I suppose I shouldn’t be putting this up already, as there is still another day, but I’m feeling pretty confident that I won’t finish another book between now and then.

August was a weird reading month for me.  I went “back” to work “full-time” on the first.  If you know me, you understand the quotation marks.  I actually never left work or went down to part-time. I just don’t get paid for all the time I put in during the summer months. Nevertheless, the start of the school year is always a stressful time and I didn’t finish my first book until the 13th.  After that, however, I was able to pick up the pace.

Here’s my list!

• Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way – Shauna Niequist – a beautiful collection of essays written during a tough season in the author’s life.  I haven’t read anything by Niequist that I haven’t liked. My only complaint is that every time I read them, I get hungry.
• You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life – Eleanor Roosevelt – there is a lot of wisdom packed into this small book.
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier – fantastic read!  Rebecca is incredibly creepy without any gratuitous horror or violence. I loved it.
• Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow – interesting, but I struggled to finish. As with many biographies, I found it a bit dry.
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford – I love historical fiction and often find myself immersed somewhere in the 1940s, but this is the first time I’ve heard the story through the eyes of Japanese Americans.
• Kidnapped – Dee Henderson – This book was previously published under the title True Courage, which I may have read, but if I did I never remembered the ending during the reread.  Henderson’s work isn’t going to win major literary awards but she tells an engrossing story well and I can easily finish them in a day or two.  I needed that after reading Alexander Hamilton.
• Wild and Free: A Hope-Filled Anthem for the Woman who Feels She is Both Too Much and Never Enough – Jess Connelly & Hayley Morgan – Not my favorite memoir/Christian living of the year but they definitely speak Truth.
• Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town – Jon Krakauer – major trigger warning with this one. Krakauer sticks to the facts, and I appreciated his style.  Even though it is clearly nonfiction, it almost reads like a novel. An important read, but a difficult one.

This brings my total for the year to 68 books.  I’m cautiously optimistic that I will indeed reach 100 again by the end of the year.