What I Read in August 2018

And now, book talk!

I find libraries so relaxing. Ahhhhhhhh.

I'm going to start backtracking at the end of each month and go through everything I've read throughout the past month. Maybe you'll find something good to read, too! Side note: I'm still working through my Goodreads To Read list, and a LOT of that is nonfiction, so if you're not a huge nonfiction reader, bear with me while I plow through the rest of the list. I promise, I do read fiction! Sometimes I read heavy stuff; other times, I read lighter stuff, which is like a delicious dessert for your brain (I enjoy cheesecake, if anyone's offering). It all balances out. :)


1. Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living- Elizabeth Willard Thames

Ohhhhhh, I loved this. I really enjoy the Frugalwoods blog; her style is so relaxing and approachable, which makes for an incredibly engaging read. The book is written in the same style, telling the story of how Thames and her husband came to save up enough money to buy the rural homestead of their dreams and be financially independent. My goals and dreams aren't the same as hers, but I still found her story really inspiring.


2. Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions- Susan Tive and Cami Ostman

A collection of essays on women at various points in their religious journeys, in what you may or may not find extreme (as the authors cover in the foreword, extreme is in the eye of the beholder, or, in this case, the believer or non-believer). This wasn't *quite* what I was expecting, but still a very good read, as I'm a huge fan of reading about other people's experiences, especially when it comes to religion, which I've always found endlessly fascinating.


3.The Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien

I was lucky enough to be able to hear the author speak last week at a local high school as part of a parent education series. This book is a fictionalized account of a man's experiences before, during, and after the Vietnam War. Some of the experiences were very similar to what happened to the author; others were not, and he discussed that in his talk. It's moving and some parts are hard to read, but it's worth it to push through, because this is something that needs to be understood, as far as we can understand another person's wartime experience. My son's English class is reading this this year, so I'm curious as to how he'll perceive the book.


4. The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel: The Rise of a Village Theocracy and the Battle to Defend the Separation of Church and State- Louis Grumet with John Caher

If you're not familiar with Kiryas Joel, it's a village in New York whose residents are almost entirely Hasidic, of the Satmar sect. Their public school district has been very controversial, and this book deals with the first major legal case against that district. Again, it wasn't quite what I was expecting; there was a LOT of legal talk that was, on occasion, a bit over my head, but it was still fascinating.


5. The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World's Most Endangered Languages- K. David Harrison

Super fascinating book written by a linguist who travels around the world, documenting languages that are dying out or are in danger of dying out. Hopeful, heart-wrenching, intriguing...


6. Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America- Helen Thorpe

 Loved this! Thorpe documents the final parts of high school and all of the college years of four friends, all of whom were born in Mexico. Two are here legally; two don't have documents. The struggles that the undocumented young women faced are gutting, from healthcare to jobs to school, to driving legally, to being able to rent an apartment, to being able to care for their family and younger siblings... My heart absolutely broke for those two girls over and over again. This book was published in 2011 and I'm deeply curious as to how the women are faring today. If anyone knows of any updates, PLEASE let me know. This was a great, great book. I've read Helen Thorpe before and have enjoyed her, and I'm looking forward to reading more from her in the future.


7. Almost Amish: One Woman's Quest for a Slower, Simpler, More Sustainable Life- Nancy Sleeth

This started out well. The back cover made it seem like the author had gone on a journey to slow her life down, and here's what she tried, and here's what worked and what didn't, etc. She told the story of how she and her physician husband realized their lives weren't exactly working for them and how he quit his job and they reworked everything in accordance to their newfound religious faith.

I'm not particularly religious myself, but I have no problems reading about others' deeply held beliefs. Rachel Held Evans has some delightful books, and I deeply enjoyed John Pavlovitz's A Bigger Table (this one *really* made me think, which I appreciated!). I also really enjoy the writings of Rabbi Harold Kushner. But about halfway through, this book switched from pleasant to preachy, and I found myself disappointed.


8. What I Eat: Around the World In 80 Diets- Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusio

A large coffee table-style book, full of great photographs of people from all over, surrounded by a spread of everything they ate on that particular day. It's arranged by calories taken in, ranging from somewhere in the 800's to over 12,000. It was a pretty neat look at how diets differ based on not only where you live but what class you belong to. There's quite a bit of text in this photo-heavy book, so prepare to be holding this giant book up for a while!


9. Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America- Linda Tirado

Tirado wrote this book after a post she wrote on poverty went viral. There's a lot of hard truths in here about what life is like for poor people- what society demands from them (but not from others), how they're viewed and treated, the ways they help and hurt themselves (and sometimes they have good reasons for doing so). This is an excellent book. For me, it was preaching to the choir (but I'm still glad I read it, huge thanks to I Heart Tightwads for making me aware of this book). I haven't experienced the type of prolonged poverty that she has, but I've worked those jobs where management doesn't schedule you but threatens your job if you don't come in every single time they call you to come in an hour before they want you to start working (this was also the same job that forced me in after I'd been awake all night vomiting. Yes, it was retail. Yes, I worked face-to-face with customers, several of whom commented on my ghastly appearance. And we wonder why cold and flu season is so awful in this country? DING DING DING). I've been food insecure, I've had to put medical stuff off for financial reasons, and I was extremely lucky to have a dentist who worked with me on paying off an extremely large amount of dental work. Like Tirado, my dental issues were through no fault of my own- hyperemesis gravidarum is not good for your teeth- but I still dealt with people who judged me for their state, and I still felt that shame.

