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“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
–Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
I did not plan for Call Sign Chaos to be the first book I finished in 2020, but it was, and it actually provides a great quote to begin my yearlong effort to share great reads.
This is my second year of using Evernote to capture the books I read. I kept two basic notes–one for non-fiction, one for fiction. In 2019, I read 88 books, 53 non-fiction and 35 fiction (some are re-reads ).
For 2020 I have decided to write a round-up each month (end of month/beginning of new month) to share good books.
January 2020 Reads
I read 11 books in January: eight non-fiction, and three fiction. All three novels were re-reads (two from the far past), and one of the non-fiction books was a re-read.
Favorite Non-Fiction
My favorite non-fiction book, not surprisingly, is Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis & Bing West. Mattis has a long and storied military career, ending with Defense Secretary for 2017 and 2018.
This was an excellent book. I am not generally interested in military memoirs or this type of non-fiction, but I was immensely impressed by how much I learned (so many quotes written down, like the one above).
Here’s another quote, that I had a chance to share during a dust-up in a Facebook group:
“As Churchill noted, ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on.’ In like age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.”
Another book this month that inspired me–in this case, spiritually–is Becoming Women of the Word: How to Answer God’s Call with Purpose and Joy by Sarah Christmyer. Her writing style was very engaging—she compared different women/stories in her own life with Biblical women. Well done.
I won’t share all the books I read, because some I didn’t love or didn’t get a lot from. It takes me longer to explain why I don’t love a book, and I want this monthly round-up to be a good way to share great reads.
Favorite Fiction
My favorite novel read this month was The Blue Castle. I was reading it along with a daughter who had not yet read this classic, so it was especially wonderful as she discovered the plot twists and turns of this wonderful novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables.
So many, many good quotes—I have dozens highlighted in my Kindle edition of the book from the many times I have read it. If you have not yet read The Blue Castle, do yourself a favor and read it!
The other two fiction? I also read and/or finished two novels for my Well-Read Mom book group this month—Little Women and Their Eyes Were Watching God.
I listened to the audiobook of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s most famous novel.
When I was in my 20s, I loved this novel so much. Now that I’m older, I do admire the craft of her writing, but I did like it very much. I made a good choice in listening to the Audible audiobook version—a good choice. Ruby Dee, the acclaimed actress, narrated, and her dialects and making characters distinct helped so much.
What have you been reading this month? I’m especially interested in good audiobooks, as I have several Audible credits.
