November Book Review
A mix of audible & paper book reads...
It feels almost strange to be writing about my monthly reads, especially at this time of the year. Normally, I start the year out strong with serious goals of getting in one book a month piled with 900 other goals for a fresh start… none of which ever include a gym membership but that’s a story for another time. I guess what I am finding so interesting about this year is that I am still consistently reading all the way to the very brilliant (not bitter) end.
I was going through an all-or-nothing period of my life from about 26-32 years old. If I committed to a calorie-counting plan and didn’t get through it one day, I quit. When I decided to give up gluten to see if that could help the horrendous pain in my stomach I willfully made it 3 months and then ate a sandwich one day on regular bread and told myself that there was no point in continuing on my very effective journey because it would take a whole 28 days for that bread to leave my bloodstream, so I just gave that journey up all together. If I started a book and didn’t really fall in love with it immediately, I didn’t pick up another or try to “get to the good parts”, I just quit.
Why am I telling you this??? Get to the point already Krystel! Ok ok! I am saying all this because here I am in December… 12 months after the motivated Krystel comes to the room to say, “Hey, we are capable of doing more than we thought when we don’t quit.”
So, if you’re looking for something out there in the cosmos to motivate yourself to keep going, start back up, or just shift instead of quitting, yet again, I’m here to cheer you on.
Ok now on to the real reason you are here today. Thanks for sticking it out that long for my forever motivational rant to get to the meat.
In November I had the pleasure of reading a few books. Again, reading is used in the loosest term possible because spending 12-14 hours a day in my car some days calls for Audible too.
November Reads:
Wintering by Katherine May Mother Nature by Jedidiah Jenkins So Long as It’s Wild by Barbara Jenkins
Wintering thoughts -
Where do I begin with this amazingly peaceful, beautiful, inspiring book? This book was not read by the author but it was read by the most calming voice I have ever heard. Her words flowed off the pages into the air of my home like morning songbirds. The way music rolls off the page for a pianist, playing as though alone, while a crowd of silent onlookers gaze in awe of the majesty.
This book portrayed the idea of what each month of wintering looks like and how closely our human souls cling to the ability to live as nature does, through the natural progression of the seasons. I listened and listened and took in every word like a child savoring every last drop of a melting ice cream cone in the dead of summer’s heat. I stopped folding socks and took deeper breaths while driving, while she explained the ability and craving our bodies naturally have to withstand cold winter ocean ice water. I waited and waited for the moment she would reveal the “right way to winter” through my own life. A little nugget that could better prepare me for the next time winter wanted to encroach into my life like it had so many times before… but it never came.
No, instead this book portrayed the truth of the difficulties and how even in the darkest and coldest months of our lives, while wintering, we are in the most patient parts of learning and relearning. Life isn’t supposed to hold us without discomfort. It never promised us perfection and endless happiness and productivity. Actually, we were birthed into this realm scared, cold, screaming for safety, and in one of the most terrifying moments of our lives, we became human. And this incredible book was a reminder of just that. Sometimes the winters of our life award us a moment otherwise not given, to sit back and notice the beauty that is truly forever surrounding us, even when it hurts to look.
Mother Nature thoughts -
Oh, how this man has a way with words. Young and scared. Filled with anxiety that overtakes his mind and body at the thought of having to share his deepest truths with the world, and yet he does… over and over and I get to appreciate this work from afar. A beautiful story of the ability to love through differences that have and continuously do destroy homes, hearts, and lives. Jedidiah takes you on a heart-wrenching and tension-filled road trip with his conservative, Christian mother… All while holding the question, “Will my mother come to my wedding when I find the man of my dreams?”
I have not yet found the ability to love this unconditionally. Or to dig so deep within me where understanding equates to disappointment that can be held in a container of family or love. I actually feel like the defender and bodyguard for such loved ones in my life to their own family members who chose to continually break them down and other them. However, listening through this book and coming to the realization that there isn’t always the kind of fairytale ending we hope for in life, but that love can still exist there, is one of the beautiful gifts of Jed’s writing. Life does not have to look the same for everyone and mostly, it really doesn’t. We all have such different perspectives in this life based on our own realities, circumstances, upbringings, neighborhoods, influences, and a multitude of other coins that flip in different directions to land us on completely opposite paths. When we choose to love ourselves regardless of the people walking around us, it seems to make it easier to love them through the differences and misunderstandings.
As Long as It’s Wild thoughts -
This book by the mama of Jedidiah Jenkins (yes the book I mentioned above) gave me so much insight into the trials that women of my mom’s era faced. The way the world looked at a life that had endured as much as her husband but did not applaud her in the same manner. I thought, here this woman is with her three kids trying to make it work in a man’s world… the same way my mom had to with her three kids, after divorce, in a man’s world.
The perseverance, patience, and peace this woman found to make it through was utterly inspiring. She walked… actually WALKED across America in the late ’70s. Full-blown backpack, sleeping on the side of the road, falling off cliffs, being hit by cars, chased by ravaging men, and then was completely forgotten when she left a man who cheated on her time and time again, while pregnant.
This story, while filled with trial after tribulation shows the strength and resilience you don’t often hear about anymore. I grew up entrenched in Christianity and while I do not agree with most of the dogmatic ways of religion anymore, I am the first to admit that there is a high moral teaching in the bible(and most religions). Barbara Jenkins reminds us that through a belief in a higher power, all things are possible, that with patience and love, we can find a way through the darkest times, and that if you keep believing that, some way, some how everything will work out… it does.
I’d love to hear about what you read last month and what you have coming up in the comments.