Honest Book Reviews – June 2022

Well, it’s July 14th, 2022, and I’m only just getting to my honest book reviews of what I read in June. Because June was A MONTH…it was intense. I had clearly forgotten what Grade 7 is like in June, and with report cards, graduation from elementary school for my students (which is a full on EVENT here!), and keeping up with parenting, my Masters, and family stuff, I feel like I can count on one hand the number of nights that I had more than 6 hours of sleep.

So, when the holidays finally arrived, I took a break. But, back at it today! Here are my honest book reviews for what I read in June. Because busy or not, this person must read! And besides, if I got through it during June, then it was worth the time.

Without further ado, here is a roundup of what I read in June, and what I thought about it.

Quiet is a Superpower: The Secret Strengths of Introverts in the Workplace by Jill Chang

Before I start with this, I think it’s hard to put oneself into a camp of “introvert” or “extrovert” because, let’s face it, we are rarely completely one or the other. And, honestly, I teach Grade 7, so all day, every day, it’s a performance to keep them engaged, connected, and interested in what we are learning at school. So, I think I can be forgiven for finishing work, hanging out with my own little people, and then, once everyone is in bed, sitting in silence working on my own projects. Not interested in chatting. Not interested in going out. Recharging with not being social. So, if that makes me an introvert, so be it, but quite honestly, I think that’s just being tired at the end of a long, extremely social day.

So, this book spoke my language. It had a number of anecdotes and strategies for navigating a working world that feels as though it rewards extroversion at the expense of introversion. This book celebrates being quiet and introverted, and turns this way of being into a strength. The author gives ideas on ways you can get around the desire to be quieter than your colleagues and use the quiet as a strength. It was interesting, but not a lot of new information here.

Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead by Emily R. Austin

The main character of this novel, Gilda, is someone who suffers from anxiety to a crippling degree, and finds herself obsessing about death. As she is trying to find ways to escape her obsessive thoughts, she decides to answer a flyer that is offering free therapy at a local church. Unfortunately, through a series of misunderstandings, she ends up taking a job there. She ends up to both hide her identity as an atheist Lesbian, while working at a Catholic Church, and get to the bottom of what happened to her predecessor.

I really enjoyed this book…it was both sad and funny. Gilda is realistic and likable, while being someone I had real compassion for. It’s a great lesson in the fact that none of us know what’s truly going on in the lives of the people around us, and to just be kind. I recommend this one!

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

This book was seriously interesting. Steven Pinker spends the duration both proving why humans are rational, why it was evolutionarily significant, and why we are, indeed, still rational, thinking beings, which definitely occasionally feels debatable these days! The book is extremely up to date, referring to Covid vaccines and the response some have to them as an example of why humans might be seen to be irrational, but he explains that rationality explains something more to us than simply that we just agree in some scientific set of lessons and then apply them.

I know I’m not going to do his argument justice, but the way he explains how humans think logically and rationally (and why they’re not the same) makes complete sense. He ties it into goals that we all have and how those connect closely into our evolutionary heritage as essentially tribal pack animals, who succeed because we work both with and in opposition to each other. Read this, it explains so much.

The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

Full disclosure: you know how I said that, if I didn’t enjoy it, I didn’t spend time on it during Crazy June (hereby dubbed thus)? Yeah…I DNF’d this one. I just found it boring and couldn’t get into it. It felt like it was trying to be a bit of a ghostly Harry Potter, but the characters didn’t grab me very quickly, and I found it putting me to sleep. Please add a comment if I am doing this book a gross injustice by not finishing it, and I will try it again. I’ll link it here, in case it is of interest to anyone, but nope…didn’t finish this one.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

I can’t wait to read the rest of this series. It’s a retelling of Cinderella but a wildly inventive one. This is a far-future tale of a gifted mechanic, Cinder, who is hiding her cyborg identity. Her tale plays out against a backdrop of a building war between Earth and the Moon, a disease running rampant on Earth, and a wee bit of romantic tension between her and the crown prince.

I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely be reading the rest of what Marissa Meyer has to offer. While it is a Young Adult book, like so many of that genre, it is popular for good reason, and as an adult, I still was able to completely immerse myself. Recommended!

Honest Book Reviews, honestly…

So there they are, what I managed to get through (and didn’t) in June of 2022. Please let me know if you have any thoughts about these, or if I should give good old Drearcliff another try!

If you’re interested in my other book reviews, you can find them here:

Honest Book Reviews for April and May.

If you’re interested in read alouds for Grade 7s (12 and 13 year olds), check out my post with student reviews of this year’s read alouds.

Full disclosure, some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click the link and make a purchase, I will get a small payment, at no cost to you.