Tonya's Book Blog: Fun Fall Fiction and (Non)Fiction That Will Fulfill Your Fantasies

Hello friends!

So it may be half-way through October already, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about all the amazing things that happened in September. For us, September meant back to school and work, so we’ve been a little busy. I did manage to fit in some quality reading amid the adjustment and its associated hustle and bustle. Shout out to my friend Jessie Yao and sister-in-law Robbie for recommending some of these books.

Chloe took a few weeks to get used to her new class but is now really enjoying all the fun activities that they do at school. Maya slid right into her new routine with nary a complaint to be heard. She’s the best baby in the world. Seriously. I’m getting into the swing of things back at work and trying again to figure out how to make it all work with the help of my husband extraordinaire, Daniel.

As always, let me know if you have any recommendations for me or any thoughts on these books.

Happy Fall!

Tonya

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes! Especially for all my mommy friends out there

Review: Sometimes when I read books that are amazingly good and life changing I insist that my husband read them too. He’s more of a news and current events guy. This was one of those books. Even though the target audience for this book is definitely women, and more specifically moms, my husband also enjoyed it. First, Schulte perfectly describes my own time-pressured feelings with the concept of “time confetti,” a feeling that all your time and attention is constantly fragmented due to continuous interruptions and demands for your attention. She goes on to examine some of the systemic and societal issues that lead to most women feeling debilitating time stress. These include: the demands of work and career, the expectation of being the primary caretaker of the children and home, and a lack of any societal structures to help with the above. She has chapters examining the “ideal worker” who is perpetually available to do any task required regardless of the time of day, the lack of any assistance with child care in the United States, the lack of any sort of paid parental leave in the same country, and the fact that most working women still shoulder the majority of the household and childcare work. I could relate to all but the last as my husband and I have so far been able to split these duties equally. In the end, a lot of the problems that lead to our insane time stress are literally beyond our control to resolve as individuals and would require the concentrated efforts of civil society, industry, and policy makers to change not only policy but the culture of the ideal worker and mother that is literally making modern life impossible to live. Hey, I didn’t say it was an easy read.

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

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Sure

Review: I’m going to be honest; I read this book because I follow Kristen Bell on social media and saw that she was reading it. That being said, it was pretty good. The parenting theory that this book proposes focuses on allowing your children to fail in the relatively low-risk settings of home and school so that they can build resilience, develop intrinsic motivation to succeed, and be self-reliant adults who contribute to society. Easier said than done. While I found a lot of the advice in this book to be helpful and have tried to incorporate it into my parenting. There’s one part, though, and it is a crucial aspect of the whole theory, that I’ve failed in incorporating: the elimination of rewards and bribery. I recognize that this is just me making excuses, but I have a very strong-willed three year-old, and sometimes the only practical way to get her to eat, go to the potty, get dressed, brush her teeth, go to bed, etc…is to bribe her with a reward. I’m not proud of it, but I also don’t see it changing any time soon. Let me know if you all have any thoughts on how to eliminate rewards to help children better develop intrinsic motivation.

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Kind of…

Review: I started this book thinking that it would be mostly romantic-comedy fluff, and it mostly was. There were a few points in it that surprised me though. The book focuses on Olive and Ethan who, in a plot very reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice, go from hating each other to, you guessed it, falling in love. Along the way there are misconceptions, hasty judgments, and a charming, handsome man who later turns out to be a villain. Sound familiar? There are a few surprising twists along the way, but I kind of think of this book as a modern, not-as-good retelling of the best romantic comedy in history.

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Phillippe

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Maybe

Review: If you enjoy reading books about snarky, angst-ridden, quick-witted teenagers, then this is the book for you. It follows Norris Kaplan, a black, French Canadian 17-year-old boy who has to move to Austin, Texas. As you can imagine, Norris feels out of place in the land of big-horn steers and burnt orange. The books follows his (mal)adjustment complete with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, cheerleaders, jocks, and a climatic screw up. The best part of the whole book was listening to Norris’s internal dialogue that was frankly hilarious. The worst part was enduring awkward scenes of teenage partying. Overall, it was a clever, quick read that was more insightful than most books set in high school.

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes! For anyone who likes to learn about history

Review: This book, as advertised, read like a novel more than a nonfiction recounting of a world-renowned historical figure's early days. Turns out that Winston Churchill was not always old, overweight, and famous. This book tells the story of how a 25-year-old Churchill places himself in the middle of the Boer Wars between England and the descendants of European colonists in South Africa at the end of the 19th century. (Side note: I didn’t even know that the Boer Wars were a thing before I read this book. The capacity of humanity to fight with itself never ceases to amaze and frighten me.) Churchill, in an insatiable quest for battlefield glory to jumpstart what he knows will be a brilliant political career, gets himself taken as a prisoner of war, escapes, and navigates through 300 miles of enemy territory to freedom. Reading the account left me with the impression that Churchill was literally the luckiest person in the world, or maybe there's fate or destiny involved?... There was no great skill or planning that went into the escape, and --I cannot stress this enough -- he just got really lucky. It made me wonder about how little control we have over what we do and what happens to us. There were millions of points in the story where things could have gone very badly for Churchill and we would have never had one of the greatest statesmen of the 20^th century, but they didn’t, and we did. The weird thing was how confident Churchill was proceeding, during, and following the events that he was destined for greatness and everything would be OK. I simply couldn’t relate to such feelings of confidence in my destiny, but I guess that’s partly what made him such a great leader.

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes

Review: This book was so good I read it in a day. I don’t know what it’s like to be a poor immigrant or to grow up with the expectation that I will support my family, myself, and my future children, but Jean Kwok does, and she does an excellent job relating these feelings. When I started this book, I thought it would mostly be an emotional drama, but it ended up being a really good mystery. Younger sister, Amy, sets out on a mission to find her missing older sister, Sylvie. The book is narrated from both of their perspectives with Sylvie narrating the story leading up to her disappearance and Amy narrating the story following it as she seeks to find her older sister. Not only did Kwok keep me guessing on the who-done-it aspect of the story until literally the last page, but she also tells an emotionally powerful and moving story about the price that lies and secrets exert on those we love. In the case of this family, the reckoning comes due in a powerful and tragic way.

Mommy Corner

We went to Annapolis for the Kunta Kinte Festival. Annapolis is lovely and the festival was fun! This is also one of the only photos we have with all four of us.