I was reading this book when Aidan was born, and could not wait to finish it.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

(Book summaries from Amazon)

I have yet to read a single book by Kristin Hannah that I haven’t loved. This one was no exception. In fact, I think it was my most favorite yet. She has such a wonderful way of developing characters, weaving their stories together, and provide both great descriptions of places and feelings and action. The Nightingale was recently picked as one of Reese Witherspoon’s book club books. Generally, I tend to like her picks, so I thought it was probably time to pick this one up. This one is likely to make it into my top books of the year. It was simply AWESOME.

I lightened life up a bit by finishing off May reading…

Crib Sheet by Emily Oster

As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There’s a rule – or three – for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? 

Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they’re ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren’t necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. 

Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking-parent’s guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert – and mom of two – who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions – and stay sane in the years before preschool.

I can’t remember why I decided to read this book. I was probably intrigued by the data driven part of it. (I’m still an accountant at heart, after all.) I like an examination of the facts. But wow, this book fell flat for me. I could see some value in it if I hadn’t already gone through the baby and toddler phase now life with two children already and working my way through a third newborn phase, but for someone who is well entrenched in raising a rising kindergartener, preschooler, and baby, it was mostly irrelevant. The choices that are discussed are things that you have to decide when at the hospital, choosing a daycare situation for your child, how to feed your baby. And…we’ve already been there. Done that. And I had already examined much of the same “studies” and reasoning that she covers. So, it wasn’t really for me.

My 2023 Books:

• January:
  • Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff
  • Christmas in Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey
• March:
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Spare by Prince Harry
  • Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi
  • The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama

Happy book review day, friends! It was a GOOD couple of months for me (since I didn’t finish a book in the month of February…) I really liked most of these books….and could have done without one.

I started off January…and most of February…reading The Poisonwood Bible.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it―from garden seeds to Scripture―is calamitously transformed on African soil.

This tale of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction, over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa, is set against history’s most dramatic political parables.

(Book summaries from Amazon)

My mom gifted me this book for Christmas. It’s one of her favorites. And I mostly liked it. Taken at face value of how well it is written, the deeply tragic flaws of the characters in this family, it was so well done. Story-wise, it hit a nerve for me. Having grown up Christian my whole life, and then attending a private, Christian college, I feel very sensitive and uncomfortable with the missionary lifestyle that seeks to change people’s beliefs without understanding the culture and the foundation of another person’s life and belief system. This is not to say that I don’t respect the choice of people to be missionaries. It’s more so how it’s done, for me. It just fundamentally makes me really uncomfortable in real life and in this story, which revolves around a family leaving their home in the US to travel and evangelize this African community, entering this community with a “holier than thou” attitude.

Now beyond my own personal issues…I loved reading about how this family turned out. Where they all ended up as adults, and how their relationship changed. Overall, I enjoyed it and gave it four stars.

Next, I moved on to Spare.

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

For Harry, this is that story at last.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.

At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.

Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . .

For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Right off the bat, I’m going to say that I just felt the need to read this one for myself. I’ve seen reviews all over the place and all over the map. I’d say in general, I know very little about the royal family, but I do find them fascinating. The little girl in me just thinks it’s really cool that there are queens, kings, princes, and princesses in real life in this world. And any book that was going to give insight into what that is like, well, sounded interesting to me.

I love Prince Harry and Meghan Markle together. They seem like a really good match for each other. And Harry’s love for Meghan really did come through loud and clear in this book.

On the flip side, I think most of us are well aware that there many reports out of the palace and media about behavior within the royal family, how the press treats them, etc. It seems like a very complicated and messy life to live. To have been born into, at the very least. But what really seemed to come through to me in this book was Harry’s pain. Pain that he’s been carrying around for decades, not just related to his mom, but a whole host of issues. And I think the unfortunate part of it all, while I certainly empathize that pain is a tough thing to work through, it seems like he’s worked through very little of it.

In fact, it felt like there was a serious lack of introspection into his own actions and how they contributed or hurt people of his family. Or a step back to consider where others were coming from, at the very least. And ultimately, I just finished the book feeling like he seems like a very bitter person. And that’s got to make it even more difficult for him.

Overall, I gave it three stars.

Next, I decided to switch to some fiction with Sparks Like Stars.

Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives. 

Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name—Aryana Shepherd—and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. 

New York, 2008: Thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room—a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers—and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul—a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban—and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. 

This story was incredible. It reminded me a lot of The Things We Cannot Say, which I picked as one of my top three books of all of 2022. I loved the writing, the characters, peaking into the present day life to see where they ended up and how their past has impacted them. Oh my goodness, it was good. So, so, so good. I gave it FIVE stars, and it’s definitely in the running as one of my favorite books of this year.

And in case I hadn’t had enough of books written by famous figures, I followed that up with Michelle Obama’s new book, The Light We Carry.

In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with listeners, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?

Michelle Obama offers listeners a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles—the earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility, encouraging listeners to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness.

“When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it,” writes Michelle Obama. A rewarding blend of powerful stories and profound advice that will ignite conversation, The Light We Carry inspires listeners to examine their own lives, identify their sources of gladness, and connect meaningfully in a turbulent world.

I thoroughly loved Michelle’s first book, Becoming. So I was excited to see what she had in store in The Light We Carry. And man, it did not disappoint. The more time that passes between her stint as FLOTUS and now, the more I come to really admire her. Such great pearls of wisdom. Such deep introspection and sense of service to people. She’s a gem, in my opinion. And maybe even more of a gem than Michelle Obama, is her mother. She seems remarkable. Loved the stories of the life lessons from her mom. Her saying that she’s “not raising babies. [She’s] raising adults.” Such great nuggets through the whole book!

That’s what I read over the last couple of months! I’m reading one book now that’s fantastic, and I’ve got some ones I”m really excited about lined up for this spring/summer…basically whenever new baby let’s me have time. 🙂 But I want to know, what’s the best book you’ve read recently??

My 2023 Books:

• January:
  • Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff
  • Christmas in Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey