Welcome, friend! If you’re looking for your next great read, brew yourself a cup of tea and join me in the library!
*Friends reading on email: please click the post link to view this review in its entirety!
I’m gonna be straight with you, dear reader. I was pretty ambitious with this last year’s BOOK-IT LIST and may have stacked a few more titles on the shelf than the brackets could support, if you know what I mean. We can’t all read 51 books in a year like the Captain after all! Sigh. My son has become my reading hero!
Nevertheless, that looming, heavy bookshelf of mine successfully strong-armed me into reading more than I ever have before in a single calendar year, and I almost made it! Thankfully, one title turned out not to be worth my time in finishing (no offence to the author, it just wasn’t pertinent to me) so I was able to free up some space a few chapters in.
Two of the books I had to burn it into the New Year to finish, and one of them, I must confess, is still being hacked away at. Eh-hem, the giant red one. Come to think of it, the exercise bike might have been a wee neglected too. Whoops.
All in all, I’m grateful that I set such audacious reading goals last January. They pushed me into a year of truly accelerated learning and I’m proud of myself for nearly finishing! That being said, I fully intend to lighten up a bit for 2024 and try this thing people call “leisure reading.” Facinating. Before I reset my shelf with a fresh, slightly trimmed down collection for 2024 (stay tuned), here are my overly honest 2023 book reviews!
~Everything I Read In 2023~
The only thing better than a good book or a good friend is chatting about a good book with a good friend! The only thing better than that? Setting out a pot of tea first.
This past year I was blessed by many new friendships, some of them in the form of books! I hope you will enjoy getting to know a few of them as much as I have. To help navigate my reviews, I like to give each book a ☕rating in teacups☕ or steeps! What did you expect? Please note, I don’t pour out teacup ratings as readily as I do actual tea for my friends. So, bear in mind that I see four teacups as generous indeed.
~Faith~
Will They Stand by Ken Ham
☕☕☕☕
“[Instilling a Christian worldview is] very difficult to do when the child is spending all day in an anti-God, Bible-denying, secular humanist-enforcing environment.” -Will They Stand
For quotability alone, this title has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. I especially love what Ham has to say regarding the homeschool versus public school versus private school war . . . I mean, debate, of course. The loss of a teacup is for the following two reasons. One, I found quite a lot of the content in this book repeated sections from the author’s other books. If you haven’t read anything by Ken Ham before then this point is irrelevant. Two, there is a chapter in this book that I felt missed the mark regarding gender roles in parenthood, namely that Ham claims the role of the Biblical educator in the family belongs more or less exclusively to the father. I personally disagree with this opinion and to be honest, I think the book of Proverbs agrees with me 😆 . Proverbs 1:8-9: “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.” My husband and my interpretation of scripture on this topic is that a husband and wife should be united and one flesh in all things, perhaps even most of all in the training and teaching of our children! But I’ll leave that there, for now.
Do not let my above ramblings deter you, however, in reading this book. That would be a major baby-bathwater kind of error. If you are a Christian parent, the discussions and questions Ham poses are of crucial importance for raising our children to stand up to adversity in a culture that increasingly condemns Christianity.
Stealing from God by Frank Turek
☕☕☕☕
“If nature had a beginning, then the cause can’t be something natural because nature didn’t exist. Nature was the effect, so it can’t be the cause. The cause must be something beyond nature, or supernatural.” -Stealing from God
I’m not as young as I was when I took theology classes back in college and I think I may be losing some of my academic mojo! Stealing from God is the textbook of apologetics. The information and arguments presented and even played out in dialogue are more than a little compelling. But I would be remiss if I didn’t warn you that this is no light read! There is a lot to digest. Also, I think for the Christian who is already firm in the faith, reading this book can have the reader saying “ok! I get it! In fact, I already agreed with you before I ever opened this book!” However, this is the nature of apologetics and the very reason so few Christians can actually defend their faith with any semblance of credibility. I doubt many atheists are picking up this book to challenge their beliefs, as awesome as that would be! Usually, apologetic literature is for the Christian to educate him or herself on how to defend the faith they already have. If we cannot back up our beliefs, we abdicate any authority we might have had in the sharing of our faith. That is where this book comes in and make no mistake . . . Turek does a smashing job! Unless you are an athlete scholar, however, I suggest you may prefer taking on Turek in video form. His recorded debates are absolutely jaw-dropping and much easier and more exciting to follow than in reading those same arguments and concepts.
