July Books

I've been reading a lot lately. So much I've been neglecting other stuffs I gotta do. But who ever really vacuums or cleans out their refrigerator anyway?

Here are the books I've read lately:

I could not stop laughing while I read this book. This guy is a Catholic comedian, so it's pretty clean. And absolutely hysterical. It's about him living with his 5 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment in New York. Greg and I would read together at night. Greg was finishing up Boys in the Boat and kept looking over at me because I couldn't stop giggling. 

This is a great book. It's about how our culture doesn't value cooking at home anymore, but there are a lot of benefits in doing that sort of stuff for yourself and now always being a "consumer." I like cooking, but this books still changed the way I thought about things. I do think American society today sort of has come to the conclusion that we should be paying other people to live our lives for us. We pay other people to decorate for us, cook for us, fix stuff in our houses, whatever. So while I didn't necessarily agree with all of Pollan's discussion points, I do like his overall theme that we shouldn't be afraid to live for ourselves. Really, that's a huge part of how I understand the gospel, too. 

This is the first time I've read any kind of Tolkien. I know, I know, I'm a book nerd and I should like Tolkien, blah blah blah. I have a lot of respect for Tolkien. I mean, the guy created a world, invented a language, and pioneered a genre. That's cool, you know? But...while I will finish the entire series at some point this year, I was not as impressed with The Lord of the Rings as I expected to be. Maybe I should have tried harder to keep track of all the bizarre names and stuff. (I didn't try that hard). I like Sam as a character and Strider, but that's kind of it. Frodo seems whiny to me. And what the heck is a balrog? Does anyone know? I guess it just wasn't as insightful as I wanted it to be. Epic-ly epic? Yes. Super insightful? Meh. 

I read this book as part of my family's book club. A sad book, but it ends with hope. I don't think Genova is an amazing writer necessarily, but she definitely is capable of taking something that seems distant and abstract--like early-onset Alzheimer's--and making you come to terms with the fact that this is a real, concrete problem for real people. That's a very valuable talent. 

I never know how to end these booky posts. So now I'm done. The end. Sayonara. Time to go make dinner.