I have been thinking about and pining to post my book review from the last year, but this little tiny human (plus my husband, my job, my house, my laundry ... and if we're honest, probably a little of my laziness) has kept me from sitting down and devoting the time to it. But only pushing 3 months late, I've finally done it. I think 3 months isn't so bad, really. I didn't manage to make catchy names/categories/quotes or anything catchy for each book like I typically enjoy doing, but don't let that deter you from digging through to find something you might like to read!
Sparkly Green Earrings by Melanie Shankle - I had really high hopes for this book. I don’t know why, exactly, since I really only knew that it was supposed to be a funny book about being a mom … but I did. I was ready for a good laugh related to something close to home and recent. Unfortunately, SGE didn’t really do it for me. There were certainly some funny tidbits, but most of the parts that I think were supposed to be funny seemed a little forced to me. Too much trying to be funny. However, in the very last chapter of the book, the author hit a serious, heartfelt, sentimental note, and that was surprisingly my favorite part! It seemed genuine in comparison to the “forced funnies” and really expressed sentiments that I, as a new mom, related too. I even teared up a little. So I guess it was all worth it for the last chapter!
The Pieces We Keep by Kristina McMorris - This was a borderline WWII book. I say borderline because it wasn’t necessarily the main focus of the book but it was part of the book. In The Pieces We Keep, there is a young boy who is having horribly violent nightmares, which, a psychologist intimates to his mother, may be caused by him being spiritually linked to someone who has died and is trying to communicate a message to someone they left behind. It sounds weird to write, but I promise, in the book it isn’t as weird as it sounds. At any rate, the boy’s mother begins to try to seek out the person who may be associated with her son’s nightmares and as the story unravels there is drama, love, history … it’s a pretty good one. I don’t think I mentioned that there are 2 stories happening simultaneously in the book: one past - a story of a political diplomat’s daughter and her lost love, one present - the boy and his mom I have already described. Although this wasn't my favorite book, it was engaging and it did keep me interested with all it’s facets and storylines.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - Ok, so I’m breaking my own rule of “must be completed in the year of the list” and adding this one to the list, even though I still haven’t finished it. Mainly because I think I’ll be picking through this one for years. Not because it isn’t good or interesting. It is actually VERY interesting. It’s just not fiction so it’s easy to read a bit, get my fill, put down and read another book, and then pick back up a few months later. I love Barbara Kingsolver novels, but this book isn’t her fiction. This is the story of her own family. They decided to buy and move to a farm in the middle of nowhere, Appalachia, and took a one year pledge to eat only things that they grew or that they could purchase locally from farmers. This concept baffles me because it by default pretty much doesn’t involve pineapples or mangoes, but it intrigues me all the same. I have learned a lot from the informational parts of the book, and been really impressed with the family’s positive outlook, determination and enjoyment of the process. Kingsolver has 2 daughters and both got to be actively involved in the process and seem to have become food advocates from what I have read. Definitely you won’t fly through this one if you’re like me, but it is a great read to expand your thinking about food, where it comes from, what it takes for us to get it, and how we can make small changes to make the food world better. (Y’all know I have to get a food book in every year.)
Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave - Little Bee was definitely a thought-provoking book. The story is that Little Bee, a refugee from Nigeria, manages to make her way to England to the home of a couple she met on a Nigerian beach. Coincidentally (or not), Little Bee shows up right after the husband has just killed himself, and she plays a part in how the wife chooses to deal with his death and ultimately shapes her career future as well. I half like this book, half didn’t. There were some beautiful, though-provoking lines that made me really think about life. But there was also something lacking between those lines for me. I wish I could put it into words. I would recommend this book, but I don’t find it at the top of my list.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt - Set in the 80’s, this novel is the story of a young teenager, June, who has a homosexual uncle who dies of AIDS. June, who had a special bond with her uncle, begins to have a secret friendship with her uncle’s boyfriend, whom the family doesn’t like. Through their friendship, June and the boyfriend learn about the uncle and just learn in general. I really loved this story. I liked the humanity of it, and it made me take time to consider how much love and listening can do to make people find the human-ness in each other.
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd - This was one of my favorite books that I read this year. I began reading it while nursing Emma in the wee hours, and soon enough, I became eager to nurse her and less eager to return to bed because I would get so wrapped up in the story. This is the story of slavery in Charleston, SC as the anti-slavery movement was gaining momentum. Two of the main characters, The Grimke sisters, are actual historical figures, and although the novel is historically based, the story is fiction. But such great fiction! The novel is told from the perspectives of Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a prominent plantation and slave owner, in Charleston, and Hetty/Handful, a slave in Sarah’s home, who is given to Sarah for her 11th birthday to be her maid. The novel follows them as they grow together, apart and each learn about slavery, freedom and independence through their journeys. Again, this is one of my favorite books of 2014. A wonderful read where you really start fighting for the characters in your heart!
The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty - Hands-down, winner of easy beach read of the year. As you may have already guessed, this novel is about a busy, super-mom, do-it-all-perfectly-and-to-the-max wife who discovers a letter that her husband wrote for her to open if he died. The husband isn’t dead, and the wife has to decide whether to open the letter and find out his deathbed secrets or to let them lie. I’d say there is a big twist, but I thought it was pretty obvious, although that didn’t make the book unenjoyable. It was very easy to get lost in without having to put forth much effort!
