Read, of late.

There are so many Twitterature link-ups I’ve intended to join over the past months. Alas, pregnancy and the early postpartum months managed to get in the way of my best intentions. Finally I’ve remembered it in time to hammer out a post. This isn’t exhaustive, but I thought I’d cover some of the highlights of my recent reading.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

I stumbled upon this on a serendipitous library trip at a different branch and snatched it up (Sidenote: one of our frugal ways is to skip the bookstore and go to the library branch in the nicest part of town, the one by where the Bushes live. It’s maintained well and we can bring home as many books as we want and when we’re done just drop them off at our local branch.) This book fulfilled two of my goals – reading more international, non-British literature and reading more Korean literature specifically (my oldest son is Korean). It’s a short story with delightful pictures, but it’s not children’s literature by any means. It’s melancholy and so dear. It made me cry. And I felt like my heart would burst with sympathy for this poor hen’s motherheart. I shamelessly personify everything so finding myself breathlessly interested in the life of this hen was normal for me.

Dad is Fat

Oh how I laughed while I read this book. And I made my poor husband listen to whole passages. He kept asking why I was cackling away and I finally just shortened my explanations to “this book.” Jim Gaffigan is my favorite comedian and this book did not disappoint. If you like his stand-up, you will like the book.

Delancey

It’s almost criminal for a gluten-free/dairy-free girl to have to read this book. I wanted to devour all the pizzas while reading it. If I wasn’t nursing a dairy-free baby I probably would have hightailed it to the nicest pizza joint in town to devour me some, consequences be damned. I enjoyed the voyeuristic look into opening their restaurant, although the recipe selection was odd. I think I liked A Homemade Life better, but I haven’t slept enough recently to discern why exactly.

Counting One’s Blessings

This has been my bathtub read for several months. While looking for solutions to my postpartum anxiety I learned that magnesium helps a lot so I regularly draw up a bath of hot water with epsom salts and lavender and grab this tome (600+ pages) and settle in for an hour or so. The first part is more interesting than the last part. The editor’s explanation is that she stopped writing about personal details due to the risk of stolen letters being published. However, what is interesting is very interesting, at least to this historian and lover of women’s biographies! I especially liked to contrast her letters about important events to the various people in her life. The tone and word choices were strikingly different sometimes.

What Alice Forgot

As others have said, this book reads fast, but sticks with you. We’re approaching our 8th anniversary next month and are fully in the trench crossroads of marriage and parenting littles. It’s hard and it’s good and this book was the perfect accompaniment to this season of life.

For a full list of what I’ve read lately you can check out my Book List page where I’m documenting every book I read since beginning my book challenge in 2009. You can also friend me on Goodreads.