A Few Good Books: August

It’s the middle of the month so I’m linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share what I read last month.  I read some good stuff in August!

Here’s the lineup:

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

One: Unity in a Divided World by Deirdre Riggs

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

The Polygamist’s Daughter by Anna LeBaron

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

The Best:

read this immediately

Hands down "Homegoing" was the best thing I read this month.  This book was…. I don’t even know if I have the words to properly explain its significance.  It follows the lineage of two sisters in Africa starting at the beginning of the slave trade.  Each chapter gives a snapshot of the next generation, going back and forth between families.  There is a helpful family tree at the beginning of the book that I referred back to constantly.  It is so beautifully and powerfully written.  Each character could have sustained an entire novel, but the fact that we only got what is essentially a short story peek into their lives just made me want more.  Gyasi did an incredible job of tying each generations story together so that you felt like you got resolution to each character’s life.  It was in incredibly ingenious set up and the execution was perfect.  It’s a powerful, powerful story that needs to be on everyone’s “to read” list.

worth it 100%

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t eagerly anticipating this one like I have of Hatmaker’s books in the past.  I loved Jen’s books “Seven” and “Interrupted" and I’ve been a long time reader of her blog, but her last book “For the Love” fell kind of flat for me so I figured I’d get around to “Of Mess and Moxie” whenever.  I wasn’t on the pre-ordering rush.  But after hearing a podcast interview with Jen about the book my interest was piqued and her pre-order incentives were decent so I went ahead and pre-ordered it a few days before it came out.  It came to my door on a Tuesday and I think I’d finished it in two days.  It is classic Hatmaker, honest, funny, thought-provoking.  There was something different about this one though.  She’s been through the ringer over the last year with in the big “Christian Industry” and the book reveals a depth and groundedness that I haven’t seen with her.  She’s been refined and I found her to be even wiser and bolder, my favorite combination.  I shared essays with Tommy, returned to a few later and am still thinking about some.  I couldn’t recommend this one more highly.

this cover conveys zero about the book itself

Another surprise this month was “The Almost Sisters.”  It was on a bunch of “Best Summer Reading Lists” but the cover was such a turn off for me that I kept avoiding it.  Then, a book store owner I follow on Instagram, Annie B. Jones posted about it mentioning that the cover didn’t really fit the book so I added it to my library hold list.  When I finally got it I’d forgotten all about Annie’s post and once again found myself so turned off by the cover that it sat on my desk for a week before I finally picked it up.  I’m so glad I did!  It was a delightful story.  I loved the main character and the world in which she lived.  It’s a story that takes place in the South is one part family drama, one part murder mystery and one part “woman at a crossroads.”  Don’t let the cover (which truly makes absolutely no sense to both the plot and tone of the story) turn you off.

The Rest:

Deirdre Riggs’ One: Unity in a Divided World is a beautiful look at how we can be unity and peace makers in this modern era which seems so divisive.  I really enjoyed it and hope to entice a few others to read it so I can talk to them about it.  The Perfect Stranger is a mystery/thriller in the vein of Gone Girl et all.  I liked this one better than Miranda’s previous book “All the Missing Girls.”  Anna LeBaron is the daughter of an infamous polygamous cult leader and this memoir, The Polygamist's Daughter, documents her life within the cult and her escape from it.  Weird fact about me-I'm fascinated by polygamous cults.  I don’t know why, but I will read any and all cult memoirs.  LeBaron’s story is fascinating and heartbreaking, but if you’re going to read a polygamous cult memoir I’d read The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner (who happens, weirdly, to be LeBaron’s cousin, though they didn’t know that until both their memoirs had come out).

That's what I've got this month friends!  What are you reading?

A Few Good Books: June and July

Oh hey there.  It's been a minute hasn't it?  July was basically a blur of airports and adventures and laundry and repacking for more adventures (so basically it was my favorite month ever :) ).  I will say my reading has taken a hit this summer.  There are so many children around right now.  And there are so many adventures to be had.  So I got a bit less read in July and I’m not on track to change that in August.  But a bunch of what I did read was awesome.  And the rest wasn’t terrible.  

Since I missed posting about my June reading in July I’m going to cover the best of June and July today.  As always, I’m linking up to Modern Mrs. Darcy’s monthly quick lit post.