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty - After the easiness of The Husband’s Secret and with some prompting from others who read it, I delved into What Alice Forgot. Again, I found this novel to be something fun for my brain, easy to spin through quickly, to pick up and put down mid-sentence when baby cries interrupted me, but also enough to keep me wondering what would happen next. In this book, Alice wakes up in the hospital thinking it is 10 years earlier. In her mind, she is happily married, pregnant with her first child, and best friends with her sister, but in reality she is a “Stepford” style mom, going through a nasty divorce, and estranged from her sister. As the story progresses, Alice tries to regain her memories and maintain her “new” life, all while trying to reconcile and make sense of the reality she remembers with the completely different life she has woken up to. I did find myself rooting for characters in the book, and it was a good, fun read!
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - By far one of the most mysterious, difficult-to-explain books I’ve ever read! What’s it about? I would recommend this book to people and they always asked, and every time I tried to explain, but ended up saying, “You just have to read it. It’s hard to say what it’s about.” Here’s my best (very lacking) attempt: It’s about this magical circus and two magicians who control it in a battle of powers. Sort of. I realize that it sounds very sci-fi, but it doesn’t feel like a sci-fi read. The timeline jumps between the past and the present, working it’s way closer in the past, until it meets the present. It took me a skinny minute to figure that one out. I would highly recommend reading this book, and enjoying it for just what it is - something mysterious and curious that just keeps you guessing. And the ending is very unique.
Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - I think anyone who has ever read any of my book reviews knows I’m a sucker for a good Holocaust/WWII era book. This was my main WWII book this year. The story alternates between modern day (like maybe 1990s/early 2000s) and the stories of a mother, Anna, who lived in Germany during World War II and her daughter, Trudie, who is a German culture professor in the US. The book focuses on their strained relationship, which of course is partly due to the events that occurred during the war. I actually listened to this book, and some parts were very difficult to listen to due to the content, but overall I enjoyed it. It gave me a different perspective to think from, as the protagonist isn’t a Jew, but a German woman who has to make difficult moral decisions that may save her and her daughter but at a cost, of course. This was a great book for discussion because, really, what would you do?
On Becoming Babywise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Buckram and Moms On Call by Jennifer Walker and Laura Hunter - So I hate to lump these together because they are actually quite different, but it’d also be unfair to say I truly read either. I skimmed and hopped through Babywise right before the new year and made some notes, and then revisited portions of it after Emma was born. I found many of the tips to be helpful and reassuring, and it fit the style of parenting we decided to use to assist Emma in her journey to night time sleep. I knew I would be returning to work, and Thomas and I both know that I am not my kindest, wisest, most fun or best when I haven’t had enough sleep, so we decided to implement a sleep/feeding schedule around 2-3 weeks. For us and Emma, it worked really well! We worked on a “loose” schedule based on Babywise for the first 6-8 weeks. I say loose meaning, she ate every X number of hours, slept X time after she ate for X amount of time, but it was always based on what time she woke up in the morning, which wasn’t consistently the same. Around 5 weeks, she began consistently going to bed between 9-10 pm and waking up between 5-6 pm, and as she grew and those times solidified, so did the schedule until it became consistent every day. For my personality, this was a gift. I like to have an idea of what my day will look like so that I can get things on my “to-do list” accomplished, or even just know that at some point I’ll have a minute to myself when in the midst of a “hairy” moment. Sometime between 3-4 months (of course, right as I was about to return to work), Emma took a giant U-turn. She stopped sleeping through the night, she was always grouchy and fussy, and in general I decided around that time that I might like to return her. She was so inconsistent in her sleep, sometimes screaming through an entire “nap,” other times acting like she couldn’t sleep enough. After trying to “push through” and “stick to the schedule,” I realized something was just not right, and it seemed to be mostly to do with her sleep. Naturally, I tried giving her more sleep time and naps. That equaled more screaming, wailing, and general unhappiness for all parties. Then I remembered the Moms on Call book I had inherited and did some investigating. One thing I love about MOC that I wish I had had in retrospect from Babywise was an exact, laid out schedule to follow. I am an “implementer.” Give me a schedule and I can implement like a champ. Give me a fussy baby and try to get me to make up my own schedule based on some suggestions on how many times a day they should eat and sleep. Ummmm, waaaay too OCD, tired and frazzled to do that!! So after about 2-3 weeks of misery, I decided to try to swap to the MOC schedule for Emma’s age. I was pretty nervous since there was less nap time, more spread out through the day, but lo and behold, the improvement was almost instantaneous! Looking back, I’m pretty sure she was getting TOO MUCH sleep (which is something that I think rarely happens for babies), alternating with NOT ENOUGH because she was fighting my sleep regime. I kept trying to force her to go down for naps and she just wasn’t having it, which wore her out. Thank goodness there are other people who have been around way more babies than I have who wrote down a general schedule! We still loosely follow the MOC’s schedules (I now have a little more experience and trust myself enough to be able to tweak them to suit our needs best), and if I were going to choose one baby book, I’d choose to give Mom’s On Call to a new mom (Sorry, Babywise, you really did us right in the beginning, but Mom’s on Call saved us in a time of need … plus it has lots of other good baby info, not just eating/sleeping/schedules). Both of these books were pivotal to my 2014!
Whew! Done! I feel really proud looking back over my list. I felt that I didn't do nearly as much reading in 2014 as I normally do, but as I look at my list, I feel like I got some good ones in there! And I've met a long-standing reading goal .... I'm in a book club!! It's kind of cheating because it's basically a group of girls I already hang out with regularly, now we just read all the same stuff each month and it gives us another excuse to eat and talk, but still ... goal met!
I really don't know what my reading goals are for this year, but I do know I've already finished at least one book that I feel certain will remain a list-topper for 2015! I'd love to hear what other people are reading so I have some fresh ideas!
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