Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

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If Only I Could Tell You (3 stars): This book covers many, many serious and heavy subjects and it’s about what secrets do to a family. How what we think we know about others (even our closest family members) can determine the course of our whole life and can also be completely wrong. As I was reading this, I felt like the author couldn’t decide whether this should be a serious book or more of a light one. There are a long list of very serious subject matter in this book including suicide, serious illness, miscarriage, and it covers deeply broken relationships between husband and wife and daughter-parent and siblings and yet, there topics aren’t really handled at depth (maybe in an effort not to have the book become too heavy?) which left me a bit unsatisfied. I still enjoyed reading the story quite a bit.

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Permission to Feel (4 stars): “But the trigger is inside us, not out there. We have to take responsibility for our actions rather than shift the blame elsewhere. It may not have felt like a choice, but it surely was—we decide how we’ll respond to life’s provocations.”

I find it interesting that so many people are unhappy with the title of this book. The way I interpreted it was that if we really own the feelings we have, name them, and let ourselves feel them, we can then decide how to respond to them. To be able to get to the place of responding it’s really important to actually feel your feelings. Lack of awareness, lack of naming, are, in my opinion, all ways in which we don’t always give ourselves permission or space to feel the feelings. Maybe I misinterpreted what the title was trying to say but alas this interpretation made the title totally make sense for me.

I’ve seen Marc Brackett live before when he visited the elementary school my kids attended at the time, I’ve sent my kids to SEL-heavy schools all the way from elementary to high school. I believe strongly in Marc’s assertion that a high EQ is going to be crucial to one’s success in life. So I was already a primed audience for this book.

And it didn’t disappoint. I think the parts where the book shines are where the author shares his own journey and experiences. I wish there were more of that. I like the RULER framework: recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating. I’ve found journaling can really help me with the first three and I am constantly working on the latter two. 

It was painful to read the chapter on emotions at home and understanding how much of my learning comes from my own history and how much I am impacting my children’s story. I am grateful that there are opportunities to course-correct but I also am reminded how much more I have to work on this in my home (and in my work!) 

Even if the title makes you uncomfortable, or maybe especially then, I would recommend this read. IMHO, emotions are there whether we acknowledge them or not and they have the capacity to wreak havoc when we don’t.

thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

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The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae (3.5 stars): I liked this sweet novel about a girl who gets a heart transplant and is learning how to live on her own, make her own decisions, choose her path. Her relationship with her mom is the heart of this novel, in my opinion. Her grief, her hope, her resolve, her gratitude, and her learning how to navigate life are all the highlight of this sweet novel.

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The Family Upstairs (3 stars): I didn’t read all the reviews of this book until after I was done. I am not sure if that would have deterred me from reading it but it probably would have helped me get a sneak peek into how totally messed up the plot is. I loved the way the seemingly unrelated characters came together in this super twisted story. It was a great little escape if you’re looking for a quick, fast-paced read that has twists and turns as long as you don’t mind the relatively creepy subject matter.

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A Warning (3 stars): Not even sure why I read this. There was nothing new here and while it was a short, quick read, it towed the line between trying to be preachy, sensationalist, and informative. For me, it ended up being none of them and mostly just a waste of time. 

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The Starless Sea (3 stars): I can’t even begin to explain how excited I was to read this book. The Night Circus was one of my favorite reads (and an amazing listen) and I was beyond excited that the author had a new book coming. Alas, this one didn’t end up working as well for me. So much so that I took a long break to see if I would get into it more if I walked away for a bit. 

There are many, many fantastic and glowing reviews of this book so I know that your experience might be very different. The language and writing are beautiful, the characters are interesting, and this author just knows how to weave stories together. While I didn’t love this particular one, I will continue to read anything Erin Morgenstern writes for as long as she continues to write.

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And there we go, a bunch of reading this week, ending my week is 360 reads for the year. Here’s to another great week next week.