Here’s the rundown of June and July:

June

Almost Missed You by Jessica Strawser

Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters

The Dry by Jane Harper

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham

Every Wild Heart by Meg Donahue

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

July

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

A year of Living Danishly by Helen Russel

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I See You by Clare Mackintosh

The Best:

The premise of Underground Airlines is that the civil war never happened and slavery still exists in modern day America in four states, known as the hard four.  It was so uncomfortable and, frankly, unsettling to see our modern day government systems and conveniences within the back drop of slavery.  The book follows a black slave catcher who is on the hunt for an escaped slave, trying to infiltrate an abolitionist group along the way.  The story itself is riveting, fast paced, and intense but it was the premise itself and the ease of which slavery could still exist in this modern world that haunted me.  I couldn’t stop thinking about this one and recognizing the ways our laws and systems still protect other injustices.

Lincoln in the Bardo was one of the buzzed about books and when I heard that the audiobook included an all star cast (featuring prominently my favorite couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally) I knew I wanted to listen to this one.  It took me a beat to get into this book, it was so outside the norms of literature in many ways, but I love what Saunders did.  It’s part play, part novel, part history lesson, poetic and beautiful.  It explores the period of time after Abraham Lincoln’s son dies, imagining him encountering the spirit of his dead son in this middle place between life and death.  I’d highly recommend the audiobook, but you may need a copy of the physical book nearby at first to understand exactly what’s going on (I did).

This is How it Always Is was one that a number of people with fabulous taste had been recommending on line or in person.  I’m so glad I read it.  I think this may be a good book to go into with very little knowledge about the story so all I will say is that its characters are so beautifully and realistically drawn, the unravelling of the story so honestly and powerfully revealed and the interpersonal dynamics among the family members so authentic and loving that I felt like I knew these people and I was a friend on their journey with them.  It made me think, lay down assumptions and grew my empathy, just like all good books should.

I’d had Hillbilly Elegy on my list for a long time but kept avoiding it for some strange reason.  I’m sorry that I did, because this was a beautiful story that I couldn’t put down.  Vance tells his life story with such love and care for the people and place that raised him without denying the complicated and conflicting aspects of them both.  As a reader you can disagree with the characters he draws while still loving them fiercely as Vance did.  It helped me understand large areas of our country that I’ve been wrestling with lately.  I very much appreciated and respected the way Vance told this story; he honored the best of his community while still calling out the worst, doing so in a way that set him firmly within the community, not as an outsider pointing fingers at a problem.  His voice and leadership is remarkable and I hope we hear more from him.

The Hate U Give will definitely be on my best books of the year list.  I am obsessed with this story.  The characters in this are so incredibly and authentically written that I found myself so sad to leave them when I got to the last page.  I read this book in about two days.  Main character Starr is a teenage girl who walks in two worlds, the upper class white community of her private prep school and the urban, black, more impoverished community she lives in.  She finds herself thrown in the national spotlight and drawn to activism when she witnesses her unarmed friend shot by a cop.  The story is relevant, nuanced, and engrossing.  It’s technically YA, but this should be required reading for everyone.  I can’t recommend it more highly or enthusiastically.

Almost Missed You was an engrossing tale about a husband who disappears with his son, leaving behind a wife to unravel the secrets he’d been keeping about his past.  The Dry was a really good murder mystery set in the Australian outback.  Talking as Fast as I Can is Lauren Graham’s memoir about her career with a focus on her time shooting the Gilmore Girls reboot.  Graham is a pretty good writer (did you know she has a fiction novel out??) and I super enjoyed this peak behind the scenes of one of my favorite shows.  Every Wild Heart follows a mother and her teenaged daughter in this equal parts mystery and love story.  It was an easy, fast read that tied up a little too neatly at the end.  Into the Water is the newest work from The Girl on the Train writer Paula Hawkins.  It was a great story and definitely in the same vein of Girl on the Train, but not earth shattering.  I’ll probably give A Year of Living Danishly its own post because I have a lot of thoughts on this one.  A british woman moves to Denmark with her husband and spends the year trying to discover why the Danish are considered the happiest people in the world.  I See You is another new one out by the author of I Let You Go, a novel who's surprise twist had me gasping out loud.  This was another great psychological thriller that had me turning the pages as fast as I could.

That's a lot of words about two months of reading (so much for Quick Lit!).  I can't wait to hear what you've been reading!

A Few Good Books: May

                                   

Despite the insanity that is my life in May (or maybe, as a coping mechanism, because of it) I finished a new record of books last month.  Every single one would have been noteworthy in a different month, so narrowing down the top two or three is difficult.  But, we can do hard things, right?  So for this month’s Modern Mrs. Darcy Quick Lit link up I give you the very best of what I read in May (and some brief words about the rest).