Here’s a great debate to get you started binge-watching Frank Turek (without the kids): Reality Debated: Michael Shermer vs Frank Turek | What better explains reality? Atheism or Theism? (youtube.com)
The Lie: Evolution by Ken Ham
☕☕☕☕
“They haven’t eliminated religion from public school. They have eliminated Christianity and have replaced it with an anti-God religion —humanism.” -The Lie: Evolution
Our beautiful boy is just buzzing with questions about the universe. Here I am supposed to be inspiring him to seek knowledge and wisdom in the world around us and more and more I find our roles reversed.
It is most often our son who prompts me to look deeper and probe dauntlessly into the worlds of science and theology on the quest to see God. My reward is finding the divine continually revealed and reflected back in every single speck of literature and nature before me.
The Captain was indeed my inspiration for reading A Flood of Evidence last year which equipped me to have some absolutely life-changing conversations with our kids. And so, I decided to read another creation science book of Ken Ham’s collection this year. Again, I have found my knowledge and understanding of the evolution versus creation debate widened and deepened. However, I did find that there is a lot of cross-over content between this book and A Flood of Evidence. For most readers, I would suggest that just one title would be sufficient to jump start your creation apologetic education. And if I had to choose, my vote would be for A Flood of Evidence which I found to have more breadth and to be a more enticing read overall.
~Family~
Holy Hygge by Jamie Erikson
☕☕☕
“In chaining yourself to a lengthy list of to-do’s, you may inadvertently lose sight of the whole point of hospitality: to welcome the stranger. Don’t make the experience about you, make it about them.” -Holy Hygge
After enjoying her first book Homeschool Bravely some years ago, I was intrigued by this latest title by Jamie Erikson. Hygge is a topic of interest for me, and I was curious how Erikson would write about it from a Christian perspective. I read the first few chapters before deciding that this book wasn’t a valuable use of my time. Erikson’s writing is good, and she approaches the topic of hygge from a unique viewpoint, intertwining a passionate call to arms for Christian hospitality with the decadence of hygge homemaking. To be clear, I don’t actually have any complaints against this book, only in my choosing it. Truth be told, I love hosting and meeting new people. In fact, having a new family over for dinner or a new friend up for a cup of tea are among my favorite hobbies. And apparently, I’m already housekeeping with a lot of hygge on the brain. So, I decided to focus my self-improvement reading in other areas where I could really use some, such as exercising above a stroll and actually sticking to a daily schedule. Enough said.
I recommend this book for anyone who may want to become a more intentional housekeeper or a more enthusiastic hostess.
The Convivial Homeschool by Mystie Winckler
☕☕☕
I have so enjoyed the Schole Sisters’ Homeschool Retreat seminars the past two years, so I thought I’d try out Mystie Winckler’s first book. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it as much as her playful advice and banter on the podcast. To be fair to her, I think mostly I simply am not the right audience for this book. As a bit of a veteran homeschool mom and former public-school educator, I’m always looking for the latest ideas and methods for inspired learning. This book is more basic; an entry-level read for the new homeschool mom or the unsure/nervous home educator. Overall, I found the content to be good and the Biblical encouragement for everyday homeschool struggles applicable.
My biggest complaint with this book is that I didn’t find it very convivial at all. In fact, I found the overall tone a bit on the negative side. I write that apologetically peeking through my fingers, by the way. Winckler has a hilarious, fairly sarcastic sense of humor and I do appreciate that she doesn’t sugarcoat or strap a pair of rose-colored glasses onto the reader. But then we part ways.
