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A Girl’s Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp ♥♥♥

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I think any book that provides a human face to homelessness is a good thing. However, I like many others I have seen struggle with defining Brianna, as she describes it in the book, as “homeless.” While her situation (living in a RV in a Walmart parking lot) is certainly not a good one, I think that it’s certainly better than living out of your car or in a doorway somewhere.

Still, if the thought interests you, I would suggest this book. But I would take it with a bit of realism: Brianna can come off as a bit of a unreliable narrator at times (particularly when she discusses her family), so it’s hard to know what all to believe.

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure ♥♥♥♥

I read this ebook while visiting my family in July. Since I have really enjoyed rediscovering the Little House books as an adult, this memoir of another adult Little House reader trying to step into the pages of the book.

While this book is not primarily a discovery of the “real” story of the Ingalls family, there were plenty of those real life glimpses, that I both liked and didn’t like. A bit like discovering the magic behind a spectacular stage production.

But what I really did like about this book is the exploration of why the Little House books are so appealing.

Drop Dead Healthy by AJ Jacobs ♥♥

I really like AJ Jacobs’s writing style. But after A Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, this fell way flat. I’m not sure if it’s because of the triteness of the subject or just the fact that he didn’t seem particularly committed to this project (it was spread out over a much longer time period than his two previous books).

Even if you like Jacobs like I do, I’d skip this one.