My last book recap was in the Fall, and since then, I’ve read six books! One of them has the makings of a new classic, it was that good. I had some thrillers, some fluff, and some memoirs. So, let’s get into it! And tell me in the comments if you’ve read any of these, too! I’d love to know what you thought of them.

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I’ll soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own…

Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out… and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of…

I could not put this down. That is, I was looking for every last single free spot in my day to pop in my AidPods and see how this would go down. And wow, I did not see it coming. Not at all. After finishing it, I immediately added the next two books to my want to read list!

A Killer’s Wife by Victor Methos

Fourteen years ago, prosecutor Jessica Yardley’s husband went to prison for a series of brutal murders. She’s finally created a life with her daughter and is a well-respected attorney. She’s moving on. But when a new rash of homicides has her ex-husband, Eddie, written all over them—the nightmares of her past come back to life.

The FBI asks Jessica to get involved in the hunt for this copycat killer—which means visiting her ex and collaborating with the man who tore her life apart.

As the copycat’s motives become clearer, the new life Jessica created for herself gets darker. She must ask herself who she can trust and if she’s capable of stopping the killer—a man whose every crime is a bloody valentine from a twisted mastermind she’s afraid she may never escape.

If you’re a thriller lover, this is another GREAT one. (Am I thriller book lover now?!) I was so caught up in trying to figure this one out. The main character was so interesting to me: her backstory, the way that she acted, her strength. I was very very into it. Until we found out who the killer was, and then it got a little boring for me. The trial part of the book was just mediocre, in my opinion.

One in a Millennial by Kate Kennedy

One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned generation.

Kate is a pop culture commentator and host of the popular millennial-focused podcast Be There in Five. Part-funny, part-serious, Kate navigates the complicated nature of celebrating and criticizing the culture that shaped her as a woman, while arguing that great depths can come from surface-level interests.

With her trademark style and vulnerability, One In a Millennial is sharp, hilarious, and heartwarming all at once. She tackles AOL Instant Messenger, purity culture, American Girl Dolls, going out tops, Spice Girl feminism, her feelings about millennial motherhood, and more. Kate’s laugh-out-loud asides and keen observations will have you nodding your head and maybe even tearing up.

I’ve listened to Kate Kennedy’s podcast (Be There in Five) on and off for a couple of years. While the ability to properly articulate how millennial culture shaped my world view and view of myself has evaded me for years, Kate seems to have a knack for analyzing our collective millennial upbringing and bring order and words to its impact on why millennials are the way they are. From the desperate need to fit in, navigating mental health with mental health illness was really just starting to be discussed as a legitimate thing, and the all importance of American Girl dolls, I LOVED this book. I found myself remembering things about my childhood that I had forgotten, and nodding along and having ‘aha’ moments along the way for some of our shared experiences. Her book sounds just like her podcasts, and I adored it.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for listeners of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

It feels too early in the year to call something potentially the best book of the year, but this may actually be one of the best books I have ever READ. Period. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book becomes required reading in high school English classes when Harrison is in high school. It was SO well written. I felt so deeply for this character and his journey through life. Through so many tough breaks, and still beautifully redeeming. Ugh. It was fantastic. Please, go read it!

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

Full of beautiful, heart-wrenching, and hilarious stories, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details one man’s opportunity to edit his life as if her were a character in a movie. Years after writing his best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another. But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don’s life for film – changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative – the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges listeners to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.

Given that just about every other book I had read up to this point was great or absolutely fantastic, this one just seemed ‘ok.’ I had a hard time getting into it. I appreciated the parallels he was trying to draw to really fully live life, but I struggled to really dive fully into it.

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13 she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate – a life and a role that she has never challenged…until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister – and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

My Sister’s Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child’s life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart or let others lead you? Once again, in My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.

Jodi Picoult can do no wrong, in my opinion. If I want a book that’s going to make me cry, I can pretty much guarantee that her books will do that. This one was no exception. What a heart wrenching story. I felt for the daughter. I felt for the parents. Oh my goodness. It was a wonderful, good cry.

It’s been many months since my last book review…many months. So I’m just going to call this my fall book review. 🙂 As always, I listened to all of these books as audiobooks. I rarely have time to sit and read an actual book…not to mention I’m the slowest reader on the face of the planet. So all of these opinions are based on listening to these books!

