Books July 30th through Aug 12th

I have actually listened to and read a few in this time period!

 I finished The Murder Room and just as I said before it was not that good. The cases were interesting as a true crime buff. Most of them I had read about or watched on forensic shows and the back story was something I was glad to hear. This book though could have been so much more than it was.

After finishing The Murder Room I picked up The Feast Nearby. This one was a disappointment also. The author writes well but I do not feel like the book lived up to what it was billed as. She makes some valid points about local living/eating but I never felt progress from her.

I did finish The Feast Nearby fairly quickly as good portions of the book is recipes. After that one I moved on to Men Explain Things to Me  which started out good. I am not sure that I completely agreed with everything in the book, as a feminist and the mother of boys I think there needs to be more balance in the way men are portrayed. Not all men are hateful oppressors and using the words " there are some nice men out there" smacks of the same prejudice as saying " I have black friends".

Once finished with Men Explain Things to Me which was very short I picked Little House in the Suburbs. I had previously started this book and not finished it so I thought this would be a good time to finish. There is some really good information in this book and it is set up in sections so you could skip say the goat chapters if you did not have any interest in raising goats. There were a couple of things I disagreed with but felt the book is worth reading. I did get some helpful information from it even though I am already doing some of the stuff. In order to do everything they suggest you would have to be at home all the time. I do not have the time to make everything including my condiments from scratch and rotate them out on a schedule since they do not keep like store bought. I will just pick my battles and maybe someone with more time will choose to do all the options listed.

I actually finished Little House in the Suburbs today at lunch and picked up another from my huge stack. I started on How Not to Die by Dr. G. This one has been on my list since 2011 so I am excited to see what information it holds.

As far as books I have been listening to. I ended up not going right back to Factory Man and instead listened to Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking. This was an excellent if incredibly sad book. She does jump around a lot as memories hit her but you get a real sense of her struggle to move on and deal with the immense grief she feels after the loss of her husband.

After finishing Joan Didion's book  I went back to the long Factory Man. I am within an hour of being done with this book and almost can not wait. While I love the subject and the information in the book which was very well researched I am ready for it to be finished!!!