Create Space In Your Brain to Relax, and other fun reads around the internet.

Happy Saturday, friends!  Today I am sharing a list of links that I enjoyed reading this week and think that you might also be interested in.  Enjoy!

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4 Ways to Make Space In Your Brain to Create: is a great little essay on tips to carve out time to let your ideas grow.  Especially geared towards introverts, it talks about how many of us get recharged by alone time, and that time gets pulled away from us due to the obligations of the outside world.  In this article, I was most intrigued by the three pages a day idea and the bird by bird mantra.

Three pages a day encourages you to handwrite three journal pages a day in a stream of consciousness.  I will write more about this in a future post, but I loved this idea.  The Bird by Bird mantra has been on my radar for a while (and most recently suggested to me by the very sweet Laila at Big Reading Life) is about taking things one at a time and showing up to do the work.  A suggestion in this section is about creating a schedule to be creative, so I have been thinking about that a lot as well.

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I Read 52 Books This Year.  Here’s What I Learned.: is a fun little musing on the things that we discover when we aim to read as much as possible.  One of the lessons that really hit home with me: reading shouldn’t always be an escape.  I’ve decided for the month of December I will make reading an escape to make it through the holiday season.  But I have been thinking a lot about my goals in the New Year, and I think they will include books by diverse authors.  Diversity not only in gender, ethnicity, and religion, but by, dare I say it?  Different viewpoints.  It makes me a little sick to my stomach, but could that help me understand how this country elected a sociopath?

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50 Books Necessary for Your Anger and Your Action: 2016 has been such a heartbreaking and difficult year.  And for me, it just keeps getting scarier.  So we bookish types try to find our answers in books, and this list is a great place to search.  It’s broken into nonfiction and fiction/poetry, with 25 suggestions for each genre.  I will be adding many of them to my TBR!

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10 Overlooked Books by Women in 2016: I love to look at lists like these because they always have books and authors that I’ve never heard of!

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Great Books from 100+ Indie Presses: Super fun list by Liberty Hardy on Book Riot.  Liberty is the most amazing reader that I am aware of – the sheer number of books that she consumes is mind blowing!  Just reading the books on the list will keep you busy throughout 2017!

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I hope that you enjoyed some of these links.  Tomorrow is Christmas!  I hope your day is festive and full of joy.  And that you see Santa Claus, because that would be awesome.