What I've Been Reading Lately

1. Paper Towns by John Green: I'm guessing most people have heard of this one. It's by the same author who wrote The Fault in Our Stars. It is about a boy and a girl in high school. The girl runs away and leaves clues for the boy to follow her. It was suspenseful and had some romance, but it was a bit slow at parts and I was super disappointed by the ending.

2, Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent: I really loved this book. It is about a midwife in the 70's in Berkeley, California. The book talks about how she went from being a labor and delivery nurse to being a midwife. It was interesting to hear a lot of different birth stories from the perspective of a midwife. I read this one during the summer and it almost convinced me to have a home birth ;).

3. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare: This is a classic book that most of us read in middle school. I don't remember ever reading it though, so when I saw it on a fall book list I decided to give it a try. It's about a teenage girl who moves from Barbados to New England during the 1600s. She is not used to all the strict rules of her Puritan cousins and has a hard time adjusting, and later is accused of being a witch. This book was slightly on the boring side but maybe that's just because it's meant for a younger audience.

4. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson: This book is kind of hard to describe so I'll take a description from goodreads. "Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?" I liked this book, but it wasn't my favorite. I thought it was a little predictable. Apparently this is the first book of the series but I have never read any of the others. 

5. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosenay: This book is about a young girl in 1942 who locks her younger brother in a secret cabinet on the same day her family is taken to a concentration camp. In the modern day a woman tries to uncover what really happened to the girl and her brother. I found this book on a display of librarians picks at the library. It was a really good book. Although it was a sad book because of the Holocaust aspect, I felt like it had a good balance of realism and idealism.

6. The Gift of Giving Life by Felice Austin: I first read this book last winter and I decided to read it again now that I'm pregnant. I love this book! It is definitely one of my favorites. It is an LDS book about pregnancy and birth. It compares motherhood with the Atonement, as well as with other doctrines of the gospel like patience, fear, preparedness etc. It is also full of birth stories (which I love) but these ones have a more spiritual approach that I haven't really found with other birth stories. It has given me a new perspective to pregnancy and birth and helped to make motherhood as a whole so much easier. I would highly recommend this one!

7. The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright: This book is based on a true story about a husband and wife living in a garbage dump in Cambodia with their sick baby. They make their living by searching the dump everyday for recyclables to sell. Although the couple and their story is true, the author adds in a fictional plot about how the mother is taught to read by the woman who collects the rent. I thought the story was interesting and it definitely made me grateful for all the modern conveniences we have. However I am more interested in what aspects of the book were actually true. Apparently the author's son was a BYU student who went to Cambodia and made a documentary about the couple on whom the story is based. I am dying to see the documentary and find out what is actually real.


Has anyone read any of these books? What were your thoughts? If you have any book suggestions for me I would love to hear them!