Recent Reads

Book Nerd (secular)... This is just a cute art book full of bookwork illustrations and sayings. A few made me laugh out loud ("Look at this! It's me!") and it took maybe 20 minutes to get through it cover-to-cover. 

Garden Anywhere (secular, nonfiction)... I have to do my garden as a container garden this year so this gave me some good advice. 

Keeping Holiday (Christian, middle grade)... This was such a great, well-written allegory! We have male and female cousins for protagonists so this one will appeal to both, I'd say ages 11-14.

Mom Set Free (Christian, nonfiction) ... Five-star read for me. I have a major propensity towards perfectionism in my parenting and this was incredibly helpful + fostered some truly awesome conversations with my kids!

More Than Enough by Kara Stephenson Anderson (Christian, nonfiction, homeschool books)... Very short read that I did enjoy and think will be quite soothing for new / unsure homeschoolers.  

Return from Tomorrow by George Ritchie (Christian, nonfiction, memoir)... This was another of my beloved near-death-experience / Heaven books and it was a good one! This book was short and super readable so I whipped through it in a couple of days. It left me feeling very moved and inspired to redirect my focus and once again work hard to live out the love and grace that God has given me.

Salt Fat Acid Heat (secular, cookbook)... I am no longer using cooking oil which absolutely changes everything! Because of this I have started to really explore tastes in food. For example, I adore salsa which is tomato and veggies and spices... but when I take those same ingredients and swap out the spices I have the blandest pasta sauce in the world. Why is that? Why does the salsa taste so amazing without olive oil while the pasta sauce hardly tastes like anything without it? I wanted to understand the science of food taste a little better. I did skim over quite a lot of this thick book as I was looking not to understand how to better cook with these ingredients but rather how they tick so I can make attempts at replacing them in my own way. Overall it was a fascinating read and I think it will be very helpful for anyone who is just cooking without restriction but it did not ultimately give me the information I had hoped for. LOVED all the watercolor! 

What Happens Next by Christina Suzann Nelson* (contemporary Christian fiction / time slip)... Five-star read for me, loved this book! I am going to call it a missing persons case but it's more than that. It isn't like a true suspense novel but I think suspense fans should give it a chance.

Writing Magic (middle grade, nonfiction, writing book)... This was a great writing book for kids around probably 5th through 7th grade. I had not read any of the books she wrote about but that did seem to be a problem.

*I received a free copy of What Happens Next and Return from Tomorrow in exchange for an honest review.