What We Read in June

2019 is turning out to be a banner year of reading for me! I met my goal of reading 52 books in mid-June! I knew I'd easily hit this goal, but this is the earliest I've ever hit it. Maybe this will be the year that I read 100 books? We'll see! I read 10 books this months. The bolded titles were my favorite reads.


Light, Summer Reads

Hope and Other Punch Lines - This is a YA novel about 2 New Jersey teens whose lives were gravely impacted by the 9/11 attacks. 16 years later, the protagonists are still working through their grief and dealing with the aftermath of such a tragic attack. The subject-matter is sad but there's also a love story which makes this a lighter read.

The Hating Game - This is a fun romance novel about two coworkers who work closely together but hate each other. Except do they really hate each other? I rarely read romance novels but this one came highly recommended and did not disappoint!

Field Notes on Love - This is another YA novel. The main protagonist was supposed to go on a train trip across the US with his girlfriend before they start their freshman year of college. Except she breaks up with him weeks before the trip. The tickets are in her name so he needs to find another girl with the same name to come along with him. This was a sweet, delightful read.

Maybe in Another Life - This is the book equivalent of the movie, Sliding Doors. It looks at how different the protagonist's life would be if she made one decision differently.

Heavier Fiction Reads

List to the Marriage - The entire book takes place in the office of a marriage therapist over the course of 10 months as a couple decides whether to stay together or get divorced. You get to be a voyeur and witness the decisions and behaviors, some of which are maddening, of two flawed people. This is my book club's July read and I think the conversation about the book is going to be interesting.

Christadora - This has been on my to-read list for such a long time but I finally got around to reading it since the eBook was available at the library. It's about a group of people who live in the Christadora, a building in Manhattan's East Village. This book can be challenging to follow as the time frame jumps around from the 1980s to the 2010s and it does not move linearly. The point-of-view also changes. There were times when I struggled to keep the cast of characters and how they were related straight but in the end, it works and it's a novel that really stuck with me.

Goodbye, Paris - When I picked up this book, I thought it would fall under the light, summer read category. But since it deals with infidelity, heart ache, and rebuilding your life, it was a heavier read with moments/aspects of levity. Music and creating string instruments is another feature of the story, which I enjoyed!

Our Souls at Night - This was a quiet, beautiful novel about two windowed neighbors who love, solace and comfort in each other's company.

Non-fiction Reads

Shoe Dog - This will go down as one of my favorite reads of 2019. It's the co-founders memoir about the creation of the company/brand, Nike. I did not expect this to be such a page turner but I had the hardest time putting it down each night. It made me want to go out and buy a pair of Nikes!

What No One Tells You - This is a new release written by 2 reproductive psychologists about the emotional side of pregnancy and motherhood. I wish this book had been available when I was pregnant with Paul. I ended up skimming a lot of the book since I'd been through it already but it was still an interesting read. Pregnancy books tend to focus on the physical experience of pregnancy but the emotional side is equally important IMO as you have so many different hormones coursing through your body which cause a very strong emotional response. As a super logical fairly unemotional person, it was hard to feel that my emotions were not in my control!

Paul's Reads

I bought a bunch of Usbourne books last winter when a friend hosted a virtual Usbourne books party. I pulled them out recently as I needed some new books (it's easy to get sick of books when you read them over and over and over again)! Paul has been super into the interactive touch and feel, finger trail, and lift-the-flap books I got. He seems to especially like the book about dinosaurs. It has a bunch of pages with features that "slide" - like the eggs that hatch on the far left picture below.

We always have a huge pile of books on an end table next to our rocking chair. He loves to sort through these books and will either page through them on his own or will crawl over and lift a book up which is his way of saying "read this to me, mama!"

He still prefers that I read to him but will occasionally sit on dad's lap for a book. Phil's cousin sent him "Go, Dog, Go" after I posted on Facebook how excited he gets when he sees dogs when we are out for a walk. This book is not a board book, though, and it seems to have too many words on the pages for his attention span! But I'm sure he'll like it when he's a bit older.

His favorite new book is the "Wheels on the Bus" book that Grandma Joan got him for our road trip to the lake. I think he over-used the song button as only part of the song plays now!