Take this quote as an example: “School days feel like a tug-of-war. We are trying to bring our kids along the path of knowledge and wisdom, and they insist on pulling in the opposite direction. We exert more strength with more stamina than we thought we had, yet they seem hardly to budge and inch.” Yes, there are hard parenting days. Yes, there are sibling squabbles. Yes, there are times when learning hits a wall. However, I personally have found over the years that homeschooling can and should be mostly a delight. I don’t see home education as a burden I must bear or a hurdle to clamor over as this book seems to suggest (at least to me). The kids and I genuinely treasure our homeschool days together. “Hurray!” is the usual cry when I announce that it is time for reading or lessons each day. If a groan is the response, then something is wrong, either in the little minds or bodies of my pupils, or with my lack-luster efforts as an educator that day . . . or week . . . or month.
It is my personal conviction that fostering a lifelong love for learning trumps the mastering of any one concept. Accepting anything less and obligatorily trudging through the homeschool day is, in my opinion, falling short of inspired education.
This book’s main goal appeared to have been to assure the reader that “we’re all in this together and it really can be a headache a lot of the time.” I’m not an advocate for accepting that education (at home or otherwise) is often going to be a drag so let’s just get on with it and put on a happy face. Sadly, I just don’t find the message in this book to be very empowering. All that being said, if your homeschool journey so far has been less than delightful, you may take comfort in this book and find a bit of solidarity in the genuine struggles of another homeschool parent in the trenches. My word of warning would be that the journey doesn’t or shouldn’t end there!
Educated by Tara Westover
☕☕☕☕☕
Reading this book was about as toxic as a bag of potato chips. And I loved every bite of it.
How could anything so tragic as this book be so completely addicting? I had no idea I was cursed with so much curiosity. Unfortunately, the stories in this book are true, the memoir of a woman who was “homeschooled” but . . . was she really? Even more heartbreaking than the complete neglect of her education, Westover was also victim to a decidedly backwards family culture and upbringing, or more appropriately, the lack thereof. Worse still, her parents did (or didn’t do) everything under the claim, and seemingly genuine conviction, that they were following the very will of God.
Westover masterfully tells the story of how she pulled herself out of the family junkyard (literally) and eventually found herself a Harvard graduate. The salvation she claims in the unfolding of her story is, ironically, what I myself find to be the most tragic part of all. Because of her upbringing, Westover not only separated from much of her family, but from faith in God entirely after having had such a dysfunctional perception regarding the “Christian” faith and family. Instead, she now puts her complete, implicit trust in education as the answer to finding one’s identity and greater purpose in life.
“You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education.” -Educated
My interpretation of this memoir is that that education itself has become the author’s new religion. Reading about Westover’s journey in “finding herself” shows me only how lost she truly still is; indeed how lost we all are without the true, saving knowledge of Christ who can pull us out of the darkest, grimiest pits, and even from the grips of the very people who claim to know Him. And my heart goes out to her. I wanted to reach through the book and tell her “Tara, wait! This isn’t the end of your story! Don’t let this be the end of your story.”
Do I recommend this book? My answer is an unequivocal yes. It is a particularly important read, I believe, for the Christian home educator. We need to understand that when some people bristle at Christianity and/or home education, some of them may very well have had their perceptions shaped by situations such as those detailed in this heartbreaking memoir. It is crucial that we realize there are “homeschool” families out there that do not or did not or cannot or will not educate their children. We must also accept that in situations such as these, the “students” find themselves in a prison of abuse from which they do not even have the saving grace of escaping on the school bus for a few hours. Of course, I find these horrific homeschool situations to be the exception. But understanding that they do still occur is a sobering realization that can help us navigate these perceptions and shed light on what home education can and should look like in the Christian home.
