April Reading

Here I am, sending my reading list into the void again :). Someday I'll get my pretty blog up and running again and maybe then I'll write something other than book reviews, but for now I'm stuck on this sort of embarrassing blog that still has all my super poorly edited Jerusalem photos on it. Oh, the Internet is such a great time capsule of awkwardness.

Siblings Without Rivalry - Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish: My pediatrician said this is the most helpful parenting book he’s ever read. It was awesome; I feel like I need a pocket version to carry around and consult moment to moment. Graham and Margi obviously aren’t fighting with each other yet, but I’ve been trying to use the principles during playdates and such to practice. Quick read, highly recommend if you have kids.

Daring Greatly - Brene Brown: Brene Brown may be my spirit animal. This book is about vulnerability and shame, which is something everyone struggles with (at least according to Brown, and I really hope she’s right because I struggle with it HARD). I especially loved the chapter on embracing vulnerability in parenthood. This is one of those books I think I’ll return to again and again.

Brain Rules for Baby - John Medina: I read this book a few years ago and really liked its practical advice on what is actually scientifically proven to help your kids be happy, smart, and moral. I’d forgotten how fluffed the writing was in parts, but the advice is still really good and usable.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini: This book was a gift from a friend who is herself a gorgeous writer, and who has gorgeous taste. This book felt stylistically similar to Jhumpa Lahiri’s books, with the woman power amplified AWESOMELY. Loved it.

My Life On the Road - A memoir of Steinem’s work and travels; really fantastic. Worth reading for the historical overview of the fight for equal rights alone, but it’s also beautifully written and powerfully insightful. Plus Emma Watson picked it for her feminist book club. So read it.

Outline - Rachel Cusk: This book sort of defies categorization; it’s a novel, but there’s barely a plot. Instead, it lays out a series of conversations the protagonist gets into over the course of a week. It’s sparse and insightful and utterly delightful; I really loved it and I recommend it highly.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret - Judy Blume: There was something so wonderfully refreshing about reading this book—I don’t normally seek out YA lit., but it is so good to know that honest and loving people are writing it. It makes me very happy to know that my kids will have this kind of reading at their disposal, because I remember very well being young and being a young reader especially, and I needed books like this, I needed to know that I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t so strange and I suppose I still need that, and what else is literature for?

The Game - Neil Strauss: I had long been aware of this book as one that every man (apparently) has read, even if none of them admit it, although David actually really hasn’t read it. It’s the story of Strauss infiltrating the world of pickup artists and ultimately becoming one of the best artists in the world himself; there are exploits and betrayals and eventually the whole thing crumbles. Part how-to, part narrative, entirely disturbing. Don’t read it unless you want to lose your faith in (at least a portion of) humanity.

Packing for Mars - Mary Roach: Graham is obsessed with outer space and I know hardly anything about it, so I’ve been looking for books that could teach me. The first ones to come into the library were astronaut/space exploration-related, and I could not have started with a more delightful one than this. Roach is hilarious and digs deep into the questions I didn’t even know I had about space travel (lots of information about pooping in space! And who knew what a complicated enterprise that is without gravity!). I guffawed many times. An excellent investigation into the bizarre world of space travel. Highly recommended.

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth - Col. Chris Hadfield: Hadfield is SO COOL; if you don’t believe me, go watch his Bowie in space video. He makes space travel out to be much more graceful and noble than Roach does, and it’s heavy on the life lessons (which, to be fair, is clear from the title), but I really enjoyed reading it. Also I hope Graham is never an astronaut.

Gratitude - Oliver Sacks: This is a tiny book, just four essays written by Sacks in the final years of his life. It is a perfect and graceful little book.

Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist - Sunil Yapa: Holy cow. This book is so incredibly stunning; please go read it. It’s a novel about the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle, something I knew almost nothing about, but now want to learn everything about. The writing is intense and incendiary and I don’t know how someone could read it and come away without some kind of fire burning inside. Be warned that the violence is brutal, but it’s also important; I couldn’t put it down.