What’s on Your Nightstand?

So there’s been all this reading I’d been doing the past couple of months that I couldn’t include on my Nightstand because I was trying to keep mum about becoming a Mom – but now that we’ve announced Baby Garcia’s expected arrival, I can deluge you with the last several months of reading.

Back in May and June, I read:

• Best Baby Gear by Sandy Jones and Marcie Jones
  Parents: Baby Gear from Birth to Age 3 by Parent’s Magazine with Debra Wise
  Consumer Reports Best Baby Products by Sandra Gordon
  Interesting. Terrifying. I’m a minimalist when it comes to baby stuff and feel like some of the safety stuff is going too far (with some definite exceptions.) Basically, I spent my way groaning through these supposed essentials – and suddenly getting why so many people think they can’t afford to have children.
• The Smart Mother’s Guide to a Better Pregnancy by Linda Burke-Galloway
  Basically, a guide to second-guessing your doctor. I struggle to come up with what I think about this. I want women to be educated regarding their own care. I want them to know when to ask their doctors to look deeper. There’s nothing wrong (in my mind) with women having a basic understanding of what could go wrong during pregnancy and what to do about it – but Burke-Galloway’s advice almost always leans on the side of more intervention rather than less – which is the exact opposite of my personal stance on childbirth management. I can easily see a woman reading this book and then going out and insisting that her doctor give her every test in the book and every intervention available, never mind the risks of intervening unnecessarily.
• Homebirth by Shiela Kitzinger
  I can’t help but love Kitzinger, with her strong pro-home-birth stance and her straightforward descriptions of how to set up for a homebirth. Kitzinger is decidedly pro-home-birth, with a similarly decisive dislike of overmedicalized hospital birth. If you’re thinking of a homebirth or a birthing center birth, this is a great resource to help you interview a midwife and set up a strong plan. If you’re pretty sure you’re not interested in a homebirth, you’re likely to get frustrated with the author’s clear bias.
• Choosing a Nurse-Midwife by Katherine M. Poole and Elizabeth A Parr
  A nice overview of midwifery in America and things to take into consideration when choosing a midwife. While this is definitely written about choosing a nurse-midwife, the many questions included within are worth asking your certified professional midwife if you’re choosing one of those instead (Wichita’s hospitals are very anti-midwife and there is only one practicing nurse-midwife in town. She, unfortunately, only delivers in the hospital – leaving me with CPMs as my only option for a home birth.) I appreciated reading through this book prior to interviewing my midwife.
• The Essential Homebirth Guide by Jane E. Drichta and Jodilyn Owen
  A very nice guide for women who want to give birth at home. This covers choosing a provider, the distinctives of the midwives model of care, other people you might want to have involved on your home-birth support team, how certain circumstances would be dealt with by homebirth providers, and so on. In general, I think this is a very good book. I do have some quibbles with the authors’ tendencies to represent herbal, nutritional, and other “nontraditional” (in a medical sense, although generally “traditional” in the midwifery world) treatments as truth without showing any substantial evidence to support these (one particular bit about eating a raw cucumber a day to keep preeclampsia away struck me as laughable.)
• The Doula Advantage by Rachel Gurevich
  A description of the roles of a doula, how to hire a doula, and lots of stories about doula care. It sounds like doula care is a very good thing for a lot of women – but reading this book only cemented my opinion that doula care is not for me.
• Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta by Ina May Gaskin
  You can’t talk about midwifery in America without talking about Ina May Gaskin. In general, I found myself nodding and mm-hmming through much of this book as Gaskin complains about the high intervention rate and lack of accountability in modern obstetrics and calls for a better model of care (midwife-based care with obstetricians who are committed to doing what’s best for mom and baby) that protects women and babies. That said, some things about this book really creeped me out – specifically, the birth stories of women who delivered at “The Farm”. While these women raved about the care they received and the community they had, the fact that almost every story included some midwife or other women just showing up during labor uninvited did not sit well with me. While these women were able to labor without unnecessary interventions, they weren’t laboring on their own terms. In fact, one woman talked of laboring in the bathroom with the door closed because she really didn’t like having other people around – why didn’t her midwife kick everyone else out so the woman could labor however she wanted without being confined to the bathroom?
• Liz Lange’s Maternity Style by Liz Lange
  A standard fashion sort of book, complete with photos of disembodied clothes “mixed and matched” for every event, quotes from style celebrities, and tips that make you wonder what sort of world the author thinks you live in. I enjoy this sort of thing and liked browsing through it, but gained next to nothing in practical advice.

