September! Wow- what a strange reading month. I would have expected to read a lot more this month, but I guess that being so busy has also taken out some of my reading. I only read 7 books this month- and two of them I just barely finished before the month was over!
I ended up taking more books back to the library than I did checking them out- which is unusual for me!
Side note: let’s talk about the library for a minute.
I love the library, and almost all of the books that I read come from the library. And there are a couple things that I must discuss here. First- when you put a book on hold and it becomes available, how many days do you have to go pick it up? I frequent 3 different libraries and they all have various hold times- from 1 day to 1 week. And also- do all your holds come available at the same time? I feel like mine do. But the worst is when I drive to the library to pick up holds, then get home and get a notification that a book I requested is available for pickup. ARGGG.
Second question- I have heard it said that librarians LOVE it when people check out of a lot of books. It helps with their numbers, their circulation, etc. However, there are several libraries that I go to where I get the side eye when we check out a lot of books. Now, we are checking out a lot of books- we usually max out our cards. But sometimes I get the idea that it’s a big ‘ol inconvenience for them, when I always thought it was a really good thing for them? There is one library in particular that does NOT appreciate that my kids each check out 15 books and I usually check out a large pile as well. Isn’t that the whole point of the library?!? Is it that we like checking out books *in theory*, but the reality is a big inconvenience? I’m just trying to figure this out, because what I’ve been told and what I’m experiencing are two different things. Is it because I have a lot of children? Do they think we will lose the books? Drop the books? I don’t know, please give me your thoughts on this!
And here are my (overall- lackluster) September reads…
Road Trip
My Review: I should’ve known this one wouldn’t really be for me and DNF’d it. It was a cute story about two sisters who lose their mother and her dying wish is that they get along again. So they go on a trip to Ireland to try to discover their roots, and discover friends, family and love along the way. It was just kind of cheesy and not for me. Also, I don’t know why it was called “road trip” because they spent very little time driving around in an actual car.
The Twenty-One Balloons
My Review: What a delightfully weird book! This is one of the Newberry Medal winners and it’s a quirky story about a professor who wants to get away from it all, so he decided to live in a hot air balloon. But he returns home with a crazy story to tell about diamonds, explosions and a group of people who moved to an island to become the richest people in the world. It’s quirky, but cute!
A Change of Habit
My Review: I love a good memoir, and this one didn’t disappoint! It’s not salacious like Educated or The Glass Castle, but it’s very interesting. Sister Monica Claire lives a very secular life but always feels called to be a nun. She eventually decides to pursue it and spends years becoming a nun in a convent. Although I don’t agree with many of her religious conclusions, I found this story fascinating and I learned a lot about nuns and that side of religion!
The Shampoo Effect
My Review: Well, I loved and hated this book. This is classic “rich people behaving badly”, but I think they took it too far. This is about a group of friends who really struggle to accept an outsider who is dating one of them. It gets dramatic when the main male character finds out that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his baby. It’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s interesting how they all deal with it. Like I said- I loved this book AND I hated it. I have no better way to describe it haha!
Where the Lost Wander
My Review: This book was our book club pick for the month! I enjoy historical fiction (that is not WWII) so I was excited to read about a family who is going West in a wagon train. This started out really good and really interesting. I was enjoying the characters and wondering where the story was going to go! Well, about halfway through it took a turn and the story went in kind of a weird direction. A bunch of people died, and I ended the book so disappointed with how we got to where we were! However, I do have to say that this book is PERFECT for book club discussion!
The Magic of Motherhood
My Review: This was a sweet essay-style encouragement for young Moms. I think I have had this book on my shelf for YEARS and used to love following the Coffee + Crumbs gals, who are the ones who put this book together. There are several different authors who write sweet little essays on their experience in motherhood. It was encouraging to me to read it, but I do have to say that most of the essays had to do with infertility, pregnancy or young motherhood- there wasn’t many mentions of mothering tweens or teens. I kept reading and thinking “boy, I needed this 5 years ago”, but I didn’t find it as relevant to my mothering years now. I would absolutely gift this book as a baby shower gift, though!
The Burning Side
My Review: Wow, ok. Best book of the month by far! This one will probably be in my top 10 of the year, too! It is about a couple in the middle years of marriage who endure a house fire. They get out ok, but what we learn after the fire is that they had decided to divorce that night, before the fire started. The rest of the story unfolds why they are getting a divorce- and it turns out, it’s not just one reason. They are also thrown back into their families of origin and some of the past that stirs up both good and bad things. And, someone in the family faces a difficult diagnosis, because layers of trauma don’t stop when one person ends up going through something hard. I loved this one. I loved the nuanced way that she approached how complicated a divorce can be, and how complicated families can be. I loved the ending (it’s happy) and I loved the family throughout the story.
And that is a wrap on my September reads! I am currently reading “The Sun Does Shine” as a nonfiction read, “The Heir Apparent” as a fiction read and “Adam of the Road” as a Newberry Medal selection. What are you currently reading?
Ha! Yes! I HATE when I get home and get an email that a hold is now available. Our library gives me 5-7 days (I’m not sure the exact time frame but I know I have a decent amount of time to pick them up). My holds often do come in in large batches but I think libraries ship them in large batches for cost/shipping reasons. I don’t think our library has a max; when we were homeschooling I often filled a giant LL bean tote with books and then also, at least one time I can remember, had a giant cardboard box they gave me with all our requests that had come in too. I used them to teach most every subject other than math so we had A LOT of books. But our librarians knew I was homeschooling and would often pull books for us that they thought we’d like. I do think they were nervous at first that we’d end up with lost books but in all our years I think we lost 2 (that we happily replaced with the same book we bought through Amazon). And now I’ve spoken so much about libraries I don’t feel like I left much room/space to talk about your actual reading. I thought Road Trip was cute but yeah it kind of is an odd name as they don’t drive much at all. It wasn’t a compelling read or anything but cute enough. I haven’t read any of the others but A Change of Habit and The Burning Side sound really good to me.