Nightstand (September 2015)

Since the first day of September was a Tuesday, the fourth Tuesday of the month is the earliest it can ever be – which means the September Nightstand completely snuck up on me. (Does anyone else feel that way when the Nightstand isn’t on the last Tuesday of the month?)

And since I haven’t had a lot of books that needed to go back to the library over the past three weeks, I’ve been enjoying a leisurely reading schedule that has me partway through a couple dozen books but only finished with a few. Which means you should be able to browse a nice short list this month :-)

Fiction read this month:

• Whirlwind by Cathy Marie Hake
  A rather typical Christian romance in which a widower ends up thrown into a marriage of convenience with his son’s new nanny. A little underdeveloped mystery, some likewise underdeveloped romantic tension. I still enjoyed it. Also, this was my library’s last book by Hake, so I’ve closed her out in my quest to Read Every Book at my local library.
• The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
  My in-real-life book club’s September pick, this was a long but intensely interesting look at the intertwined lives of three women. It wasn’t a mystery exactly, but it was something like that. I highly recommend it. Read my full review.
• 3 “Arthur” picture books by Marc Brown
  Maybe I need to pick up the pace so I can just get done with these. Ugh.
• A dozen or so read aloud board or picture books
  I’ll be discussing our favorites from among these this Thursday for Read Aloud Thursday.

Nonfiction read this month:

• Don’t Know Much About Literature by Kenneth C. Davis & Jenny Davis
  This Q&A book made me feel that I do indeed not know much about literature. Either I hadn’t read anything from the author (sadly, way too common an occurrence) or the questions were about the author’s life instead of his works. I did ace the quiz on C.S. Lewis, though. So there’s something. Also, this closes out the “802” section in my library. Go me!
• The Journal of Best Practice by David Finch
  David Finch’s marriage was on the rocks with little expectation of resolution when his wife made a discovery that changed their lives: David has Aspergers. The Aspergers diagnosis (which was confirmed by a doctor) gave Finch the impetus to try to work on his marriage, to try to work on himself. Daniel and I listened to The Journal of Best Practices (read by the author) while we drove on our recent vacation – and we generally enjoyed it, although we felt that the author blames his Aspergers for rather a lot. Many of the problems in the Finch’s marriage were exacerbated by Aspergers, sure; but they’re the same things many marriages suffer from – lack of communication, failure to see a spouse’s perspective, poor division of labor, etc. Finch makes statements about “neurotypicals” that make me wonder what tree he fell out of (and if his editors also think that’s actually how normal people are) – believe it or not, not being on the autism spectrum doesn’t make one intuitively socially aware or incapable of overthinking something. Nevertheless, this book was interesting to listen to and gave us plenty to talk about. We were disappointed, however, with how often the author drops the F-bomb. (Side note: Why is such deplorable language considered acceptable writing? I wish I could trust that I can listen to a nonfiction book in my car with my daughter present, but I’m realizing I’m going to have to do a lot more screening of our trip reads in the future.)
• The New Kitchen Science by Howard Hillman
  Back in the day, I taught a lab called “Scientific Principles of Food Preparation” – and I loved it so much I’ve dreamt of making a series of posts with videos showing the amazing science that goes on under our noses every day in the kitchen (although, oh my, the work it’d take to turn that dream into a reality!) So I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, Hillman starts his Q&A format book with a chapter on kitchen *equipment* – definitely the most boring of kitchen science. It got more interesting as the book went on, but I still felt like the book could have been laid out differently to better engage the reader and more logically explain the science. (Also, it could have included a LOT more experiments!)
• The Modern Christmas in America by William Waits
  An adaptation of the author’s doctoral dissertation in sociology, this was a rather dry treatment of the evolution of gift-giving in America from the 1880s through the post-WW2 period. The author took a novel approach to studying this by exploring popular literature: magazines and their advertisements. I enjoyed the many advertisements reproduced in the book, but thought the author’s blatant socialism (in the chapter on charity) and his theories on “decontamination from the marketplace” were rather off-putting.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!