This month, I read:

• Beginning Life by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald
  I mentioned last month that this was an “opposing viewpoints” sort of book – but found that wasn’t the case. Instead, this is an attempt by a single author to fair-mindedly address the various ethical issues surrounding conception. In general, Boleyn-Fitzgerald does a good job at being fair – but she definitely seems to lean towards the interventionist side on stem cells, abortion, etc. – and underrepresents the non-medical arguments against those practices.
• Husband Coached Childbirth by Robert A Bradley
  Daniel and I are attending a Bradley childbirth class (our first meeting was last night), but that doesn’t mean that I really know that much about the method. In fact, my only familiarity with the method is that it’s husband coached, that it has a good success rate for unmedicated births, and that a family friend told my mom that she and my dad “basically did Bradley” even though they never did it officially. Since my mom is pretty much my childbirth hero (7 natural births, 5 of them at home, 3 of which were unassisted by a midwife), I figured it must be a decent method. But I might as well read up on it before our first class. Thus, reading this book. We’ll see how things go – on first reading, I feel a little rebellious against the “one right way” to do things :-)
• Buff Moms-to-Be by Sue Fleming
  A good basic guide to fitness during pregnancy. As far as I am familiar with current exercise guidelines during pregnancy (and I have done a fair bit of looking in both the medical literature and in the recommendations of various professional organizations), this book gives tips in line with the latest research and recommendations for exercise in pregnancy.
• Bumpology: the myth-busting pregnancy book for curious parents by Linda Geddes
  An amusing and informative book set up in Q&A style. I was pleased with the rigorous way in which Geddes looked at the evidence and evaluated it objectively – being careful to describe how the strengths and weaknesses of a study should inform the conclusions we draw based upon that study.
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
  Read for the Chronicles of Narnia Reading challenge because I thought I hadn’t yet covered it – but then I realized I had, so I moved on to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which I have not yet completed.)
• The Stone Age by Patricia D. Nerzley
  A children’s guide to the various Stone Age hominids. The aspect I found most interesting about this book was how the author took great pains to discuss how difficult it is to interpret artifacts from early hominids – before making bold statements about what these hominids looked like and how they lived. As could be expected, this book has a decidedly evolutionary slant and often confuses hominids with humans (something I have a quibble with – while all humans are hominids, I do not believe that all hominids are humans or “precursors” to humans.)
• Pregnancy Chic by Cherie Serota and Jody Kozlow Gardner
  This is a book of the nineties, when pregnancy fashion was just emerging (that is, pregnancy fashion that looked like normal people clothes). The authors sold/sell? a “pregnancy survival kit” which contains four fashion essentials – and this book is basically an extended advertisement for their kit (and your husband’s closet.) It had a few tips that I found interesting, but most of it was terribly dated – leggings are considered an essential, your husband’s denim shirt a must, and a sweater tied around the waist always in fashion. Not so much a decade into the new millenium.
• The Maidenstone Lighthouse by Sally Smith O’Rourke
  Ended up being much to raunchy to recommend – and nowhere near as compelling a story as The Man Who Loved Jane Austen. However, this marks me done with this author.
• Christmas in Denmark and Christmas in Spain by World Book
  More “research” into Christmas around the world.
• When We Were on Fire by Addie Zierman
  A memoir of belonging to the 90s Christian subculture, of losing faith, and of finding it again. Very difficult to process the thoughts that went through my mind while reading this. Read my jumbled thoughts here.

Books in Progress:

• Grace-Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel
  I suspect that this book was written in response to popular authoritarian parenting manuals marketed to Christians (the Ezzos’ Growing Kids God’s Way and the Pearls’ To Train up a Child) – and I definitely tend to agree more with its grace-filled approach than with either of those rigid parenting techniques. A lot of the topics addressed in this book are very future-tense for me (since our baby is yet unborn, and this book is more geared toward parents of preschoolers and up), but I have found it to be enjoyable and thought provoking. I do have one beef with this book – and that is that the author doesn’t always extend the same grace to parents that he asks them to extend to their kids. A parent could finish this book and feel even more pressure to perform, not receiving the grace that God gives to imperfect and fallible human parents.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
  Reading along with the Chronicles of Narnia Reading challenge, also at Reading to Know. So far, I’ve written one post of reflections on how this title is different from the other Narnia tales.
• What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
  Because every pregnant woman pretty much has to read this one, right? Kinda blah, in my opinion (but maybe that’s because I already have a lot of knowledge when it comes to pregnancy – it’s kinda my job). The author is not an advocate for natural childbirth and kinda reminds me of the hand-out-condoms-in-school crowd – “Yeah, you could be have a natural childbirth (be abstinent), but really, you might as well just get an epidural (use a condom).”
• Origins by Annie Murphy Paul
  A layman’s look (and NOT a prescriptive formula) at the science of fetal origins.
• The 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
  Reading with the Reading to Know Classics bookclub and enjoying it greatly so far.
• The Babycenter Essential Guide to Your Baby’s First Year

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

I’ve been returning books to the library once I’m done reading them (a good habit, you know) – and therefore hadn’t been noticing that I’ve actually done a decent bit of reading this month. However, I’ve got a whole slew of books due (without renewals) the first of July, so I’m still cutting it close with plenty!

