Recommended Reads

October 2024

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Have you ever wondered why someone you love deeply doesn’t seem to know it? This book might be your answer. Gary Chapman talks about the existence of five different love languages: touch, affirmation, gifts, quality time, and acts of service. You might give the person you love gifts every day, and they still don’t seem to understand that you love them. It could be that they have a different love language. Maybe “affirmation” is how they interpret love, not “gifts.” The idea in this book is to explore the love languages you use. Once you do this, you can start seeing more clearly why maybe what you are doing isn’t working. At the end of the book, there is a simple quiz to help you learn how you interpret love. I challenge you to take it and give it to someone dear to you. This book could change relationships at home, at work, and between friends. It isn’t complicated to read, but it does have life-changing information. If you want better relationships with others, come get this book.

Silence of the Songbirds by Bridget Stutchbury

Try this experiment: step outside on a bright spring day, preferably in a rural area, and listen. Can you hear a silence that wasn’t there 10 or 20 years ago? Silence is a hard thing to hear, but the fact is, a new silence is there, and it’s growing every year. The 2022 “State of the Birds” report found that half of all bird species in the United States are decreasing, across all habitats except for wetlands (the result of waterfowl conservation efforts related to hunting). Songbirds, scientifically known as “passerines”—those beautiful, colorful birds that fill our lawns and meadows with lilting melodies—are sadly one of the most rapidly declining groups. Few people understand the problem of declining bird populations better than Bridget Stutchbury, a Canadian biology professor who has studied birds all around the world and gained international recognition as an avian expert. This book, published in 2007, is even more relevant now than when she wrote it. It explains the different factors that contribute to songbird loss (from habitat loss and climate changes to increases in predator populations), why losing songbirds is a sign of more widespread environmental problems to come, and what individuals can do to protect these birds and maintain their habitats. It’s also a bit of a love “song” to the bird species that are endangered, full of drawings and color photographs of songbirds, along with the author’s engaging and funny personal stories. If you want to do all that you can to ensure your grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in a world filled with birdsong, read this book!

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye is the first novel written by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. It tells the story of Pecola, an 11-year-old Black girl growing up in poverty. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother, a maid, adores the attractive, pampered white children of her employer, but shows nothing but cruelty and indifference toward her own, “ugly” daughter. The other kids at school also call Pecola ugly and make fun of her. Pecola prays every day for blue eyes, believing that if only she had beautiful blue eyes like the white girls that people admire and love, then she would be loved, too. Can this story get any more depressing, you ask? One day Pecola is quietly washing the dishes when her father, drunk as usual, staggers into the room and rapes her. The reviewer read this novel for a women’s studies class in college, and it is, beyond question, the most painful work of fiction she has ever read, but also one of the most touching. It could break a heart of stone, and often leaves you wiping away tears and hoping that somehow, against all odds, Pecola’s life will change for the better. It’s also an important novel (hence being assigned for a college class) because of its brilliant writing and the themes it explores—such as the impact of racism and beauty standards on young people, the objectification of women, sexual abuse, and racial and socioeconomic inequality. It’s obviously not for everyone (lots of trigger warnings here), but if you can handle the bleakness, it’s the kind of book that subtly changes your way of seeing the world, makes your heart just a little bit bigger, and stays with you forever.

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

This book is written by a great British author, Lisa Jewell. She has written many mystery books, and if you love a good mystery, she is a must-read. Then She Was Gone is a book with many plot twists that will have you saying, “WHAT!?” The story is about young Ellie Mack, who goes missing one day after school, and after ten years, there are still no answers for her mother, Laurel. She has had to learn how to live life without her daughter. As part of this new way of life, Laurel starts dating and meets a very nice man and his young daughter, Poppy. While spending more time with them, she starts having this sense that something is off. Why is Poppy’s mom nowhere to be found? Is Laurel just experiencing grief, or is there another explanation for the way Poppy has her thinking so much about Ellie? Could this new dating relationship be connected to her long-lost daughter?  By the end of the book, you will have all the puzzle pieces put together to know what happened to Ellie Mack ten years ago. Did she run away and create a new life for herself, or did someone take her life from her? Is she still alive and locked up like the famous girls from Cleveland, Ohio? You won’t be able to put down this book until the end, where everything comes together clearly. If you love a great mystery, Lisa Jewell does it again in this book.