WHOA, seven books in June! Must be Summer! I’m taking Summer reading verrrry seriously and enjoying many stolen hours on our screen porch swing bed when the kids nap or as the sun lingers in the late-evening sky. It has been blissful. This month I listened to two books and read five (the girls trip my mom took us on to a spa in Wisconsin helped!). DISCLAIMER: This book review is a long one!!! Grab a glass of wine before proceeding at your own risk.
OK, getting right to it. The first book I completed was an audiobook; Rising Strong by Brene Brown. Okay. Well. This wasn’t my favorite. It has nothing to do with the book, the author, the theme… I’m sure all of those things are good. In fact, I have since listened to another of Brene’s books (look at next month’s review for that) and find her brilliant and insightful. This was just not my cup of tea for whatever reason. I’m experienced enough to realize that certain books resonate more with use in certain seasons of life, so I’m not ruling this book out entirely. I just think I would have enjoyed reading it more than listening to it because as an audiobook, it came across ever so slightly as listening to a textbook. Not completely engaging. I can picture owning the hard copy of this book and inserting my own footnotes and highlights throughout it in another season of life.
Next up we have Delicious! I thought this book was charming and delightful. If you like food (specifically if you’re the type that enjoys culinary magazines) you’ll love this story about a girl who goes to work for a dying magazine (Delicious!) and ends up uncovering a treasure trove of history in the building’s secret room. I was totally surprised by the underlying WWII subplot that wove its way through this book, but being a fan of historical fiction anyway, I would say it was a pleasant surprise. This would be a good book club pick, in my opinion.
Other People’s Houses was a book I read while on our spa trip and I disliked it so much, I was almost mad about it. It is about suburban infidelity and I have zero interest in reading about that, to be frank. I had previously read another of this author’s books and thought she was rather funny, sarcastic, quippy, yada yada, but the scandalous theme of this one just didn’t do it for me (her other book I read was The Garden of Small Beginnings). Not for me.
So speaking of our spa trip, we went to this fabulous destination spa called Sundara in Wisconsin. Our Kindles were loaded up for lots of reading by the pool and in between spa treatments only to be told (rather firmly, I might add) that electronic devices of ANY kind were very strictly prohibited in the public areas of the resort but that I may help myself to the reading library left behind by other guests. After feeling self righteous and pissed off for maybe 15 minutes or so, I sulked over to the library to see what they had laying around and picked up Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman. I’ve already written about my impressions of Backman as an author (I think he goes into exhaustive detail developing his characters) and this book was no different. It wasn’t a bad book at all, and I became rather endeared to the book’s main character, Britt-Marie, by the time I was finished, but as with the other Backman books I’ve read, it was just OKAY. Very similar small-town/sports theme to Beartown without the crime allegations.
For my second audiobook of the month, I listened to Is Everyone Hanging Out Without me? by Mindy Kaling. Again, sticking to my theme of author-read, blog post-style books, this one was humorous, enlightening and likable. Stockton and I love watching The Office, so I felt like I was hanging out with Kelly Kapur for a couple weeks during my once-a-week lawn-mowing times. I haven’t read or listened to many books by comedians, but this was probably up there with Tina Fey and Amy Pohler’s books in terms of humor and hearing all of the funny coming of age stories of some of America’s favorite comediennes. I think listening to it was great so that you could hear her trademark voice telling her own stories, too!
I was so thankful for my friend, Anne-Marie, recommending this next book. As I read Same Kind of Different as Me, I literally sobbed my way through it. It was so convicting, so encouraging and a story so beautifully lived and told. About an unlikely pair of friends (one affluent Texas art dealer and one down-on-his-luck homeless man), their journey through understanding each other’s worlds, and how to love like Jesus did. I highly recommend this book (and it’s also a movie, though I’ve yet to watch it!).
The seventh and final book I put away in June was You, Me, Everything. I was looking for a Summery novel at this point and this one fit the bill. About a European mom and son who go to spend the summer in France with the young boy’s dad, this story tells the tale of the “cool dad,” the hard-working mom who just wants everyone to be OK (including her terminally ill mother back in England), and the fear she carries about being a genetic carrier of the disease that is stealing her mother’s life. The relationships in the book are everything I wanted them to be, and I enjoyed reading this book very much.