Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I enjoy Kingsolver’s novels so I was interested, even if this was a nonfiction work. Plus, it was about eating locally and raising much of your own food, which I’m also interested.

Subtitle: A Year of Food Life

Additional writing by: Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Published: 2007

Genre: nonfiction, gardening

Length: 370 pages

Summary: Short version: An example of eating locally and in season

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Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

This was my book club book for the month of July

Subtitle: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Published: 2017

Genre: nonfiction historical crime

Length: 291 pages of story, 338 pages total

Setting: Osage County, Oklahoma, early 1900s

Summary: Short version: White people screw Native Americans again in Osage, OK

Deep Down Dark by Hector Tobar

I listened to an Ideas podcast with the author of this book and found the story so fascinating, I wanted to read the book. I finally got around to reading it.

Subtitle: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free

Published: 2014

Genre: nonfiction

Length: 309 pages

Setting: Atacama Desert of Chile, 2010

Summary: Short version: the subtitle tells it all

Untangled by Lisa Damour

I was made aware of this book from a Modern Mrs. Darcy post of books about navigating the teen and tween years. Since Miss Adventure is entering the tween years, I thought it would be helpful. Plus, it has a coveted “U” title.

Subtitle: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

Published: 2016

Font: Legacy

Length: 280 pages of text, 326 pages total

Genre: nonfiction adolescent psychology

Summary: Short version: The stages of teenage development, particularly in girls

Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws

I picked this book up from the library as a possible resource for Miss Adventure. She’s doing a project on the different sources of fabrics and their history. I read the pages on cotton to check and see if it would work for her, and got sucked into reading the whole book.

Published: 2010

Genre: science nonfiction

Length: 217 pages of text, 224 pages total

Summary: Short version: read the title again

Reading People by Anne Bogel

I faithfully listen to Bogel’s podcast (What Should I Read Next) and read her blog (Modern Mrs. Darcy). It’s where I get half of my new books on my TBR list, so of course I am going to read her new book. I am trying to be a bit more mindful of my personality and looking at long-term goals for myself. I thought this book might help with that personal goal.

Subtitle: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

Published: 2017

Genre: nonfiction psychology

Length: 203 pages of text, 217 pages total

Summary: Short version: What are all the different personality tests about

Weird Geography Picture Books

After having a chance to see the Terracotta Warriors in person earlier this year, I was looking for some books about them for the kids to read. Sadly, I couldn’t find too much in our local library system. The best I found for kids was a mention in a book about other oddities on Earth. While they didn’t really have much information about the Terracotta Warriors, the books are fascinating on their own.

First off, there’s the DK book What’s Weird on Earth, subtitled “our strange and wonderful world as you’ve never seen it before”. This book contains about 70 two-page spreads split into nature, supernatural, places, people, history, and fun facts. All but the fun facts section shows a map of the world with interesting locations around the world that fit the page’s theme picked out and described. I can pretty much guarantee there’s a page on here that interests anyone. When Miss Adventure was reading it in the car, I had to limit her to two bits of information per page, or she would have read the entire book to me. Definitely a must read for any map fiend, but not really intended to be read cover to cover in a single sitting.

The other book I’m highlighting today is Curious Constructions: A Peculiar Portfolio of Fifty Fascinating Structures by Michael Hearst. Hearst describes fifty different impressive structures. Most of the are manmade (like the Millau Viaduct or the International Space Station) but also includes a few natural phenomena (like the Great Barrier Reef). For each construction, there’s a page of information, often with some true or false questions or fun facts, and the facing page is an illustration. This book involves more reading than the previous book since there is a page of text on each construction. Even so, there will be many interruptions to share little tidbits of “Did you know…?”

Both of these books would make a fun addition to a child’s library if they’re into construction, maps, or nonfiction books.

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