A Year of Books: January

Happy February!

As usual I've gotten myself behind on posts. I have a lot of fun things coming up, but I wanted to make sure this one got written first.

Most of you know that I am a huge fan of reading. I'll read almost anything and I always need to have a book going. I also read fast, and I make sure to squeeze time in for a book every day. (I wrote more about my reading habits in this post.)

Even though I love to read, I rarely keep track of the books I've gone through. But my friend Annalee over at Happiness at the Core recently wrote this post about how she set herself a goal to read 50 books in 2013 and is going to keep track of them on her blog. (You might remember that I wrote about Annalee and her beautiful daughter Maya back in June.)

I love the idea of blogging about the books I've been reading. Some of them I plan to review in more detail, but I just couldn't bring myself to list them without saying anything, so I've included a little synopsis of my thoughts on each one.

In January I read:

Bottled Up: How The Way We Feed Babies Has Come to Define Motherhood and Why It Shouldn't by Suzanne Barston. This book was written by a fellow blogger, and while I really wanted to love it...I just didn't. I started reading it in December but found it was so dry I had to put it down and pick it up again in January. It was full of great information but also loaded with statistics. I was hoping for more of a story, but it was more an informational book. It wasn't bad, just not what I had been expecting, and Suzanne is a wonderful writer, so if you're interested in the topic I do recommend it. Just be warned...it doesn't read like a blog post would read.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I saw this is the store and when I read the back found out that it was about 3 sisters. Being one of three girls myself, I just had to read it. I thought it was a great book about sisters who have grown up and moved on with their lives but then return to their roots to deal with a family crisis. The sisters are nothing like me and mine, but I did enjoy it so gave a copy to my older sister for her birthday.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. I LOVED this book. I don't know much about Ernest Hemingway, but I found this fictional tale about his first wife to be a wonderful read. I highly recommend it, and I think it was my favorite from all the books I read this month

A Season of Angels by Thomas Kincade and Katherine Spencer. This is the last book in a long series of Christmas-themed books by these two authors. They are far from great literature, but they're sweet tales about a little town in Massachusetts and the people who live there. I read the entire series in the month of December but hadn't gotten this one in time so I read it and completed the series in January. 

Motherland by Amy Sohn. I didn't like this book at all. I don't know why I read it, since I didn't like her other book, Prospect Park West, either. It's supposed to be a fictional account of modern motherhood in a ritzy area of Brooklyn, but I just found the themes of abuse and adultery to be too much to stomach. It had the potential to be a really good book, based on the description from the dust jacket, but it just wasn't the type of book I like and fell short of my expectations. 

The Yoga Body Diet by Kristen Dollard and John Douillard, DC, PhD I loved this book and plan to write more about it a little later this month. It lays out a four-week plan to get the body you want based on yoga and it's principles. I won't be following the plan completely, but I learned a lot and hope to incorporate various bits and pieces of the diet and lifestyle plan into my own life.

Are you a reader? What have you been reading lately? Feel free to send me your suggestions, either in the comments below or on my Facebook page. I'm always looking for book ideas, and need to get started on my February reading!

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