September Reviews

September was this weird blur and crawl at the same time. School in full swing for Sawyer and I, my brother moved out-of-state, I caught a nasty cold, I saw lots of friends (not when sick), plus lots of other things to deal with at home and at work. If I'm being honest, I've been really preoccupied with some things that are making me very anxious lately, some thing warranted and some not. 'Tis the life of a worrier! Luckily I've spent my entire life working on how to wrangle these sorts of feelings, so I've got things under control, it just feels like it's taking more effort than normal... Anywayyyy, October is looking pretttttty busy, but with mostly fun things, so I can't complain. Here's what I read in September:

First up, the big buzz of the literary world was The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Everyone, their mothers, their cousins, their neighbors, and their pet dogs read this one, or at least pre-ordered it, I think. I posted about it here last week.

I started off the month reading Peter Bognani's Things I'm Seeing Without You, a story about a teenage girl who comes to terms with the suicide of a boy she felt she loved, but whom she had never met. The dialogue felt forced, the plot disjointed, the premise weak, and just as whole not my favorite. It wasn't YA, but it felt like it to me. 

Clearly my month for fiction was a little stunted, minus the Atwood, because I also read Kevin Kwan's Rich People Problems, the third in the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy, and I didn't think it was anything amazing. I think the biggest problem is that after the other two the whole poking fun at the over-the-top lavish lifestyles is just overplayed. The first one was delightful, the second one fine, but by this one I was over it. It had it's moments and was entertaining at times, but if there was a fourth I probably wouldn't read it.

I read two parenting books this month, for whatever reason, one I thought wasn't very good, Permission to Parent by Robin Berman, and one quite insightful, The Gift of Failure, by Jessica Lahey. Permission to Parent gave contradictory advice and really didn't offer any new information. The other one made me feel validated in how I parent. I am really into making my son self-sufficient and I think sometimes others might think I'm callous because I'm okay watching him get frustrated when trying to, say, put on a difficult item of clothing or struggle to tackle a problem. I never expect him to do anything he can't truly do,  but I am all for challenging to help him build that critical problem-solving stamina he'll need in the real world, even if tears are shed. I hope to do a more extensive post on it soon.

I also FINALLY read Can We All Be Feminists, a collection of essays edited by June Eric-Udorie about intersectional feminism. It was really, really good, and it was really eye-opening for me, since this concept is still something I'm exploring and learning about.