This is the most books I’ve read in months! And sadly, I finished out with only 88 books. If I hadn’t crashed and burned back in May, I would have made it to 100 before fall. I had some good ones this month too. The biggest stinker was The Good Book. Just don’t bother. But I had some great fiction reads, check out my recommendations for the month at the bottom of the post. They are all some of my favorites overall. I’ll be doing a little wrap up soon, but I’m just not sure what wrappy-uppy things I’m going to do yet.

I just managed to get the second audio book in on the last day, which meant that I had to subject Mom to some pretty awful short stories. I also had to force myself to finish up The Good Book which was supposed to be in preparation for this year’s resolution but turned out to be a lame-o. But I have started with my new year’s resolution: reading through the whole Bible in one year. We’ll see how that goes.

My recommendations:

• Time Traveler’s Wife
• A Lion Among Men
• Pillars of the Earth

1. SPT Buy, Buy Baby – Susan Gregory Thomas
2. STR Breaking Free – Beth Moore
3. GFT The Lucky One – Nicholas Sparks

I’m up to 76 books. That leaves 24 to go to reach the big 100. I’m starting to think that just ain’t going to happen. I was doing 12 books a month or so when I had the time (and the fervor) so I know it’s doable (and at that rate I should have reached 100 by August). It does stink a tad though because I was cruising along and got loads of great books read. (Also some real duds, but oh well.) The reason I didn’t finish any audiobooks this month is because I’m in the middle of a huge one and I’m also not in the car as much as I used to be when I had a commute every day. I’m on disc 8 of Pillars of the Earth, which is one of the most ginormous books I’ve ever read. I think the only book that equals its length is Harry Potter 5, and even that one falls short by about 100 pages.

Buy, Buy Baby was really interesting. I think I read it rather quickly considering how much junk I have going on. I definitely won’t think of children’s products as benign anymore, and while I can’t see myself totally boycotting the industry, I think it’s good to be aware of these things and then teach your children correctly. And also try to avoid helping them be blind consumers.

Breaking Free was a fabulous book that had lots of great insights in it, and I think I may read it again next year but get the journal that goes with it and then do it slowly over the course of a month. I’ll probably do her book Believing God first since I already have that journal, and I just got another of her books the other day that I’m excited to dive into. I wish that I had waited on Breaking Free though because since I’m doing another Bible study at the same time I wasn’t able to take it all in. Oh well, my copy is so water damaged that I won’t be trading it!

And the new Nicholas Sparks book was great. He totally redeemed himself for Dear John and The Choice, which were depressing beyond words. This one reminded me of some of his older books and it just captured that romance and loveliness that the other ones had.

Right now, I’m reading Son of A Witch by Gregory Maguire and really enjoying it. I hadn’t realized that I was reading it on Halloween, but I guess that is somewhat fitting. I have a ton of Christmasy books coming in too, that I’m excited about starting over the holiday season. I’m all set (internally) for Christmas, and I can’t wait for my reading material to reflect that.

1. PBS Love The One You’re With – Emily Giffin
2. SPT Unauthorized Biography of Tom Cruise – Andrew Morton
3. PBS Inside my Heart – Robin McGraw [audio]

I actually thought I was going to get a lot more reading done this month, but Hurricane Ike threw a wrench into my plans. I am halfway through three library school texts books, so if you count that I’ve been reading like a fool. I also started more books than I could finish this month.

You’ll probably notice that I put the Giffin book up there again this month, since I actually finished it in September, not August. I figured the two other selections would be lonely. I’m up to #73. I could still make it to 100 if I pick up the pace. And I’m actually quite caught up in school related things, so I may even have some extra time for fun reading.

As for this month’s finished books, the Giffin book was subpar as I mentioned. The Tom Cruise book was pretty much a scathing report on his religion. I actually didn’t find it that great. There was lots of dirt, yes, but first you have to wonder if any of it is true because he doesn’t cite any sources (or very few) and only provides a ’selected’ bibliography in the back (what’s up with that?). The Robin McGraw book was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I’m actually considering keeping it instead of trading it back. It was pretty inspirational, and I love her accent. I might even pick up her newer one.