First, the line up:

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

Be Frank with Me by Julia Clairborne Johnson

At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenrider

Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Hamilton the Revolution by Lin Manuel-Miranda and Jermey McCarter

El Deafo by CeeCee Bell

Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham

At Home in the World is Tsh Oxenrider’s second book, but my first encounter with her writing.  I’ve been listening to her podcast for a little while now and through the blogging world I knew that she and her family had taken a year long trip around the world (and lived to tell the tale!)  This book is just that tale.  I honestly hesitated to read it.  I’ve got some hardcore wanderlust right now and I was worried a book about a fantastic adventure globe trotting with three children would make me a little bitter.  I found it to be the exact opposite.  Oxenrider writes very honestly about the tension that exists between her adventure seeking traveler spirit and the root longing homebody that also lives in her.  She writes beautifully about all the amazing benefits of traveling like that with her family while also acknowledging that it is not perfect and it is not real life.  There were very real challenges that came with that experience, ones that were worth it, but challenges all the same.  This book made me start planning doable adventures my family could do now, and also appreciate the regular, everyday home life we’ve created for ourselves at the same time.  It was a quick read, a thought-provoking read, and I highly recommend it!

I heard about the premise of One True Loves described as “basically the story of Cast Away only he comes back before she gets married.”  I would add that it’s also told from the “Helen Hunt” point of view, as opposed to Tom Hanks.   Emma marries her high school sweetheart Jesse who disappears in a helicopter accident on their first wedding anniversary.  She returns home to put her life back together and ends up falling for an old acquaintance, Sam.  A few months before their wedding Jesse returns and Emma is left with a bit of a dilemma.  This was a page turner and I think I finished it in about three days, but I was surprised by how torn I was by her situation.  Reid does a good job of making it an impossible situation for all parties.  Based on the premise alone I assumed I would be rooting for the story to go one way, but Reid reveals the complexity of love, loyalty and death.  This one is a good summer read. 

So, El Deafo.  This book wrecked me.  I am obviously very invested in this topic, the story of a young girl who goes deaf at age 4 due to a bout with meningitis, and her subsequent years living in the hearing world with hearing aids, not quite in but not quite out.  This is CeeCee Bell’s true story, written in graphic novel form.  Liam and I read it together and I don’t have enough space here to fully convey how great of an experience it was.  Bell’s goal with this memoir was to express how it felt to be deaf in the 70’s in a hearing world.  And man, did she do a great job.  It opened up so many conversations for us, giving him some language and concrete stories to help him describe his experience.  I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially to parents of kids with hearing loss (and the kids themselves!).

Dreamland Burning is my read of the month I think (which says a lot ‘cause this was a heck of a month).  This is technically a YA, but I think it’s a great read for all ages.  Set in Tulsa, OK the book flips back and forth between present day and 1921 in the days leading up to the Tulsa race riots.  I knew nothing about this tragic event in history, so everything about it was eye opening.  In 1921 the thriving African American community of Greenwood was burned to the ground by rioting whites.  There’s a mystery involving the discovery of a dead body that connects both storylines, as well as the reality of racism that may not have lessened as much as we’d like to believe from 1921 to present day.  This one stuck with me and I’ve recommended it more than once since finishing it.

The Gifts of Imperfection is one of Brene Brown’s earlier books.  It’s a short, quick read that I’ll probably return to again, as it’s a good reminder of the importance of leaning into vulnerability and honesty.  I picked up Be Frank With Me on a whim, to check of the “book you picked solely for the cover” category in my reading challenge.  I really loved it and the endearing character of the little boy Frank will stay with me for a while.  I’m making my way through the Anne of Green Gables series, reading the second book, Anne of Avonlea.  Anne is a little older and a little wiser but just as charming.  Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk was our book club pick this month and I was super delighted with it.  Lillian Boxfish is another endearing character and the book follows her as she walks the streets of Manhattan on New Year's Eve, 1985 reflecting on her life and career as the highest paid female ad exec.  That premise sounded stupid to me, but I promise it was really good!  Finally Hamilton the Revolution is really only going to be interesting if you are Hamilton obsessed like me.  It’s basically the book of lyrics from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical interspersed wth stories of how the show came to life and the players that made it happen.  The real gem for me were the many footnotes Miranda added to the lyrics pointing out the different easter eggs he’d created or giving background on particular references or lines.  I’m a theater nerd and I hardcore love Hamilton so naturally this was right up my alley.

That’s what I’ve got this month, friends!  Have you read anything good this month?

A Few Good Books: April edition

On the fifteenth of the month I link up with Modern Mrs. Darcy and share the books I read the previous month.  I’ve made a concerted effort to read more this year, and I’m finding that keeping track of what I’ve read and sharing my favorites has helped make that possible.  (More thoughts on how I read more here.)  Plus, I love a good book talk. April was lost to disease in our house-everyone was sick more than once, including me.  The only plus to this kind of sick that keeps you horizontal is that you’ve got plenty of time to read, and read I did.  I made my way through some good ones this month.