~Farm Life~
Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte
☕☕☕☕☕
“If possible, investigate the original, invigorating habitat of such plants, remove some of the soil, and see if nature doesn’t have a cure for the ailing plant far better than any commercial fertilizer you could buy.” -Carrots Love Tomatoes
Carrots love tomatoes . . . and I love them both . . . and I love this book . . . and I love Louise Riotte! Oh, how much this book has taught me and is continuing to teach me as I become a homesteader. I’ve read it twice but go back to it continually as a reference because, well, I simply cannot seem to memorize the thousand or so companion planting pairs she writes on! Best of all, the recommendations in this book are not snake oil. I’ve seen firsthand now through two growing seasons that companion planting is powerful. Take our brassicas, for example. Our first year on the homestead, all of our brassicas went to the worms, literally. An interplanting this last season of brassicas with strong herbs between them, namely rosemary and thyme, along with a touch of natural “BT” spray resulted in THIS. That’s right. Actual, edible, broccoli and cauliflower!
My recommendation for this book?
Buy it.
Read it.
Read it again.
Refer to it . . . forever!
All New Square Foot Gardening Method by Mel Bartholomew
☕☕☕
My hubby and I can often be found having the “book versus YouTube debate.” 99% of the time, I would rather take a few weeks to read an in-depth book on, say orcharding, and slowly make my way through the illustrated mastery of planting, staking, pruning, and harvesting. My hubby is more of the mind to “rip off the Band-Aid already” and binge watch a few dozen minutes’ worth of YouTube tree gurus (or, so they claim). He maintains that his way is the more expedient, and I maintain that my way is the more . . . noble. And enjoyable. And lovely. I’m a real treat to have around.
As much as it pains me to admit it, however, square foot gardening may be in the 1% bracket of topics where I would submit to my husband (just some tongue-in-cheek Bible humor) and join him on the couch for some good old-fashioned yuppie YouTube time.
Please understand, there is nothing wrong with this book. In fact, the information is fabulous! It just doesn’t take reading a book to “get it.” Square foot gardening is SIMPLE. Spoiler’s Alert: it’s gardening by the . . . wait for it . . . square foot. You can master the concepts involved and reap a quadrupled harvest after viewing just a few YouTubers on the topic. You’ll save weeks, a few bucks, and maybe even a little bit of dignity. Plus, if you’re in my snobby shoes, you may be giving your spouse a win which is always a nice gesture.
Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard
☕☕☕☕
“Most people on planet Earth live their lives surrounded by concrete, steel and stone —with the crush of humanity on all sides. Their only contact with the natural world may be pigeons flying the streets in search of a morsel or ants emerging through cracks in the sidewalk at their feet. Like the ants, humans live lives of existential vanity working for all eternity doing apparently nothing more than working for all eternity for nothing more than working for all eternity.” -Restoration Agricultre
If you’ve ever tried metal-detecting at the beach, that’s the best way I can describe the experience of reading this book. It is so thrilling when you find an old coin or a wedding ring hob-knobbing with some crabs and daubers. But they are always, but always, buried beneath an excessive accumulation of sand.
Unless you are writing a thesis on environmental agriculture methods, I would say the best way to reap the benefits of this book would be by using the Blinkist app. There’s a recommendation I never thought I’d see myself type. I am not the SparkNotes girl. I choose a slow journey, thank you very much. But in this case, I must make an exception because Restoration Agriculture is slower than slow. Shepard even quotes Thoreau. If you struggle with insomnia, get yourself a copy immediately. I believe that I fell asleep on the same page for a week straight. All that being said, there is information in this book that is absolutely vital for the holistic homesteader like me! So do be sure to read or listen to a summary!
Here are my top takeaways:
- Monoculture cropping is the most depleting, destructive practice of modern agriculture.
- In order to feed ourselves sustainably, without destroying more and more of our natural ecosystems around the globe each and every year, we must shift our agriculture mindset from annual crops (wheat, corn, rice, soy) to perennial agriculture (nuts, fruits, seeds, berries).
- Animals should be rotated through crop land in as natural a sequence as possible such as is seen in nature in order to both feed the animals properly as well as fertilize and prepare the land for the next crop rotation. If done carefully, the animals will not damage the land, feeding demands can be alleviated, and the ecosystem will improve over time rather than become continually depleted.
