What We Read in June

June was a pretty good reading month. I read 8 books and liked many of them - I just didn't like the favorites as much as months past. This is a wordy book post, so settle in... We are at the half-way mark for the year and I've read 46 books. It seems unlikely that I'll read 100+ books as I have the last 2 years but that is totally fine. I don't set a numeric goal for reading because I don't want to read books for the sake of hitting a numeric goal.

Favorites:

My favorites for the month were mostly lighter types of reads. Mika in Real Life is about a woman who gave her daughter up for adoption when she was a teen, but now her daughter has tracked her down. Life hasn't turned out like Mika expected so she tries to reinvent herself to impress her daughter. It was a heart warming kind of read, if a bit predictable. I'd classify this as "romance plus" as there's more to the story than the romance storyline. Georgie All Along was highly recommended by NGS so I was excited to check it out as I've liked the author's other books. Georgie moves back to her hometown after her boss retires from her Hollywood role and she's a bit adrift about what to do. Then she meets the reformed former "bad boy" and brother to her high school crush. I liked that the author mentions that Georgie's mom has Rheumatoid Arthritis and suffers from flares - it's kind of nice to normalize the autoimmune disorder I have (which, in my experience, many are unfamiliar with). Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is a graphic memoir about a woman's experience working in the Oil Sands in Canada (mostly in Alberta, I think). This was recommended in the BookPage magazine that I pick up each month at the library and it gave me some insight into what it's like to work in the oil industry, especially within a work camp type of set up. I was vaguely familiar with the concept as there are work camps in my home state of North Dakota. I thought she did an excellent job of illustrating what life was like. She moved there for 2 years to make enough money to pay off her college loans so she could pursue her true passion, which is illustrating/drawing. Lastly, I read The Celebrants by Stephen Rowley. I adored his novel, The Guncle - it was one of my favorite books the year I read it. His latest novel isn't as good as The Guncle was, but I still really enjoyed it. It's about a group of college friends that loses a friend shortly before college graduation so they make a pact to have sort of "living funerals" so they can hear all the ways they've impacted each others' lives while they are still alive.

Middle of the road:

These books were more along the lines of "just ok." We Should Not Be Friends is Will Schwalbe's memoir about a friendship he develops in college with a person that couldn't be more different than him. I read this right after I read the RBG friendship memoir so I think it suffered from comparison to that gem of a book. The Half Moon is Mary Beth Keane's latest novel. Her last book, "Ask Again, Yes," was one of my favorite reads the year I read it. This book was good, but not as good as her last novel. I did appreciate the examination of the impact of infertility on a couple, though. That's another topic that has become more normalized in recent years, I think. 

Lastly, Invisible Kingdom was a book that I had high hopes for as it's about the author's journey to getting her autoimmune disorder diagnosed/treated. I have a bit more to say about this book so it deserves its own paragraph. As someone who has dealt with having RA for almost 10 years, I was excited to check this one out, but her story was so different from mine since her diagnosis was not at all clear cut, nor was her treatment path, so it didn't resonate like I thought it might. I was also a bit put off by her comments about the use of antibiotics causing/leading to her having an autoimmune disorder. I was a pretty sickly child and was on a lot of antibiotics. For example, in 6th grade I was so ill with a sinus infection that I was hospitalized as I really needed stronger IV meds to fight the infection. I don't view my antibiotic usage as optional. Nor do I think there is evidence that antibiotic use leads to autoimmune disorders. Could be it be a factor? Sure. Are antibiotics overprescribed? Probably. Also my kids have been on antibiotics quite a bit for non-stop infections - have I made them susceptible to an autoimmune disease because I followed their doctor's recommendation to prescribe antibiotics? I hope not, but we are always making the best decisions with the information that is available to us. Clearly, autoimmune diseases are a sensitive topic for me and I'd prefer to avoid of a line of thinking that even suggests the ill person might have brought their disease upon themselves. I did appreciate this quote from one of the people she interviewed, though: "With other diseases it's this kind of external thing you're fighting against. If you have cancer, you can fight your cancer. But if you have an autoimmune disease, what are you fighting against? Do you fight against your own immune system? Are 'you' your immune system? Are you the organ under attack? Who are you?" And overall, I appreciated that the author brought more attention to autoimmune disorders.

The book I didn't like:

Well for the second month in a row, my least favorite book was "Girlhood" by Melissa Febos. It was an examination of what it means to be a girl and how we are treated as a gender. It seemed like it would be great, but the execution didn't work for me as I got bogged down by her research or inclusion of things like Greek Mythology (something I have zero interest in, to be quite honest). If would have DNF'd this if we weren't reading it for book club (I try to finish every book club). Interesting, it has a 4.26 rating on goodreads and the other person I know who read it gave it 5 stars. It was not loved by most in my book club either. It read more academic than we were expecting. 

Abandoned Books:

I abandoned The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane around the 30% mark. It's historical fiction set in the late 1800s. I had heard about it on a "From the Front Porch" podcast episode last summer but did not realize it was set that far back - that's an era I don't feel especially drawn to so I'm not too surprised it wasn't a fit.

What Paul read:

Paul has been asking a lot of questions about Kindergarten so we have checked out A LOT of Kindergarten books! I think we've checked out about 20 picture books about kindergarten. We've probably reached our limit on this genre but I figure the best way to help with his concern/anxiety about this change is to read about it! Other than that, the only book read on repeat in June was "The Summer Nick Taught His Cats to Read" which was a sweet story. 

Did you read anything great in June?