This month, I read:

• Bottled Up by Suzanne Barston
  A treatise from the “fearless formula feeder” arguing that breastmilk isn’t the best option for every mother and child. A valuable look into the psyche of those who “failed” at breastfeeding – but her arguments against breastfeeding are less than stellar. Read my full review here.
• The Heart’s Frontier by Lori Copeland and Virginia Smith
  Amish romance meets Wild West, set right here in Kansas. This was a rather fun version of the standard Amish romance, since the primary differences between the plain way of life and the cowpoke’s life wasn’t technology but…well…other things. I enjoyed this book far more than I’ve enjoyed most of the Copeland novels I’ve read recently, but I’m not sure exactly why – it was still nominally Christian fiction, a relatively sappy romance with little character development. But, I enjoyed it. So there you have it.
• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rader Haggard
  Adventure is not my usual genre, but I’ve read along with all of the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub so far this year and I don’t intend to stop now. I’m awfully glad I did read this one, which was a gripping tale of a 1800s elephant hunter who is hired by two English gentlemen to lead them to the (generally presumed to be mythical) mines of King Solomon, in search of one gentleman’s brother, who set off on an expedition to the same locale and was never heard from again. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel!
• Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
  When a rich uncle tries to convince his grand-nephews to marry his ward, things don’t exactly turn out how anyone expect. This is an absolutely delightful romp through Regency England – and officially my favorite book by Heyer. Check out my full review here.
• The Upside-Down Christmas Tree by Delilah Scott and Emma Troy
  A collection of various families’ strange holiday traditions – many of which entail avoiding family functions, thumbing their noses at “Christmas culture”, or celebrating personal obsessions. It kept me moderately entertained during our wait at urgent care when Daniel had pneumonia, but, as a Christmas lover myself, I wasn’t too impressed.
• The Man Who Loved Jane Austen by Sally Smith O’Rourke
  Eliza (quite unwisely per her investment banker boyfriend) buys an antique writing desk on a whim. She isn’t expecting anything spectacular of it, but finds herself on a grand adventure after she finds a couple letters hidden within – an open one from an F. Darcy, addressing himself to Jane Austen, and a sealed one addressed in Austen’s own handwriting to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Thus begins a lighthearted and fantastical tale of a modern day man (whose family was not Austen fans, thanks to her strange co-option of their family name and the name of their American state) who fell in love with Austen. This was a fluffy read, but enjoyable – it reminded me a little of “You’ve Got Mail” meets “Kate and Leopold”. There is a bit of potentially objectionable content – premarital sex (in the modern day) is considered the norm and there’s also some language – but it wasn’t racy like I feared it might be. I’m glad this caught my eye during a recent library trip because I enjoyed it rather a lot.
• Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
  A very nice basic introduction to economics – without the math. It’s supposed to make economics interesting for people whose eyes glaze over when they start hearing economic talk, but since I’m not one of those, I don’t know how well it succeeds at it’s goal. Nevertheless, it is an engaging overview of economic principles. Read my full review here.
• Christmas in Colonial and Early America and Christmas in Finland by World Book
  I love Christmas and I love reading about how other cultures celebrate it. These two books from World Book’s extensive Christmas around the world collection were fascinating and managed to transport me back to my childhood, where I took copious notes on worldwide Christmas traditions and tried my hardest to incorporate them into my family’s Christmases.

In Progress:

• Beginning Life by Miriam Boleyn-Firtzgerald
  One of those books that tries to shed light on controversial subjects by excerpting articles from a variety of sources. This one deals with assisted reproductive technologies as well as abortion and emergency contraception.
• Behold Williamsburg by Samuel Chamberlain
  A photograph-filled tour of Colonial Williamsburg as of the forties, when restoration was still in full swing. Reading in preparation for our Garcia family trip to Williamsburg in October.
• Gilgamesh: a new English version translated by Stephen Mitchell
  It’s been a long time since I last read the Epic of Gilgamesh – and I’ve forgotten how racy it is. This is, however, shaping up to be an excellent and readable translation (I might have to remember Mitchell’s name and put this translation up with Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf as favorite renderings of ancient mythologies.)
• The Maidenstone Lighthouse by Sally Smith O’Rourke
  I checked this out when I realized that I could close out O’Rourke with just two books if I jumped on it now. This one is not anywhere as interesting as The Man who Loved Jane Austen. It’s told in first person from the heroine’s point of view and if she mentions making love one more time… She hasn’t been explicit, which is the only reason I’ve kept reading, but I’m considering calling it quits on this one anyway. I only have so much reading time, and this does not seem worthy of my time.
• When We Were On Fire by Addie Zierman
  A memoir of belonging to the nineties teen evangelical culture, of falling away from the faith, and of returning. My sister-in-law asked me if I’d read it because she wanted someone to discuss it with. And there is definitely discussion to be had here. While I have not had a falling away or returning, I identified strongly with Addie’s experiences as a teen in the nineties. This has been a tough book to read, inducing bits of nostalgia combined with equal parts distaste for the “on fire”, revival-happy, experience-seeking evangelicalism of my youth.

On the docket for next month:

• New Mercies by Sandra Dallas
  For my in-real-life book club.
• The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
  Because my sister-in-law (a different one than above) recommended it.
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
  For Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge.
• 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
  For the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Generally, I would take advantage of a long weekend to get my Nightstand post up and ready to go with all the bells and whistles – but my brother and sister-in-law came down to visit Daniel and I for this particular weekend and I was much too busy spending time with them to do internet stuff.

So you’re getting the little list I put together before I returned the last batch of books to the library – without expanded comments or books read since then. But something is better than nothing, right?