- Permaculture is modeled after the layers of a forest and can be mimicked by the organic farmer for a natural, sustainable, higher-yield farm!
~Fiction~
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
☕☕☕☕
“Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work done.” -The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
Hate to be that snob who just keeps on singing the same old tune: “the book was better than the movie!” But it was, yet again. Potato peels and all, this book was just what the literary doctor ordered for me this year. Amid too many textbooks (namely Restoration Agriculture, Stealing from God, and How Not to Diet) I was in desperate need of some breezy reading to clear my head for a few days. While I did not find the writing as superb as I had expected, the plot was compelling, the writing witty, and the different voices the book is written in kept it fresh and interesting for me. I especially enjoy the way the storyline comes together in bits and pieces and humors the reader into thinking she’s a veritable Nancy Drew. I’ll definitely peel this one open again.
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
☕☕☕☕
“The loudest sound on the earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.” -Prodigal Summer
Perhaps my favorite read of 2022, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle had me spellbound for a week straight. I just had to get some more Barbara Kingsolver in my life, so I chose Prodigal Summer more or less at random for this year’s reading list. While I did not relish it to the same extent as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I’m a nonfiction lover after all), Prodigal Summer certainly did keep my interest. I must say though that Kingsolver seems a bit obsessed with the birds and the bees and buzzes around with them far more frequently and at too close a range for my personal taste. I especially find it awkward when she feels the need to insert random sexual content which in no way contributes to the plot. Otherwise, the book was fascinating to me. Some would probably call it slow, but actually that was my favorite of its feature. Kingsolver has a way of immersing you in nature and intoxicating the senses which is to be envied by any writer. And this simply cannot occur with fast fiction.
“She could never explain to Eddie how it was, the undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming. And the hallelujahs of it, too: the straight, abundant rows, the corn tassels raised up like children who all knew the answer. The calves born slick and clean into their leggy black-and-white perfection. Life and death always right there in your line of sight.” -Prodigal Summer
I particularly recommend you read anything by Barbara Kingsolver outside on lazy summer afternoons as I did with this title.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
☕☕☕☕☕
“I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don’t recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.” -Jane Eyre
I kind of hate that I loved this book so much. Sometimes I actually loathed myself for being so caught up in its drama which is indeed as over the top as I remembered! Oh well. You have to admit when you’re beat, and I guess I can be a hopeless romantic after all. Chapter after chapter, I just had to marvel at the masterful writing which escaped me somehow in the eighth grade. Imagine, a thirteen year-old not appreciating a literary wonder! Not that Charlotte Bronte really needs my tiny, sheepish stamp of approval these decades later, but I must confess at last that the world got one right. Jane Eyre is indeed a masterpiece, albeit a gaudy one. I may even have to sneak-read it again sometime and pretend that I forgot how it all unfolded.
~Fitness and Nutrition~
How Not to Diet by Michael Greger
☕☕☕☕
“[D]ead people don’t eat.” -Michael Greger
Everybody knows that age-old diet tip that it burns more calories to chew a stalk of celery than the stalk itself replaces to our bodies. But apparently this doesn’t hold true if you slather it in peanut butter first! Bummer. Anyway, that’s about the best way I can describe my attempt to digest this book. It is about as heavy as a 5-pound bag of carrots and every bit as packed full of nutrients. I would have given up entirely except for the fact that the content is so very rich; I’m determined to extract every last morsel. My mistake was in trying to read each section in one go. I’m not woman enough for that kind of reading. So, with about 500 more pages to go (yes, literally) my new plan of attack is to read TWO PAGES A DAY ONLY (I’ll be done by Christmas) and challenge myself to apply one new principal therein each day. After all, what good is a giant nutrition textbook if reading it is so incredibly exhausting that you don’t have the wherewithal to apply any of it afterwards?
Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman
☕☕☕☕
It is always regrettable when people make promises they can’t keep, especially when the promises are completely unnecessary. Take for example this book. The information that Joel Fuhrman lays out is accessible and compelling for any health or nutrition enthusiast. Unfortunately, he goes on to make sweeping promises in regard to following his recommendations, even claiming that his readers need not become sick anymore if only they follow his nutrition guidelines to the tee. Well, I can tell you after following a whole foods, plant-based diet almost religiously for the past decade, I still catch colds. Lame, I know! That being said, in regularly maximizing micro-nutrient density as emphasized in this book, I can vouch for the fact that our immune systems DO function at a higher level when we are faithful to flooding our bodies with the rainbow of produce. Again, we have a baby-bathwater situation on our hands. This book is a valuable resource, you just have to overlook the snake oil promises.
My top takeaways from Super Immunity:
- Focus on micro-nutrient density foods (veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds).
- Avoid processed foods and animal products.
The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
☕☕☕☕
“. . . adding years to your life and life to your years!” -Dan Buettner
Imagine my surprise upon finishing this book and flipping on Netflix, when what do I find but Dan Buettner himself with a special Live to 100 Blue Zones Series just for me! If you already watched the series and are hungry for more then you will love this book. Although not impeccably written, I enjoyed every moment walking the world with Dan Buettner and some of the oldest, friendliest faces on earth. Both the book and the series have a unique appeal. The book is wonderfully comprehensive, and I simply love reading all the accounts and anecdotes of some of the world’s longest-lived people; something which has always intrigued me. The Netflix special, however, while much too short and somewhat shallow compared to the text, really helped the content come to life for me. Food and culture do love to be shown in full color after all. And so, I cannot choose whether I liked the book or the series more in this instance because I found that the two really enhanced the other!
The Blue Zones may receive flack for not being scientific enough in its approach and leaning instead on anecdotal evidence. Indeed, this is true. However, I believe there is a place for both science and anecdotal evidence to come together, and that the two can happily cohabitate if we just lighten up a little! After all, science doesn’t have all the answers yet and —spoiler’s alert— it never will. For me, I loved the anecdotal support this book contributed to nutrition and lifestyle studies I’ve already read elsewhere. For example, I noticed a tremendous amount of “crossover content” between the observations in this book and the studies and information in texts such as How Not to Die by Michael Greger, Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman, and The China Study by Colin T. Campbell, to name a few. I find that correlations are important after all!
Whether the longevity “secret” in question is beans, greens, whole grains, a robust social life, lots of vitamin D, functional exercise, or nuts (aren’t we all), I personally relished hearing each of these habits touted again and again while staring into the beautiful faces and cultures of the world’s longest-lived humans. Here, science and humanity unite across a painter’s pallet of skin tones, languages, and cultures as deep as the wrinkles on the centenarians’ faces. Traveling through this book was like a health spa holiday around the globe. And I didn’t want to come home.
The Blue Zones Solution by Dan Buettner
☕☕☕☕
I got bit by the Blue Zones Bug and just had to keep going. This solutions sequel to The Blue Zones is exactly what you would expect: a practical guide to applying the top takeaways from the longest-lived people around the globe. Although I had already discovered the longevity secrets revealed in the first book, I found this sequel to be very helpful in adopting some of the principals and practices. I do not recommend it as a standalone as it is not very intriguing by itself. Think of it as the companion workbook to go along with the actual literature.
A few of my top Blue Zones takeaways:
- A plant-based diet is still the way to go!
- Bean consumption continues to top the charts for longevity correlation.
- My Grandpa (currently 97) was wise all these years to insist on eating three raw walnuts a day.
- Variety is the spice of life just so long as it’s smothered in spice (turmeric, ginger, curry, chili, cinnamon, garlic).
- Stress less, laugh more!
- Be sure to get your “vitamin G” (20 min+ a day in the garden)!
- Stop moving and you die.
- “Hara hachi bu!” Eat until 80% full.
- A purposeless life is a short one.
- Life is longer with friends!
Thanks for taking a peek in our library today! What were your great reads this year? Comment below! 😀
Love, ~Candace Arden~
