Book Report, January - July

JANUARY

The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs
Adam knows I love memoirs and saw this one on a list of "best memoirs of 2017" so he got it for me for Christmas. It was another similar to When Breath Becomes Air, which I'd read last year, another personal account of what it's like to face death as a 30-something. This time from a woman and a poet. I'm not into poetry, although I wish I was, so I was hoping to like this. But me and poetry. We just don't really mix. So, while it was really lovely and just so beautifully written, I wanted something a little more straightforward. It was equal parts nice and a bit funny and plenty sad. But I just didn't love it. A few days after I finished it, my sister told me the widow and widower of both of these authors got together and are dating! Sooooo cute and so happy for them. I was glad I read both books because I felt like I knew these people and understood this love story already. A very sweet ending.

Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Every 3rd person on the planet has told me to read this book, and I finally obliged. It's set during the depression in Seattle and tells the story of the young men rowing for the University of Washington. They are a hardscrabble bunch but they pull together and become a great team and go onto greatness. It is such a great story and so masterfully told. It lived up to the hype. Now they need to make a movie!

I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends by Courtney Robertson
This was the tell-all memoir of a former villain on The Bachelor. It was just as juicy as I'd hoped.

Walden by David Henry Thoreau
I've always wanted to read this book. It's been on my shelf for years. I finally realized I wouldn't read it unless it was via audiobook. So that's what I did. I appreciated several of his little gems about the simple life. My favorite is, "I love a broad margin to my life." I get it. Having time is one of the biggest luxuries you can have in a world of busyness. Otherwise, he was kind of insufferable. I am fine with anyone pontificating about the rightness of their life choices, but when you talk about everyone else like they're idiots, it kind of kills the mood. Good job, Thoreau. We're proud of you for building a cabin and watching the pond for hours. We learned from your experiment.

FEBRUARY
Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett
I've listened to Krista Tippett's podcast On Being off and on for many years. I've always appreciated her moderate voice when it comes to spirituality and religion and I was pleased to find out she'd written several books. I really, really enjoyed it. It was published 10 years ago when her podcast was called Speaking of Faith. She talks about her own lifetime faith journey and weaves in commentary from her interviewees. Really interesting and uplifting.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
This lady can write! I loved every page of this book. Best known as a poet, Lockwood uses words to create images better than any author I've ever read. Her descriptions are just .... wow. It's a book about her upbringing as a child of a Catholic priest, but it mostly details the time she spent living with her parents while she and her husband dug themselves out of a financial hole. Her parents are endlessly entertaining and there were plenty of laugh out loud moments. But there were also serious reflections about her falling out with the religion and how she views it now.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Don't read this book if you don't want to feel bad about everything. Womp womp. But it does make me want to improve, too, so that's good. He talks about how America's food culture has evolved and how much of what we eat now can hardly be defined as food. He offers some good tips to getting back to our food roots. I felt bad for a bit but was also inspired.

MARCH
Zealot: Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
Well, this book ruined Jesus for me. Okay, not completely. But kinda. Aslan talks about the historical Jesus verses the Biblical Jesus. He lays out historical facts verses Bible stories. I liked it. I'm glad I read it. And his closing statement sums up how I feel about it: whether Jesus was just a man or an actual deity, he's someone worth believing in and following.

The Wisdom of Sundays by Oprah Winfrey
Queen Oprah drops wisdom about universal truths in this book. She takes her favorite interviews from her show, Super Soul Sunday, and puts them in chapter form for us all to enjoy. This is the type of book that's perfect to pick up occasionally for a boost of inspiration. I really enjoyed these golden nuggets.

Hunger by Roxane Gay
Oh man. This was a very tough read. I love memoirs and I think part of that is I like the inspiration that comes with them. People typically tell you their story interspersed with the wisdom that they pick up along the way. Gay tells you her story and it is not a happy one and there’s nothing uplifting about it. Not at the end, not ever. I’m having a hard time even typing a review because I guess I always assume there will be at least a tiny shred of redemption in the story arc. But nothing. Maybe that's a good lesson, too. Sometimes you can’t rise above the crap life hands you. You do your best but some pain just goes too deep.

