What I Read: October

I had a rare trifecta this month where the book and ebook I was reading were both amazing and I was also loving my audiobook! Usually I have at least one that is kind of meh. It made it hard to decide whether to read my book or ebook during free time because I liked them both so much! I read Sharp Things, Other People's Houses, and The House Girl all at the same time and they were 3 of my favorite books for the month! We had some more nice outdoor reading weather and I got to enjoy it a bit more than last month. I'm not close to finishing any books so I won't have anything to add tomorrow and figured I'll go ahead and post this today instead of posting over the weekend.

Books:

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls- This was a book someone brought to book club as an option, but we ended up voting to read a different book. I was interested in it and mentioned it to my mom. She said it was good so when I found it at Goodwill, I picked it up. It reminded me a lot of Educated because of Jeannette's childhood and her lack of reliable parental figures/parents with likely mental illness.

• The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins- I expected the book charmer to be the main character of this story and was disappointed at first that she was more of a secondary character. I was initially drawn into the story and then I felt like it was a bit slow for the first section, but I ended up loving it!
  

• The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon- I saw this at a Little Free Library I was donating books to and decided to borrow it. I felt like October was a great time to read about psychopaths so I decided to read it this month. It was definitely interesting.

• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn- When I returned the psychopath book and the other book I borrowed from the Little Free Library, along with adding a few other books I've picked up at Goodwill and read, I saw this one and decided to borrow it. It's not one I would normally pick but with it being October I was in the mood for something creepy and I thought this would fit the bill. I really loved this book. It was so strange and kept me guessing and second-guessing for most of the book. Now I want to read Gone Girl because that book is the reason I recognized this author's name.

• Not Like the Movies by Kerry Winfrey- This was the sequel to Waiting for Tom Hanks but from the best friend's perspective. I absolutely loved both of these books. They were cheesy like a Nora Ephron movie, but I loved them. It still stands true that I can read things as books that I wouldn't like as a movie. If they made this book into a movie I'd watch it, but it would probably make me cringe.
  
  
  

• Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik- There was so much I loved about this book. RBG was such an amazing person and by the time I finished this book I felt like we were friends. Her love story with Marty was really something special and him empowering her to do the things she did in the 60's and 70's were truly remarkable. 
  
  
  

• Tempted by P.C. and Kristin Cast- This was book 6 in the House of Night series and the last one until book 9 from the ones my friend gave me. This series is killing me because the whole book is drawn out without any action until the last 50-100 pages and then the book ends in the middle of the action. I don't want to read them anymore because that is driving me crazy! So far the first 6 books have spanned 2 months in the main character's life. Seriously, ladies, you are killing me! But I have to know how things end so I'll keep going with the series even though it's driving me nuts!

eBooks:

• Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman- I put this on hold a long time ago, I think after I read one of her other books, and totally forgot about it. When it came in I was super excited and stopped reading the ebook I was working on so I could read this one. I read The Garden of Small Beginnings and The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by this author and was excited to read another one of her books. I absolutely loved this one and it was my favorite of her books I've read. I liked that the main character from The Garden of Small Beginnings made a little cameo in this book so you got to see what happened in her life after that book ended. I'm excited to read her newest book now.
  
  
  

• Officer Clemmons by Francois S. Clemmons- This is the book I was reading when Other People's Houses came in. I didn't mind taking a break from it because I had just finished a section getting  ready to start Part III so it was a good stopping point. This book was interesting and I especially liked reading about his relationship with Fred Rogers.

• Love in the Afternoon by Karen Hawkins- I loved The Book Charmer and when I looked at the author on Goodreads, I was super excited to see this book was described as Dove Pond #0.5. I loved all the characters in Dove Pond and the sweet, little town itself. I was really hoping Hawkins had more stories set in the town. This one was really good but also short. The first part of the story felt like the first half of a book and then all the sudden the last chapter wrapped up everything that could have been drawn out into the second half of a book. I would have liked it more as a novel than a novella.

Audiobooks:

• The Truth is Marching on: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham- When I saw the narrator for this book, I decided to get it as an audiobook. I've liked most the books I've read by Meacham and I was really interested in reading about Lewis. This book did give me hope as it went back through Lewis' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's and how long it took for real change to take place. It gives me hope for our future.
  

• The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle- This is the 2nd Sherlock Holmes book. I didn't like it nearly as much as the first one. It may have been in part because I listened to it as an audiobook. But it was also racist and that detracted from the story for me as well.

• Women Talking by Miriam Toews- This was based on a true story of sexual assault that occurred in a Mennonite colony. At first I was super irritated that it was a story about women but it was narrated by a man. As the story progressed I realized the need for a male narrator to give an outside view of the story so you could empathize with all the women involved rather than seeing mainly through the lens of one of the women involved. In that way you were given a broader perspective. It was also interesting to see how religion can affect women in colonies like these where they don't have a voice.  

• The House Girl by Tara Conklin- I really liked The Last Romantics so I put Conklin's other book on my list. I liked this one even more than her newer one. When I saw the audiobook was narrated by Bahni Turpin, I decided to get it as an audiobook. Per usual she did an amazing job! The story was told from the perspective of a slave in the 1840's/1850's and a lawyer working a reparations case in current day. It was so good.
  

• The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal- I loved this book. I kept seeing it on Libby and decided to see what it was about. The only bad thing was all the talk about brewing beer made me want to drink a beer every time I was done listening to the book! The narrator on this one was perfect.