A Few Good Books: October

Hellooooooo!  I’m linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy again to share a few good books I’ve read in the last month or so.  This month is actually pretty stacked!  I’ve read eight books and six of them were share-worthy (and the other two probably would have been if it had been a different month)!  Yea for good books!

Here’s my two cents:

The Girls by Emma Cline

This was the book everyone was talking about this summer.  It’s a fictional story about a young girl in the sixties and her experience with a Charles Manson like cult.  I’d been warned by more than one person that the content matter was a little R rated.  I think maybe I’d been over-warned so that it was worse in my imagination.  I didn’t think it was that bad, but others might, so be aware.  Otherwise I thought it was a really intriguing story (which made me more interested in the real case that inspired it) and an overall good read.

Eligible by Curtis Sittinfeld

This modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice came out this summer with a bit of fanfare.  I’ll admit that I’m not actually a huge Jane Austen fan (I know, I know, terrible).  But I LOVED this retelling.  It takes place in Cincinnati, involved a “Bachelor-esque” reality show and the Lizzy and Darcy of this story are just as endearing and delightful as Austen’s.  I loved this so much I sent it to a friend for her birthday.

Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton

I had been looking forward to this book for years, from when I first heard Glennon was writing a memoir about her marriage- the falling apart of it and the putting back together.  Melton is a writer I follow on social media and through her blog so I was interested in the full story behind the bits she’d shared in the past few years.  Plus, she’s one of my favorite teachers and so her wisdom on the topic of marriage seemed like a home run.  I was nervous when I found out, shortly before the book’s release, that her marriage had ended and she and Craig were separating.  I wondered if it would make whatever she shared in the book seem false, or not quite truthful.  Once I read the book though, the outcome of her marriage, a year or so after she finished writing, wasn’t actually relevant.  Melton goes there in this book- she’s more honest than she’s ever been- and this is a book about marriage and intimacy, porn, addiction and what happens when two really unhealthy people get married and then really deal with their unhealthiness.  I’m still thinking about this one and will be for quite a while.  It’s a book about marriage, but it’s really a book about what happens when you really and truly face your deepest junk and save yourself from it.  (Also, this is an Oprah book club pick, so it will be everywhere)

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

This needs to be required reading friends.  Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and works with people on death row.  This book is about a case Bryan worked with early on in his career, a man who had been wrongfully convicted of murder and subsequently placed on death row.  The injustice in this case caused my blood to boil and more than once I wondered how Bryan managed to keep his cool and continue to fight against what seemed like bold and outright injustice.  In between chapters on this case Bryan shares different aspects of injustice in our prison systems.  The section on mandatory life sentences for minors will have you outraged.  I can’t recommend it enough.  The writing is beautiful, Stevenson is so descriptive I kept thinking, this needs to be a screen play, someone has to turn this into a movie.  (Someone is and Michael B. Jordan is playing Stevenson.  Score.)

Very Married by Katherine Willis Pershey

I wasn’t trying to read a lot of books on marriage, it just sort of happened.  I’d heard some buzz about this book for a while now.  Pershey was on my radar as she’s a pastor of a church in the same town I once worked (in a church).  If Melton’s book is about the individual work that happens within a marriage, Pershey’s is much more a celebration about the work of togetherness that happens there.  I loved this memoir, deeply appreciated Pershey’s honestly and her voice.  I want very much to read more from her.

Honorable mentions this month: The Forgetting Time, Landline, and The Silkworm.  All were great, but this post has gotten too long for recaps of everything :).  I'm in the middle of the third book in the Cormoran Strike series, Career of Evil and I've got Hatching Twitter on deck.  What are you reading??