I’ve been thinking that now that I have more time to devote to blogging and reading I might make some website tweaks. It’s not really fleshed out yet, but I would like to spend more time being creative on the web. I’ve been meaning to make some changes for awhile, mostly to the main page of the site, but I just haven’t gotten off my tushy yet.

This month’s recommendations:

• Inside My Heart

1. PBS So Much for My Happy Ending – Kyra Davis
2. PBS Over Her Dead Body – Kate White
3. PBS Playing For Pizza – John Grisham
4. GFT The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini [audio]
5. PBS Love The One You’re With – Emily Giffin

So I didn’t read very much but at this point I will be amazed if I make it to the end of the year with 100. So Much for My Happy Ending was sort of bizarre but very unique. After I finished the Emily Giffin book (check out her first two novels, Something Borrowed and Something Blue for the best reading experience EVER), I felt like they were pretty much two sides of the same story. Girl meets boy, girl loves boy, girl marries boy, boy turns out to be a weirdo, other boy comes into the mix… They just ended differently. Over Her Dead Body was a little murder mystery that is apparently several books along in a series (but it worked well as a stand alone) and Playing For Pizza was about a washed-up NFL player who has a little Italian adventure, a la Eat Pray Love. (Grisham said in an interview on The Colbert Report that there were no lawyers in it – lies.) And my one audio book this month was a pretty famous one. The Kite Runner was a solid story, but sort of depressing. Khaled Hosseini’s books are probably better in audio form because you get the real gist of the story through the accent.

All of my books this month were fiction. I’ve changed it up this month; first book I started was the unauthorized biography of Mr Cruise. I should probably finish off those books that have been collecting dust on my “currently reading” section on the page about my reading resolution. Like that cosmetics encycopedia. Yeesh. With all of my school reading, I don’t even know where I find the time.

I just realized that the last book I only finished yesterday, not in August. Whatever. I may include it again next month just for giggles.

This month’s recommendations:

• The Kite Runner

1. ARC Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity – Kerry Cohen
2. GFT Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul - edited by Jack Canfield
3. GFT Tuesdays With Morrie – Mitch Albom [audio]
4. GFT Getting Things Done – David Allen

But hey, 1 more book than last month! Technically, I only really read 2 of those books in July. Chicken Soup and GTD were finished this month, but I read the bulk of them over the last couple of months. I’m about to start a second Chicken Soup book (great for those random few minutes that break up the day) and I’ve downloaded It’s All Too Much from the Houston library. I also randomly picked up a novel on Saturday and started reading, and I’m already 150 pages in. (Novels go by so much faster than non-fiction.) I wrote a review for Loose Girl and posted it on my Library Thing profile. I was meaning to jazz it up a little bit (make it less review-y) and post it here but never got around to it. It’s on my to-do list. I guess I’m feeling the reading bug more these days, and since I’ve made such great progress on my magazines stack (8 magazines read, scanned and ready to be recycled!) I’ve been wanting to get through my stack of books.

This Month’s Recommendations:

• Tuesdays With Morrie

1. PBS The Nanny Diaries – Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus [audio]
2. LIB Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? – Peter Walsh [audio]
3. GFT Sunday’s at Tiffany’s – James Patterson [audio]

I’m planning to start Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett soon which is a MONSTER of a book. 42 CDs. I can’t fit the entire audio book on my computer it’s so big. And it’s taking me a long time to transfer it to my iPod, so at the rate I’m going it will be August before I start it. If you check out my reading resolution page you can see I’m still reading the same books I was reading back in May. I’m really trying to get through GTD but it’s so boring. I read a few pages here and there, but it’s slow going. And no, I can’t just scrap it. It’s actually very useful and helpful, the writing just needs to be jazzed up (a lot). I actually put a hold on my Paperback Swap account because I not only have too much going on to mail books out, I’ve run out of room to house the books I’m receiving. And when a wish list item becomes available, I have no willpower. So I’m going to try and work down my book shelf but it’s harder than I thought. I don’t think summer is a good reading season unless you get to plunk down on a beach towel for several weeks.

This month’s recommendations:

• Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?