This month, I read:

• The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
  An intriguing one as Heyer goes since the hero and heroine are married from the very beginning of the book. I’m enjoying working my way through my library’s collection of Heyer.
• Ruth by Lori Copeland
  I only finished this because it was the only fiction I had out of the library. The heroine was an impulsive fool, the hero a “good man” who wasn’t a believer until the day before he married the heroine, the plot absolutely implausible. I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I’m considering just being done with Copeland – I’ve been either “meh” or “blech” on the last half dozen or so of hers that I’ve read.
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
  This is the second book in the “Ender’s Game” series, and we own a copy of the first two in one volume. I loved Ender’s Game when I read it last year, and I started reading Speaker for the Dead immediately afterward – only to give up in desperation. The story was too different, the style too different. There were new characters that I didn’t know and love yet. I couldn’t do it. But when I ran out of fiction from the library this past month, I picked it up again – and absolutely loved it, devoured it. Whereas Ender’s Game is very action-packed, Speaker for the Dead is all about relationships and the inner workings of peoples’ brains. Card is a gifted writer, that’s for sure.
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
  A re-read for our church-lady book club. I led the discusion and found it provoking all sorts of new thoughts in my own mind. Love it, love it, love it.
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
  I read along with the Reading to Know Classic Book Club – and enjoyed this little Gothic tale immensely.
• Yesterday’s Schools by Ruth Freeman
  An interesting look at the evolution of schoolhouses in America from the colonial days to the mid 20th century. The emphasis is on New York schools, as the author was apparently an educator there, but I could see resemblances to schoolhouses I’ve read described or seen in person elsewhere. It took me a while, with rather a lot of confusion to figure out that every eight pages or so was misplaced such that I had to skip a page to have a continuous paragraph and then go back to the previous page. Very odd. But I’m glad I read this itsy-bitsy little volume from my local library.
• Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi
  I’m working on book notes for this one, but don’t know when they’ll be done. This was a great look at how parenting has turned into a can’t-win game – and children are losing out because of it. The subtitle is “why ignoring the experts may be best for your child” – and I agree completely, except when I’m the expert :-)
• Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook
  I might have only made one recipe from this book – the second one, for Buttermilk Bread. It was amazing. I made it a dozen times. I really need to get this book out again and make some more recipes to see if the rest are as good as that one.
• The Gift of Health by Karin B. Michels and Kristine Napier
  Just another prenatal programming book. More interesting than the other two, more practical as well – but a bit too “diet-book” like for me, with two weeks worth of menus and recipes for each trimester. You have to go to the end of each chapter to see the food group recommendations that give you the option of creating your own menus within the nutritional guidelines the authors recommend.

It’s been a beautiful and busy month here in Wichita, what with setting out seedlings and preparing a Seder and getting close to the end of Daniel’s semester (one more month until he’s got his MBA!)

And I’m not even going to estimate how my reading has been compared to previous months. It is what it is.

This month, I read:

• Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis with Beth Clark
  I read this with my church’s book club and was… disappointed. The writing is poor, the story told without soul. And the worst part of all was that Katie is a missionary, but I saw nothing in the book to suggest that Katie understands or shares the gospel (not that she doesn’t use the word the gospel…) I might review this in more depth later. Or I might not.
• To Do List by Sasha Cagen
  A very fun look into the lives of dozens of people, all through the to-do lists they submitted to the author. Majorly interesting, mostly fun, occasionally crude. Let the reader be warned.
• Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer
  Yes, I like Heyer. This one had very little romance but plenty of little laughs. Perfect.
• Catalog Living at its most absurd by Molly Erdman
  The author pokes fun at stock photographs by writing blurbs by a fictional couple to go along with the photos. A great light read with lots of laughs-out-loud.
• The Prenatal Prescription by P.W. Nathanielsz
  A dry but not awful look at the science behind prenatal programming. A terrible prenatal program (not because the science wasn’t sound but because the author didn’t communicate clear ways to implement the science into real life). I guess you’ll just have to wait until I write my own prenatal nutrition program :-P
• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
  I finally finished this one and reviewed it. It was beautiful and frustrating. I can’t summarize it better than in my review, so you might have to check that out.
• My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
  I listened to this one (my library only had an audio version) in conjunction with this month’s Reading to Know Classics Bookclub. As usual, Wodehouse is a delight. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was a collection of short stories (not all including Jeeves and Wooster). It was nice not to have to keep track of a long story line since I was listening in the car and rarely drive for more than ten minutes at a time.

