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.

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.