Ah, June! Despite feeling like I was SO READY for summer, June was very full and busy! I don’t really understand how- it didn’t feel relaxing and very summer-y at all. I did read 8 books, but that was lower than I was expecting. Surprisingly, this month- I read more non-fiction than fiction!
Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys
I have LOVED the podcast that is hosted by the author of this book! And since I’m raising 3 boys, I decided that I should probably finally read this one. It took me about 5 weeks to read it, because it’s very full of information and raising boys is not exactly an easy topic to tackle haha! I did enjoy this book and recommend it to anyone who is raising a boy. There were some parts that were almost depressing and made me feel nervous about what is to come, but I also appreciate an honest look ahead (and I’ve heard some of these same “warnings” from friends who are in the trenches of raising older boys!). One of my friends who has older boys read it and said it was the best and most helpful parenting book for her.
Summer State of Mind
Kristen Woodsen Harvey writes the type of book that is perfect to read during the summer- short chapters, propulsive plot, characters that we fall in love with…she is one of my favorite authors to read in the summer! This book kept me hooked from the beginning- a baby is found in a dumpster and the people who find the baby are all set to be the heroes of the story- but is there more at stake here? I appreciated how she drew us in to root for “the heroes”, but then kind of flipped it on its head to show that there are two sides to every story. I did find that there was a little bit too much going on in this story- there were like 3 other side plots at the same time and it was too much drama for one story. However, if you are looking for a low spice summer romance read, this one would be perfect for a lake or pool weekend!
Hello Beautiful
I’ve been working my way through some of the books on my bookshelf and this one finally got selected. It’s the story of four sisters and it spans their entire lifetime. It’s a slow-moving story, but it has plenty of drama. There are many references to how closely their story relates to Little Women, although it’s almost a “re-telling”- what would have happened if two of the sisters didn’t had a falling out? There is drama and you really feel for both sides of the falling out. It’s a beautifully written book and I can see why it gathered so much hype a few years ago!
The Last Thing He Told Me
I finally decided to read this one because the sequel has just come out this summer. This is the story of a young lady whose husband goes missing. Things slowly start to unfold that everything is not as it appears. She needs to figure out what happened to her husband, and she needs to take care of her step daughter in the meantime. I enjoyed this one!
Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of Childhood Online
I was so excited for this one- give me dirt on any type of influencer culture! I feel like I toe the line so close to the influencer lifestyle (although my measly 100 blog readers and 200 IG followers probably don’t consider me an influencer hahaha) so this topic fascinates me to no end. I was hoping for a bit of a tell-all similar to Shari Franke’s memoir, but this was kind of just a disjointed recollection of many facts layered in opinions. It bounced all over the place and never reached a great conclusion or made any kind of concluding claim. I did find all of it fascinating, but I wish that it had been presented in a more streamlined manner, and I would have liked a deeper dive into specific case studies instead of just surface level references to different online influencers.
Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries
This was the story of four mothers- one in Japan, one in Kenya, one in Norway and one in the United States. The book did a deep dive into the first year of motherhood for each of these mothers. It was really interesting!! It talked about pregnancy, birth, support systems that are typically in place, maternity leave, how society sees and treats a new mother, how society supports a new mother, etc. It wasn’t a fast moving book by any means but I found it very interesting. I also appreciated how she chose different lifestyles to highlight – one Mom was in a healthy marriage, one was in a relationship but ended up separating, one was a single Mom, and one was in an open marriage situation. In some ways, I think it would have been more effective to compare four women who were each in similar situations, so we could really understand the comparison between the cultures. But I also appreciated getting totally different views of that first year of motherhood. I guess this is a pretty niche topic, but as I work through doula training, this is a very interesting topic for me.
No One’s Coming: The Rogue Hero’s Our Government Turns to When There’s Nowhere Else to Turn
This might just be my favorite book of the year !!! I know- you have probably never heard of it. Where is the hype? This was SO GOOD. If you’ve read The Only Plane in the Sky- it was similar to that. This is the true story of the team of people who were wiling to fly to Liberia, West Africa, and transport two US citizen Ebola patients back to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, GA. There were no insurance companies or government agencies or anyone else willing to do it- so they stepped in and did it. This book reads like the most compelling documentary and I could not put it down. I knew how it ended, but I still could not stop reading.
Called for Life
As soon as I finished reading No One’s Coming, I grabbed this one off my shelf. This is the SAME STORY, but told from the perspective of the patient, Dr. Kent Brantley, who was evacuated. I had read this one several years ago and loved it, but remember some of the facts differently from how they were presented in No One’s Coming. Well, after reading them both back to back I would say that the stories match up perfectly and I spent a lot of time thinking about Ebola the week that I read both these books haha.
And that is a wrap on my June reading! Have you read any of these? If you only read one, read No One’s Coming and let me know what you think of it!