New Non-Fiction

Five Non-Fiction Books to Read in March

KimLeave a comment

This month I’m hoping to finish up a few non-fiction books I’m meandering through because my TBR is piled super high. And because I’m soaking in the content and learning a great deal.

Creatrix: She Who Makes by Lucy H. Pearce. The author shares personal stories from her own life as well as the voices of many other creative women. What are the joys, the challenges, the highs and lows of creative living. The exhilarating experiences, the slogging through to finish, finding and making time for creative work in the margins of our busy lives. And I haven’t gotten to it yet, but there’s even a practical section about business and marketing. More when I finish the book!

Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katherine Hayhoe. This book could also be titled ‘How to Talk to the Deniers, Dismissers, and Those Resistant to Reality’. LOL. But seriously, in only the first few chapters, the author gives clear ideas and examples on how to talk to people about planetary peril, climate catastrophe, etc. I look forward to reading the rest of it.

Abundance: The Inner Path to Wealth by Deepak Chopra. With his clear writing, Deepak takes complex concepts and distills them into easy-to-understand and practice principles for living an abundant life. I’ve already had several aha moments. I’m reading through his explanation of the chakra system at the moment and appreciate the way he takes the ‘woo woo’ out of this yogic way of looking at life.

The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet by Leah Thomas. This book has so much to teach us: from the explanation of terminology of words and concepts such as intersectional, to what has happened and what is happening to dismantle systems of oppression, to what we can do. I am learning so much and can’t wait to read the rest of the book.

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, Volume 1: Planet edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer. All I have to do is see Robin Wall Kimmerer’s name anywhere and I immediately have to read it. This is the first volume of a five volume set from the Center For Humans and Nature. Each piece is thoughtful and beautiful and helps the reader understand even more how we are all connected and related and how what we do matters. I am really looking forward to the piece by Kimmerer as well as the one by Drew Lanham in this volume.

The Moment of Lift (Book Review)

KimLeave a comment

I recently finished reading The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates. Before choosing it as an audiobook, I had no real idea what it was about; I wanted to be able to join the bookish community in conversation about it.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to have zero expectations about a book. In this case, I was completely unprepared for the powerful, positive message that this book contains. Melinda alternated between writing about research and sharing stories of women around the world.

My eyes were opened to the gender bias and inequality that persists in the U.S. even in 2019. In first-world countries like the U.S., it has taken women millennia to get where we are today and we still have a way to go. Women in developing nations suffer much more extreme gender bias and inequality every day of their lives.

But this book is filled with stories of women who changed their circumstances by challenging those in authority and standing up for themselves and their children.

Melinda is clearly a woman in a position of wealth, privilege, and power, but she also possesses humility, a willingness to learn and change, and an awareness of the dangers associated with wealthy people trying to do good. I was surprised by her down-to-earth manner. I think listening to her narrate her own book made it much more personal. And she is a really good narrator; I am super picky about voices, but hers is just right for listening.

As a person of faith (she is Catholic), Melinda takes into account the Bible’s words about serving the poor and being a voice for those who cannot speak up for themselves. She travels the world and spends time with the poorest, most marginalized people, which I was impressed by, and which is certainly Christ-like. But as much as her and Bill’s charitable foundation impacts the lives of others, she has been impacted and changed by them as well.

In case you were wondering, this isn’t a book that puts down men in any way, or that preaches that women should be above men. The book has a respectful tone toward everyone: man, woman, child, rich, and poor. Instead this book is about women taking their places alongside men in every area of life. And the message woven throughout the book is about love as the missing link, as the needed element that can heal social ills.

The Moment of Lift will challenge you, educate you, surprise you, break your heart for the suffering of others, and, yes, it will lift your spirit! I hope you put it on your TBR list and read this important book very soon. I’d love to hear what you think when you read it!