While our world starting opening back up in May, I still had a lot of time to read while we were home. I tackled a few from my physical to-read pile, read some good fiction and chose some interesting non-fiction books. Here is what I read in May:
In The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Cussy Carter has very few loves in her life – her father and her books. It’s not her love of learning that makes her an outcast in her Kentucky community, though. Her skin color sets her apart with its blue tint. She is often treated worse than the “coloreds” in their area as no one understands why her and her father are blue. Going around the people who work at the traveling library, Cussy applies to be a traveling librarian and gets the job, ending up working with people who don’t want “her kind” around, but tolerate her as they really need workers.
What is your passion? What do you do that makes you come alive? If you haven’t found it yet, that’s okay. Your Blue Flame was written to help you find that passion or “blue flame” and set it on fire. Jen Fulwiler speaks from her experience of dragging through life day after day until she made the time to write. When she wrote, she ended up with more energy to give her family than when she didn’t follow any dreams. She shares her struggles, successes and lessons learned in Your Blue Flame.
The Warsaw Zoo during WWII faced devastation and loss. Animals were killed or taken to Germany. Parts of the zoo were bombed. However, the zookeepers did their best to not only save what animals they could, but also managed to hide people in their home or the zoo. Antonina and Jan Zabinski always kept their hope that the zoo would be a zoo again one day, but they had to face so many trials along the way as they protected their son and as many lives they could. Their story is told in The Zookeeper’s Wife.
In About Your Father, Peggy Rowe shares more family stories, but focuses on ones involving her sons and husband. With the same strong voice, she tells about events she thinks helped shape Mike into the Dirty Jobs celebrity we all know. She talks about how she and her husband got to do commercials and how they adjusted moving from acres of land to a condo. I laughed many times.
In Being Known, Jennalyn tries to be happy with her life, but with a husband working long hours, two toddlers to run after and still grieving the loss of her mom, she feels down most of the time. She loves that her husband, Joel, is fulfilling his dream of running a restaurant, but since he’s also still the chef, he gets very little time off. Her mother passed away several years before, but now having children of her own, she wishes her mother was there to see them. She doesn’t quite know how to explain it to her friends but when she runs into an ex-boyfriend, she finds she can talk to him.
Stay With Me and Come Back to Me by Carolyn Astfalk
In Stay With Me, Chris felt drawn to Rebecca the moment he saw her – in loose clothing in a supermarket watching her niece and nephew. As they start to date, Chris realizes her relationship with her dad is affecting how she sees herself and her views on intimate relationships. Though they both share a belief in God, Chris is Catholic and her father doesn’t approve of that. The obstacles they face will either drive them apart or create a very strong foundation.
Come Back to Me is the second book in series and is about Chris’ brother Alan and his wife, Jamie. Alan wants to start thinking about children, but his behavior (being a Dave Matthews roadie) makes her question his ability to follow through and be a stable father. She kicks him out and he goes to live with Chris for a while, but then loses his job and starts making some bad decisions.
In a follow-up to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Albom brings the child who Eddie saved into the after-life in The Next Person You Meet in Heaven. Annie is grown and has just gotten remarried. Her new husband Paolo and her decide to take a balloon ride before leaving for their honeymoon. Disaster strikes and they end up in the hospital with Annie wanting to give Paolo her lung. She then heads to Heaven and meets her five people – all of which change her in ways she never knew were possible. It is a captivating read that will remind you how much impact we all have on each other.
Some true stories read like fiction. A Bookshop in Berlin is the true story of one woman’s survival during WW2. She starts the war owning a French bookshop in Berlin. She is a Polish Jew, but her store survives Kristalnacht due to her reputation in the community. However, from then on, she is on the run with “no place to lay her head” (the original title for the book). She escapes to France, but hopes to get passage to Switzerland somehow so she can be safe and find out how her family is going in Poland.
Jack only knows one place in the whole entire world at the age of 5 – Room. His mother is being held captive by Old Nick but does everything she can to make Jack’s life happy and healthy. He sleeps in the wardrobe so Nick never sees him when he visits the room. However, his mother holds hope for escape in her heart and her salvation may lie in her only son. The problem comes that he doesn’t want to leave the only world he knows – Room.
Tell Me More is a very real, authentic book about the things we should all learn to say in life. Corrigan shares touching life stories where she learned to say, “I love you,” “Yes,” “No” and “Good Enough,” among other key phrases. She shares about her relationship with her mother and father, her own experience fighting cancer, losing a friend to cancer, grief and being a parent. I came away reminded of how precious life and relationships are and how we need to speak what is true to ourselves.
Will Cooper is sent into the wilderness to run a trading post at the age of 12. As an orphan, his aunt and uncle needed the money and hired him out on a seven-year contract. Taking only a horse, map, key and some food, he enters Indian territory on a journey that shapes the rest of his life. The friends he meets turns into family and he finds love and a career. However, his life is not a smooth road, but is full of twists and regrets in Thirteen Moons.
Mercy Train follows the story of three generations of women all affected by the orphan trains that ran from New York to the Midwest. Violet is put on the train by her mother who left her father to find a better life for them in New York, but can’t seem to settle anywhere. Eventually her recipes end up in the care of her granddaughter, Samantha. Her mother, Iris, never felt very close to her mother and it trickled down to Sam. I wish the book had gone deeper into their stories but it was an interesting generational book.
As a young man, Frankenstein happens to study the wrong science books. He is fascinated with the research and is captivated with the idea of how life is created. When he goes away to college, he is told he is on the wrong track and needs to read and study different authors. Instead of taking correction, he resolves to prove the theories he’s been studying by working on creating a man and bringing him to life. However, he doesn’t stop and think what will happen if he succeeds in Frankenstein.
In Catalyst, Marcie wants to believe that she has had contact with spirits, but doesn’t know who she can talk to about her experience. However, as soon as she arrives on her mother’s archeological dig for the summer, she immediately senses something different about her team leaders. Lorraine and Zeke say they are graduate students, but when they take Marcie, her brother, his girlfriend and Leo to a hilltop where they move a giant rock with their thoughts, it proves what Marcie sensed. They are given a vision of a destroyed Earth and are told they will learn to tap into energy fields to help heal the Earth.
In Harrow Lake, Lola is the daughter of a famous horror movie director and the actress who was a star in his most famous film – Nightjar. The filming of Nightjar took place in her mother’s hometown, Harrow Lake, and tourists gather there every year as there is a cult following of the movie. The town looks just like it did for the movie – how it’s always looked, except for when the land shifted and a sinkhole swallowed the church. After her father is stabbed, Lola ends up in Harrow Lake with her maternal grandmother, whom she hasn’t had contact with since her own mother disappeared when she was five years old. Harrow Lake might holds secrets about her mother as it definitely holds secrets about its own past.
I perused through Grant Writing for Dummies to get a feel for how the grant writing process works. I help several non-profits with writing and social media so I wanted to see if grant writing was something I could do as well. The book gives a great overview of the process and helped me decide that while I could do grant writing well, it is something I would want to be hired to do as it’s very time-intensive.
What did you read in May? Share your favorites in the comments! I’m always looking for good books to read!