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Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

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Love Lettering (4 stars): I really enjoyed my time with this sweet story. The blurb tells you most of the plot of the book. Meg’s a letterer and Reid and his wife-to-be are her clients. A year later, Reid finds her and asks about the message she’d hidden in their wedding announcements. 

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot since there is a bit of a twist towards the end of the book (which I guessed somehow) but this isn’t a mystery novel so it’s not really about the plot. The characters are fun and each uniquely interesting and the main character was developed enough to make the story enjoyable for me. In many romances, the characters seem to be cardboard versions of themselves, with the author not feeling the need to develop the characters fully in favor of developing the romance/electricity. In this novel, I felt both of the characters were developed enough that they felt real to me. Even the secondary characters like Meg’s roommate, the client Lark, and the women at the store were all fun additions to the story without seeming completely one-dimensional.

I love lettering and I love numbers so the extra layers of Meg’s job and Reid’s job were an added bonus for me. If romance is your genre, I am pretty sure you’ll enjoy this one.

thank you to netgalley and Kensington Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

ps: this book also has the honor of being my 100th netgalley read this year 🙂

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The Man Who Solved the Market (3.5 stars): This was an easy, interesting read. The author states from the very beginning that the ex- and current employees don’t like to talk about the company and Simons didn’t want him to write the book. It’s clear that while there’s a bunch of research, the book, to me, didn’t come alive the way some of the similar books in the genre do. The characters didn’t seem 3-dimensional and the story didn’t have the spark it needed to move from a research project to a compelling book. It didn’t really come alive off the page the way I had hoped it might. The reader is left with some interesting tidbits about Simons and Renaissance but not the real essence of what made them tick. Still found it to be quite readable and enjoyed my time with it.

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After the End (4 stars): I put off reading this book for a long time because I was worried that the plot would make me too sad. And it really did. Deciding whether to pull the plug on your child’s life support would easily wreck any parent, let alone when the two parents disagree. These types of experiences strain a marriage so much and that’s partially the focus of this story. Many people wrote in the reviews that they didn’t like the second half of the novel where the narrative splits in half and you get a Sliding Doors like experience of finding out how each choice would have turned out. 

But I loved it. 

I didn’t necessarily find each of the narratives super-engaging but what I loved was the way it highlighted how there’s no “right” choice in this scenario and how regardless of what path they had chosen, their relationship would still have taken the intolerable tax of losing a child. To me, this demonstrated how impossible the choice was. It was a great example of showing and not telling.

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The Color of Style (3 stars): I’ll be really honest here, I hate shopping. I would have never picked this book up if it weren’t for a work friend who said she had a meeting with Zyla and raved about him. In fact, I am absolutely sure he’s fantastic in person. The problem, in my opinion, is that his unique and very personal talent is hard to translate into a book. Finding these very unique colors that will suit you perfectly is something that requires a really keen eye for subtle differences. It’s hard for an ordinary person to do it, in my opinion. I loved much of the advice here and found myself wishing that I had already had a personal appointment and knew my colors so I could read this book and figure out how to start turning over my closet. It does have good tips for people who don’t like shopping and how to build it out slowly. As with most things, there’s no easy magic bullet here, you can’t replace a personal experience with a book. It was still enjoyable to read.

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I Will Never See the World Again (3.5 stars): I was born and raised in Turkey so when my childhood friend who lives in London recommended I read this book, I added it to my list. It took several more months for it to come to the United States but I finally got it from the library this week. Like Dawn, the author of this book is also in jail. Unlike Dawn, this is a non-fiction novel and not stories. 

I don’t know enough about the politics and truth behind so much of what happened during the coup and this particular author’s part (or lack thereof) in it. So I can’t really speak to that, but I can say that this book is powerful and full of beautiful imagery and gives you a glimpse of how inconsistent and nonsensical the legal process (or lack thereof) can be.

I am glad I read it.

