What’s on my night stand?
The 5 Love Languages of Children – I love The 5 Love Languages for it marriage advice. I am hoping to love this book just as much for its parenting advice.
Hands Free Life – I downloaded the Kindle version of this book when I saw it on sale for just $1.99. I don’t normally like reading books on my phone, but I like having something available to read when I find myself at an activity that doesn’t require my attention. I read a little bit during the warm-up time during my daughter’s gymnastics practices or when I’m in a doctor’s office waiting room.
The Gardener and the Carpenter
Present Over Perfect
Choosing Real
Books finished in 2018
The Choice – My husband picked this up as a gift for me because he knows I enjoy Nicholas Sparks.
Getting Noticed – I joined Young Living in June 2018, and I purchased this book that was written by an Young Living leader.
You Can Stay Home with Your Kids
Business Boutique
The One Thing
30 Day Push – I love Chalene Johnson
The Longest Ride
Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction
Atomic Habits
Books finished in 2017
Dirty Sexy Politics – I started this book a little before the 2016 election. It was written by the Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, about her experience on the presidential campaign trail with her dad and vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin in 2008. It was interesting to see a different side of the political process. Meghan also maintained a blog while on the campaign trail, which was appealing to me as a blogger myself. I was slow to get through it, but I finally finished it at the end of January 2017.
Trusting God’s Plan – As someone who did not grow up in church, Trusting God’s Plan challenged me to discard the idea that God is just a spirit in the sky watching everything we do. Brittany Ann shows us how God really is intimately involved in our lives. But even when God is involved, bad things do happen and things may not happen as quickly as we would like. She goes on to discuss why those things happen by using real-life examples that I found relatable to my own life. Plus, she provides actionable steps for exactly how to trust God’s plan for your own life going forward. I found this book to be both encouraging and challenging.
The Happiness Dare – I ordered this book with an Amazon gift card I got for Christmas. I chose this book to help me with my proclaimed Year of Happy in 2017. I loved this book. It is written from a Christian perspective, which is usually a deterrent for me because I want super-practical, actionable tips. This book provides those actionable steps based on different happiness styles. This book goes deep into five happiness styles and how each one has been given to us by God and how Jesus experienced each of these happiness styles. The happiness styles are: doer, relater, experiencer, giver, and thinker. I am a Doer, which means I find greatest happiness in getting things done. It’s much more than discovering your happiness style. I now recognize that I need to keep my do, do, do nature in check in order to truly be happy and this book told me how to do that.
No More Perfect Marriages – I pre-ordered this book at the same time I ordered 2 other books using an Amazon gift card. It arrived on Feb. 7, when it was officially released because I have Amazon Prime
The 5 Love Languages – I read this book for the second time to help me write this blog post. This is the best marriage post I have read. I think all couples should read this book.
Stirring up Fun with Food – Who knew Sarah Michelle wrote a book about combining cooking and crafting? My husband pre-ordered this book as a fun surprise for all of us.
In the Woods – This is a mystery book that is keeping my attention right now. My husband bought it a few years ago and I found it on our book shelves.
I don’t read a lot of fiction, but I find fiction better to read before bed than self-help non-fiction because the self-help books make me want to make to-do lists on my phone, which is not what I need to be doing in bed.
Breaking Busy – I ordered this book off of Amazon using a gift card I got for Christmas. I started reading this book in January to help me focus on what is most important. I find myself constantly needing to be busy, but I realize that is not healthy for me and it’s not beneficial for my family. It is written from a Christian perspective, which is often a deterrent for me because I want super-practical, actionable tips.
This book DOES have actionable tips. I do most of my reading in bed at night before falling asleep. But I’ve had trouble reading this book at night because that is not the best time for me to pull out a sheet of paper and carry out the actions to really benefit from this book. I took a break from this book to dive into The Happiness Dare (another Christian self-help book). Then I took another break to start on No More Perfect Marriages.
I finally returned to this book and finished it. But now I want to make time to go back and re-read the actionable steps and do them.
I borrowed this from my husband’s night stand while he was reading this. I started reading it because I am familiar with Rick Ankiel’s story of moving from being a pitcher to being an outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals.
I took a break from reading it before bed because the hard aspects of his childhood were not comforting for me to read right before bed.
More Than Just Making It – I finished reading this book once. Now I want to read it again and dive deeper with it because I am part of a launch team for this book. The book released Sept. 5, 2017 and I got to read a pre-release copy.
Why I Didn’t Rebel
Finish
