Summer Reading List

I love to read.  In elementary school when we were coming up for alliterations for each of our names my class agreed that "Bookworm Bojana" was the perfect name.  Over the years my reading has evolved and ebbed and flowed.  One of my goals the last few years was to read one book per month that was not teaching related.  I have a book club that meets every second month and I prefer it that was because then I get to choose my own book and also have a book to discuss with other.  We also take the summer months off and this year I had a stack of books waiting for me thanks to wonderful friends who have been exchanging books through our lock-down time.  Here is what I read over the summer.  

★★★★ Untamed by Glennon Dyole
My girlfriend dropped this book off in my mailbox right after we went into lock down.  She left a note saying that she felt this was the book for me!  She was RIGHT!  I found this book insightful, forthcoming, honest, reflective and funny as can be.  Now as I return to work I keep telling myself I can do HARD things.  Glennon explores her emotions, her growth and development and realizations in an honest, insightful and often  funny ways.  Is it self help?  I don't think so.  For me its more affirmations.  Realizations that we all have stories.  We all have discoveries.  We all have truths we can acknowledged or not.  Loved it!

                                                   

★★★★★ Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand
I am giving this 5 stars because in terms of a beach read it was exactly what I expect form a beach read.  It was sweet, a little predictable but not in a way that doesn't want to make you keep reading, it had love stories that were complex and yet simple, and it was set on Nantucket.  I found this book in one of those little libraries at our lake while on a walk and it gave me so much joy to read on the beach.

                                                
★★★★★  Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
I had no intention of reading this book.  Honestly the title and the cover seemed borrowing to me.  It looked like a heavy book and summer time is usually for lighter reads in my world.  But this book was brought over by a friend and she highly recommended it!.  READ IT!  It's poetic at times,  it's inspiring, and heart wrenching.  It follows a young girl, abandon to survive in the marsh and to learn how to integrate with society just so she can survive.  There is a a look a how humans judge and these judgments prevent us from getting to know a person or helping them when we know they are in need.  It's also a page turner as a criminal trial unfolds and a side love story unfolds in different and more subtle ways than we are used to as readers.  Also, my husband read it and thought it was also very good!

★★★★ Kids These Days by Jody Carrington
This was a book for work, but it doubled up a book that I  also found insightful as a mom, teacher, administrator and member of society.  Jody is a trained psychologist that helps us understand and implores us to make connections with the children in our lives that are the hardest to love.  She explores how connection and relationship is a key ingredient to not only managing children we have in schools, but getting to know them and helping them when they are struggling to regulate themselves.  Overall good message, nothing extremely new and profound but also an important reminder how not to slip back into some of our old habits that are built on institutions and business model, rather than a human connection.  

★★★1/2  California Girls by Susan Mallery
Okay this book was good.  It was a good, easy, beach read.  It wasn't a book that I had to keep reading.  It followed three sisters and their lives at different intervals, one sisters marriage is falling apart, one is becoming a surrogate, and one is rediscovering her own self-worth and love after a break -up.  The only sister's story I was really into was the last one, although, I liked the way it followed all three.  If you come across it in the library, or a friend has it, or it's free, I would pick it up for an easy read but I wouldn't necessarily spend $$ on it.

What are you reading currently?  What should I add to my my "must read" list?