In Progress:

• I got pregnant, you can too! by Katie Boland
  Because I’m reading the library and figured I might as well do more of the preconception books (since I’ve already read several). I will *not* be recommending this one. The author’s life is a soap opera and it’s only going to get worse. I’m considering just calling it done, even though I haven’t yet gotten to where she meets her spirit guide. Yep. Blech!
• Paranoid Parenting: Why ignoring the experts may be best for your child by Frank Furedi
  Just started this last night, but I’m already liking it. At the same time, I’m wondering if I won’t have some issues if he starts talking nutrition. I’m fine with ignoring the experts until you start ignoring me.
• The Gift of Health : the complete pregnancy diet for your baby’s wellness by Karin Michels
  I think this is the last book my library has on prenatal programming, for which I am glad. All the books I’ve read on it so far were published around the same time period (2003) and review the same information. Some are better written than others, but it’s still all review. This one might be the best so far, but I’m not sure I’d recommend even it.
• The Atonement: It’s meaning and significance by Leon Morris
  Lisa wrote about this book on her last month’s nightstand and I picked it up right away. I’m moving slowly, but this is a great look at what God accomplished in salvation.
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
  I’ve already read and reviewed this book – but I’m rereading because I’ll be leading a discussion on it for my church’s book club next month! Yay! I love this book and am just speeding through it.
• Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
  My little brother read this in his high school economics class and really liked it. And I’m reading the economics section at my library, so I picked it up. A couple chapters in, it’s a very readable and enjoyable intro to economic principles (without the math).

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Thanks to getting my final two wisdom teeth out last Thursday, I’ve had opportunity to get caught up on some reading this past weekend. I have not had much time to blog about said reading. So this is all I’ve got for the month!

This month, I read:

• Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography by William Anderson
  A very nice biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, written at a reading level similar to that of the Little House books. See my full review here.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder Country by William Anderson
  A nice little book with photographs of the actual places where Laura lived and some of the actual items described in the Little House books.
• June by Lori Copeland
  Completing a series I began long ago–this one struck me as not very well written at all. Still, I like Christian romances sometimes-especially when I’m recovering from oral surgery :-)
• Discover your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen
  A nice look at the economics of everyday life. This is less sensational and more informative than the well-known Freakanomics, which belongs to the same genre. If you’re interested in economics and human behavior, this is an excellent book on the topic.
• The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
  I read this for the first time with this month’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club–and enjoyed it a good deal. It required serious suspension of disbelief and was certainly an off-the-cuff fantasy as opposed to a well-reasoned one, but it was fun and I liked it. I’ll review it in more depth later.
• The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
  I expected this one to be a Regency, but it turned out to be set a century or so before. Nevertheless, it was a highly enjoyable romp that involved an affair of honor, a highwayman, a kidnapping, a love triangle, and a long-lost heir. It took me a while to get interested in the characters, since I met at least a half dozen before I could figure out which direction the tale was taking–but I’m glad I stuck it out.
• Program Your Baby’s Health by Barbara Luke and Tamara Eberlein
  Not a terrible prenatal program, but not a great one either. It was written to 2004 and the research on healthy pregnancy has advanced quite a bit since that time. The biggest flaw with this particular program was the advice to restrict physical activity during pregnancy–advice that showed up in nearly every chapter. This one was the most readable of the several books I’ve looked at on prenatal programming, but I can’t really recommend it due to its out-of-date recommendations.
• Empires of Mesopotamia by Don Nardo
  A very nice little book detailing the various empires of Mesopotamia from Sumer to the Second Babylonian Empire. I was impressed by how well-written and laid out this was, but a little surprised that it had been filed in the adult non-fiction section of the library. I’d say it’s perfect for a late-elementary or early-Middle School introduction to Mesopotamia.
• Ancient Persia by Don Nardo
  A look at the empire immediately following the Second Babylonian Empire, by the same author as Empires of Mesopotamia. Certain parts echoed the previous book heavily–although this was written at an even lower reading level (early-elementary, I’d say) and filed in the children’s section at my local library
• The 1920s edited by John F. Wukovits
  I grabbed this title to give me a bit more context on Calvin Coolidge (my husband’s favorite president) and found this to be a perfect introduction to the ’20s. The book is a series of chapter-long excerpts from other biographies and histories of the era–which meant it was easy to read in segments, and gave tastes of a number of authors’ styles (making me kinda want to read some of the books from which the excerpts were drawn.)
• Williamsburg: a picture book to remember her by
  A book of photographs of Colonial Williamsburg. I wanted to get a taste of what to expect when we travel to Williamsburg this fall with Daniel’s family–and I’m getting really excited to see all those historic buildings and the craftsmen and craftswomen within!

Still in Progress:

• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
• To-Do List by Sasha Cagen

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

What with all my project doing, I haven’t been reading quite as much this month. Even more, I haven’t been finishing books this month. I still have at least a half dozen in progress.

This month, I read:

• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
  The story of a 5th Grade boy with craniofacial abnormalities due to a rare genetic disorder. August goes to school for the first time and learns that middle schoolers can be cruel and kind and awful and awesome. Or something like that. I wasn’t a huge fan. Read my full review here
• Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
  First, she witnesses a plane going down. A fellow air transport auxillary pilot made a heroic attempt and failed. Then she makes her own heroic attempt, and she goes down–escorted into Germany where she ends up in Ravensbruck, a witness to horrific events. This is undoubtedly the best book I’ve read so far this year–and likely one of the best I’ll read all year. If I haven’t already convinced you to read it, check out my full review.
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  I re-read this for Barbara’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge and in conjunction with the Reading to Know Classic Book Club–and found my experience reading it very different this time. I’ve become much more sensitive to the interactions between Ma and Pa–and to the reality that the family was illegally squatting on land that wasn’t their own in hopes that it would soon be available for settlement.
• Four children’s picture books, author BO

