4 Books I Read The Past Two Weeks + 1 Book I Decided Not to Finish

So after starting this year out with a book-reading bang — and reading a book per day for the first 7 days, I definitely slacked off the past two weeks.

I had thought I’d get in LOTS of reading on my two 18-hour plane flights, but what I didn’t realize about international travel was that at least 10 hours of the flight they’d have all the lights off in the plane and the only polite things to do during that time are to sleep, watch a movie on the screen in front of your seat, or read something on a device. To read a real book — which is what I’m so partial to — would require me to turn on my over-the-seat light and probably wake people up around me.

In addition, I didn’t realize that if I took Dramamine, I’d be so tired that I’d sleep much of the flight and be groggy a lot of the rest of it! At any rate, my visions of reading 2-3 books (or more!) per flight didn’t happen. I ended up reading one small book and starting and deciding not to finish another.

Eating dinner on the plane to South Africa while reading Growth Hacker Marketing.

Books I Read the Past Two Weeks

James and the Giant Peach — We enjoyed reading this book aloud, though I have to say that some of the language and attitudes has surprised me for a children’s book. I edited it a bit and used other parts as opportunities to have discussions on how our words can be hurtful and shameful to others.

Growth Hacker Marketing — I picked up this little book on the recommendation of a reader. While it was a short read and I would have loved more “meat” and examples, it did have some good advice and thought-provoking information.

Glimpses of Grace — While I thought there were some encouraging ideas in this book, truth be told, I struggled to really get into the book because I found the writing style kind of laborious. I don’t think the author was a bad writer, I just think that something about the style of writing didn’t draw me in. That said, I thought there were a lot of good reminders for us as women as we go about our everyday lives.

The One Thing — I found this book thought-provoking albeit a little confusing. The author encourages you to really drill down on the one thing that is going to make the most difference in your life right now and to make that your priority. The questions he encouraged you to ask really made me think and examine my priorities. However, I found it confusing then when he encouraged you to come up with your one thing in multiple areas of your life. It seemed to somewhat contradict his message of only focus on one thing and one thing only if you were supposed to have multiple “one things” in multiple areas of your life. I may be the only person who found this confusing, though, as most all the other reviews I’ve read of this book have been rave reviews. 🙂

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie — Okay, so confession time: I just couldn’t get into this book. At all. It just was weird, plain weird, to me. I tried really hard, but after about 7 chapters, I decided that it was okay to just set it aside and not finish it as there are many, many more books I’d rather read and life’s too short to waste on making myself finish books that I’m not enjoying or benefiting from at all. Sorry, all of you Flavia de Luce fans!

Books I Plan to Read/Finish This Week

The Imagination Station: Surprise at Yorktown — We always enjoy the Imagination Station books. When this one came in the mail recently, Kathrynne and Kaitlynn wanted to pick it up and read it right away, but they said, “We’re not going to read it ourselves since we want to enjoy you reading it aloud to us!”

Long Walk to Freedom & Kaffir Boy — I didn’t get these finished before my South Africa trip — hoping to finish them soon!

Against All Grain — Multiple friends have mentioned this book to me and suggested I read it.

The Anxiety Cure — As someone who struggles with anxiety during different seasons of life, I’m on a mission to learn more about it and what I can do to help prevent or minimize it. I read Sleep: It Does a Family Good by Archibald Hart two years ago and learned so much from it that I picked up this title to check it out, too.

From This Day Forward — I saw an article about this book on Ann Voskamp’s site and was intrigued so I picked up a copy.

What did you read this past week? Any must-read book recommendations?