October was finally a great reading month! I flew through quite a few books and loved several of them! I also took some time to finally catch up on my Goodreads and Storygraph tracking, AND even posted several of my book reviews on my book Insta account. August and September are struggle months for me as I’m usually trying to get back into the swing of the school year, so October tends to be the month when the dust settles a little bit and I can pick back up some of my hobbies and enjoyment again.
I read 12 books this month- 7 fiction and 5 nonfiction books. One of the ways I broke through my Aug/Sept reading slump was by picking up some books that I could read quickly, so while 12 is an impressive number, some of these were easily read in one sitting.
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water – 3.75 stars
My Review: The format of this book is unique, but I actually really appreciate that in books! This is the story of a mid-60s Hispanic immigrant woman who is attending counseling sessions at the job counseling center. She stream-of-consciousness tells her entire life story to this job counselor. It was hard to read in some places, and I will admit that I actually didn’t love the main character. She was always right in her own eyes and couldn’t see what other people might have seen in a situation. But by the end, I actually started to like her and enjoyed how the story wrapped up. This is quick read, with lots of food for thought.
Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans – 3 stars
My Review: I love reading any book I can find about MLM marketing. As with most women, I was sucked into one or two in my early motherhood years, but nothing ever came of those experiences and I certainly never made a penny. Now, I like to sit back and observe marketing and recruiting strategies that these companies use. It’s fascinating to me. This book was more of a look at the history of MLMs, and had about 9 chapters on how they started and a detailed history of some famous MLMs. Honestly, I was skimming the book because I wasn’t interested in the history of these MLMs! I wanted to know all the juicy parts of the businesses. There was some of that interwoven into the book, but overall it was a bit too dry for me.
Worst Case Scenario – 4 stars
My Review: T.J Newman writes airplane thrillers. In all of her books, an airplane crashes and there is a short time to save a lot of lives from mass destruction. In this book, an airplane crashes into a nuclear power plant and there is 30 hours or less to prevent a scenario of mass destruction for the entire country. It moves fast and this is about as close to a thriller as a I can get! I love how T.J. Newman really builds her characters and I’m becoming so deeply immersed in the stories because they feel like real people. My biggest complaint of this book is that after reading other T.J Newman books, this felt kind of repetitive. There is only so many ways to crash an airplane and save everyone, and it feels like we already visited that exact scenario in one of her previous books.
The Rule Book – 3 stars
My Review: Maybe this is a “me” problem, but I think I’m starting to be over romance, especially the open door kind. I felt like this plot line was sweet and unique, but I could hardly see the plot through the romantic banter and build-up. I usually love romance novels, so I have no idea what made me so grumpy towards this one, but alas…that is my review.
A Piglet Called Truffle – 4.5 stars
My Review: This was our latest homeschool read aloud and we all loved it! Jasmine rescues the runt piglet from a neighboring farm and trains it to be a sniffer pig. Of course, the pig finds something really special and important and everyone falls in love with this pig who wasn’t ever even supposed to survive. So sweet. Since we live on a farm and have animals, we LOVED this one. There is 4 more in the series and you’d better believe we are dying to get our hands on the next one!
The Exvangelicals – 4 stars
My Review: This book was such a well-written and introspective read. As someone who grew up as an evangelical and would still be considered an evangelical, I don’t think I was the target audience. But it gave me much food for thought and helped me as I think through the cultural and personal implications of the church deconstruction movement. Why did I stay when so many of my friends left? What did we experience or feel differently? What do I still need to disentangle from my faith, even if my path isn’t deconstruction of my faith?The one bone that I have to pick with this book (besides the fact that I fundamentally disagree with the idea of leaving the evangelical church), is that she didn’t offer any better solutions. She spent 10+ chapters focusing on ways that the evangelical church got it wrong…but never really mentioned what she thought the *right* choice would be. Perhaps this just wasn’t the book/timing for that topic, but as a person who is raising my kids in this faith, I would have been interested to hear what she felt the solution should be to not have a generation of traumatized people fleeing the church.
You Will Never Be Me – 3 stars
My Review: I really liked the first 1/3 of this book. I was enjoying hating on the influencer culture and seeing what it does to people through this fictional story. But then the story turned dark and twisty and I wasn’t really expecting that and didn’t really enjoy it much. I think it veered too far away from reality and I would have preferred it to stay firmly grounded instead of trying to go from influencer Mom culture to horror (for me- I know most horror readers would NOT label this as scary at all). There was no good resolution or even shocking twist at the end so I just kind of closed the book thinking “huh”.
Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children – 4 stars
My Review: This is such a cute book with so many great suggestions for making gardening fun for kids (and adults!). I love the idea of a pizza garden – where you grow pizza ingredients in the shape of a pizza – and a sunflower fort- where you grow sunflowers up and over so that they create a little fort under them. Remind me to revisit this book in early March when I’m planning out my spring planting and gardening!
Other People’s Houses – 3.75 stars
My Review: I think I had a love/hate relationship with this book. The author had a way of describing the thoughts and feelings and experiences of a mother with such clarity that I found myself tearing up, smiling and nodding along at parts. It made me feel so seen that someone else (even a fictional character) was feeling some of the same things that I feel – and was able to put them into such eloquent words! On the hate side of things, this story is about a woman who chooses to have an affair and how her poor decisions ricochet into her family, her marriage, and an entire community. It was really sad in some places, and the characters weren’t always lovable. Overall, though, I did love how the characters were realistic HUMAN (as opposed to one dimensional fictional characters) and I found that to be so refreshing.
Good People: Stories from the Best of Humanity – 3.5 stars
My Review: I grabbed this one from the shelf at the library and enjoyed reading it! Does anyone remember reading those Chicken Soup for the Soul books? This was kind of like that. Just a big collection of people loving up and showing up for other people. Some stories I skipped, some I thought were weird, some were inspirational and some had me bawling.
Tell Everyone: SIM Niger Stories – 5 stars
My Review: My Dad worked for over two years to compile and write this book, all about the 100 years that SIM (Serving in Mission) has spent in Niger, West Africa as a mission agency. He compiled stories from each of the past 10 decades and put them all together in the book. He writes so well of the intricacies of mission work- how mistakes have been made and also progress – both spiritually and culturally – has been made. I really enjoyed reading all of these stories, especially the ones about people that I know!
I Have Some Questions for You – 3 stars
My Review: This book was SO hyped years ago- many people had it on their best of the year books! My question is: Did we read the same book? This was a little bit twisty, but mostly just sad and dark and S L O W. It’s about the murder of a boarding school classmate years ago that a middle age woman starts revisiting when she teaches a podcasting class. The whole book we still aren’t sure who did it, but as the mystery unfolds it turns out that there are several people that could have done it. They eventually figure it out, but nothing is really resolved. I guess this type of book just really isn’t my cup of tea!
That’s a wrap for October! What have you been reading lately?
Yay for getting over your reading slump! I’m in one right now and decided yesterday to request a bunch of new to me books from old favorite authors I haven’t thought about in months and hope that triggers me to pick it up. I’ve only read/listened to one TJ Newman book and I liked it a lot so I’ve requested another one of hers. I can see how airplane disaster books might get repetitive though.