If you're sensitive to swear words, you should steel yourself before diving in, because she uses them a lot. I'm not bothered in the least, but even if you are, this is a really important book. I was surprised by the Goodreads reviews. It seemed to me that a *lot* of people there absolutely missed the entire point of the book, and that disappointed me. Far too many people ignore the humanity of others, and think that serving the public is an undignified job and thus the people who do it are worthy of their scorn and derision. If you've never worked a crappy retail job where customers threaten your life for policy created by someone that makes hundreds of times more than you, try it out and see how great it feels to make about fourteen cents a minute for that experience (that's actually more than I made when that happened to me. Yay, minimum wage!), and then try to pay rent and buy your kid new shoes and pay off that hospital bill from that surprise bout of pneumonia and see how grateful you feel to that employer. Tirado covers all of this and more.

Super important book right here, one that I feel like a lot of people could benefit from reading, because I see far too much scorn and disgust thrown at low-wage workers.



I finished a book today and started a new one, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep going with it. It's one my son recommended to me, and the writing style is very good, but I'm not sure I'm in the greatest headspace for it. It's rare for me to abandon a book, especially one from my To Read list, but I'm' already feeling a bit down because of my back issues (more about that on Monday's recap), so I might move on to something more appropriate for the place I'm at right now. :)


What about you? Read anything good lately?




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Things I Love: The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn

Have you ever had the course of your life completely altered by a book?

This was that book for me.

I was 19 or 20 the first time I read it. I'd always been frugal, saving my money for things that I really wanted and frequenting thrift stores and yard sales, but as an adult, I was surprised to learn that there were whole online communities of people out there like me. Entire online forums devoted to the practice of saving money? Sign. Me. Up. And then someone mentioned The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. They referred to this book as the bible of frugality, and of course, my penny-pinching brain was intrigued. Off to the library I trotted, and I came home with the hefty book tucked proudly under my arm.

My mind was blown by this book. Here was a woman who knew how to Get Things Done. She cooked from scratch (even when the pantry looked bare), sewed her six children Halloween costumes (out of a surplus of black fabric, so they could be whatever they wanted as long as it was something black), threw a party decorated with what was basically scraps from the trash and recycling bin... The list went on and on and I'd never been so impressed with anything in my life. I wanted to be just like Amy, and I set about incorporating her ways and ideals into my life.

And over the past *coughcoughletsnottalkaboutnumbers* years, I've done my best to live up to those ideals. I cook, bake, craft from cheap or free materials, decorate with what I have on hand and what I can scavenge inexpensively. I use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without, and so much of what I've learned has come from this wonderful book. It has a place of honor with my cookbooks and I pull it out several times a week to reference a recipe or thumb through for a tip on some topic or the other. Usually once every year, I'll sit down and page through the entire thing for frugality inspiration, to get myself back in the mindset of doing it myself.

Several of the recipes (the food processor pizza dough, Create-A-Muffin recipe, Real Tightwads Eat Quiche, Tuna Cheddar Chowder) have become staples around here. I learned to always compare unit pricing thanks to Amy, I got in the habit of creating my kids' Halloween and dress up costumes because of her, and I've used countless tips and hints throughout the book to make my home and daily life run easier. The Complete Tightwad Gazette absolutely made me the homemaker that I am.

This book is frugality inspiration between two covers. Has the book aged over the years? Of course. Some of the articles- healthcare, long distance plans, if you really need the internet at home- aren't exactly relevant these days, but the vast majority of the book has held up surprisingly well. Frugality is a mindset, and while you might not need to sew Halloween costumes out of leftover black fabric or find a use for your baby's old crib, it's still ridiculously inspiring to read about how Amy did those things, and it puts the reader in the mindset of, "What can I use up around here? How can I improve my quality of life using only the things I already own?"

If you've never checked this book out before, RUN, don't walk, to your local library. I suggest that first, but if you're anything like me, you're going to want your own copy (I'm on my THIRD. Yes, THIRD copy of this book. That's how useful it's been to me!). Amy Dacyczyn is a Woman Who Gets It Done, and I'm proud to say that she taught me how to Get It Done, too.

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Book review: A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen

"Have you read A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen?" a friend said recently in an online book discussion group. "It's this really great middle grade novel about life behind the Berlin Wall." Well. That's something I didn't know much about, and so onto my Goodreads list it went. Turns out my local library had it, and thus I grabbed it to read while I wait for my interlibrary loans to come in.

