February Book List

I can't believe it's March already! This is an exciting month for us, as it is the month that we will officially become home owners. February was spent in a whirlwind of realtor meetings and phone calls, bank meetings, etc. Hopefully the time we have from now until closing will be a little more settled and I'll find more time to read!

At the beginning of February I wrote a list of all the books I read in January. (You can find that list here!)

In February I only read four.

1) Does this Church Make Me Look Fat? by Rhoda Janzen. This was a follow-up memoir to Rhoda's first book, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. She writes about her journey with cancer, her second marriage, and her newly discovered faith. I love memoirs, and found that the author attacked some very serious subjects with a good dose of humor.







2) Belonging by Robin Lee Hatcher. This was a quick easy read. Set in the late 1800s, the book tells the tale of a woman names Felicia who moved to Idaho to become a school teacher. It's a romance, and a bit predictable, but a heartwarming tale.







3) Habits of the House by Fay Weldon. I read this book because Jane Green, one of my favorite authors, recommended it on her Facebook page. She said if you're a Downtown Abbey fan, you will enjoy this book. I've never seen Downtown Abbey, and really have no idea what it's about but I decided to read it anyway. I found it a little slow, but the story wasn't bad. It's about an English Earl who falls on hard times at the beginning of the 20th century. He is struggling to keep up appearances while helping his family gain back some of the riches they lost. The book is the first in a trilogy, so I will probably end up reading the rest of them at some point.

4) Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska. I really, really liked this book, and flew through it. It's a novel about a man raising his 8 year old son in New York City. (His wife ran out on them a few months earlier.) His in-laws pay for his son to attend a ritzy Upper East Side school, which is pressuring him to put his son on ADHD medicine even though he doesn't think it's necessary to do so. It really gets you thinking about the culture in our country and the way we push our kids to succeed, to the point of putting their health at risk. I highly recommend this one.




What have you been reading lately? I'm always open for suggestions! If you decide to read any of these (or have already read them) let me know what you think!

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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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Lets Talk About Hobbies

Today's Toddle Along Tuesday topic, over at Growing Up Geeky, is hobbies. I've started and stopped many hobbies along the years. Latch hooking, cross stitching  scrap-booking ..and the list goes on. But the one constant thing that I always make time for is reading.

I love to read, and I've loved it for as long as I can remember. I've always had at least one book that i'm in the middle of, and hate finishing it without knowing that I don't have another one right behind it. I read fast, and will go through 3-4 books a week, depending on the content. 

So many people have said "I don't know how you find the time to read with two little ones!" or "Wow, I'm way too busy to read." Which makes me chuckle because nobody would think twice if I said "I love to watch TV, and watch an hour of it at night before bed." Somehow TV watching is considered a given, but reading is something that only people with the luxury of time can afford to do. 

For me, there are very few shows that I would choose to watch over reading a book. (Parenthood and Revenge to name two.) I read every single day, even it's just a magazine. (I have a subscription to four of them, and read them cover-to-cover. I hate skimming through because I know I've paid for them...I want my money's worth! Hmm, reading that makes me sounds cheap. Oh well.) Sometimes I only make it through 10 or 15 minutes at night before my eyes close, but I always end a day knowing I've read something. 

As I kid I loved series books. BoxCar Children, Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, etc. I have very fond memories of waiting eagerly for the next book in the series to come out and running to the local bookstore to buy it. I would then devour it in a day.

These days I prefer to read light books that don't require a lot of concentration. Romance, "Chick-Lit" (although I detest that phrase, I can't really think of another way to describe it) and light mysteries. I went through a Mary Higgins Clark phase at one point, but haven't read anything by her in a long, long time. I have dabbled with historical novels (Phillipa Gregory is good) and memoirs as well. 

The most recent books that I have read and enjoyed are Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio (one of those fly through it to see what happens books) The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman (a book that left me with an uncomfortable, "i'm not sure how to feel" feeling at the end, although it was very well written) and What the Nanny Saw by Fiona Nell. (A slightly humorous look at high society parenting in London.) 

Do you like to read? I'm always looking for good book recommendations so feel free to share. 

What other hobbies do you do? I'd love to hear about them! If you blog and have a hobby post, link up over at Melissa's site. 

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