The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
Add David Leibovitz to the list of gay men I have crushes on. He is so nice and so funny but also a little saucy and snarky. Leibovitz’s story is about moving to Paris in middle age after a successful career as a pastry chef in San Francisco. He came to the right place and his stories revolve around his foibles and fumbles as he uses his food expertise to win the hearts of the Parisians. I ate up every bit of his melodrama. Even better, I read it while I was in Paris on my own solo adventure! There’s just nothing like pastries and Paris.

The Long Haul by Finn Murphy
Murphy is a trucker who specializes in moving people start to finish. He’s the first, middle and last point of contact for people moving just down the street or across the globe and he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. He shares his love for the job and some funny stories. I really enjoyed learning about his daily life, trucker culture, and about the types of people who are in that line of work.

APRIL

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
This was a novel about eight or so random people who met at cooking classes. They each have their own complex backstories and as the book unfolds, you witness how their lives intertwine as they prepare food and eat together. It's sentimental and sweet and I enjoyed it most of the time. Mostly for the food descriptions and little thought nuggets about how food preparation, meals and mealtime plays a big role in each of our stories.

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler
This is the third book I’ve read in what seems to be a new genre: terminal cancer patient memoir. This one is different from the other two I’ve read, as Bowler took this serious subject and made it funny. She shared her story with terminal cancer while juxtaposing two religious traditions that she is most familiar with: the prosperity gospel (the group she studied for her PhD thesis) and the Mennonites (the dominant religion in her family life). It’s warm, insightful, sweet, sad, sincere and funny. I loved it.

MAY

Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman
I'm a Bachelor/Bachelorette fan and have always wanted to know more about how the show is made and what really goes on behind the scenes. This book gave me quite a few answers. Like what the questionnaire entails for applying to go on the show, the tactics producers use to encourage zany behavior, and the power of editing that makes the contestants seem legit crazy. Loved it!

Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner
Phew! I finally made it through this one. It took me a couple starts and I finally finished it. Loechner explores her life story and the push and pull she's had to achieve and find meaning. The more she achieved, the less she understood what she was aiming for. I really wanted to like it but found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit. Too saccharine, too earnest ... unfortunately it gets a MEH from me. But she is a lovely writer and she does have some moments of brilliance. Maybe the book is to be enjoyed sloooowwwwllly over a loooongg period of time, picked up and put down at leisure...but when it kept going and going and going, I just hurried up and finished it. Lesson not learned.

Educated by Tara Westover
Hold on to your hats, this "I escaped a crazy family and lived to tell" tale is a doozy. This memoir could be described as Glass Castle: Survivalist Mormon Edition. Westover grew up in a tiny town near Malad, Idaho. While her family was active in the Mormon church, her dad's core belief system focused on the end times. The family stockpiled food and weapons. They prized self-sufficiency above all else. They mistrusted government and did not file birth certificates. They had their children at home and they home schooled as well. After one of Westover's older brothers decides to strike out on his own and go to college, she starts seeing her family and the world she grew up in differently. It's a long, difficult road away from her sheltered life into a totally unknown and unfamiliar world. It's gripping and heartbreaking. She tells her story brilliantly.

JUNE 
Nothing? I guess I was busy moving...

JULY
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
If you love Laura Ingalls Wilder, you'll love this book. It's a biography about her life and also much of the life of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, another acclaimed journalist and writer. It lays bare what the Little House on the Prairie series did not and spoiler alert: settling the wild American west was not all running barefoot and cozy cabin fires. It was difficult and terrible. It took me many months to read this book but I savored every page. Fraser is an expert researcher and writer. I just loved this book so much.