I knew that I was running out of steam on this whole book thing, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’m going to get to any goal that I’ve set out. I’m still going to keep track, but I’ve been falling way behind on my “schedule” of sorts, and I’m just needing more variety in entertainment these days. Not to mention, I got a Nintendo DS and I’m wanting to spend some time playing with it, and we’ve just been really busy in general. Anyways, here we go for May.

1. STR Anybody Out There? - Marian Keyes
2. GFT 5 Essentials For Lifelong Intimacy – Dr. James Dobson
3. LIB Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert [audio]
4. PBS The Veritas Conflict – Shaunti Feldhahn
5. LIB Why Mars and Venus Collide – John Gray, PhD [audio]
6. LIB How Starbucks Saved My Life – Michael Gates Gill [audio]
7. LIB The Geography of Bliss – Eric Weiner [audio]

Yeah. Case in point. 4 audio books, 3 regular books. 5 non-fiction. One part is that I had some longer books this time around (most audio books were at least 11 hours) and I just spent more time doing other things, like reading magazines and stuff. Another part of it would be that I’m reading Getting Things Done which I thought would be a short read but turned out to be unbearably boring, and also the huge 1300-page tome of Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, which is really more of a reference than a book. I guess it was bound to happen, but hey, I made it almost 6 months with reading a lot. I’m currently up to 60 books, so that’s not too bad in 5 months and 5 days.

The books I loved last month were Eat, Pray, Love and The Veritas Conflict. Those two were hard to put down, but for very different reasons. Eat, Pray, Love was like a journey of a soul, and about finding yourself. It was just a great story. It definitely made me want to go to Italy and eat like a pig. The Veritas Conflict was a great thriller, and although I don’t really enjoy supernatural stuff, it didn’t matter. It was just plain good.

I don’t have anything bad to say about any of my books this month. I guess when you read less you don’t get as many crap books in. I’m still excited about some of the books in my “to be read” bookshelf, but less dedicated in reading them. There are too many facets to life to be stuck on just one. And maybe if I’m less pressured to read read read, I’ll have more time to ruminate on some of the non-fictions. We’ll see.

This month’s recommendations:

• Eat, Pray, Love
• The Veritas Conflict
• How Starbucks Saved My Life

1. GFT Relationship Rescue – Dr Phil McGraw [audio]
2. UBS The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon [audio]
3. LIB The Year of Living Biblically – A.J. Jacobs [audio]
4. PBS Atonement - Ian McEwan
5. PBS Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus – Dr John Gray [audio]
6. STR Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner
7. LIB Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home – David Shipley & Will Schwalbe [audio]
8. PBS Girls Night In – Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, et al
9. ARC My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy – Andrea Askowitz
10. LIB The Feminine Mistake - Leslie Bennetts [audio]
11. PBS Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
12. LIB How Doctors Think – Jerome Groopman, M.D. [audio]

7 audio books this month and 5 actual books. Now, my actual book numbers are a little crazy, because Atonement took me 2 weeks to read. It was boring boring BORING. I complained about it a lot over the two weeks, and I kept getting “So stop reading it!” as a reply. I guess they didn’t understand – I had to finish it! It was actually an excellent sleep aid. I took lots of spontaneous naps while reading it.

On the flipside, however, Certain Girls took me about 2 days. Jen Weiner is one of my absolute favorite authors. The book was pretty depressing near the end though, so I guess be warned.

I have a confession. For Girls Night In, I skipped one of the short stories. But in my defense I had read it before, and not that long ago. I attempted to reread it, but I don’t really like reading stories over so quickly after finishing them. I like some time to lapse so I can forget details and feel like I’m reading it for the first time all over again. To make up for it I read all the commercials in the back of the book.

I had 8 non-fictions this month. Most of them were really great. The Feminine Mistake was life-changing. I’ll be blogging about that one later. Send was also really informative. It helped me see a benefit for using “bcc” which I always thought was sort of stupid. Their use involved people that didn’t want their email address publicized, like a celebrity or top CEO, but needed to be briefed on the situation anyways. The example they used was between reporters and news-media, and a celebrity was bcc’d. How Doctors Think was also quite good, because it gave you insight into how doctors make diagnoses and, sometimes, mistakes. It was sort of difficult to pay attention in parts because it was a little on the heavy side. I could picture the hardcover putting me to sleep.

