What I'm Reading

As if what I'm reading is really all that interesting to blog about, ha. I more of less have this page to keep myself on track with my reading goal, not because I think you care about what I read. However, if you have suggestions of great books I'd love some! So far so good with the one book a month goal! I think it's time to focus on other goals.


Currently reading:

• Slaughterhouse five or the children's crusade
• The case for God 
• Angel Dogs

Finished reading:
Feb:

• Sold
• Never fall down - A story about how one boy survived growing up in cambodia during the Khmer rouge.

August:

• Inside Islam - Reza Safa
• Wait No More - Kelly & John Rosati - Wonderful story about one family's journey adopting from the Hawaii foster care system. I think I read it in a day or two because it was just so good. 
• I am Nujood - age 10 and divorced - An excellent true story about a child bride in Yemen with the courage to go against her abusive marriage. She helped inspire other child brides to also seek help from their marriages. I definitely recommend this book.

July:

• The Male Brain - 
• Forbidden - Tedd Dekker 
• Parenting your internationally adopted child - Patty Cogen - Had some good tips. 

June:

• Somebody's Someone - Regina Louise - An autobiography about a woman who was abandoned by her birth mother and spent her childhood being sent from place to place. I cried throughout the whole book because of this little girls love of a mother who had absolutely no interest in her. She was 14 years old when the words "I love you" were spoken to her for the first time. 
• Crossed - Allie Condie - 2nd book of the trilogy. Slow moving but still interesting.  

May:

• Kisses from Katie - Katie Davis - My favorite book of the year! Five thumbs up. 19 year old Katie went to Uganda for a short term service trip to work with orphans, and now lives there permanently with her 13 adopted daughters, running a sponsorship program, meal program, and providing education for a whole village. A very inspiring story of how big an impact one person can really have when they listen to what God of them. 
• Silent Tears: A journey of Hope in a Chinese orphanage - Kay Bratt - So sad. The author tells her story of volunteering for years in a Chinese orphanage. Cases of awful neglect and even abuse. It really made me want to march right over to China and take home some babies. I'm not sure I agree with the writers philosophy, but I would probably have ended up getting kicked out of the orphanage. It makes my heart ache for all those kids without anyone to love them out there. 

April:

• The Road of Lost Innocence - Somaly Mam - A very good book. True story of a girl that was sold into a brothel in Asia, her escape, and her mission to help other girls out of the sex trade. Definitely worth reading. 
• Immanuels Vein's - Tedd Dekker - None of his books have been able to compete with The Circle series. I keep reading his books in the hopes that they will be good but they are just average. This one played too much into the vampire mania. Interestingly he does seem to connect all his books somehow even though they all follow such different plots. 

March:

• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick - Another eye opener. Such poverty, famine, and brainwashing for lack of a better term. North Koreans are taught that they have nothing to envy in all the world and that their adversaries are much worse of then they are, they are lucky to live in North Korea with the great leader. 
• Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten years in the North Korean Gulag - Chol-Hwan Kang - A very eye opening story. In North Korea if someone commits a political crime (even for so much as cracking a joke against the leadership) it is common practice to arrest 3 generations in order to get rid of the "bad blood". This book details what life was like for a 9 year old boy to grow up in the camp, and his eventual escape from North Korea. 

February:

• Great Expectations - I had been reading this for months! The beginning was very slow, but it picked up in the end. I wouldn't call it a favorite book, but I had always wanted to read it and now I have. 

January:

• Playing, Laughing, and learning with children on the autism spectrum - A very good read offering practical advice on how to engage your autistic child. 

December:

• December was so long ago I can't remember if I finished any books! I probably didn't, but I can't be sure!

November:

• Building Emotional Intelligence in Children - Very informative, but geared toward a working with children a little older than I will be working with so I skipped half the book. But I whole heartedly agree that emotional intelligence should be taught in school alongside other topics like math and science! So much to be learned and gained!
• Another Place at the Table - This is a story of a foster mom and her foster children. It was both inspiring and scary. It inspired me to be more sure that I'm on the right path, but made me more afraid of things like angry violent parents that have my address, and children that need more intense psychological help than I can provide. 

October:

• Parenting with Love and Logic - While many of these ideas and strategies may (or may not) be appropriate for emotionally healthy biological children, I definitely did not find it useful for foster children. I found this book to be a little irresponsible. The authors put too much faith in their reader to be able to execute these plans in a safe and emotionally healthy way. Which after working with parents and children with behavior issues I cannot say that I would put that same faith in the readers. They even acknowledged that people use their book wrong all the time. Some of the more concerning examples they used (if you were wondering) were shutting a child in their room and holding the door closed (or wedging something under it so they can't open it) for time outs, making an 11 year old foster child wait for three hours alone at a gas station to teach him the value of being on time, telling the neighbors mom that her son could punch little Timmy because after-all her little Timmy punched the neighbor boy, and quite a few others. I had to laugh several times that someone would think it was a good idea to write something like that. That aside, it did have some good advice too.
• The Einstein Syndrome- Bright children who talk late - Very interesting. I don't agree with all the author says, but I do recognize a subset of late talking children who are exceptionally bright. Like my little Anna who has a speech delay but could identify all the letters of the alphabet in any order by 18 months. 

