What I’m Reading (and the Kids Too)

May seems to have flown by. As always, my idea of what I’ll have time to do vs. what I actually get done are two very different things. One of these days I’ll remember that. A few of the books in my May stack were tackled, and others were pushed to the side to read later because I was rather consumed with helping prep for our swim team season. 

BUT now that swim season has started and the pool is open I have some time to relax since the kids are old enough to be in the pool without needing me to be right there with them every moment (for those of you with younger children – it will happen one day!). 

Feel free to follow along with me on the Good Reads app  as I attempt to knock a few more books off  my 2017 reading list. There are only four more books in my primary “to read” pile and another four on my “if there’s time” list, so we’ll see! It’s so much fun to see what others are reading and recommend too.

Here’s the list I want to tackle during June and hereby resolve to finish: 

• Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber 
• Scary Close by Donald Miller
• Crazy Love by Francis Chan
• Giver of Wonders by Roseanna White
• The Heir by Kiera Cass
• The Crown by Kiera Cass
• Happily Ever After by Kiera Cass
• Still Life by Dani Pettrey

The Kids are Reading…

The kids have all finished their assigned reading and I’m giving them a wee bit of a break at the moment, but we will start a reading challenge together soon. 

Laurianna and I have been reading through a series together the last bit. It’s nothing in-depth or serious, just some light summer reading, but it’s been fun reading and talking about the books with her (and besides, teen lit is easy to read). 

What I Finished in May

The last two months are ones where I read a lot of books focused on WW2 – not intentionally, it just happened that way. Some of the books were ones I picked up because I saw them on a friend’s reading list or were recommend, so it was a whole lot of random mixed in with some I intentionally wanted to read. 

Probably my FAVORITE read of the month was The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. It tells the story of the women left behind in France during the German invasion during WW2. Overall it’s real, raw at times, and incredibly moving. 

That said, there were a few that I actually had to put down, either because I just couldn’t get into the story (I made it halfway through The Book Thief  because of this) or because the content was ridiculously beyond what I personally can handle (in the bedroom department – I have a fairly low tolerance). Otherwise, here’s what I finished up. 

• Grace, Not Perfection by Emily Ley (need to finish up)
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• Threads of Suspicion from Dee Henderson – another good one, not my favorite, but her books have a different depth than a typical Christian romance. 
• The Selection and The Elite by Kiera Cass – read these with Laurianna
• Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld- do yourself a favor and skip this. Witty, yes. Crass, absolutely. I skipped a bunch of stuff in this one, but hung on hoping it would drastically improve. It didn’t.
• All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

That’s it for this month – what is on YOUR reading list??