The list:

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I Let You Go by Claire Mackintosh

The Magic of Motherhood by Ashlee Gadd and the Coffee + Crumbs team

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

A Movable Feast by Earnest Hemingway

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon is a delightful YA novel about two teens in New York City.  Natasha is an illegal immigrant, brought to the states at age nine by her parents, who is about to be deported back to Jamaica.  She meets Daniel, a Korean-American teen on the morning she is frantically trying every last ditch effort to stop her impending deportment.  The book follows the two throughout the day as they fall in love (as only two teens can in a few hours), fall apart and come back together.  The book also injects chapters from the point of view of the many people they encounter throughout the day.  It was a charming book with surprising depth about family, home, young love, and that universal truth that there is always more to people that what you see on the surface.  I really loved this book and would recommend it to teens and adults alike. 

R.J. Palacio’s Wonder is an upper grades children’s novel.  I picked it up because I’d heard great things about it, but also because I’d wanted something new to read with Liam.  Its main character, Auggie, is a young boy with severe facial deformities due to a genetic condition he was born with.  Auggie has been homeschooled his whole life but as the book begins we find that he’s about the start the fifth grade, middle school for this New York City school.  Auggie’s facial deformities are such that people react instinctually and poorly upon seeing him.  The book follows his fifth grade year as he makes friends, deals with bullies and adjusts to life in school, all told through the perspectives of Auggie and the people who surround him.  I loved this book and I loved reading it with Liam.  I’d intended to read it to him each night, but he was quickly hooked and went ahead without me.  This left us fighting for possession of the book regularly.  It was on the high end of Liam’s reading level and I’m glad I read it along side him because we were able to check in on comprehension stuff.  Plus, my book nerdery loves chatting books with my kid.  A super sweet book that gives kids a chance to practice empathy and understanding.  I loved it.

Before I’d even picked up I Let You Go by Claire Mackintosh I knew it was a fast paced story with a twist “you never see coming.”  This meant, naturally, I was on high alert, my mind forming theory after theory as I read as to what this twist must be.  And even though I’d been warned, even though I’d been looking for it, there was indeed a twist that smacked me right in the face, so unprepared was I for it.  This is the story of a boy who dies in a hit and run, the detectives following the case, and how it all can change in a moment.  Mackintosh does a really good job with multiple perspectives.  It was well written, engaging and with a killer twist.

Coffee + Crumbs is a collaborative website with stories from motherhood.  This book, The Magic of Motherhood, is a collection of essays from the women who run the blog.  I caught wind of it because one of the writers, Anna Jordan, is the daughter of Ryann’s beloved pre-school teacher.  It is a beautiful book, both the writing and the images sprinkled throughout.  The essays are a great mix of voices and topics and I love that it covers all aspects of motherhood: from pregnancy through birth, joys and loss, biological, foster care and adoption.  You can find traces of your unique story in all aspects of this book.  It would make a great gift for a new mom, or an experienced one.  

A Rule Against Murder is the fourth in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series.  I’d heard that she hits her stride by the fourth book, each becoming better and I did find this one to be my favorite so far.  A Moveable Feast by Hemingway was our book club pick.  I probably wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, but I was glad I read it and terribly disappointed when the plague that was April kept me from book club that month to discuss it.  It was an interesting look at Hemingway’s life as an unknown writer in Paris.  The English major nerd in me loved seeing his encounters with other well known writers from that time.  It also made me want to pick up and move to Paris, but only if I could also go back in time to the 1920's.  The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Schumer’s first memoir, was interesting, insightful and funny.  I fell in love with Schumer when I saw her randomly on Ellen once, and I’ve long loved her stuff, relating to it in so many ways while also feeling like she is often on a different planet than me.  The book felt the same.  She is funny and smart and I inherently “got” her but also felt completely foreign from her.  Which, for me, makes it a great voice.

That’s what I had in April.  What are you reading?

A Few Good Books: March

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?

A Few Good Books: February

It’s that time again.  Once a month I link up with my favorite book whisperer Modern Mrs. Darcy and share the best of what I read the previous month.  Let me tell you, February was a doozy!  Typically I only share thoughts on the very best two or three books that I’ve read, but this month I could probably write individual posts on each of the seven books I read!  Some of this strayed from my normal reading habits and much of it provided some of the most thought provoking material I’ve had in a long time.  I’m still thinking about much of what I read last month.  I’ll try to keep everything brief.  Here’s what I read in February.

