july book report + august list

You guys…I finished books this month! I'm actually reading books from beginning to end again and it feels great! I've found a nice shaded spot in the park across from work, and I read through lunch. I make sure I read an hour on Saturday and Sunday. I try to read at home after work some nights too.

I gave myself three options for July. I finished two of those books, and I also devoured three other books that weren't on the list. What can I say? I'm easily distracted by new and shiny.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
I don't know why it took me so long to get through this book. I really did enjoy it. Maybe I just wanted to savor it. Barbara Kingsolver does what I would love to do: eat locally (very locally, as in backyard locally) for a year. She grows seasonal vegetables, she raises chickens and turkeys, and she tries her best to sustain her family with food that doesn't have to cross many state lines. Thanks to my (very limited) gardening experience, I would love to have a vegetable farm that size in a state where you can actually grow seasonal foods. This book did inspire me to get a CSA membership for this winter to support one of our local farms. Yay local! 

Station Eleven
Oh man, I LOVED this book! I loved that everyone had flaws. I love that it was about survival and not love. I loved seeing how the world was *just* after the collapse, and then seeing what it had become years later. I thought I was done with fiction, but this book was such a great read. Now I understand why everyone was raving about it a couple of months ago. I wish I had trusted everyone then, because this book would have kept me occupied during that painful flight to Portland.

It Starts With Food
This book is the science behind the Whole30 method, and it's been sitting on my shelf for almost a year now. I'm not the best at blindly following rules; I usually need some reasoning behind why I'm doing something, and this book provides all the reasoning behind the Whole30. If you've been thinking about doing one of these but are afraid of the fat content (I'm looking at a few people I know IRL) this book will provide the science behind why eating fat isn't going to make you fat, along with why certain foods cause systemic inflammation and a whole ton of other information. Despite being heavy on the science, I flew through this book in a couple of days. It's really easy to read and understand.

The Whole30
This follow-up to It Starts With Food came out in April, and I wanted to get it for the cookbook aspect of it. It ended up being so much more, though. The first half of the book highlights so much information and answers almost any question that could come up during your Whole30. Some of the information is available on the website, but I don't want to rely on a website all the time. It's nice to have a sturdy physical copy of the information ready to go on my bookshelf.

Show Your Work
This was blog research, and the tiny book was finished in an afternoon. I almost didn't count it, but I did read a book at home that I haven't read before. A lot of the information Austin Kleon goes over makes sense, but sometimes you don't think of it when you're feeling stuck.

For the August list, you'll see a familiar choice and a couple new ones.

1. Yes, Please. I know, I know. I just need to finish it and stop getting distracted by shiny things.
2. All of the Light We Cannot See. This is a longer book, so we'll see how much I can get through.
3. Go Set a Watchman. Everyone else is reading this, so I guess I will too.

To make it even more fun, I'm not allowing myself to buy a new book, even a cookbook, until I've finished two of these. I need to stop being distracted by new things.