Still Quarantine Reading

Month two of quarantine and I’m still reading. In between reading, I’m doing puzzles and listening to podcasts (oh, and homeschooling my kids). The outside world may be scary and unsure, but in my house is a library of adventure. I choose adventure.

Read All Day: April

1. The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Historical Fiction

We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.

2. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs: Big Questions by Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Nonfiction

We can’t make death fun, but we can make learning about it fun. Death is science and history, art and literature. It bridges every culture and unites the whole of humanity!

3. Normal People by Sally Rooney

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I cared what people thought of me.

4. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Historical Fiction

Your shoes are carrying your most valuable possession—your life. Do not delay. Everything else can be replaced.

5. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

Insatiable, impatient, impossible.

6. Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Young Adult

There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.

7. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Rating: ★★★★★ (5 of 5)

Genre: Young Adult

Try to be a filter, not a sponge.

8. A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender, as normal as the bosoms on a woman’s chest, as necessary as the next generation growing inside her belly.

9. The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Parenting

In order to help children make the most of their education, parents must begin to relinquish control and focus on three goals: embracing opportunities to fail, finding ways to learn from that failure, and creating positive home-school relationships.

10. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Mystery

Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?

11. The Watsons Go to Birmingham

1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Historial Fiction

I learned about getting saved. I learned how someone could come to you when you were feeling real, real bad and could take all of your problems away and make you feel better. I learned that the person who saved you, your personal saver, was sent by God to protect you and to help you out.

12. I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

My phone’s my life. I can’t exist without it. It’s a vital organ.

13. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

Your head is the house you live in, so you have to do the maintenance.

14. Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 of 5)

Genre: Autobiography

The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone’s race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail.

15. Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Nonfiction Science

Diseases don’t ruin lives just because they rot off noses. They destroy people if the rest of society isolates them and treats them as undeserving of help and respect.

16. The Second Sister by Claire Kendal

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Mystery

Why are so many fairytales about sisters saving their brothers? All the ones you told me last week were.

He is right. Hansel and Gretel. The Seven Ravens. The Twelve Brothers. Our mother seemed to know hundreds of them.

We should write a different story. I want one with a sister who saves her sister.

17. When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 of 5)

Genre: Fiction

I feel like we just stepped into an episode of Housewives.

Now, Go. See. Do.

~meemish