One thing that our lifestyle change has enabled us to do is read more. Whether it’s a three hour train ride, mornings in the tent with no electricity or coffee shops while slow sipping coffee, reading has become part of our daily routine. We have read almost 100 different books this year and thought it would be a good time to share.
Since we are always looking for recommendations what to read next, we thought we would return the favor and share a few of our favorite books from the last few months.
Favorite Books of 2019 (so far)
If you’re looking for a memoir…
Steph’s Pick – Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
While the book Justin picked is also one of my top reads for the year, Trevor Noah’s book really stuck with me. Learning about his childhood growing up in South Africa was eye opening and led to a lot more research online about the apartheid and things I hadn’t learned about previously. I absolutely love watching the Daily Show, but this side of Trevor Noah was equally as captivating and totally different than the comedian.
Justin’s Pick – Becoming by Michelle Obama
Yeah, I know, I picked an easy one. Most of our everyday readers of the blog have likely read this already so I don’t need to sell you on it. For any of you that haven’t read it, I’d encourage you to do so. A few notes about it, the FLOTUS is an excellent writer. Sometimes when I read someone’s memoir, I get bored. She had an ability to really hold my attention. Additionally, her story is really compelling and offers up insight into scenarios an awful lot of us cannot relate to. Even Especially if some of you out there would speak ill about our former First Lady (I know there are a couple of you rascals) then I encourage you putting aside your POV and try out hers for a few hundred pages.
If you want some historical fiction…
Steph’s Pick – Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
The characters, the history, the writing style – I loved it. This story was told from four different points of view and was a little hard to get into at first. But as the story unfolded, I couldn’t put it down. I finished it in one day. I have read quite a few WWII books, but this told a story about a real event that I knew nothing about and was told from the refugee point of view. It was a favorite of mine.
Justin’s Pick – Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
This book was highly recommended to me by Steph. I didn’t really have a lot of interest but once I picked it up it was all I could think about. This story gives an interesting narrative from the eyes of characters who share the same African lineage while passing through multiple generations. The journeys of so many different characters in some novels can become hard to follow for me, but here by tying them together so well, Yaa Gyasi tells a remarkable tale of how people end up in such different places regardless of their beginnings. Check it out.
If you want great characters…
Steph’s Pick – Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This book is written in the style of interviews and tells the story of a group of musicians that rise and fall together over time. I wanted so badly for this to be a real band with real songs. It was a very unique style and I absolutely loved it. I just read that it was picked up by Amazon to be a TV series and I can’t wait.
Justin’s Pick – A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
I was a little late to the party on this book. Ove is the curmudgeon old widower who wants nothing more than to just kill himself. He is comically relieved of that task throughout the story because of his stubborn insistence that he is the only one who can get other chores taken care of. Ugh, I’ve already said too much. If you haven’t read this one yet, go pick up a copy and enjoy the colorful array of characters here who work their hardest to crack the seemingly impermeable hard shell that is Ove’s exterior.
If you want a different perspective…
Steph’s Pick – A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum
This book tells the story of a few generations of Palestinian-American women. It is very well written and I loved the characters. I learned a lot more about Arab-American struggles and the family structures of conservatives. I can’t wait to see if she writes more.
Too often being happy means being passive or playing it safe. There’s no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. Its discontent that drives creation the most—passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don’t come from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it’s sadness, or discontent at least, that’s at the root of everything beautiful.
Etaf Rum 2019
Justin’s Pick – Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia
This was a really hard category for me to pick a favorite on as I’ve been really trying to broaden my viewpoints on our trip and have read so many eye-opening books this year.
I feel like Jacob offered a small glimpse of what it is like to walk a day in the shoes of an LGBTQ+ person. Despite that difference between us, reading this was more like sitting at a brewery and listening to a well-educated friend talk than it was reading a book. He speaks, or writes rather, in a way that is so familiar to me and easy to process. This is one of the books this year I have been so grateful to have gotten to read and I can’t recommend it enough.
If you want to read about race issues…
Steph’s Pick – White Fragility by Robin Diangelo
I waited forever for this book on the library hold list. I had to read it slowly and process the information in each chapter. The book was written to help people understand why white people struggle to talk about race. It is such an important tool to help look in the mirror and figure out what you need to change. I found it extremely helpful as well with encounters with others as well. I’m still processing a lot of the information, so it’s hard to write just a paragraph so I would just say you should read it. Every white person should read it.
Justin’s Pick – Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
I finished up “Just Mercy” earlier this year and recently wrapped up “Slavery by Another Name” and both of those left me in a state of distress about how far we still have to go in our country in regards to race relations. I suggest “BTWAM” instead of those as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ paints a picture of how it feels to be black in situations and explains poetically why he feels the way he does. This is written as a letter to his son in what almost seems to be a plea to the universe that the younger Coates will have it better than he did. I can’t even describe how this book made me feel, both good and bad and it definitely is at the top of my favorite books this year.
If you want something a little spooky…
Steph’s Pick – Unbelievable by Katy Tur
OK, it’s spooky in a different kind of way. This author talks about her time as a journalist covering Donald Trump during his presidential campaign and some of the hell she was exposed to. It offered an interesting perspective into that world and I would recommend it. An actual spooky book I would recommend is this one.
Justin’s Pick – Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
This was a really good book that talks about the real life murders of Native Americans by the white elite. It also documents the formation of the FBI and their involvement in getting to the root of who was to blame. While it is a true story of unimaginable violence, it reads like a well-written mystery and is best read at night, in the dark for full effect.
If you want to read one of our favorites…
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
There, There by Tommy Orange
Other Book Notes
We absolutely love using Goodreads. It’s an app on our phones to track which books we want to read and rate the ones we’ve completed. When someone recommends a book or we hear about it somewhere, it’s so easy to just open the app and log it for later. You can also connect with friends and give and receive recommendations. Steph’s profile is here and Justin’s is here.
When looking for ideas, we turn to our awesome blogger friend, Steph, who hosts a monthly reading link up where you can find all kinds of people and their favorite books they’ve recently read. Everyone shares a little differently, but I usually add at least 5 books to my “want to read” list. Get more info on that here.
While real books we can hold are always our preference, it isn’t really possible to travel with all that extra weight. After lots of deliberation, we selected e-readers. We both use this version of the Kindle and love it. The battery lasts a very long time and the backlight helps for those dark places you want to sneak a few pages in. Justin even wrote about his love for the kindle here. Plus, our library cards allow us to check out e-books while traveling, so we continue to utilize the library and save ourselves some money.
We still try to buy a book when we find a great local bookstore in different countries, but we read the book and pass it on to another traveler as quickly as possible. Little free libraries are also an absolute treat. Owning a few of our favorite books will always be a reality in our household – even when we are living out of backpacks.
