In 2022, I’m setting monthly reading goals. You can see the 9 books I picked to read in January here. My book picks for February are coming tomorrow! Stay tuned!
I finished 10 books total in January — 4 were audiobooks and 6 were physical books. The 6 physical books I finished were from the stack I had chosen to read in January. Since I didn’t finish three from my January stack, I’m carrying those over to my February reading goals and prioritizing reading them at the beginning of the month.
My Honest Reviews From This Week
Here are my honest reviews of the the four books I finished this past two weeks:
Note: You can follow along with the books I finish this year and my star ratings over on GoodReads. Also, books are rated on a 1-5 star scale. I basically won’t finish a book if it’s one star (not worth my time!) and I’ll rarely give a book a 5-star rating unless it was just absolutely amazing or life-changing.
Fighting Forward
So many different sections of this book resonated with me deeply. It’s part memoir-ish, part essay-ish, but all around thought-provoking!
The idea for my word for the year, Stay, actually originated from reading the very first section of this book at the very beginning of the year. I slowly savored this book and didn’t want it to end. I appreciated the author’s vulnerability and her beautiful way with words.
I am guessing that her style of writing isn’t for everyone (I know a lot of people don’t love books that are more like a collection of essays with more poetic writing woven through), but I truly appreciated it and multiple sections will sit with me for a long time.
Verdict: 4 stars
The Flirtation Experiment
This book is an easy read written by two women who are in very different stages of life — one who has been married for years and is mostly an empty nester and one who has only been married for a few years and has young children. I found the perspectives at both ends of the spectrum to give the book a really good balance that you don’t often find in marriage books.
There are 30 chapters — each focusing on one aspect of deepening our relationship with our spouse. They are short and practical, but also honest. Each chapter ends with some ideas to implement the focus topic to build our marriage. It was convicting and challenging to me!
One of the things I especially appreciated was that they didn’t give formulaic answers, they recognized from the get-go that some wives are in really difficult marriages and that this book might not be a good idea to read and that they need counseling or need immediate help if they are in an abusive relationship.
Verdict: 4 stars
The Midnight Library
I’m not sure what I thought about this book. It had some sections and points that I really loved and some that I just didn’t at all. It also felt like it really developed slowly in the middle and I felt like it would have been better to have condensed it some.
I loved how it gave you fresh eyes to recognize the gifts that are in your life right now. I thought it fell very flat because it wasn’t written from a Christian perspective. There’s so much more to life than just trying to find your happiness!
But all in all, it was thought-provoking, so I’m giving it three stars! (Note: There is some crass language in it.)
Verdict: 3 stars
The Masterpiece
This book has been sitting on my shelf for a long time! I finally discovered that it was on Libby and I was excited because I was looking for a new audiobook to listen to!
While it’s long and I felt like some of the parts could have been edited down some, it’s a beautiful story of redemption. There’s a lot of real-ness and raw-ness woven in and it doesn’t tie all up neatly with a bow.
I also loved that there were themes of foster care in it that I didn’t know about when I started the book! And I thought it was such a great reminder how we never know what someone has walked through or how many deep wounds and hurts they are carrying around.
Verdict: 4 stars