What I Read: February

February was an interesting month with a couple weeks of severe winter weather. We had ice at first and snow next. You'd think I got more reading done, but the kids were still in distance learning so I was busy with that and when we weren't working on school stuff we were sledding and playing in the snow.

Reading while making soup during a snow storm.

Books:

• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng- I found this at Goodwill and enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere when I listened to it s an audiobook so I picked it up. I actually liked this one more than Little Fires Everywhere. The first page really sucked me in. It reminded me a little bit of Thirteen Reasons Why and again made me a little terrified to have teenage children!

• Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World edited by Zahra Hankir- This was pretty eye opening for me to read about the struggles in the Middle East through the lens of reporters who lived those moments. It also put women's issues in a different perspective. There were issues discussed in the book I'd never realized or thought of before.

• My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman- I picked this one up at Goodwill a while back because I've loved all Backman's books I've read. It didn't disappoint, I absolutely loved it! There was a whole theme with stories her grandmother had told her which were like fairy tales. I loved it.

• Tales From the Hinterland by Melissa Albert- I had this on my wish list and my parents got it for me for Christmas. I was really excited about it because it was all the fairy tales referred to in her other books. They were dark but I enjoyed them.

eBooks:

• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo- I listened to The Fire on High and liked it so much I decided to read more of Acevedo's books. I really loved this one. It reminded me of Brown Girl Dreaming because it was written as a series of poems. 

• Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo- I love Harjo's poetry so was excited when I realized she wrote a memoir. I love the way she writes. It was like reading poetry. 

• My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand- I thought this was a play on Jane Eyre so I was disappointed it was actually based on Lady Jane Grey. I still enjoyed it. I was excited when I saw the 2nd book in the series is a play on Jane Eyre. I added it to my to-read list.

• Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman- I was so excited to read this after finishing My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. It was really good. I didn't like it quite as much as the other book, but I really liked it. I'm starting to realize Fredrik Backman may be one of my favorite authors.

Audiobooks:

• Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev- I was in the mood for another Austen retelling and was super excited this one featured main characters of Indian descent. It was a modern take on Pride and Prejudice. I liked that she mixed up Lizzie and Darcy's characters. The female was the rich one and the roles were reversed with Darcy overhearing Trisha say negative things about him and hurting his pride.

• Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev- This was book #2 in The Rajes series. The first book was a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice and this one was Persuasion. There's a 3rd one coming out in July and I'm excited for it. Both of these were really good. It looks like the next book will be a modern take on Sense and Sensibility. I hope she does a book in this series to retell each of Austen's books!

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk- Goodreads kept recommending this book to me so I decided to try it. It was really interesting and touched on a lot of information about childhood trauma that was good to know as a teacher. He talked about fight, flight, or freeze and that really made sense to me. I've always been confused about fight or flight because neither of those responses are natural to me. Freeze makes so much more sense to me! I finished this book about a week before I was the victim of sexual battery while out on a run and looking back the timing of it is really crazy.

• We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly- I was scrolling through, looking for a new audiobook and saw this story centered around the Challenger Shuttle Mission. It was okay and I wasn't super into it. At the end there was a section about the astronauts on the Challenger Shuttle and, man, did I cry.