This post is late … but I have a very good reason. I was in Alaska! We went on a family vacation to Seattle and Alaska to show our children where we used to live. We had a great time! The airplane rides gave me some extra time to read, too. Here’s what I read in May:
Killing the Legends tells the stories of the lives and deaths of Elvis, Muhammed Ali and John Lennon. The author ties how fame led to each one’s demise. Elvis’ manager and doctors turned a blind eye to his drug use. Lennon was seen as the cause of the Beatles’ breakup even though there were managerial and relationship issues. Ali was prompted to fight long past when it was okay for his health. I learned a lot about each of these legends from this book.
I’ve been wanting to read Dune for years (I played the video game on floppy disk in high school!) but finally picked it up after seeing my daughter’s friend reading it. I’ve been listening to the audio books and it’s nice that it’s various narrators and not just one. The story is futuristic and set on another planet. A new ruling family comes to the desert planet and they start fulfilling the locals’ religious prophecies. Sci-fi fans will enjoy this series. I’m going to watch the movies soon.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a key person who stood up against the Nazis in Germany during WW2. Letters and Papers from Prison is an important read as it shows his mindset after the Germans arrested him. He thought he’d be out quickly, but ended up dying after more than a year in prison. He never lost sight of his faith or what he was standing up for. I highly recommend everyone of faith read this book.
Frick Island is an isolated fishing island and when a reporter goes to cover a pie auction, he discovers the entire island is going along with a young woman who is acting as if her dead husband is alive. As he returns again and again to see how everyone is acting, he gets close to her. What he uncovers in the end is how love, loyalty and grief can cause people to act as if a dead man is living again, but invisible. The Invisible Husband of Frick Island is one of the better fiction books I’ve read this year.
At the annual homeschool convention in Cincinnati, I saw long lines of families waiting to get signed copies and meet the author of The Green Ember. I decided to read it before recommending it to my 10-year-old and I think she’ll really like it. The main characters are rabbits who have to fight off predators, which include some of their own. There is royalty and the main characters don’t know who they truly are at first since their parents moved away from other rabbits when they were young. After an attack, they have to re-join the other rabbits and figure out their own family history. There are currently three books in this series.
I’ve read most of Chip and Joanna Gaines’ books so far and I was looking forward to reading more of Joanna’s stories. However, The Stories We Tell is more about encouraging people to write and tell their own stories with just a few personal stories from Joanna. She often alludes to a possible story, but never goes into details. I feel like it could have been better organized and been more personal. It could have gone well with a journal.
I listen to Laura Vanderkam’s podcast, Before Breakfast, and heard her talk about her new book, Tranquility by Tuesday. In the book, she gives great tips on how to create a more peaceful life. One of my favorite’s is “effortful before effortless.” It means working on some small project you enjoy before checking out with TV or social media – like a puzzle or crochet or reading. For anyone who feels life is too hectic, I would highly recommend this book.
In certain sections of the science world, there was a race to uncover the building blocks of life – DNA. One of those scientists was a woman breaking barriers for that time. Rosalind Franklin worked tirelessly using X-rays of matter to create a vision for how DNA worked. The book was interesting, but could have been told in a more exciting way. Her Hidden Genius reads more as non-fiction than as a historical fiction book.
I spent almost all of the time I was reading The Passenger trying to figure out what the real story was. It starts with a diver sent to check out a plane crash where the pilot’s bag, black box and a passenger are missing. I wanted that story to come to a conclusion, but it doesn’t. The book follows the diver as he gets targeted by feds and tries to deal with his sister’s suicide. His sister had hallucinations and it lets us into that world, too. I’m not sure what the point of the book was when I finished.
My husband and I read Devotion together and plan to watch the movie. The book is written very well for a non-fiction war story. It’s about two Korean war pilots who respected each other despite one being from a wealthy white family and the other coming from an African-American sharecropper family. I can’t write much without giving the story away, but it’s an uplifting and heartbreaking story.
What good books have you read lately? Share in the comments!
