Books I read in June 2018

Real Moms by Lisa Valentine Clark ****

I read this book last month and forgot to include it in last month's post.  I loved it!  I used to read her blog years ago when she had a blog.  It was the same engaging style as her blog plus Emma is friends with her son in real life so it was kind of fun to read about her parenting in that respect too.

Remarkable Utah Women by Christy Karras ***

We read this one for book club and I liked it.  Apparently there is one for every state which I think would be interesting to read--maybe after all the Newberys....

It made for a very interesting discussion amongst Mormon women who live in Utah and experience varying levels of freaking out about polygamy.  There was also some really good insight which is why I love book club.

Lady Susan by Jane Austen **

I decided to reread everything by Jane Austen this summer.  (I'll try.)  I read Lady Susan first because it was written first.  It's by far my least favorite but Jane Austen was a teenager when she wrote it so who am I to judge?

Thin, Rich, Pretty by Beth Harbison ***

Funny and entertaining (although not always great language--warning so I remember that in the future) but I liked it.  It's about three women who met at summer camp as young teenagers and then the story follows them into their 30s.  One wanted more than anything to be pretty, one wanted to be thin and one wanted to be rich.  But it didn't work out like they thought it would.  It was a good book about just being you.

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer ***

This is a Newbery honor book and a book Mark has been wanting me to read it because he loves it.  It's a dystopian book about a clone which is why it took me so long to agree to read it.  I liked the book though.  It was an interesting story with good characters and plenty of suspense.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson **

This was another book club book.  It wasn't too long and I skimmed it because 1) I'm not super into mountain climbing and 2) I wanted to pass it on to the next lady in my book club.  Besides the skimming, it was a very fascinating story about a man who broke his leg while climbing in the Andes.  His partner thought he was dead so cut the rope that was tethering them together.  (That's a really terrible description of what happened but I'm not great at book reviews even though I persist.)  It didn't look good at all but the man who broke his leg wrote the book so spoiler alert, he survives.  I was at once impressed by human survival and convinced I never want to be a mountain climber.