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The Bromance Book Club (4 stars): This book was super fun. After several heavy reads, I needed something light and quick. I didn’t really know what the plot was but it looked like it would be exactly what I needed and it totally was. I read the whole book in one breath. I loved the characters and the playful plot. I saw a review that said this was a feminist romance, I am not sure I’d qualify it that way but there are strong female characters in it which can sometimes be not common in a romance. It also was awesome that this is about romance within a marriage which is definitely rare. That last bit is what moved it from a 3.5 to a 4 star for me!

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Saving Francesca (4 stars): And I hear nothing because it’s like the volume button has been turned down on our lives and nobody has anything to say anymore.

It took me a while to get into this novel. I had added this to my to-read list a while back and checked and rechecked it out of the library before I finally settled down to read it. Once I got about 30% of the way in, I didn’t want to do anything but keep reading this book. I thought about the characters the whole time and really wanted to know how the story turned out. 

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, “We’re pregnant.” I want to go around the neighborhood saying, “We’re depressed.” If my mum can’t get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it’s eating us alive.

The story had a lot of flaws, in my opinion. the secondary characters weren’t well developed. The dad seemed a bit more cartoonish for most of the novel (except some fantastic sections) and while I felt like the descriptions of depression and its impact on the family were very realistic, acute and palpable in this novel, I felt like the ending and the story behind Francesca’s mom’s journey of how she got there was a bit cleaner than I would have liked. All this is messy and I wished the book had not resolved as much. Even though I also think that definitely does happen (it did to me.) I still wish it was a bit messier.

All in all, this was still a great book. The teenagers in the book were honestly portrayed and were richly developed. I loved reading it.

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Once More We Saw Stars (3.5 stars): It was really interesting to read this book after I read After the End which was a fictional novel based on a true event that happened to the author. I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to read two novels around a kid dying in one week. The nonsensical nature of the death of their daughter makes this story so very heart-wrenching and such a terrible reminder that life is precarious and can change on you in a moment. The pain and heartache of this couple is so acute and so hard to read. 

And yet it’s also hopeful in so many ways. The couple stays together through this horrible experience that usually breaks most marriages. They have another baby and continue to honor their daughter and her memory. 

It broke my heart but I am glad I read it.

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And there we go, a bunch of reading this week, ending my week is 360 reads for the year. Here’s to another great week next week.

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Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

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Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts (3 stars): As many other reviews also said, this story starts strong and then just fizzles. The premise is quite intriguing and I liked all of the characters a lot, too, especially Dex who was a pleasure to read. All in all, the story didn’t finish as strong as it started and I think it could have been a third shorter while still staying strong. I still enjoyed my time with it.

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Everything My Mother Taught Me (5 stars): Alice Hoffman was the whole reason I requested the Inheritance series from netgalley. I’ve been a fan of Hoffman and her wonderful writing. This story did not disappoint. 

Adeline’s dad dies when she’s twelve and her mom accepts a job looking after two lighthouses. Her mom is selfish, unkind and is pretty much looking out for number one. This is the story of all the havoc she causes when she enters the lives of the three families living at the lighthouses and the impact it has on Adeline and the story of Adeline’s redemption. Mothers and daughters are always complicated and it’s just so in this powerful story.

This is one of the five books in Amazon’s Inheritance series. “A collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones.”

Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer
Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman
The Lion’s Den by Anthony Marra 
Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh
The Weddings by Alexander Chee

Thank you to netgalley and amazon for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Weddings (3.5 stars): This one wasn’t my favorite of the series, but I did enjoy it quite a bit especially all the little details around weddings and the pressure they put on the attendees and how the dynamics of what it means to attend a wedding as a gay couple has changed. It was interesting to read.

The main character goes back and forth in time giving glimpses to his history with the groom and glimpses into the struggles around finding your identity, your belonging and being unclear about where you stand with a person and then the awkwardness of being at their wedding (such a special occasion) after not having seen them for years and years. There’s so much packed into a short story. 

This is one of the five books in Amazon’s Inheritance series. Thank you to netgalley and amazon for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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The Lion’s Den (3.5 stars): “Honesty comes in an infinite variety, none crueler than a teenager’s tedium.”

