On My Bookshelf in January

I started out the month weary from Christmas and with no real plan to read anything.  When Anne from Modern Mrs. Darcy mentioned a few books she wanted to re-read this year, it reminded me of one I had forgotten I wanted to read.

Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes is beyond fabulous and has become one of my favorite food memoirs of all time.  I've tried out a handful of recipes already, and they all have gone into regular rotation in my house.  Beyond the food, Shauna's story draws you in like a conversation with one of your best friends.  At times, I was literally laughing and crying all at the same time.  Definitely moving this to my "to buy" list.

I'm always on the hunt for something new to read, so when Carmella mentioned she was learning how to cook a wolf, I was completely intrigued. More cookbook than cooking memoir, How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher was first published in 1942.  It is full of advice for the home cook to be creative in frugality, which is what I expected.  I didn't expect to laugh so much!  Fisher is hilarious and full of sarcastic humor.  Her words are just as relevant today as they must have been 70 years ago.

Just as I was finishing reading Sense & Sensibility in December, Nicole from Gidget Goes Home announced the Motherhood & Jane Austen Book Club.  I love Jane Austen, but I tend to watch movies based on her novels rather than read the real deal.  I'm not sure if I'll follow along and read all 6 novels this year, but Pride and Prejudice is a favorite, so I'm determined to read at least this one.

I came across Rachel Held Evans' A Year of Biblical Womanhood somewhere online, and honestly I wasn't that interested.  But then I kept seeing references to it randomly, so I thought "eh...I'll give it a go" and checked it out from my local library.  Wow.  I'm really not sure what I expected (actually that's not true...I'm pretty sure I expected to be turned off by this book) but this book was surprisingly awesome.  As in, I couldn't put it down awesome.  As in, I still haven't watched this week's episode of Downton because I was reading this instead.  It's an incredibly thought provoking read, so if you're just the slightest bit interested in what the Bible has to say about women, I highly recommend this book.

I was a huge Full House fan growing up.  The wait list for Candace Cameron Bure's latest book is insanely long at my library, so I grabbed Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness instead.  It's autobiographical as well as being a diet/motivational book.  I'm only halfway through it, so I don't feel like I can give a fair assessment of the book as a whole.  I'm enjoying the autobiographical side of the book, but I have mixed feelings on the way she intertwines spiritual and physical fitness.  Jury's still out on this one...

And that's about it!  Do you have any book recommendations?  Share with us in the comments!

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