Gerta is a young German girl whose family is becoming more and more wary of the tense political atmosphere around them. After much discussion, her mother finally agrees with her politically active father that it's time to move, and he and Gerta's brother Dominic head out on a two day trip into Western Germany to secure an apartment and a job. In an amazing stroke of bad luck, the border is closed overnight, leaving Papa and Dominic trapped in the West, and Gerta, her brother Fritz, and Mama trapped in the East, the side controlled by the Soviets.

As Gerta grows, life becomes as gray as the wall. Food shortages are common, books are censored or banned, music from the West (like the Beatles) is forbidden. The Stasi (the brutal East German police force; for more info, check out Wikipedia's article) keep their guns trained on the citizens, and neighbors and friends are quick to inform on each other in order to keep the heat off their own backs. Teachers instruct students on how lucky they are to live in such a wonderful Communist country and how dastardly the West is, how immoral and full of misery. But if East Germany is so wonderful, Gerta ponders, why must they force their citizens to stay there upon pain of death?

Having spotted her father and brother at an observation point on the Western side of the wall, Gerta interprets his dance movements, which used to accompany a song about farming that he sang to her as a child, as him asking her to dig. But where? It takes a secret note passed on by a friend she's no longer sure she can trust to help her locate the site, and with a borrowed shovel, Gerta begins digging her way to freedom.

The best kind of books leave you unaware of the physical act of reading, and Nielsen's novel is one of those, easily forming pictures of gray skies, state-sponsored fear, and the dirt-streaked yet hopeful face of a young girl in the reader's mind. Gerta is a wonderfully strong character, never losing her drive or resolve despite her country's determination to quash all indications of individuality. Her fear of losing her brother to the Stasi, her sadness over the end of a lifelong friendship with Anna, her longing to be reunited with her father and brother, every emotion leaps off the page and turns Gerta's plight into one that could easily be our own today, if we're not more careful.

This is a superb book, one I hope will be on the reading lists of middle schools and junior highs around the country. I knew very, very little about the divide between Western and Eastern Germany before this; I learned a little in grade school, and I vaguely (very vaguely) remember the Berlin Wall coming down, but past that, my history education pretty much stopped once World War II ended. Modern history is definitely something I need to focus on more, and this was a fantastic introduction, both in that it was a fabulously well-written story, and that it drove me to want to learn more.

Are there historical time periods you've realized you don't know much about?

Book review: A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

Imagine a walk on the beach. The sand under your feet, the sun shining ahead, the call of birds in the distance, a power plant to your right, the strong smell of...is that some sort of solvent? And is that a half-stripped deer carcass over there? And what's all this trash doing here???

Equipped with a deep love of Lake Michigan (pictured above), author Loreen Niewenhuis decided to undertake a walk on its beaches- a long walk, all the way around. Clocking 1,019 miles at journey's end, Niewenhuis began at Chicago's Navy Pier, touring the lake counterclockwise, through towns, industrial areas, tourist havens, and deep forests with no signs of human life. She walked through various types of weather; occasionally she walked with friends and family, but mostly, she walked alone, allowing for deep contemplation of the lake, humanity and its relationship to nature, and herself.

This story is beautifully written, one of goal setting and determination, a love letter to the lake and a plea to the people who live on it and make the laws controlling it. Niewenhuis wonders over the natural beauty of the lake and the diversity of the wildlife that flock to it, but laments the way it's been not just changed, but devastated over the years. Industry has polluted Lake Michigan in shocking, terrifying ways, and invasive species such as zebra mussels and round goby have severely damaged the biodiversity of the fish population (and many of the remaining fish found in the lake are unsafe to eat). Time and again, she mourns what the lake could be, should be, if only humans would learn to live with it, instead of demanding that the lake serve us.

I'd been aware of some of the problems of the lake, but not to this extent. I live close enough to Lake Michigan that my drinking water comes from there (the water in the middle of the Lake is known to be potable; Niewenhuis drank filtered lake water on her journey, which, after reading her tales of all the chemical spills, and chemical and waste dumping that has taken place in the lake, I consider that pretty brave!), and I was extremely dismayed to read about how carelessly the lake has been treated practically since the beginning of white settlement (the native population lived more in harmony with the world around them). "I began to formulate the idea that the most invasive species of all is probably man," Niewenhuis says, and she's not wrong.

There's a lot to admire about Niewenhuis's journey, her love of the lake, and her persistence (she was back out there just days after being hospitalized for gallbladder issues so severe, her pancreas was affected). Loreen Niewenhuis is an amazing example of not only finishing what one starts, but also delving deeply into a personal passion. She's continued her walks, strolling the shores of all five Great Lakes and exploring the Great Lakes islands. I'm inspired by her drive, her follow-through, and her passion for the natural world, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more about her 1,000 mile walks.

And I'll be keeping a closer eye on the news regarding the health of Lake Michigan, and demanding that my representatives act as better stewards of this amazing resource. You should too.

Because this little girl, and all the other girls and boys out there deserve a clean, healthy lake.


(All photos come from our trip last summer to Traverse City and the surrounding areas.)