I did a little reading in March. In an effort to cut back spending I actually cancelled my audible.com account for a while…GASP! In case you were wondering, audible.com is part of why I am able to read so many books. I always listen to books on my drive to and from work.
Anyway, now I’m getting my books from the local library which is forcing me to make my reading choices based on what’s available. It’s been a good exercise for me. Here’s what I read this month and what I thought about the books.
I love Gaffigan’s comedic material so I thought I would check out his book. While he is a much better stand-up comic than writer I still laughed my way through this book and actually thought he had great insights on the wild adventure of parenting. If you have kids, and a lot of them, this book is a riot.
I kept hearing from friends that I needed to read this book so I finally picked it up. There’s no doubt that Steven D. Levitt is a genius and I love the way he approaches difficult questions. The style of the book reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell who is one of my favorites. I was engaged from start to finish.
Sigh…yes, I actually read this. What can I say? I wanted to know what the hype is all about. This isn’t my first foray into the genre of “adolescent girl thriller” either. I hesitate to admit that I loved the Hunger Games. Anyway, about Divergent...the story is gripping from start to finish. I couldn’t put it down and it made a flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix feel like 5 minutes. With that said, the book has this nasty habit of getting steamy in a physically juvenile kind of way that made me repeatedly look around and make sure no one noticed that I was reading the book. In spite of that, I loved it and I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you that I’m almost done with the second book in the series.
This man was born in a secret North Korean prison camp and escaped to China, South Korea and then the United States. He is the only known person to be born in a North Korean camp and escape. It’s an incredible story and terribly heartbreaking. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are brutally mistreated in government camps. This isn’t 1943 Nazi Germany. This isn’t the Soviet Gulag. This is 2014 and it’s slavery and worse. Everyone needs to read this book.