Reading Update

Book #11 of the year was Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, by Diana Gabaldon. This is the ninth book in the Outlander series. I have spent so much time with these characters, as each book is 800 plus pages. I didn't know until the last page whether there's going to be another one!

 

Book #12 was The Dakota Winters, by Tom Barbash. The Winters of the title are a family, and Dakota is an apartment building where they live in New York City. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I finished it.

Book #13 was a book of poetry, The Mail from Anywhere, by Brad Leithauser. (I wrote more about that here.)

Book #14 was Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far, by Amy Grant. I really like the person Amy Grant has turned out to be, and I loved reading this book, which I found in our library. It came out a long time ago, but I hadn't heard of it.

Book #15 was Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, by Kate Bowler. I enjoy Bowler's writing. "God is our safe place, not after the worst is over or before the other shoe drops. But right in the midst of our pain and grief and loss."

Book #16 was a re-read, The News from Paraguay, by Lily Tuck. This time, now that I've spent a few weeks on streets named after the main characters in the historical drama, it meant more.

Book #17 was Shauna Niequist's new book, I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working. In this 2013 review of Shauna's book Bread and Wine, I mused about similarities between our lives. In this book, she's moved to a new place (same) and is trying to figure out how to navigate all the newness (same). She says, "It's okay to let yourself change, to let an environment change you, a city change you, a season change you. You are who you are, and also it's okay to love one thing and then another." 

Book #18 was Can I Touch Your Hair: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship, by Irene Latham and Charles Waters. I loved this collaboration between two grown-up poets remembering and imagining being fifth graders talking about race. It is so good, and so worth sharing with kids.