This story of a father-son relationship. A boy who’s father took an action that put his whole family’s life in jeopardy and forever changed the rest of his teenage son’s life. A father who is both famous and infamous. Who’s both revered and reviled. A family who didn’t make the choice but was thrust into the consequences. 

“I’d forgotten conversations with Jimmy Massaro are spectator sports. He has an uncanny ability to speak to himself even while looking you in the eye.”

This is a story about this boy coming back to be with his dad as he dies. The story of what it means to forgive, to turn one’s life into a story, to have your whole identity wrapped up in something that was never even your choice. The consequences of ego. Does time heal wounds? So many questions in such a short story. 

“The good news is that adolescence is a disorder whose physical effects are invariably treated by time. Emotionally and psychologically, it is, for some, incurable.”

This is one of the five books in Amazon’s Inheritance series. Thank you to netgalley and amazon for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Zenith Man (4 stars): “Harold Pardee was as close to a stationary object as a person could possibly be.”

I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I liked this story a lot and it stayed with me after I finished it. This is the story of Harold’s wife whom he finds dead one morning and due to her recluse nature, no one has ever met her (except one person) and knew about her existence. There is a lot of suspicion around her death but how can Harold prove he didn’t kill someone whom no one even knew existed? It’s a weird but still intriguing premise.

This is one of the five books in Amazon’s Inheritance series. Thank you to netgalley and amazon for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Can You Feel This? (5 stars): As a mother, this was one of the stories I enjoyed the most. I could feel all the hesitation, excitement, joy, anxiety, worry, frustration the main character had and the helplessness around trying to nurse your baby and not being able to. There were so many moments in this story that I loved, the best friend who comes in and takes charge, the cleaning lady who ends up being the only one who can actually help, the lactation consultant who is harsh and unhelpful. On and on, so many real characters that stay with you long after you’re done. A powerful short story. This is one of the five books in Amazon’s Inheritance series. Thank you to netgalley and amazon for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Big Dreams, Daily Joys (4 stars): I’m a huge goal-setter and have at times followed Elise on different online platforms. I was excited to read her book on goal setting/getting things done and it did not disappoint. I liked how clear she was with some of the concepts:

“There are three reasons why you don’t get your to-do list items accomplished: lack of time, lack of communication, or lack of interest.” 

Yep and it’s helpful to know which is in which state so I can be clear so that I know what I need to do to move them to a different state.

Even though she quotes the idea from someone else, I loved the idea of looking at my life as an inbox and seeing what’s noise and what’s spam and what I actually signed up for. Lately I’ve been obsessed with the signal to noise ratio in several areas of my work, no reason I can’t think the same way about my life as a whole.

“The fact that you made something you didn’t love today doesn’t matter when you have to make something again tomorrow. This is the power of daily creative projects. You can’t dwell because you have to keep going.”

Yes! This is exactly why I love working on daily projects. It takes my ruminating self out of the equation. I can’t spend too much time overthinking it. I do it today, I move on because I have to do it again tomorrow. This is how I treat my daily drawing for insta: some days I love it and other days it’s a disaster, either way I move on. 

I also loved the five-year plan. I’ve never made one and five years still seems too much to me at this stage of my life, but three doesn’t seem undoable and I think it would still be hugely valuable so I am planning on taking some time with it.

All in all, if you’re a planner and doer and like having projects, I recommend this pretty and inspiring book.

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Payoff (4 stars): “As people feel connected, challenged, and get more recognition for their efforts, the total amount of motivation, joy, and output for everyone grows much larger.”

I don’t think it’s possible for Dan Ariely to write a book that’s anything but fascinating. His areas of study are so interesting, so relevant and his work is always so thought-provoking. This short book is no exception. This book focuses on motivation. How we’re motivated, why we’re motivated that way and what’s the best way to motivate your employees. As always, the answers are not intuitive. The strongest motivators are trust, acknowledgement, goodwill, long-term focus, and creating meaningful things, legacy, etc. This is a short book to read and yet impactful, my favorite kind of nonfiction.