Left over from last month’s list:

• Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography by William Anderson
  I’m still hoping to get this one done and reviewed this month for Barbara’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge.
• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
• The 1920s edited by John F. Wukovits
• Discover your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen
• No More Sleepless Nights by Peter Hauri and Shirley Linde
• To-Do List by Sasha Cagen
• Sumer and the Sumerians by Harriet Crawford

New Additions to Works in Progress:

• Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook
  I’ve never had good success with bread prepared and baked in the bread machine (I don’t have a problem with the dough cycle), but I wanted to try again. The buttermilk white bread turned out perfectly–so I’m eager to try a few more recipes (maybe I can get a good whole wheat loaf?)
• The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch
  I started my peppers and tomatoes last night, and am eager to have a successful garden this year (crossing fingers.)
• The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
  I just barely started this, thinking I wanted some more fiction–but the projects and nonfiction have kept me busy, so I’ve stalled.
• Program Your Baby’s Health by Barbara Luke and Tamara Eberlein
  Because I’m interested in seeing how the prenatal program prepared by Luke and Eberlein (of Harvard School of Public Health) stacks up to my own.

I’ve also picked up The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, which I’ll be reading along with the Reading to Know Classic Book Club.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

I started the month strong on the blogging front, but quickly fell off that particular bandwagon. I am proud to announce, however, that I have NOT fallen off the reading wagon. I have enjoyed finishing several books over the past month.

This month, I read:

• No Impact Man by Colin Beaver
  As a guilt-free (at least as far as environmental concerns go) conservative who nevertheless loves to avoid waste, I enjoyed “the adventures of guilty liberal who attempts to save the planet.” Beaver’s adventures in bread baking, cloth diapering, no packaging-shopping, light-turning-off, bicycle riding, and the like interested me to no end. Less interesting were “the discoveries he makes about himself and out way of life in the process.” See, Beaver is a Buddhist of sorts, who meditates regularly and quotes his feel-good Zen master over and over and over again ad nauseum. I’m going to guess that (of my regular readers) only the environmentally interested are going to be able to push through Beaver’s worldview to enjoy this book-so I won’t be at all surprised if the rest of you skip it.
• Hope by Lori Copeland
  Standard Christian fiction. Nothing extraordinary, but still entertaining.
• Calvin Coolidge by David Greenberg
  Daniel rather likes Coolidge, and I knew next to nothing about him, so I decided to read a biography. The biography the library offered is a part of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s American Presidents series–and is written by someone who is clearly NOT a fan of Coolidge but who was trying to be fair. As such, this book was a rather dry and mostly measured account of Coolidge’s presidency. I’m glad I read it (since it gives me some background on the former president), but I wouldn’t really recommend it.
• Good-bye Mr. Chips by James Hilton
  I watched a film by the same name several years back, but don’t remember anything of the plot. Reading this book, I realize there isn’t any plot, per se. What this book is is a charming character sketch of an old-fashioned British schoolmaster who ended up making his mark on generations of British boys–but whose own influence was mostly due to the now forgotten Mrs. Chips, who turned him from a solid but unmemorable master to a thoughtful and quirky “institution”. I greatly enjoyed this little easy-to-read novel.
• More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg
  I picked this book up because I like economics…and because the title really shocked me. Turned out, the “title chapter” (sort of a like a title song is only one of a diverse collection of songs, the title chapter is just one of the many explorations in this book) was just as shocking as the title was. Long story short, Landsburg argues that moderate levels of promiscuity would slow the spread of STDs like AIDS because it would increase the pool of uninfected individuals, making it easier to have sex without putting yourself at risk. While I have my doubts about his economic argument, I have far more doubts about the prudence of his advice based on both morals (when God says something’s sin, it’s best not to do it) and because I don’t think he takes into account the potential other effects of individuals trading abstinence or monogamy for promiscuity. But…the important thing was that it made me think. The whole book did. Often, my conclusions differed from Landsburg’s based on externalities I felt he didn’t appropriately address or based on assumptions he made (that I felt were incorrect) about what is good or what government is for, etc. But it was a very interesting book to think my way through. I am glad I read it.
• Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent: 10,000 to 539 BC by John Malam
  A very nice children’s history of Mesopotamia. I noticed one Biblical error (stating that Nebuchadrezzar II’s ziggurat in Babylon was the Biblical “tower of Babel”, despite it being contemporary with the fall of Jerusalem rather than with the pre-patriarchal period), but in general, this is a well-written history of the early residents of the world’s oldest inhabited region.
• The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
  I read this for the L.M. Montgomery Challenge and Reading to Know Classic Book Club–and I’ll be writing up my full review sometime soon. Suffice to say that I enjoyed this book. I identified strongly and not at all with the main character–an almost-old-maid (that was me) who lived her entire life trying to make other people happy (that was not me) who stops caring what anyone thinks (that would be me) and becomes a… but I can’t tell you what she becomes, because that would be giving it away, right?