September:

• Matched - Allie Condie - I love dystopian society books. This one was alright, not the best, but still pretty good. It was slow moving in the beginning but the end picked up. The next book in the series comes out in a few months, I suppose I will read it. 
• Divergent - Veronica Roth - A much more fast paced dystopian society novel! I really enjoyed this book. In the future society lives as 5 factions (the peaceful, intelligent, brave, selfless, honest). When a person turns 16 they chose which faction they will join. I can't wait to read the next one!
• Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy - L.A. Meyer - I thought maybe this would be a good adventure book for an older foster child, but I don't think I would recommend it as a children's book. A young girl is orphaned by the black plague and lives begging on the streets until she disguises herself as a boy and gets taken on as a ships boy. I enjoyed the adventuret but it could have done without the pedophilia and violence. 
• The Maze Runner - This book is written for a young audience so it was a really fast read. Interesting plot, but I found the style annoying. A group of boys with no memory of the past try to survive and escape an experiment. They live in a large courtyard surrounded by a  maze that changes every night. 

August:

• The New Testament - I finally finished the NT. I didn't realize until recently that I had the whole NT read except for a few odd chapters, and 2 or 3 books, so it wasn't that I read all of it in one month.

July:

• Evolution for Everyone - David Sloan Wilson - A very disappointing read for me. I thought it would talk about evolution in a way for everyone to understand, but it talked about how evolution relates to and influences our lives now.  I really enjoyed the middle of the book and found it quite interesting. But the first third and the last third were torture and I'm not sure the interesting middle justifies the rest of the book. 

June: Oops. I did not make my goal in June. But that's alright. I read a few half books so if I add those together then why shouldn't it equal one whole book? June went by too fast!


May:

• The Connected Child - A wonderful book! I don't normally buy books, but I am going to have to make an exception for this one. It has wonderful practical advice for families raising an adopted child or a child from a troubled background. 
• The Idiots guide to buying a home
• Buying a home: The missing manual 

April:

• Genesis and The Big Bang - Gerald Schroeder - After reading The Science of God I was very intrigued so I decided to read his earlier book. This book went into a lot more detail about the physics behind the ideas outlined in The Science of God. It was harder to understand and less concise but it filled in some gaps for me. 
• Parenting the Hurt Child - Had some okay advice for parenting hurt children, but it seemed to me that they liked to toot their own horns a little too much. I very much prefer The connected child to this book. 

March:

• Jesus through Jewish Eyes - A very interesting read. I learned a lot about Judaism and Christianity. 
• Babylon Rising (book on CD) - Archeologist tracks down the bronze serpent from the OT and a group of evil doers rises in power. Not the greatest book and I didn't care for the voices the guy used to read the story. 
• Burn - Tedd Dekker and Erin Healy - A gypsy girl is faced with a choice to save herself or someone she loves. 
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book on CD)
• The Science of God - Gerald Schroeder - A Jewish nuclear physicist explains Genesis and nature being in harmony. It was very interesting. He talked about fascinating concepts that are fun to think about even outside the context of the book (time dilation, how time stops at the speed of light, evolution, the history of the universe) I'll probably read his other works. 

February:

• Jamaica and Me - Linda Atkins - A woman volunteers with children in residential placement. She takes one 'bad' little girl under her wing and becomes the only constant in her life. 
• Genesis, Leviticus, (and Mark) - I've been really interested in the Jewish view of Christianity/Jesus lately and thought I should brush up on Old Testament history and teachings. 
• Finding the Real Jesus - Lee Strobel - I think most of this small book was selections from his other work. It was still interesting and informational to read and provided me with names of books for future readings. 

January:

• Reaching Children Through Play Therapy: An Experiential Approach - Interesting and useful for when we start foster care, but not the best book on play therapy. I'll have to find another to supplement it.  

December:

• The Nest: Newlywed Handbook - Carl Roney - Not a page turner. I more or less just skimmed the parts I was interested in. Each chapter is started by a list of questions for you and your spouse to answer about a topic such as finances, household tasks, romance, friends etc. I liked that part the best.
• Family Fun Night - Cynthia Copeland - Such a fun book. Offers ideas and advice about how to have a family night. Theme nights, movie nights, game nights, volunteer days. It had a lot of neat ideas that I never would have thought of on my own but that I'll definitely want to try. Now if only I had a family....
• Three Little Words - Ashley Rhodes-Courter - This book was about a girl who spent her childhood in the foster care system (but eventually was adopted by a loving family). I highly recommend this book.

November:

• Miserly Moms - Jonni McCoy - No I'm not a mom, but I dream about the day I will be one! This book has good tips to help the thrifty person manage a family (or individual). What I like is that it had a lot of her favorite recipes and activities/crafts to do.  Some things that I think I will take from this book is a weekly soup and bread night, freezer cooking (it's on my to-do list before foster care), safer and cheaper cleaning solutions. It was a really easy read with short chapters that could be read in any order. 
• The Nazi Officers Wife - How one Jewish woman escaped the Holocaust 
• Hansi - The girl who loved the swastika - Maria Hirschmann - I really enjoyed this book. It was about a smart young girl who got a scholarship to go to school - a Nazi school. She has a beautiful story of how her life was transformed and prayers answered by the power of God's love. 

October:

• Skin - Ted Dekker
• Mocking Jay - Suzanne Collins - I'm so sad to be done with this trilogy, but the last book is not nearly as good as the others. 
• Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins Loved it almost as much as the first one!
• Hunger Games -Suzanne Collins Great book! I had to go to the library before I finished it to make sure I had the next book in the series on hand for when I finished!
• Saint - Ted Dekker Though also connected to the same characters in the circle trilogy, I did not find this book as engaging. 

September:

• Showdown - Ted Dekker I really enjoyed Ted Dekker's circle trilogy. This relative of the circle trilogy was also very good. 
• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbra Kingsolver I found this book depressing, but I couldn't put it down. 
• The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner - Stephanie Meyer I really enjoyed this novella. I knew how it had to end but I found myself wishing for a different ending so the story could continue. 
• Kiss - Ted Dekker