Hey friends – hope you’re doing well as the summer’s winding down. Did I just say that? Waaahhh. I’m trying not to think about that sad fact. But happy weekend anyway!

School has already started in some parts of the country and it’s been a busy time around here too as we’re getting ready for school to start next week for our younger kids. And in just a few days we head south dropping our oldest son off at college for the first time. (Sniff.) This is new territory for us.

It’s going to be a long ride to Birmingham (and likely an even longer one home), so I’m collecting some good reads for the trip. Which reminds me that I meant to post a summer reading suggestion list here like I did last year, just didn’t get a roundtuit.

If you missed these two book recommendations from this past fall and spring, check out The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. It was amazing. Also Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius. Wanting a contemplative beach/weekend read? Consider Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I’ve got two new suggestions to share from my reading list this summer. Both are fascinating reads and take place during the the WWI/WWII era.

First: Born Survivors, a poignant memoir by Wendy Holden published in 2015.

From the inside book cover:

“Three women pregnant by their husbands.

Three couples praying for a brighter future.

Three babies, born within weeks of each other in unimaginable circumstances.

By the time they arrived, each weighing less than three pounds, their fathers had been murdered by the Nazis and their mothers were ‘walking skeletons’, living moment to moment in the same concentration camp.

Somehow, all three women managed to survive.

Against all odds, their babies did too.

Seventy years on, these siblings of the heart have come together for the first time to tell the remarkable stories of the mothers who defied death to give them life.

All of them, born survivors.”

This book had me teary and in awe of these three incredibly courageous women who defied all odds to protect the precious babies they carried.

And second: All the Light We Cannot See, a novel by Anthony Doerr published in 2014.

From the book flap:

“Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home.

When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, on a special assignment to track the resistance.

More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie Laure’s converge.”

These books are deep, poignant and tear jerkers both. You’ll think. At least I did. (I don’t recommend these books for children.) I’m always on the lookout for a great read, and look forward to hearing your recommendations too.

You may also like: Gift from the Sea

The post THLG Summer Book List 2016 appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

Hi friends!

And how are you today?

Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday America! Hope you’re out and about, enjoying the festivities of the weekend with friends and family today. It’s a bit of a different 4th for me. As I write, Jon and my older boys are airborne, on their way to Romania with a missions team. It’ll be quieter around here and I’ll be missing them. Looking forward to hearing of their adventures. So glad they have this wonderful opportunity, and the little guys and I will make the most of our 4th here. Might even light a few fireworks. That’s what Charlie says anyway. (Gulp.)

So if you’re a book lover, keep reading. Truth be told, I’ve been dying to write this Summer THLG Reading List 2015 for some time now. I love to read. There’s nothing better than a great book to take along on vacation. And if I can’t get away, a good book is vacation. There’ve been stages in life when I’ve read like a fiend. Other times, I’ve barely picked up a book in months. It’s all a matter of available time….

I’ve read all the books on the list below. Some I found on The New York Times Best Seller’s list. Others in the library. But most from friends, word of mouth.

In my book (pun intended), a good book is a real luxury.

And uninterrupted time to read? Now that’s extravagance.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, just a few favorites that came to mind.

Summer THLG Reading List 2015

• A Girl Named Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. Haven’s a storyteller. And that’s why I love this memoir. She’s quirky and she’ll make you laugh (out loud) with tales of her unusual childhood in Moreland, Indiana. Moreland is a sleepy little town with one stop light. And a boatload of characters. (And you know I do love characters.)
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Novel by the author of The Kite Runner. Hosseini is also a storyteller and he weaves a fantastic and believable tale set to true to life events in Afghanistan’s history during the last four decades. This is a moving book, violent at times, draws you in from the beginning. I was particularly struck by the poignant relationship of two women, main characters in the book. They start out as enemies by a strange twist of fate, but realize on the journey they desperately need each to survive. What an incredible friendship.

• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. A mother of five. Aviator. Deep thinker, writer. In 1955, forty-nine-year-old Anne spent two weeks alone in a New England coastal cottage, penning her thoughts on aging, relationships, solitude, being a woman, caring for the soul. Those thoughts morphed into this thought provoking book.

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Jeannette is an accomplished writer and journalist, a former MSNBC news correspondent. Had the most unusual upbringing in a very poor and highly dysfunctional family. Her mother: a distracted starving artist. Her father Rex: a brilliant man, but an alcoholic out of touch with reality. Can’t hold a job, moves the family from state to state avoiding bill collectors. Draws blueprints for a glass castle he’ll build as the family estate when his latest invention takes off. But it never does. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry.
• The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. But it’s not really Nik Ripken. That’s just a pseudonym. “Nik” traveled around the world preserving the stories of more than six hundred Christians in over sixty “closed” countries. True stories of how faith survives, let alone flourishes in places that are overcome by darkness, despair and hopelessness. These God stories will floor you, blow your mind. This is what’s happening behind the scenes, the insanity of God.

• Essentialism: the Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Greg outlines a “systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that’s not so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.”
• The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein. Harry Bernstein recently passed away, but he penned several memoirs, his first after he turned ninety. His is an amazing story. On the eve of World War I: “In a small English mill town, Harry Bernstein’s family struggles to make ends meet. Harry’s father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams…. Then Harry’s older sister does the unthinkable: she falls in love with a Christian boy. But they are separated by an “invisible wall” that divides Jewish families on one side of the street from Christian families on the other. When Harry unwittingly discovers the secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.”
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Laugh out loud funny. Definitely one of the funnier memoirs I’ve read. Don’t be deceived by the cover. This book is not intended for children and has considerable language. ( Cuz that’s how it was…..)

So have you read any of these books? Throw in your two cents today. I’m always pining for a great read, and I know others are too. Take a second and give us your book recommendation today!

The post Summer THLG Reading List 2015 appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.