I’ve been strong on my reading game lately! In March, we took a 15+ hour road trip one way, so I attribute most of my reading from those two days I spent in the car. HA.
What are you reading lately? I’d love to hear about it!
Can’t Nothing Bring Me Down
I picked up this book because it claimed that it was a book about the oldest runner in the world. Well, running was hardly mentioned in the book at all, but I was so drawn in I didn’t mind. Ida Keeling grew up to immigrant parents in the Bronx. Anything that would qualify as a “hard knock life” happened to her. Growing up in a tough neighborhood in NYC, as a racial minority and immigrant, Miss Ida overcame thousands of hurdles in her life. This was a powerful memoir/story and I found my jaw dropping many times. I do wish it had focused a little more on running, but I was very impacted by this story. It was a very quick and easy read.
The Danish Way of Parenting
I don’t LOVE all parenting books, but I do love parenting books that focus on parenting in other cultures, and this book did not disappoint. According to studies, Danish people are the happiest people in the world. It’s certainly not because of their weather or necessarily their country, but it seems that it is mostly because of their upbringing. This book dove into some of the key ways that Danish children are raised compared to their American counterparts. I really enjoyed reading this book and getting some fantastic parenting tidbits. I found that I do tend to naturally parent more “Danish” than “American”. This book did have a few concepts and chapters that I didn’t agree with, but it was one of those books that I could take the gold nuggets and leave the rest.
Girl in Translation
I needed a fun novel to read on our road trip to Florida, so I grabbed this book off a display shelf. I actually really loved it! A young Chinese girl immigrates to America with her mother. While her mother works for minimum wage in a factory, Kimberly immerses herself more and more into the American culture that she is growing up in. The book takes the reader delicately through something that is not delicate at all: cross cultural transitions. I laughed and I even cried a little, and I felt so very connected to the characters. It was light enough for a novel, but heavy enough to not be pure fluff.
I Capture the Castle
I still can’t fully grasp how I feel about this book. As far as the plot, it was fairly slow, like talking a slowwww walk through a meadow with a toddler. At the end there was a plot twist, like when the slow, ambling toddler decides to sprint around. The descriptive writing in this novel was excellent, but I think descriptive writing has fallen out of popularity these years- popular books seem to be written more as blog posts with as few characters as possible. This book took me awhile to get through, but it was a beautiful piece of work. The most wonderful part of this book is the character development- the main character goes from a young, naive girl to a mature woman. Character development is not always the most interesting piece of a book, but in this case it was the star of the show. I recommend this one, but only for seasoned readers. Don’t pick it up if you are struggling to get into the habit of reading.
Garden City
The last book I read this month was Garden City. I had conflicting feelings about this one, as did most of the Internet. It seems that some people really disliked his unique writing style- broken up paragraphs and shorter sentences that pack more punch. I actually liked his writing style. He writes as if you were sitting in the room talking to him, which is similar to how I write, so I felt that I connected with him. The premise of this book is that man was made to work (not labor, but work) and we should find great joy in what we do/choose to do with our days. He also devotes an entire section to rest, and an entire section to the new earth that the Bible speaks of. Some of his chapters and ideas really inspired me to think and to search how to apply that to my life. But some of his thoughts left me thinking “huh?”. I found that he wrote his opinions as facts and some of them just didn’t quite work with me. Anyways, I do recommend this book for some of the great ideas and tidbits, especially on rest and the Sabbath. However, it is important to go into a book like this knowing your own overview of theology and what you might not agree with- and why!
You can check out my other 2019 book reviews here: January // February