I reviewed two books this month in some detail. Men Are From Mars and My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy. The former ticked me off and I needed to write about it, and the latter was an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) from LibraryThing.com’s April batch of freebies, so a review was, if not mandatory, considered appropriate. (Posting reviews enables me to get more freebies later!) It’s kind of neat to be able to read books that haven’t been published yet.

So this brings me up to 51 books. Think I can break 200 by year’s end?

This Month’s Recommendations:

• Certain Girls
• Send
• The Feminine Mistake

Around my age (the youthful bliss of 24), the baby question comes up a lot, especially after marriage. Actually, I think the questions began before we actually got married, but those questions were all from other people, on the outside looking in. The question I’m talking about comes from within myself. Am I ready to have babies? Do I ever really want babies? Can I stand the pain of childbirth? What do I do with a baby? Can I handle the responsibility? All those questions melt into the big one, which doesn’t really fit into one particular sentence. I can’t say personally that I’ve felt the urge that I hear supposedly happens to women when their biological clock’s alarm rings, but the “baby thoughts”, so-to-speak, still hover in the background of my brain at all times.

Reading My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy by Andrea Askowitz brought these things to the surface once again. I thought the book was a crudely honest look at pregnancy, especially the physical aspects. Despite not having lived it, I feel as though I have through her descriptions. Or that I can at least begin to understand what may lie in store for me down the road. And let me tell you, it ain’t pretty. This book is not for squeamish men, despite the lesbian overtones. A few girlie action scenes are not going to be worth it for most guys out there. (Well for those that like that type of thing.) She describes the nausea, the constipation, the heartburn, the anxiety and depression, and then the actual birthing process. It sounds utterly miserable. And painful. Her friend sympathizes, saying, “Doesn’t it feel like you shat your ass inside out?” (p219) But after she has the child and the birthing wounds heal, her writing style changes from sardonic to serene. Like she can do anything after having given birth.

While we certainly have rather large differences between our life experiences (i.e., the whole lesbian thing) which makes pregnancy somewhat more difficult for her, I could empathize with her in a lot of ways. She seemed bitter towards her friends during most of the book, often feeling that they didn’t care for her and make an effort to be sensitive to her condition. These friends forgot appointments, promised to visit and didn’t, and loads of other things. This mindset is one that is easy to fall into when you become “me-centered” but the harsh reality is that people don’t think about you nearly as much as you might think they do. Generally when friends do these things, it’s not out of spite but just human forgetfulness and imperfection. Near the end of the book, after Andrea holds her baby girl Natasha in her arms, she starts to see things differently. She starts to realize that while she was accusing her friends of being self-centered, maybe she was acting the same way: “Maybe I didn’t ask Robin how she was feeling. I certainly didn’t ask Kate. With Tashi I have no choice. I have to consider her first. Tashi makes me better.” (p231)

Pregnancy and giving birth seem to be rites of passage for women. Maybe it makes a woman her complete self, along with a romantic relationship and a career or life passion. A third piece of the pie that gives women the impetus to get up out of bed each day. I’m not sure if that convinces me to make my own 9-month (and consequently 18-year) journey just yet, but it is very impressive that a woman like Andrea Askowitz can undertake this on her own, and come out of the experience empowered. Right now when I consider having a baby it just seems scary and painful, but I hope that when I’m ready, I will also feel empowered and ready to conquer the world.

4/5 stars

***

While I truly believe that the differences between men and women are so important to know and understand, I feel that Dr Gray has really missed the mark on this one. Men and women communicate differently, show love differently, and yes, cope with stress differently. But it should be equal – both sides give and take. A man could be a really great listener but if he can’t show his wife the love she needs and be there in other ways, then the marriage won’t be better off than most others. It will be nothing more than a good friendship. Maybe my 25% snippet didn’t accurately show the wealth of knowledge brimming inside of the Mars/Venus world, but until someone gives me reason I don’t think I will be taking a closer look.

2/5 stars