january reads

 i crashed and burned a bit with my reading goal for 2020 - 62 books read out of 75. i read 85 books in 2019 so 75 seemed like a realistic goal, but i guess i didn't count on the realities of returning to work part time halfway through the year! so this year i'm setting my sights a little lower with 50 books pledged to read by the end of 2021. i'm also committing to reading a book in each of three categories every month (plus hopefully a few bonus books). 

a book i own

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. i've been wanting to read this for years, and Nick thoughtfully gave it to me for Christmas! it's a quick but deep read, an honest reckoning of the economic forces and cultural precedents that have impoverished Appalachian America. i'm letting it settle in my brain and heart a little more before watching the Netflix version. 5/5. 

Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3), by Ken Follett. this monstrous book actually moved faster for me than the preceding two, since it covers the second half of the twentieth century and involves politicians and cultural leaders with whom i am more familiar. i did wonder how much creative liberty Follett took with various storylines, but still it was an interesting read, and also felt very satisfying to close the cover after reading all 1136 pages! 5/5. 

a classic 

The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis. (this counts as classic, right?! even though it's more modern than what i would typically consider classic literature, it certainly expresses universal truth in an undeniably beautiful way.) anyway, despite reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia series multiple times as a child, i didn't remember much of this story. it was delightful to experience it almost for the first time again while reading aloud to the girls. the passage where Aslan sings Narnia into existence gave me actual goosebumps. 

spiritual reading

Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body, by Scott Hahn and Emily Stimpson Chapman (a dynamic duo of Catholic writers, if ever there was one!). this also happens to fall into the category of Books I Own, which is good because i was compelled to underline multiple passages and write in the margins. as a convert to Catholicism, i never quite understood the church's directive against cremation (or exactly how strong of a directive it was, for that matter). while meaty, this book is relatively short and easy to read, the sort of book you could read in a day but whose content is rich enough to distill over weeks. highly recommend as a Lenten read! 5/5. 

bonus

Empty, by Susan Burton. this book details (and i do mean details) the author's journey with disordered eating. i always feel like a terrible person criticizing a memoir, especially one about such a sensitive topic, but it just seemed to drag on and on and on. she does do an excellent job of describing how her perspective on food shifted and warped over time, and she's honest about her own vulnerability (which again, makes me feel awful for wishing her editor had chopped about 1/3 of the words). 4/5. 

All the Bright Places, by Jennifer Niven. oh, this book. yes, it's young adult fiction and yes, everyone should read it. i think we all know a teenager like Theodore Finch (oscillating between zany outbursts and clinical depression) and Violet Markey (grieving the death of her sister), or perhaps we were them. i was a bit skeptical of the book going into it but the characters continued to grow in complexity and the ending hit me like a punch in the gut. 5/5. 

linking up with Rosie!