Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend! I didn’t do too much exciting this weekend, but I did enjoy the free time and relaxation, as well as the feeling of accomplishment I get when I get a lot of things done! Haha, yes, totally lame, but I’m okay with that.
I also loved that I finally got a long run in! My CARA run was supposed to be 6, which is the longest I’ve done in weeks, but I ended up making it 8 by running from the bus to the start, and then back to the bus. I forgot how much I love getting in longer runs and I’m looking forward to training! Although I must say I’m a liiiiittle overwhelmed by the thought of those runs longer than I’ve done before, the 14 miles and up runs! But I’ve just got to believe in myself!
Today’s post is about books, so I thought I’d start off by saying, sadly, I don’t think I’ll be able to participate in Julie’s book club on Peanut Butter Fingers this month! For June, the book is called Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs.
The book looked interesting, but I’m not a huge fan of informational books. Haha I read PLENTY of those during the school year, so I prefer to get lost in a novel during the summer. I decided to read it anyway, but since I’m on a budget this summer I didn’t want to buy it. I looked it up in the Chicago Public Library system and found that it was checked out or on hold in EVERY location. And there are a lot. Since I won’t be able to get to it before July 1st when the posts are supposed to be up, I’m just going to skip out this month.
However, don’t you worry, I’m definitely still reading! Currently I’m working on American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, which actually was an older book club choice of Julie’s. I had ordered it for the book club but it didn’t come in time!
I also just finished a book by Jodi Picoult! I LOVE her novels, they are a mix of law (usually a court case is involved), some sort of social issue, and great characters that you really feel like you know by the end of the book. I’ve read every single one of her books except for Picture Perfect and her newest one, Lone Wolf.
The book that I just finished is called Sing You Home.
The first thing I noticed about this book was the playlist. At the beginning of each section, there’s a playlist, and each section is a song on the playlist. Part of the novel’s message is how ingrained music is into our lives and our memories. The playlist is like a soundtrack to the main character, Zoe Baxter’s, life.
Zoe Baxter is a music therapist who we first meet while she is desperately trying to get pregnant with her husband, Max. She is currently pregnant after several rounds of IVF, however when her pregnancy ends in a still-birth, her world falls apart, including her relationship with Max. When an acquaintance and school counselor, Vanessa, tries to help by asking her to work with a troubled student at her school, Zoe finds a friend in Vanessa and realizes that she is falling in love even though she’d never considered herself as gay.
I won’t spoil any more of the story, but much of the book is about the issue of not gay marriage, but whether or not a same-sex couple should be able to raise a child. Max, Zoe’s ex-husband, continues to play an integral part in this story and has very different views from Zoe, since after their divorce he fell back into his alcoholism but was “saved” by his brother and his brother’s wife and became a very devout Christian.
One thing that I loved about the novel (as I often do) is that the author moved around between points of views, mostly Zoe, Max and Vanessa. It not only made the story more interesting and easier for us to know everything that was going on, but it also showed each person’s individual views on the situation and the issues at hand. I don’t like to get religious or political on my blog, but I have to say that reading this book opened up my mind to things I had never really thought about.
I really enjoyed reading Sing You Home and highly recommend it. Who knows, you mind find you also love reading Jodi Picoult and start on all her other novels! She has quite a few…
Do you buy books or try to get them from the library?
Do you enjoy reading books that involve current social issues?