summer bookshelf.

I know that some of you count on me for regular book recommendations, so I feel like I’ve let you down this summer with my lack of Bookshelf posts.  I’ll try to make up for it by giving you some of the highlights of last several months.  I love blog posts about what I’m reading, but the exhausting thing for me is writing descriptions of the books.  So in the interest of my sanity, I’ll try to keep it more brief and you can always see Amazon for the full description.

Will you do me a favor?  If there are any books you’ve read recently that you enjoyed, will you let me know in the comments?  I’m always looking for book recommendations!

1. Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, Shauna Niequest
I bought this book a few months ago and so glad I did!  I love Shauna Niequest’s memoir-style of writing, honesty about her fears, insecurities, and victories, and descriptions of the joys of food.  We’ve loved experimenting with the recipes she includes, especially those that are gluten-free.

2. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is one of my very, very favorite nonfiction writers and his latest did not disappoint.  This book was a delight to read.

3. Young House Love: 243 Ways to Paint, Craft, Update and Show Your Home Some Love, Sherry Petersik and John Petersik
From the creators of Young House Love, this book is so fun.  Lots of great DIY decorating ideas and these two always make me laugh.

4. An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, Tamar Adler
I’ve already mentioned this one, but I’ll say again that I loved it and I’m hoping it influences my approach to food and life in the kitchen more and more.

5. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg
This is a sweet food memoir/love story by the creator of Orangette blog, which interestingly enough was the very first food blog I ever found.  I remember jumping up from our desktop computer in our Lititz condo back when Judah was a baby because I just had to try cooking Molly’s black beans with cumin.  I’m excited about her next book coming out in winter 2014.

6. The Fault in our Stars, John Green
This book is in the teen lit category — not normally my genre of choice — but I read that he’s a fabulous writer so I had to check it out.  The reviews are true: his writing is captivating, themes are thought-provoking, and he’s a great story-teller.  I’m not qualified to recommend it to teens, but I definitely think it’s one I’d want to read alongside my teen so we could discuss it.

7. Looking For Me, Beth Hoffman
I enjoyed that this novel was set in Charleston and that the main character was an antiques dealer.    It was sad but sweet too with a redemptive ending.

8. Saving Ceecee Honeycutt, Beth Hoffman
The first novel by the above author and I think my favorite of the two; I’d give it almost the exact same description except that it’s set in Savannah.

9. Joy for Beginners, Erica Bauermeister
I just read Joy for Beginners at the beach and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It’s a story about five friends of differing ages and stages of life who each push themselves to do something they find difficult one year.  Very inspiring.

10. The Lost Art of Mixing, Erica Bauermeister
This is the sequel to Bauermeister’s novel, School of Essential Ingredients, and if you enjoyed that book you’ll like this one too.  Her characters are always real and like-able.

11. Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer
Okay, completely changing genres, this book is an account of Foer’s wrestling with the way 99% of animals are raised, slaughtered, and eaten in our country.  Sharp, disturbing, thought-provoking, it’ll force you to ask good questions about your food.

12. Man Walks Into a Room, Nicole Krauss
This is not a feel-good, happy-ending novel at all, but I was fascinated by it because the story was completely different than anything I’ve read.  I always read Nicole Krauss’ novels because she’s creative and I like her way with words.

13. Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I finished this novel late last night at the beach, and I’m still processing it — and will be for a long time.  It’s set in Nigeria in the 1960’s, during the Nigerian-Biafran War (which, quite honestly, I’d never heard of).  It’s a gripping story — I could hardly put the book down once I started — and I was immediately captivated by the characters.  It is about war and so has some very difficult and at times very graphic subject matter.  I understand that not everyone can stomach the same intensity in reading — there are books that friends recommend to me that I just know I can’t read — but I also think that, when we can, it is good to read about things that are uncomfortable, things that open our eyes to how others in the world live (in this case millions of others), and give us perspective about our own life and our own problems.  I’m very glad I read it.

 Photos were taken during our recent trip to Lititz, PA.