Because I’m lazy, I had an extraordinarily light reading month.
1. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
by Cheryl Strayed (5/5). You can read my review of this book here.
2. Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe
by Gavin de Becker (4/5). This book coasts on its excellent parts. Honestly, it isn’t so different from his first book, The Gift of Fear (from which he actually recycles, verbatim, several different anecdotes). There’s also some brief evo-psych mumbo jumbo. But the good stuff is really, really good and helpful.
3. Ella Enchanted
by Gail Carson Levine (4/5). I loved this book as a child and I love it now. It’s not perfect, even so far as children’s books go. But something about it stuck with me all these years, and I enjoyed reading it again.
4. The Mama’s Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close Makes Them Stronger
by Kate Stone Lombardi (3/5). The Mama’s Boy Myth should have been the length of an article, not a book. Lombardi made good points, but then she repeated them for 150 pages. Meh.
5. The Tiger’s Wife
by Tea Obreht (5/5). Jason bought this book last summer and after he read it, I somehow got the impression that he hadn’t much cared for it, so I didn’t bother picking it up. Well, I finally did and it was wonderful. I’ve read a lot of good books, but even some of the good ones are forgettable. The Tiger’s Wife isn’t. It’s breathtakingly sad. I’ll be on the hunt for my own copy.
6. The Starboard Sea
by Amber Dermont (3/5). Where do I start with this book? It was riddled with cliches (“I capsized into her eyes”), stereotypes, and totally unrealistic situations…but the last page absolutely floored me. Dermont sure knows how to write an incredible ending.
