age-ist – I’m not doing well today am I?).

His goal in his podcast is to make neuroscience available and understandable to the masses. And he does this so incredibly well. He is eloquent in his speech and listening to him teach about one of the toughest subjects to understand about the body is like watching a master ballet dancer telling a story effortlessly on stage. I listen to him from YouTube whilst I am painting but he is also on Spotify. He is an AMAZING teacher and makes things very accessible for every day people with average intelligence (like me!)

Last but not least is the Etsy Success Podcast. Obviously, with my new business venture I need to be a quick study in all things Etsy and this is the podcast which is going to help me!

Watching

I have a few YouTube channels I watch each night to relax to. I’m sure most of you have heard of The Cottage Fairy? She creates the most beautiful videos and is very relaxing to watch. I also watch Ruby Granger, which my husband thinks is really weird! I started to watch her videos when I went back to studying for my master’s degree last year. I stay because I love her enthusiasm for life, her intelligence and the long lists of books she reads and recommends each month. These are the two channels I watch regularly.

I have also begun watching a few artist channels since I took up painting. The first is Anna Lunak and the second is Randi Lynn Reed. Both have channels which are very relaxing to watch as well as being very inspiring for me as a (very untrained) artist!

Hopefully I have given you some ideas for your weekend when you have a quiet minute or two which you’d like to fill. If you have any recommendations, or if you have a channel or book or website yourself, please do leave them in the comments. I promise to check out each and every one, and you never know, they might end up in next week’s list!