October Book Review

It’s already November, but I wanted to make sure that I put together my October reading list! I had some books this month that were rather long and arduous to plough through. They weren’t necessarily boring, but certainly not fast-paced novels.

I read five books and quit one.

Side note. This past year I have given myself the freedom to quit books halfway through. Suzanne from a year or two ago would have never done that. Now I just ask myself if this book is wasting my time, and if it is, I quit it. I will list the reasons that I didn’t like the book here, but I won’t give it a rating, because that doesn’t seem fair.

3.75 Stars Half of a Yellow Sun 

This book took me a long time to read through! It’s a rich historical narrative on the civil wars in Nigeria in the early 60s. I found I could grasp a lot of the concepts because of my personal ties with West Africa, plus my grandparents were missionaries to Nigeria during this time period. It was told from multiple points of view, which kept the story going for me. It was a bit graphic in some places, and not for everybody. Still, I felt like I was learning and bettering myself by reading something like this, instead of just fluff.

2 Stars // Indoor Epidemic

This book looked awesome to me! The cover claimed to give some solutions to parents and teachers on getting kids brains to learn outside. The inside of the book, however, did not deliver. He waxed eloquently on about evolution and how we were made to learn outdoors, how squatting is good for us, how classrooms are bad. He then whined and complained for a few chapters about how classrooms were bad and his son loves to be outdoors. And that was the end. I wouldn’t recommend it, although it did have some good little tidbits (Like that I should squat more often).

2 Stars // I Feel Bad about My Neck 

Eh. I didn’t really like this one. It was essentially a series of blog posts by a rich middle aged woman who was whining and complaining about a lot of things aging related in her life, with a little bit of humor thrown in. It was a tiny book and a very quick read, but probably a waste of my time and I should’ve quit it while I was ahead.

5 Stars // Dance, Stand, Run 

You guys! I LOVED this book! I was not expecting to, and I think that made it even better. I’ve followed the author on social media for awhile, and she seems like a great woman who loves the Lord. But I’ve noticed a trend in all these newer books that bloggers write- they seem to have a lot of fluff, and tone down the spiritual side of things while reaching their audience (Christian women millennials). Not so this one! She presented so much of the gospel- the real gospel, not the fluffy gospel. While her writing was still blog-ish and fluffy, the content was fantastic. I finished the book feeling inspired, encouraged and challenged.

2.75 Stars // Gaudy Night 

I originally checked this book out of the library and almost took it back as soon as I saw the title, because “gaudy” to me meant ugly and horrifying. It wasn’t a horror story at all, but a mystery set in the 1920s in Oxford. All kinds of strange things are happening at a women’s college, and the whole book is a “whodunit” with a little bit of romance mixed in. It’s apparently a classic and one that everyone “should” read, but I struggggllllled with the vocabulary and context. I followed just enough of the story to get the plot, but just barely.

That being said, this book should have a higher rating than I gave it, I just gave it such a low rating because I could hardly understand what was going on (due to vocabulary and not understanding the culture of the setting). I think if I did understand those two things, this would have been a fantastic book.

Quit While I Was Ahead // Faith in the Spotlight 

This book. is about a very successful news anchor who is also a Christian. Her entire premise is that it’s very possible to do both, and that we should in fact not shy away from successful, flashy jobs because that is a great place to shine the light of Jesus.

This book rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. The author’s tone was very braggy and she pushed a lot of the prosperity gospel (all you have to do is trust and pray and hustle, and life will be successful!). I gave the book a good 100 pages, and then quit. I then flipped to the pictures section in the middle and found out that she has a family- never in 100 pages did she mention that she was also a wife and a mother, and that also threw me off. Anyways, I can’t really recommend it, but I can see how she would be a good example to young girls who are trying to find their way in a corporate job while keeping their faith. It was just totally unrelatable to me.

It’s now baby month, which means I could end up reading a ton of books or hardly any at all! I sure hope this month brings some more enjoyable books, because this last month wasn’t really the greatest in my reading list!

What are you reading now?

One comment

  1. Nancy DeValve says:

    I looked up Gaudy Night because…..Oxford. I see it’s written by Dorothy Sayers who was a contemporary and friend of C. S. Lewis. I think I read one of her books and it was a tough slog if I remember right. Maybe I should try again, though.

    Half a Yellow Sun is very raw in places but I really appreciated it as it describes a period of history in Nigeria that I lived through.

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