First up, was Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

(Summaries from Amazon)

What I’d say about this book was that it was mostly pretty light. It went remarkably fast. I found myself easily able to track the story and characters even while listening to it. Elizabeth Zott, the main character, is lovely. I love her independence and absolute refusal to comply with the gender norms of the time. I will say that my dislike for the book is primarily due to how uncomfortable I feel when women are not allowed to just be themselves and are held to different standards than men. I realize that was the time and era of when this book was set, but man, it just grates at me.

If you’re someone who likes to read a book before it becomes a movie/TV show, then this one might be for you. It just came out as a show on Apple TV. It’s on my list to watch sometime over Thanksgiving or Christmas break!

Next, I listened to Honor by Thrity Umrigar

In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide.

Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena—a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man—Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.

In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal, and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time.

This book has incredible reviews, but for the same reasons that I struggled with Lessons in Chemistry, it absolutely destroys me when women are treated so poorly and unfairly. No matter how realistic and true to life that may be, it just truly bothers me. This book was well written, easy to listen to and follow, but the content was just absolutely heart wrenching. That coupled with the love story between the journalist covering the story and the Indian guide who helps her, and I just couldn’t really give myself over to this book. The love story felt thrown in like they felt it needed the romantic aspect to round out and draw in more readers. And it just wasn’t for me.

And lastly, I listened to The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then…six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes—they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court-martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the listener spellbound.

This book was recommended to me my Dad, and it was fascinating. It was so well researched and put together to take the listener through what it was like to be a seaman in the 1700’s, what they contended with on the waters and on shore. I enjoyed the dual lens of how two groups of sailors survived their shipwreck, what transpired on the desolate island, and how they made it back to civilization. I will say, I had to slow down my normal listening speed, because it was harder to keep up with the characters and the story due to the depth of the information. But overall, a good listen!

If you’re looking for a book to pick up this holiday season, here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

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
• March/April:
  • The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
  • Cribsheet by Emily Oster
• June:
  • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
  • The 5 Love Languages of Children
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures
• August:
  • The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling (podcast)
  • I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
  • The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
  • Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

It’s book review day! You could say that Aidan and I started to get into a groove in June just from the sheer number of books I was able to listen to this month versus over two months when he was first born. :).

This first book I really looked into only after seeing a trailer for a movie based on it and wanting to see the movie.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands. 

In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime-green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of start-ups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all start-ups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today. 

But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path to start his own business – a business that would be dynamic, different. 

Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream – along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.

I love a good memoir. Lifting the veil on someone’s life and engrossing myself in another person’s journey is just particularly fascinating for me. And this combined with a business book was just simply fascinating.

What really was alarming and such a nice surprise was how wonderful a writer Phil Knight is in this book. His descriptions of his runs, to business dealings was so well done and interesting.

Now I can officially see the new Nike based movie with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (two of my favs!)

After Shoe Dog, I decided to pick a book that everyone has raved about this year…

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late. 

Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

Like so many of you before me, I loved this one. I love a story where individual characters that seemingly have nothing to do with each other somehow become woven together. And I just simply loved that dang octopus. It was a relatively easy “read”/listen. The characters were easy to keep straight and I found the story easy to follow and engaging as well. This book was my type of “beach read.” A little more meat to the story but sweet. This book was worth the hype, in my opinion.

And I ended the month finishing up…

The 5 Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell

You know you love your child. But how can you make sure your child knows it?

The #1 New York Times bestselling The 5 Love Languages® has helped millions of couples learn the secret to building a love that lasts. Now discover how to speak your child’s love language in a way that he or she understands. Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Ross Campbell help you: 

• Discover your child’s love language
• Assist your child in successful learning
• Use the love languages to correct and discipline more effectively
• Build a foundation of unconditional love for your child

Plus: Find dozens of tips for practical ways to speak your child’s love language. 

Discover your child’s primary language—then speak it—and you will be well on your way to a stronger relationship with your flourishing child.

Pretty much everyone has heard of or read the Five Languages book for couples/adults, myself included. I thought I’d listen to this version regarding showing love for our children to see if there were any helpful tips. I’ve been trying to pin down for years what I think Harrison and Jonathan’s love language is for each of them. While I think I have a pretty good hunch for Harrison, Jonathan is still a bit of a mystery sometimes for me. I think I know….but then I’ll question myself. :). I like this concept of the five love languages, and I enjoyed the practical examples in the book. I listened to the whole book in a couple of days, so it went super quick!

What has been your latest favorite book? What do I need to add to my reading list??

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
• March/April:
  • The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
  • Cribsheet by Emily Oster

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