Recent reads

I don't know if other people do, but I still love reading book reviews from internet friends in the year 2019, so I'm going to keep writing them. I haven't written one since the very beginning of the year so I'm going to do a highlight version rather than list out every single one.

Books linked below are Amazon affiliates. If you click through here, I get a tiny kickback. Thanks for supporting my blog and always remember: use your local library! They're the world's greatest institution!

The Grace of Enough by Haley Stewart
I'm about a year behind all of the other highly intelligent and thoughtful reviews of Haley's book, but if you're also behind you should still read this book. Haley presents a thoroughly Catholic and intelligent treatise on living with satisfaction in the modern world, and how to fight society's constantly materialistic attitude. It's not only an inspirational book though - she has tons of real life examples of how her family lives in a meaningful way, both in being satisfied with "less" and in caring for the earth at the same time. I highly recommend it!

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

This was a sincerely intriguing and unique mystery novel. Set in India in the 1920s, it follows a young woman (the first female lawyer in Bombay) as she uncovers and investigates a murder. The setting and cultural discussion in this book was so fascinating that the crime rather took a back seat -- but I was not at all complaining! India's history is one I am very unfamiliar with, so some of the references made me feel like my education has completely failed me, but I still couldn't get enough. I can't wait for further installments.

A Song for Nagasaki by Paul Glynn

I cannot express to you how much this biography has impacted me. It's the story of Takashi Nagai, a Catholic convert in Japan who survived the atomic bomb (!!) and who was one of the world's first radiologists (!!). His conversion story is fascinating, and heartwarming, and man did it make me feel like a lukewarm Catholic but in the best, most motivating way. I can't recommend it enough.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Another book I'm definitely behind on reading, but this WW2 novel of a young female spy captured in France by the Nazis is heart-wrenching, fast-paced, nerve-wracking, and full of twists and turns I didn't see coming. Everyone's been talking about it for years for a reason! Highly recommend if you want something quick that isn't a beach read but will keep you entertained like one.

Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week by Pope Benedict XVI

It totally feels like a braggy thing to say "I read this for Holy Week" but I can be honest and say this is the first work by a pope that I've read so forgive me for saying it anyway. Let me say that it is totally worth the read, though. I need to pick up more of this "series" and read them in the future, but if you're looking for a good dive into the events of Holy Week, this is totally the book for it. Intellectual and I learned a lot but I could still read it without slogging through it too much.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

So the majority of my reading time this first half of the year has been on this HUGE series, and this one was the first installment (over 1000 pages each book). I went in thinking this series was a trilogy but it turns out there's just only 3 published out of a predicted TEN BOOKS (grimace emoji) so I have a lot of reading forthcoming. (It does make the ending of book 3 make more sense, though.) This is an incredibly long and complicated and well-thought-out "high fantasy" series and if that's your thing, this hits all the buttons.

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Apparently 2019 became the year of accidentally getting into more fantasy series than planned...although tbh, that's most years of my reading post-college. After you're submerged in 18th century poetry analysis and critical theory for 4 years, something fun and engaging just becomes so much MORE fun and engaging. Anywho, all that to say I picked up this first one when it went on sale on Kindle in March and left it there for those sleepy newborn nights when I needed to keep myself awake and be able to read with one hand. (For someone who codes ebooks for a living, this is the FIRST ebook I've ever purchased with my own money. Weird, right?) It's really hard to describe the plot of this book but it's sort of a mashup between apocalyptic/fantasy with a really great look at motherhood and leadership all mixed into a 3 book series, and it's *really* good. I'm definitely checking out the rest of Jemisin's novels after reading it.

Zoo Nebraska by Carson Vaughan

Okay I'll admit that this one wasn't my favorite, but it gets honorable mention on this list because 1) it's about Nebraska, and I'm nothing if not proud of my home state and 2) I had literally NO idea there used to be a zoo in northeast Nebraska, and the mere fact of that is weird enough for you to maybe pick this up. I think it's also free to read if you have Kindle Unlimited (whatever that is?) and it went free for a couple weeks for Prime users so that's why I got it and read it. The writing isn't amazing but it was a fascinating story of a tiny zoo in the middle of nowhere.

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Others I read but either didn't love or wouldn't necessarily recommend to people because they were just meh: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (weirdly written, okay ending); Nine Perfect Strangers (not Moriarty's best work by a long shot, it felt too rushed); Shadow and Bone (this was a HUGE letdown because I'd read so many stunning reviews of it -- amateur and boilerplate YA fantasy, which apparently I'm beyond); A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (I get recommended LeGuin all the time and this one just didn't grab me, what else should I try of hers?).

What have you read in 2019 that you couldn't put down? Right now I'm finishing Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny, and next up is my first Flannery O'Connor -- don't take away my Catholic lit credentials by seeing me admit I've never read anything of hers! haha.
HG