We had our work book club discussion of Wild last week. It was jammed in between meetings for me, so I didn’t come prepared with questions (oops), but we did discuss it! People generally liked the book, and getting together to chat. We’re drawing our next book tomorrow.

On to my recent reads!

I really enjoyed Running with Sherman, the story of the malnourished donkey the author adopts, brings back to health, and teaches to run burro races. I was really in to the novelty of learning about running with a donkey at first, but that got kind of old, which is okay, because the book is about so much more – the Amish country in Pennsylvania the author lives in, the history of human relationship with animals, how animals help with depression and other health issues, the community (humans and animals) that helped Sherman learn to run, etc. I loved reading Sherman’s story, but also loved that it was about more than that.

My next read was Truly Devious, a YA mystery novel Mica recommended to me. It’s set at an elite boarding school in Vermont in two timelines – current-ish day, where new student Stevie aims to solve the mystery from the other timeline – who actually kidnapped the school founder’s wife and daughter and killed a student on campus in 1936? As Stevie dives in to researching what happened in 1936, there’s a death on campus. This book is part one of a three part series and all three books are published now (the third one just last week!). I enjoyed reading this – it was a fun, well-written, quick and easy read. But (SPOILER) it ends with a cliffhanger, and I really want to read the next two books, but have so many other books from the library!

I only have one Kindle

After that, my digital copy of Daisy Jones & The Six was available! So many people have raved about this book and I was excited to check it out. It’s a fictional oral history of the 70s band Daisy Jones & The Six. It covers Daisy Jones’s and The Six’s separate rises to fame, how they came to perform together, and why they split. This book reads really fast since it’s written as an oral history. The author did a brilliant job portraying so many different personalities, and even took the time to develop fake song lyrics. I laughed when the character’s memories of details of what happened contradicted one another in the same page – it felt so real, even though it’s complete fiction. This format is unique and worked extremely well, and I loved how the book ended. If you want to read more about the author and this book, Stephany met her and wrote about it here.

Now I’m back to non-fiction, with The Yellow House, a recommendation from Jamie on The Popcast. I have two Jamie recommended books to read, both set in New Orleans, one non-fiction, and one fiction!