In May, I read 14 books! A road trip helped me with that total as I often read several books during the drive. I even got to read on the beach! I read some really good fiction, a memoir, a book about real estate, my favorite author’s new release, some motivational books and a marriage book. I really enjoy when I read a wide variety of books in a month!
In Nine Perfect Strangers, Masha is climbing the corporate ladder quickly until she is taken down by a heart attack and changes her life completely. Her health transformation is so drastic and powerful that it makes her want to inspire others to become their healthiest, best self. She opens a spa – The Tranquillum House – where she confiscates snacks, wine, cell phones and enforces a smoothie-based personalized diet, exercise program and a time of silence. When guests start not taking her seriously, she starts taking drastic measures to ensure they find personal enlightenment.
Our lives our made of moments. As the song in Rent says, each year has 525,600 minutes in it and we fill it with the mundane, the exciting and the dreadful. We tend to remember the highs and the lows, but it we don’t have many of those, then the time seems to meld together and we don’t remember much of what happens on a day-to-day basis when we look back. The Power of Moments suggests we need to intentionally create more meaningful moments in our lives to live fully. It can be a simple as using the good China for a birthday meal to making a person’s first day on the job a welcoming event instead of an afterthought.
After finding out his ex-wife is getting remarried, Charles James decides he will still finish his walk along Route 66, but has no clue what to do when the walk is over. He decides not to decide until he arrives in California – whether to see her and his son, whether to announce to the world that he is still alive or even whether or not to return to work. In The Road Home, Charles James realizes the journey is what changes him, not the destination.
A small town is rocked after a teenager is found dead in the town’s lake. She was a good student and a good daughter who had a bright future ahead of her, so everyone is mystified as to why she is dead. Her mother is convinced a stranger took her. Her brother is convinced the teenage boy in the neighborhood did something to her. The police, after finding out she didn’t really have any friends, think it was suicide. The truth is more complicated than anyone can imagine in Everything I Never Told You.
We all have the same amount of time in the day. How are we spending that time? Are we trying to get as much done as possible or are we focusing on getting the right things done according to our priorities? In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, the author looks at how there are two kinds of people and shows how you can work toward being a person who gets the right things done instead of just spinning your wheels trying to get everything done.
I guess you truly know you’re a bibliophile (book lover) when you read a book about reading books. Anne Bogel is a fellow book lover who has a well-known book blog called Modern Mrs. Darcy. She loves books and decided to write a book that all book lovers can appreciate. She explores how people fall in love with reading, all the readers we’ve been in our lives and how bookshelves can be organized. In each chapter of I’d Rather Be Reading, she talks about books that formed her into the person that she is today.
Wired to Eat is not a typical diet or food plan book. Its premise is that there is no one-size-fits-all diet, but that every body reacts to foods differently. By knowing how your own body reacts to certain foods in regards to insulin spikes can help a person avoid foods that can cause weight gain. The author also suggests diet alone isn’t a solution, but that we each need sleep, exercise and a community to really thrive. I thought it was one of the better, more interesting food books I’ve read.
Every relationship needs some guidance along the way. Whether in a good, mediocre, bad marriage (or even thinking about getting married), Vertical Marriage is full of good, solid advice. This Christian couple talks about fighting, learning to lean on God, intimacy and how to make time for each other. Their honesty and candor let readers know they struggled, too.
In this collection of stories, the idea of moving on in life after the children leave the nest and after a divorce are explored by seeing how one woman spends her summer. An Empty Nest is a short, thoughtful read about dealing with loss and finding the strength to find a new way ahead in life.
Decluttering is all the rage right now between Marie Kondo’s The Magical Art of Tidying Up and Gretchen Rubin’s Outer Order, Inner Calm. It seems most people crave a place to live where everything is of use, has a place or is aesthetically pleasing. While decluttering the things in a living space can help a person feel organized, sometimes what really needs to be decluttered is our lives.
The Simple Life Guide To Decluttering Your Life: The How-To Book of Doing More with Less and Focusing on the Things That Matter by Gary Collins is not a book about how to organize your kitchen or closet, but a book about living a decluttered life. Collins addresses how people can live more simply in these areas of their lives: health, finances, social circles, mind, house, technology, holiday and even politics.
Read the full review on Reedsy Discovery.
H.J. Chammas wanted to get wealthy but he didn’t know how. When he met a woman who worked in finances, he started to pick her brain (along with starting to date her). He learned the basics of finances from her and how wealth is measured not in how much money a person has in a bank account, but is a measure of investments and debt. One of the biggest surprises was that there is a type of good debt – real estate investments. As he starts digging into how he could start entering the rental property market, he meets a mentor named Papa Joe who helps him learn what to do, step by step, to be successful. He shares his story in The Employee Millionaire: How to Use Your Day Job to Become a Millionaire with Rental Properties.
Read the full review on OnlineBookClub.org.
Sarah and Quinn spend their childhood in India where their father was a doctor. As Americans living in India, they had a household full of staff and their mother got to attend parties. When Quinn and her twin brother get cholera, she survives but Marcus does not. Their mother then takes the girls back to America, leaving their father in India. They each deal with their guilt and scars in their own ways, each feeling alone. When Sarah decides to go back to India, they each must face the past to move forward in Three Ways to Disappear.
Read the full review on The US Review of Books.
Set in the Middle Ages, The Way of Glory follows a young girl who decides to follow the men fighting the Crusades rather than get married. She faces danger and learns how to deal with a woman’s place in that time. She also learns to see the humanity of the enemy, which could cost her everything she loves.
Read the full review on The US Review of Books.
At first, David just thought he’d climb one mountain and be finished. However, as life threw more curve balls his way, he felt the call to climb another summit and then another until he became one of the few people who have climbed The Seven Summits. The Altitude Journals details his climbing journeys and all he learned along the way.
Read the full review on OnlineBookClub.org.
Which of these books interests you?
What books did you read in May? Share them with me – I’m always looking for great book suggestions?