Books in Progress:

• Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
  Because I am determined to sneak at least one book in for the Armchair Cybils. And because Amy’s review convinced me that it was well worth the read.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography by William Anderson
  Because I’m participating in Barbara’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge and wanted a biography of Laura that I hadn’t read yet.
• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
  Because everyone was talking about it when it first came out, and now it’s no longer in the “new books” section at the library, so I get to keep it for longer than two weeks.
• The 1920s edited by John F. Wukovits
  Because I wanted more context for Calvin Coolidge.
• Discover your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen
  Because I like economics and might as well read Dewey Decimal 330.(I do have a decent start.)
• No More Sleepless Nights by Peter Hauri and Shirley Linde
  Because I’m not sleeping that well these days.
• To-Do List by Sasha Cagen
  Because I love lists, and I like the idea of snooping through other peoples’ lists.
• Sumer and the Sumerians by Harriet Crawford
  Because I’m researching for the children’s narrative history of the world I’m going to write someday (and have my sister-in-law illustrate) so that I can teach my children someday using it. (Duh!)

And, of course, there are plenty more in the wings for when I feel the need for some new material!

The Rest I have from the Library

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Thanks to yet another road trip (this time to Lincoln and back) where Daniel did a fair bit of the driving, I have some books to report in on this month. Were it not for that?

I’ve been struggling to keep my head afloat–except for the three days in which I whipped together a birthday party for Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

8 hours, 20 people, 6 meals, 3 movies.

If I lie in bed for the entire rest of the month, I can still consider it to have been a HIGHLY productive month.

This month, I read:

• Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton
  What I liked best about this particular biography is that it is very obviously written by a lover of Reformation theology. Bainton writes so passionately of the miracle of the gospel, of being saved by grace through faith that one can’t help but utter the occasional “Amen” after a particularly swelling paragraph. Whether in a paraphrase of one of Luther’s sermons or simply a description of Luther’s teachings, Bainton wrote so eloquently of the Reformation truths that have changed the world that my heart was moved to worship the One who is the Truth revealed. Also, Luther is hilarious. He’s so…real, so…blunt, so…human. I highly recommend this book.
• Kneeknock Rise by Natalie Babbit
  A very sweet, quick read. I love that it doesn’t have chapters but instead has very short sections. That made it ideal for reading for bed, since Daniel and I couldn’t play the endless “Just one more chapter” game (in which he starts a new chapter while I’m finishing mine, and then I start a new one while he’s finishing his, ad nauseum.) Egan arrives at Kneeknock Rise to visit his family for the fair–and to hear the moaning of the Megrimum, the monster who dwells at the top of Kneeknock Rise. When his rather superior little cousin dares him to climb the verboten hill, he takes off like a flash–and discovers something he never expected. Read Carrie’s review for a more complete idea of what the book’s about.
• Love Blooms in Winter by Lori Copeland
  The plot was pretty average as Christian pioneer fiction goes; but this book had the weirdest “conversion” story I’ve ever read. The hero tells of his conversion to…theism. Yes, he realized at some point that there had to be a God. Never once did he mention Christ. In fact, I’m not sure if Christ ever really came into the whole book. Which is rather disappointing.
• Nothing Daunted by Dorothy Wickenden
  Read for book club last month. About halfway through, it tells the story of two college-educated society women of the 1910s who traveled to the “uncivilized” Western slope of the Rockies to teach school. The first half was hard to get into for me, since I wanted the society-girl-meets-wild-west story and was instead getting society-girls-grow-up-as-society-girls. If I’d been hearing that back-story AFTER I was already invested in the girls from their society-girl-meets-wild-west story, I might have liked it better. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book overall.
• 2 children’s picture books, author BRIGGS

On the docket for next month:

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  I’m leading discussion for the Reading to Know bookclub this month–and boy am I excited to talk about Dorian Gray! Since my early teens, I’ve been fascinated by the general outlines of this story as told by Ravi Zacharias in the radio show my dad listened to every Sunday morning. But despite thinking about reading it every couple of years, I hadn’t actually read it until earlier this year, when I started it to get a jump start on discussion-leading for this fall. Oh my…so…much. Why did I wait so long? This is pretty intense.

  Join us?

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

After writing last month’s Nightstand lamenting how few books I’m reading these days, I promptly finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes the next day. Hooray! My spirits were lifted and I am optimistic again.

That Daniel drove the entire way to Wisconsin and back gave me plenty of time to do additional reading, so this month is looking pretty good.

This month, I read:

