No.359: My Latest Reads // February 2020

#09. THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW by C.S. Lewis || ★★★☆☆
We enjoyed The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe so much last month that we decided to read the entire series!  The Magician’s Nephew was our read aloud choice for January into the beginning of February.  Hard to rate because it wasn’t as good as LWW, but we settled on 3.5 stars.  (This was also my 1955 pick for the 20th Century Reading Challenge.)

#10. LOOK ME IN THE EYE: MY LIFE WITH ASPERGER’S by John Elder Robison || ★★★☆☆
This memoir was a spontaneous pick at the library, because look at that little boy’s face!  I don’t personally know anyone with Asperger’s, but appreciated learning about it from a primary source.  Can you believe he was not diagnosed until he was almost 40?!  His story is a good lesson in treating everyone you meet with compassion and understanding…you never know what burdens they may be carrying.

#11. ORDINARY GRACE by William Kent Krueger || ★★★★☆
This book had the most beautiful writing that I’ve read in a long time.  Ordinary Grace is a boy’s coming-of-age story during a summer of extreme loss.  It seems like that would make for a depressing novel, but the descriptions of suffering and miracles and God’s faithfulness were everything I needed to hear right now.  A beautiful book that brought me to tears more than once.

#12. EMPIRE FALLS by Richard Russo || ★★★☆☆
This book finally came off of the hold list at the library and I didn’t realize it was almost 500 pages!  Empire Falls has a ton of five-star reviews, but unfortunately, I didn’t quite have that experience.   

#13. THE GIRL WITH SEVEN NAMES: A NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR’S STORY by Hyeonseo Lee || ★★★★☆
This memoir was such an amazing story of courage!  The amount of hurdles she and her family had to go through to be together was unimaginable – I was biting my nails through about half of the book!  I learned so much about North Korea and communism and corruption.

#14. ROOTS AND SKY: A JOURNEY HOME IN FOUR SEASONS by Christie Purifoy || ★★★☆☆

We fool ourselves if we believe that life is the tedium of our to-do lists broken up by occasional highs, like a baby’s homecoming, and occasional lows, like that baby’s first terrifying trip to the emergency room.  Everyday life is utterly extravagant.  It is morning glories we did not plant.  It is four children we did nothing to deserve.  It is moonlight and starlight, rainbow-colored leaves and autumn rain.  It is the shelter of trees, the songs of birds, and the enduring sight of a farmhouse on a hill.  It is more beautiful than it needs to be.  It is more meaningful than we can begin to comprehend. (p.33)

…I have asked Jonathan to build a clothesline…I wouldn’t complain at all if there were less laundry to do, and yet I am not that interested in doing the job more efficiently.  Instead, I want to do it more beautifully.  Which is another way of saying, I want to do it with more love. (p.169)

I liked this reflection book much more than I was expecting!  The theme was obviously my jam (noticing the beauty and gifts of every day) but I sometimes get hung up on very descriptive, lyrical language.  Fortunately, this book was just enough and I flew through it in days.  Solid three stars.