I’ve been doing a little reading this month and I’d say that it’s been a fairly diverse set of books. A parenting book. A classic love story. And a sci-fi novel. I don’t know if they get any more different than that. But I did enjoy them all!
A co-worker gave me the Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp, back before Jude was born and it was by far the most helpful baby book that I read. Granted, I didn’t read many books but Happiest Baby had methods for calming Jude that worked every time. Every. Single. Time. It was amazing. I thoroughly appreciated how middle of the road this book was – it seems to fall in the middle of the parent spectrum which I felt good about. And because we had such great success with Happiest Baby, I used PaperBackSwap to get Happiest Toddler on the Block. I am so glad that I did. As with Happiest Baby, this book breaks everything down in easy to understand language, making the techniques suggested very easy to implement. He does a good job creating scenarios to better explain the methods he suggest. As Jude gets older, I am looking forward to having tools to be able to discipline as situations arise without having to resort to spanking. Click this to see a demonstration of his techniques as modeled on Good Morning America. I am still planning on reading a few other books on discipling toddlers, like Parenting with Love and Logic, but I am glad to have read this book as a good base to continue to learn about parenting. 9/10
I finally finished up June’s book club book, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and I have to say, books like this are the reason I am part of a book club. I would not have picked up this book on my own, but I was excited when it was suggested to be one of the classics that we read. This book has been mentioned in so many other books that we have read, like Reading Lolita in Tehran, that I was glad to have a reason to make it a priority for reading. I didn’t get to attend the book club that discussed this book because I was out of town and I’m sad I missed it. I would have liked to discuss this one in a group, but I’ll settle for talking about it on the blog. 
It surprised me how much easier this book was to read than I had anticipated. There were certainly parts that I know I didn’t understand because of the difference in cultures and speech, but overall, I felt like I was excited to read the book every time I had the opportunity to pick it up. 9/10
Now for this month’s book club book, The Host by Stephanie Meyer. I know. I know. Stephanie Meyer wrote the Twilight series. . . I almost didn’t want to like this book because of that fact. I have sworn to myself that I will not get sucked in to the Twilight phenomenon and I almost felt like I was giving in a little by reading this book. I mean, I’ve read Ann Rice’s vampire books in the past, not to mention all of the R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike and Stephen King. . . all in that same genre of reading. I don’t know that I want to spend any more of my time reading books like that! This book is not associated with Twilight at all – where Twilight is a young adult novel, The Host is certainly written for adults. It’s about an alien invasion where the aliens take over human bodies and continue to live in society, making the world a more benign place. I didn’t anticipate getting so wrapped up in this story, but I found myself reaching for this book every time I had a spare moment. Meyer is a fantastic story teller even if there were elements of the story that I found a little predictable. Especially the ‘love’ part of the story. . . Overall, a fun sci-fi read. I enjoyed turning my brain off and not having to work to read and enjoy this book. 7.5/10