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

Another favorite book guru, Laura Tremaine, raved about this book, calling it the best thing she’d read in 2016.  While it likely won’t top my best of the year book, it certainly captivated me and gave me a lot to think about.  Ruth Wariner is the thirty-ninth of her father’s forty-two children.  Born into a polygamous Mormon sect in rural Mexico, Wariner’s memoir sits firmly in this context without being about a polygamous Mormon sect.  It’s a story about poverty and family, religious convictions and the bravery to go against them.  I was so struck by Wariner’s mother and the way she could love her children so fiercely and also be so desperate for love herself; at times these two truths felt at odds with each other.  I was unprepared for the ending of this book and it took me a bit to recover.  All in all, I highly recommend this one.

The Course of Love by Alain DeBotton

I’ve raved about this book on Instagram, recommended it to everyone I saw while I was reading it and gave it as a birthday gift last month.  I made the mistake of checking this out from the library, which was a tragedy because if I’d owned a copy I’d have underlined probably two-thirds of it (something I rarely do with a novel).  As it stands I have a dozen or so pictures on my phone of lines that stopped me in my tracks with their truth and beauty.  The novel tells the story of a couple as they fall in love, get married, have kids, fall away from each other and come back together again.  It is average and mundane in its details.  This is the secret genius; you can’t help but see yourself in the characters and their inner dialogue.  Interspersed throughout this story is a third voice, I came to think of it as the professor teaching a Course of Love, using the man and woman in the story to teach deeper truths about love and relationships and humanity.  That is where the best of the book shines.  Some of the lines took my breath away and I had to put the book down and just ponder it all.  I’m not doing this book adequate justice.  It’s a piece of art and it made me want to be a better partner to Tommy. 

Upstream by Mary Oliver

I’ve long loved Mary Oliver and God has met me more than once in the lines of her poetry.  When I heard she had a book of essays out and my local bookstore was doing a book discussion on it, I couldn’t buy it fast enough.  To be perfectly honest, this wasn’t what I expected.  There were some real gems in it and the book discussion I went to actually made me appreciate it more than I think I would have had I just read it on my own, but in all I think I’d hoped to walk away from these essays knowing and loving Mary Oliver the person more.  I don’t know if it was fair to expect that from a book, but regardless that’s not what happened.  I’d still recommend it to those who love Oliver, and it was worth it for the handful of essays that really moved me.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

This was our book club pick this month and I’m really glad because I may not have picked it up otherwise.  I feel like this is a common theme in our society right now, how to say no, how to do less, how to pare back to only what is essential.  McKeown offers some solid wisdom and it came at a time when I’m really trying to discern what is essential and what I have to offer.  I put into place a few ideas from this book and I’ll probably return to it again next year.  It was a good “beginning of a new year” kind of read.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M.Montgomery

I grew up on the PBS movie version of Anne Shirley, but somehow I don’t know that I’ve ever read the whole book.  It’s been on my list for a while, but when I saw that Audible had a version narrated by Rachel McAdams, and it was on sale I couldn’t press buy fast enough.  The story was delightful, as I knew it would be, but it was enhanced so much by McAdams voice.  Anne Shirley has become one of my new favorite literary heroines and as the mother of two little red headed girls, I can’t wait to introduce them to her someday.  I’v got Anne of Avonlea on my shelf to read next.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I’ve avoided most of the “Girl” books that have popped up in the last few years.  I needed to read a book with an unreliable narrator for a book challenge I’m doing and I also was interested in watching the movie (because Emily Blunt is one of my favorites) so I figured I’d pick it up as a quick, palette cleansing read.  It was WAY better than I expected.  It’s a page-turner with characters that had more depth than I expected.  I highly enjoyed it and would absolutely recommend it, even if, like me, you try to stay away from any books with “the girl” in the title.

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This came recommended as “a book with a reputation for being un-put-down-able” for that same reading challenge.  I was headed out of town for a few days and like to have those kinds of books to entertain me on flights so I picked it up a few days before I left on my trip.  True to its description, I couldn’t put it down and ended up finishing it before I even left on my trip!  This is a novel about the two different life paths that could stem from one decision.  The premise sounded kind of stupid to be honest, but I found that Reid did a phenomenal job of adding nuance and thought to what could have just been a “Sliding Doors” novel.  It's an easy read (and not necessarily the highest of quality writing) but a solid story.  And I was not expecting the ending to be so surprising and strangely satisfying.  

So those are A LOT of words about seven really great books!  I don’t think I’ll be able to read quite that much in March, but I’m in the middle of a few really great books and my hold on a highly anticipated memoir just came up at the library so hopefully I’ll have something to report next month.  How about you?  What are you reading?