The holidays, other projects (and, I’ll be honest, a newfound obsession with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) have made it a slow reading month, so this will be short and sweet. Luckily everything I read was pretty good. As always, I’ll be linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Monthly Quick Lit posts. Here’s what November brought me:
Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
Thirsty for God by Bradley P. Holt
Small Great Things will stick with me for a while, I think. Told from three different perspectives, the story begins when a black labor and delivery nurse is told not to interact with the baby of two white supremacists (at their request). Understaffed, the baby goes into distress on her watch and ends up dying, at which point the nurse is charged with murder. The story is told through the perspectives of the nurse, her public defender and the father of the baby. I think Picoult got a little heavy handed with the “message” she wanted her readers to learn, and there was a twist at the end that felt a little convoluted, but overall this book made me think, particularly when I got to chapters told from the father’s point of view. It was difficult to be in the headspace of such hatred and ignorance, and yet it was informative to see how he got there. White supremacists are calculating in how and who they recruit. There is an agenda and people are carefully pulled into the ideology. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Like all good stories it made me think, feel and understand in new ways.
Rich People Problems is the final installment of the Crazy Rich Asian series that I’ve been flying through. It’s a light easy read and I was thoroughly entertained. I enjoyed the characters, this last book tied up the story well, and I’m very excited for the forthcoming movie!
Thirsty for God is a book I’m reading for a spiritual transformation community I’ll be starting in January. It’s not one I would have picked up on my own, but I found it to be very interesting! It’s a history of Christian spirituality. It reads like something you’d be required to read in seminary, academic and informative, but I found myself with many new heroes of the faith as well as a new understanding of the history of the church, the church across the globe (and not just this corner of America) and some terms and ideas I’d previously not encountered. I don’t know if I’d recommend this for some light reading, but I’m really glad I tackled it!
That’s all from November (it was a slow month…) I’ve already finished two books in December and a few more are on the horizon, so hopefully next month’s post will be better :)