2014 in Books: June, books read in Europe

The following books were all downloaded onto my Kindle, (which I officially love) and where read on plane, train, bus and car rides, through Europe.

1. One More Thing BJ Novak is pretty damn clever, and he knows it. This collection of short stories is witty, with a dry sense of humor. It does come across as a wee bit pretentious, with a hipster sort of “you won’t get it, unless you get it” quality. I definitely appreciated the originality and the times it literally made me LOL. 2. Hell-Bent. I read a book review for this on Candace’s blog and was curious about it’s look into Bikram yoga. I used to practice Bikram yoga, a few years back. I personally found it was not necessarily my style, but I never thought anything negative about it. I never realized there was such a thing as competitive yoga, and this book gives a good account of what those competitions look like, but focuses mainly on Bikram yoga classes and teacher trainings. Although it is a one sided account, I was blown away my how un-yoga like some of the philosophies appeared to be. It definitely gave me a different perspective in the yoga world, and how it can be translated into something that (I believe) it was never intended to be.   3. Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mom. This book is definitely controversial, but I found it absolutely fascinating and I could not put it down. Amy Chua writes about what it is like to be a “Tiger Mom.” She generalizes this to be the “stereotypical” Chinese mother, who pushes their kids to achieve at all costs. I found myself horrified at some parts in the book, as she pushes and pushes her daughters to practice music and study, with no time to “be kids.” However, I was equally horrified by how much I found myself agreeing with her philosophy (but maybe not always tactics), and wishing more parents would hold their children to the standards she described.   4. Be the Pack Leader. We definitely have our work cut out for us. We have been doing so many things incorrectly, according to Cesar, but it makes sense why we have the issues we do, when we go for walks or take our dogs to the dog park. This book gave me a much better understanding about our pack, and how to be a better leader. We have been incorporating some of the methods already, and it is working. It is definitely going to take some time to break habits (for both us and the dogs), but we are committed to improving everyone’s behavior and making walks much more enjoyable. (PS, these methods work really great on 9 year olds, too. I’m only kidding,….but not really.)   What did you read in June?