It’s the 15th! Which means I’m linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share a few of the best books I read during the month of March. I covered some good ones and a few worth raving about.
Here’s what I read in March
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Good as Gone by Amy Gentry
The Road Back to You is a look at the Enneagram personality typing. I’ve been dipping my toes in this somewhat ancient way of looking at our selves, how we respond in stress and at our best. I had heard good things about this book and had spent some time listening to the podcast these authors host. This book was a really great introduction to the Enneagram. It covers the theory behind it and goes through each of the nine types in pretty good detail. It certainly isn’t an all-encompassing, comprehensive look at the Enneagram but it’s a great starter and it made me want to look into other resources on the topic. The authors’ writing style is very warm and accessible as well. Overall I definitely recommend it!
Born a Crime is Daily Show Trevor Noah’s memoir about his childhood and young adult life in South Africa during Apartheid. Noah was born to a white father and black mother, which during this era in South Africa’s history was literally a crime. I’d listened to some interviews by Noah in recent months and have been struck by his wisdom and insight when it came to some of the things that were happening in our country. I was super excited to get my hands on this memoir. Noah writes like he talks and I could almost audibly hear him through the words on the page. His stories and antecdotes were entertaining, eye opening and thought provoking. The thing I most appreciated about this book was the education on South African Apartheid that Noah provides. Each chapter is framed with a short “lesson” on different aspects of what happened during the Apartheid era. There was so much that I didn’t know and Noah gave the reader a master class in an entertaining, approachable and interesting manner.
Americanah was my read of the month. It’s the story of two Nigerians and their respective experiences immigrating to America and London, and then their return back to their homeland. This book made me think about so many topics: the experience of immigrants, race in America and England, the way hard life experiences change and shape us. It was SO well written, and the characters so well developed. This is a book that will stay with me for a while. One of the characters writes an anonymous blog about race in America and the author incorporated these fictional blog posts into the book beautifully. It made me wish that this blog actually existed. I love good fiction that highlights the experiences of others in a way that helps foster empathy and understanding and this book is heading to the top of my list of books in this category.
I’m slowly making my way through the Inspector Gamache series and The Cruelest Month was the third in the series. Penny’s created a great cast of characters in these books and they keep me coming back. The Bible Tells Me So was a super fascinating look at how our culture’s way of reading the bible in order to defend it’s divine accuracy is ruining our ability to actually read and experience the bible as God intended. It’s changing the way I read the bible. And Good as Gone was the palate cleansing page turner I needed after the much heavier Americanah. It was a fast paced, well told story of a girl who returns 8 years after being kidnapped. Questions abound over who the girl really is and what really happened.
That’s my March reading! What did you read? Anything I should be adding to my ever growing to read list?