• The Fertility Diet by Jorge Chavarro and Walter C. Willett with Patrick J. Skerrett
  No, I am not trying to get pregnant. But seriously, when a dietitian sees a title like this from McGraw-Hill and Harvard Medical Press she just has to take a look. It turned out to be an intriguing look at what the Nurse’s Health Study reveals about diet and ovulatory infertility. Certain parts (the recommendation to eat full-fat dairy, in particular) may be a bit controversial, but the recommendations are generally science-based (although cohort studies are necessarily difficult at establishing causation) and probably useful for anyone struggling with ovulatory infertility. Because many of the recommendations work through managing insulin and adrogen production, this general diet may also be useful for women struggling with the effects of PCOS. I’d love to see some prospective studies using this diet for the treatment of infertility.
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  This was our second book club read. I put the title in the hat after reading Heather’s review and was a little surprised that we ended up drawing it. This book, about a mentally handicapped man who was chosen for an experiment to “make him smart”, turned out to be an excellent choice with plenty of opportunity for discussion. Read Heather’s review for the caveat emptors, but I do still generally recommend it as a good and thought provoking book.
• The Longevity Project by Friedman and Martin
  I read this based on an article I read about it online. It follows an interesting prospective study of children from the twenties who were followed throughout their lives–and looks for predictors of long life. It looks like longevity isn’t quite so straightforward as we think–and there are multiple paths to long life. For instance, neurotic men don’t generally live a long time, but when wives die before their husbands, neurotic men are more likely to live longer than non-neurotic men. So you can’t necessarily say “neurotic is good” or “neurotic is bad”. The information was interesting, but the presentation was pretty dry. I don’t know that I’d recommend it for the casual reader.
• Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
  A look at what the science says about child-rearing (which isn’t always intuitive). I found this fascinating enough that I’m writing up notes on it for future reference (and, yes, you’ll probably be subjected to those notes in the form of blog posts–I apologize in advance.) Practically everyone read this before me and I know I saw it mentioned on half a dozen hundred blogs–but I can’t seem to find where I bookmarked any of them. So, if you reviewed this book you probably contributed to my reading of it. Please consider yourself thanked.
• The Thyroid Sourcebook for Women by Sara Rosenthal
  It was a decent coverage of thyroid disease, but not my favorite resource. Meh.
• The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet by Barbara Rolls
  I read this while I was an undergraduate (before it was “The Ultimate”) and loved the science-based recommendations. I use Volumetrics-type concepts daily in my counseling. This time, I spent a week following the Volumetrics recipes, to see how the official “diet” works on an every day level. The good news is that the recipes are varied and relatively easy to prepare. The bad news is, like my husband said, “They’re okay, but I like your cooking better.” I think the recipes suffer a bit taste-wise from being so low-fat. Adding in some good unsaturated fats in moderation will increase the caloric density of the foods (meaning that they won’t promote weight loss as quickly)–but will probably greatly contribute to the palatability of the recipes.
• Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes
  Someday I’m going to review this in full. For now, I’ll say that it has been a source of argument between me and my husband and has almost reduced both of us to tears. Taubes seems determined to keep nutrition professionals from taking him seriously (for the matter, determined to make nutrition professionals angry at him) in the first half of the book before getting to his actual thesis in the second half. After numerous starts and not a few angry rants, I finally got to the section including Taubes’ thesis and found that it is a reasonable hypothesis to explain excess adiposity (the deposition of excess body fat vs. lean tissue). That being said, don’t read until you’ve read my full review lest you learn from Taubes that you shouldn’t believe a word I say.

Also Reading this Month:

• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
  I got it for the Reading to Know Bookclub. I read 1 chapter. I got busy with other things. Bleh! I still think I’ll plug through, but I’m bummed that I’m yet again slacking with the RTK club.
• Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton
  Continuing from previous months…this is a very interesting look at one of the leading Reformation figures.
• Kneeknock Rise by Natalie Babbit
  Just started and not far enough along to have an opinion. I generally like Babbitt, though, and Carrie recommended this highly.
• Nothing Daunted by Dorothy Wickenden
  This month’s book club pick; it tells the story of two college-educated society women of the 1910s who traveled to the “uncivilized” Western slope of the Rockies to teach school. It took a while to get into it (the author started telling backstory before I was invested in the characters, which was a bit distracting), but I’m enjoying it now–and need to finish it quickly to discuss on Thursday!

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Someday, I’m going to get used to how moving and marriage has changed my reading habits and my reading volume–but for now, I end up a little depressed every time I write up my Nightstand post when I realize just how little I’ve read.

And then I get a little depressed that I’m boring you again with my laments of how little reading I’ve done.

Sorry.

Maybe I’ll have a better blurb next month.

For now, I’m busy retiling my kitchen floor, leaving me with little time for recreational reading. So, without further ado…my Nightstand.

This month, I read:

• The Layman’s Bible Commentary: Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel by Eric C. Rust
  The commentator has little regard for Biblical authority and undermines the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy on almost every page. I do not recommend this commentary. See my full review for examples.
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
  If you didn’t read this back in 2011-2012 when all the other Nightstand-ers were raving about it, you should definitely go out and get yourself a copy and start reading now. This is a fantastic true story set primarily during World War II. Read my full review for a mostly-incoherent fan-splat.
• The 5:30 Challenge: 5 ingredients, 30 minutes, dinner on the table by Jeanne Besser
  I cooked up four or five recipes for this book and really enjoyed them. Perhaps my only complaint is that some of the ingredients were “specialty” type ingredients that I don’t normally keep on hand. Otherwise, both the concept and the execution are great.
• Clifford’s Manners by Norman Bridwell

Continuing from Last Month:

• Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther
• The Thyroid Sourcebook for Women by Sara Rosenthal

New Additions this Month:

• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton
• The Longevity Project by Friedman and Martin
• The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet by Barbara Rolls

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!