March (reading) madness

What a looooong month, right? Sweet Girl is beginning her online school as I type and it seems to be going well. OMG, fifth graders do not know online meeting etiquette, but hopefully that will come. They are just so happy to be together again.

Maybe life will resume some normalcy now that she will be busy with school assignments! I’ve been all over the place, mostly trying to spend my time with her. I am proud of the blog post I wrote about changing my perspective. I am in the middle of quite a few books, so I don’t have a long report for you this time.

Are you a master of tsundoku like me? It means piling up books to save for later … even if you’ll never actually read them. I am so good at that! I have a full kindle, a huge stack in my office, and many on my nightstand. I do plan to get to them all someday…

American Dirt: A Novel by Jeanine Cummins

OMG did this novel surprise me! I had no idea what to expect and it grabbed me in the first sentence and created an entirely different world. I normally do not like suspense at all, but I had to read this. The main character is a mom and she and her son survive a massacre of her family by a drug cartel and she must hide and figure out a scary adventure to get themselves into the United States. Since it’s A NOVEL, I don’t really understand the controversy over this book not correctly depicting “the immigrant experience.” I loved it. The characters are well-drawn and believable, the story is real, and she treated immigrants as individuals. I think it’s great writing.

“Lydia expected the crossing would be momentous. That it would happen in an instant, that she would, in the space of one footstep, leave Mexico and enter the United States. She expected to be able to pause, however briefly, so she might look back and reflect, both physically and metaphorically, at what she’s leaving behind…After eighteen days and sixteen hundred miles of endurance, she wants to feel that she’s slipping his noose. But she wants to look further back than that too, to her life before the massacre… Lydia expected there would be a moment when these notions would flood through her, all at once, like a small death. A portal. She’d hoped, like one of those desert rattlesnakes, to shed the skin of her anguish and leave it behind her in the Mexican dirt. But the moment of the crossing has already passed, and she didn’t even realize it had happened. She never looked back, never committed any small act of ceremony to help launch her into the new life on the other side.”

Evvie Drake Starts Over: A Novel by Linda Holmes

This one is not a 5-star blockbuster, but it’s charming and simple. We have a widow from a bad marriage and a handsome major league baseball player down on his luck. What a shock! They fall in love. Still, the characters were sweet and it was a quick read.

Grit & Magic: A Mother’s Story of Modern Adoption by Melanie Herz Promocene

A lovely accounting of the frustrating international adoption process. Melanie shares the journey that she and her husband went through during their adoption process of her son… waiting, meeting potential parents, the ups and downs of false promises. She writes with heartwarming humility. I read it in one sitting.

“In the back of my mind I thought to myself, “First we had to deal with xenophobia, then ageism, then mental health, and now religion?” I felt whacked by discrimination on multiple fronts, but the religious thing hit my core. I’ve always considered myself much more spiritual than ritual but Judaism is so much a part of who I am. It’s my heritage, my value system. I understand philosophically that religion is a preference. However, it saddens me to think in our modern age we still have to contend with this type of religious undercurrent.”

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

A Reese’s Book Club pick. I’m not sure why this book is so acclaimed. The first two chapters are great, but then the rest of the story seems forced, although Reid tries to highlight some racial and class tensions in society. A young black babysitter, a white guy she’s dating, and her white employer (a well-meaning mother who really tries to be her friend), who also dated this guy before. I didn’t feel that I knew any of the characters very well and the story was choppy. I don’t enjoy, in fiction or in reality, two female protagonists.

Here is what I am currently reading… reviews coming next month. Let me know what you are reading!!

Self-Care For Introverts: 17 Soothing Rituals For Peace In A Hectic World by Barrie Davenport – managing your life to your strengths… so far, really good.

The Gifted Highly Sensitive Introvert: Wisdom for Emotional Healing and Expressing Your Radiant Authentic Self by Benita A. Esposito – 9 themes: relationships, emotional healing, true identity, meaningful work, etc.

Holy Woman: The Road to Greatness of Rebbetzin Chaya Sara Kramer by Sara Yoheved Rigler – what an amazing tzaddik. About halfway through.

To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility by Jonathan Sacks – just began this but love the way responsibility adds meaning.

Your Love Is Blasting in My Heart: A Grandmother’s Journey by Marilyn Saltzman – a friend wrote this… I read half so far and loved it.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone – I think I’ve been reading this forever. It’s so long, but really really intriguing.