Summer Reading 2011

Summer seems to be the season that allows me the most time for personal reading, but now that we're halfway through, I'm feeling the pressure to get through it all! Here's what's been on my nightstand/iPod/Kindle this summer, and I'd love to hear your recommendations. What's the best book you've read this year?

Several of the books I've read this year have been recommended to me by my friend Barb. We love to talk books and school and news and a myriad of other topics, and I always love her input. Outliers was a fascinating read about how people are made successful. "Self-made" men don't really exist, and Malcolm Gladwell makes a solid case as to why.

I'm not necessarily a huge Bush fan, but I loved both of Barbara's memoirs and thought I'd read George W.'s as well. As we are approaching the 10th anniversary of the attack on 9/11, I am finding President Bush's accounts of the events surrounding the incident to be extremely interesting reading.

I read Blue Like Jazz last year and found Donald Miller to be easy going but not necessarily easy reading. He made me think, and I like to be challenged to step around and see something outside of my paradigm. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years has done the same, although because it's on my Kindle I've been reading it considerably slower than the other books.

Another recommendation from Barb, I'm finding The Primal Teen to be an excellent read as well. As I got a chapter or two into it, I realized that I had heard this study mentioned on a Family Life Today broadcast. The scientists being interviewed by Dennis Rainey said something to the affect that we always knew our teens were a little goofy, a little inconsistent, and a lot irrational, and now we know why. Mmmmhmmm.

I really, really love to have new parenting strategies on hand, and so I'm usually reading or re-reading parenting books at one time or another. While I'm only a few chapters into Mama Rock's Rules, I have got enough laughs, ideas, and encouragement to take me through the end of the year, I think. Check this out: "When I call a child, I expect him to come downstairs immediately. If he doesn't, he'd better be sleeping or unconscious." Hee!