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Half-Truths and Semi-Miracles (4 stars): This tiny short story is really just an appetizer of Anne Tyler but I am such a fan that I’ll take appetizers. I know she has a new book coming out in 2020 as well thankfully! This is the story of Susanna who has a gift for healing people, or does she? My favorite thing about Tyler’s stories is her ordinary characters that you fall in love with and root for and journey alongside. I can’t wait for her new novel. If you’re like me and will enjoy any sampling of Tyler, you’ll love this.

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Worry-Free Living (3 stars): I have mixed feelings about this book. While I really enjoyed the topics of each of the essays and really loved the lessons and thought-provoking perspective, the writing itself felt really choppy and off to me. I am not sure if this is a translation and was just poorly translated or if the author’s style is choppy like this. But either way it made it harder for me to connect with the text.

Here’s an example:

“With that said, if you want to avoid divorce, my advice for you is to offer your partner praise.” 

If this said something like, “regular and genuine praise fuels a marriage and helps foster love,” etc. I’d totally be feeling positively encouraged to do so. And yet this phrasing makes me anxious and worried that I better do what he says or I might not be able to avoid divorce. For a book about worry-free living, it’s making me worry!

I understand it’s not intended this way (or I hope not!) but because there are many examples like this, it’s hard for me to connect with the content as much as I’d like to. 

With gratitude to netgalley and IRH press for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Everyone’s A Critic (4 stars): This was a funny, ironic little story bashing both critics and mass-reviewers (in my opinion.) In fact, I feel like Weiner had fun with a bunch of different concepts in this short story. It’s about the changing face of literary criticism, about critics themselves, about the changing ownership and perspective of publishing and how to cater to new audiences. It’s about revenge, too. But most of all it read to me like Weiner was just having fun writing it. I had a lot of fun reading it.

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Universal Methods of Design (4 stars): If you’re interested in design and design methodology this is a fantastic resource. With 125 research methods, it’s absolutely a comprehensive reference with short explanations and clear examples of each method to ensure you can see the application of each method. I really enjoyed my time with this book and as someone who works closely with the User Experience and User Experience Research teams, I feel like I understand some of the methodology so much more clearly now. with gratitude to netgalley and quarto publishing for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

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All This Could be Yours (3.5 stars): Attenberg’s novel was painful to read. I find her to be a good writer and her characters always seem real, albeit so different from me that it’s a bit hard for me to connect with them. I still find myself enjoying her writing, her characters and her stories because they feel honest and real. I might not connect with the characters’ choices or actions but I connect with their pain and suffering and frustrations etc because I can almost acutely feel it come off the page. This novel was no different. At its center the toxic Victor and the pain that toxicity caused to everything and everyone around it. How we carry our scars around with us for a long time and how this type of damage can pass from generation to generation. It’s painful and observant and sad and anger-inducing. Which is why it feels so real.

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Love Poems for Married People (4 stars): I loved, loved this little book of poems. They are funny, so-well-observed, and so sweetly genuine. I connected with some much more than others, of course, but as a whole I felt it was deeply delightful. Many of these are laugh-out-loud funny, several are really sweet and the very last one is an homage to his wife. I guarantee you will enjoy at least one poem in this set.

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Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (5 stars): This was up there as one of my favorite non-fiction reads of this year (Invisible Women is going to hold the top spot there). It was honest, interesting, funny at parts, sad at others and just a fascinating book to read mostly because it wasn’t too shy to talk about the parts that most people choose not to share, the ugly, the hidden, the parts of our life that make us look less than great that we wish we could sweep under some rug. There are a handful of patients and Lori’s own story of her seeing a therapist. There are details but no names, it’s not sensationalized but more tender, open and imperfect. I appreciated her therapist insights, her peek into the thinking of a therapist when you’re a patient, and her experience with getting her own therapy. The story is compellingly told and I found myself wanting to keep listening, not out of morbid curiosity (as this could have easily become) but out of genuine care.

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And there we go, a lot of reading this week, due to many short reads. Here’s to another great week next week.

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Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.