Kaki's Favorite Things: My Year with Eleanor

I'll be honest, I'm not a reader. I like the idea of reading, and I can definitely appreciate good literature, but I'm too impatient most of the time to read an entire book or I lose interest or just am simply too busy doing things (haha.) to read. But recently, I read an entire book the whole way through! For fun! And it was great! (!!1!!!) My Year With Eleanor by Noelle Handcock is a memoir about a 29 year old pop-culture journalist who loses her job and soon realizes she doesn't really have a life and is afraid to step out of her comfort zone that seems to have shrunk since before her job started consuming her social life. One day in a coffee shop, she sees a sign with the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote, "do one thing every day that scares you," and is inspired to take Eleanor literally. She dedicated the next year of her life to facing all of her fears. From sky diving to shark diving to confronting ex-boyfriends, she does things (hey look!) that take her on a journey of self-discovery. She even climbs Mount Kilimanjaro! Throughout her journey, she faces fears that a lot of people face--public speaking, karaoke, making hard decisions, and finds that there is "nothing to fear but fear itself" (another famous Roosevelt said that one).
Its a really good book, ya'll. And, as cheesy as this is, by the end of it, I was doing more things that scared me--I went to the weight room where all the buff guys work out, I wore red lipstick to church, I started being more honest with people. I discovered the same thing as Noelle in the book--most of the things we fear aren't actually that scary. Looking our fears straight in the face makes us stronger people. We gain more self confidence in knowing that we have conquered hard things before, and that brings motivation to keep pushing, keep facing, keep growing.
This book was light-hearted, easy to relate too, SO funny and just so good! My roommate Anna had to read it for class, and I read it after she did. Once I finished it, our other roommate read it! We loved it. Now we have this sign hanging in our kitchen:

This book gets the very first "Kaki's Favorite Things" stamp of approval so do something and check it out!!