★★★★☆ Chloe Davis is the daughter of a small-town serial killer in Louisiana. Since she was twelve, this fact has shaped so much of her life. It has affected romantic relationships, driven where she lives, and shaped every interaction with her mother and her brother.
Category: Audiobooks
Bossypants by Tina Fey
★★★☆☆ Tina Fey is a major celebrity in our house - mostly because she’s one of the most famous people to attend. Given how much I’ve heard about comedian Tina Fey over the years, I was excited to listen to her memoir, especially since everyone kept describing it as hilarious and laugh-out-loud funny.
Effortless by Greg McKeown
★★★☆☆ I listened to McKeown’s book Essentialism and it was a game changer for me. I wanted more of his wisdom on how to simplify my life and get more with less effort. Unfortunately, Effortless: Make it Easier to Do What Matters Most wasn’t as revolutionary as Essentialism.
Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
★★★☆☆ Boundaries are a critical component of a happy, healthy life. With this in mind, I sought this book out to see if there were areas where my boundaries needed a tune-up. I was not expecting the book to rely so heavily on the Bible and Christianity.
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
★★★★☆ In this non-fiction book, the author, a journalist, goes undercover to see if she can make a living working a series of minimum-wage jobs. She travels to different cities and works as a domestic house cleaner, waitress, hotel maid, dietary aide at a nursing home, and sales clerk at Walmart. She sometimes holds multiple jobs at once and works seven days a week to be able to afford food and rent.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
★★★★☆ In Essentialism, Greg McKeown explains why we should all be relentlessly prioritizing and only spending time on the essentials. He encourages constantly checking in with yourself and asking, “Is this the very most important thing I could be doing with my time?” If the answer is no, it gets removed from the schedule.
Not Nice by Aziz Gazipura
★★★★☆ There is such a thing as being too nice. And, according to the author of Not Nice, if you’re someone who is plagued with too much niceness, it is causing you misery in the form of mental anguish and physical pain. In fact, he goes as far as to say your niceness is making the world a worse place for you and for others.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
★★★★☆ I am a huge Friends fan. I loved the show so much that I somehow managed to turn it into the subject of my undergraduate research project in college. The sarcastic Chandler Bing, played by Matthew Perry, was my favorite character on the show.
Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer
★★★★☆ Unwinding Anxiety was one of the more insightful resources I’ve come across on the subject of anxiety. I can sometimes get bogged down by listening to scientific explanations, but Brewer’s explanations of how our brains function were clear, easy to follow, and gave me a better understanding of how anxiety works.
The Maid by Nita Prose
★★★★☆ In this cozy mystery, twenty-five-year-old Molly Gray is a hardworking maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, where she delights in coming to work, tidying dirty rooms, and being a model employee. Disdainfully called “Molly the Maid” by her coworkers, Molly isn’t as adept at navigating relationships as she is at organizing her housekeeping cart and cleaning dirty hotel rooms.