recently read for january 3, 2014

Supernatural Childbirth

By Jackie Mize

I love this book. More than encouraging, and dripping with truth and excellent scriptures and promises. 

The Middle Place

By Kelly Corrigan

Amazing memoir about a father and daughter's journeys with cancer. She captures the feelings of that "middle place" perfectly - being in her thirties with a husband and two kids, but still loving that feeling of being a child again in the presence of her own parents, and the fear of losing them. Her stories about her dad and her own life are fantastic. A really great book!

Outliers

By Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell is one of my favorite writers and I was surprised to find out recently that he was actually raised Mennonite. He takes seemingly obscure situations and pieces them together in a way that makes you think about the world differently. Outliers looks at the idea of success, and through fascinating stories in history, Gladwell shows us that our understanding of success is skewed. Success is not so much the result of a person's ambition or intelligence as it is the combination of those things with the opportunities a person is presented with at the right time. You'll learn about everything from what a pilots culture has to do with plane crashes, to why Asians are better at math, to why the Beatles and Bill Gates were so successful when plenty of other "geniuses" aren't. The second part of the book focuses on legacy. I loved the whole thing - read it!

Dad Is Fat
By Jim Gaffigan
This book is HILARIOUS. Jim Gaffigan is one of my favorite comedians and I laughed the whole way through. Most of the stories are about his life as a husband and father of five kids living in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. (I think the title was inspired by a caption his son wrote on a picture he drew of the family.)

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

By Ina May Gaskin

I made my way through this book slowly, over the course of a few months because the first half is full of birth stories. Ina May Gaskin is a well-known midwife who started a place called The Farm, where women can go to deliver babies naturally. Super encouraging to fill my mind with one positive, natural birth story after another. I would recommend to just about any pregnant mama. (Maybe even papas, but be warned there are some crazy pictures.) I learned more from this book than any other pregnancy books or sites.

Blink
By Malcolm Gladwell
I didn't like this as much as Outliers, but it was still a great read. Gladwell uses amazing, intriguing examples from different areas of life (sports, classical music, war, racism, emergency rooms, etc.) to discuss our ability to make judgments in a few seconds. It confirmed things I've always thought about first impressions and just knowing things without being able to explain why. Our tendency in this information saturated age is to explain things about statistically, or to attribute disasters to a lack of information, but Gladwell points out that often times understanding trumps information. (And too much information can become a bad thing.) I like how his discoveries can be applied practically, and that he charges readers to act.