How many books can you read with a new baby?

A lot.

When you have a Kindle app that allows you to use a black screen and white text in low light, you can turn awful nights up with the baby into secret read-a-thons.

Thank goodness for my local library's participation in Overdrive, which allows me to download (free, borrowed) e-books. Here is a short list of books I e-read since Fiona's birth, up through the late part of summer (hey, I often skipped around). I'm happy to discuss ANY of them beyond my crude rating:

The Martian by Andy Weir
Super-funny and suspenseful sci-fi adventure. I bet the movie is awesome.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson
I never knew it could take so long for a damn boat to sink. Some facts were cool, but otherwise my nonfavorite nonfiction.

American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante
Nonfiction: The trial transcripts were the best part. Anne Hutchinson kicked butt. The author less so.

Irena's Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Totally true story. Called the female Oskar Schindler, but she was much more of a boss. She didn't have money, and she withstood torture to protect her children and families from the Nazis. Then the Nazis tried to blow up Warsaw. Very cool, well-researched story.

One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Such a guilty pleasure novel. This is based on a real offer to make peace, during which a Native Chief offered to trade horses for 1000 white women (as wives) to help bring a new generation peacefully into the white man's world. What if some crazy women really did it? I bet it would go down like this. (Oh, and there's a sequel coming soon!!)

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Ganor
Loved how the narratives came together. I could see a movie version of this someday. And who doesn't like Titanic stories?

The Lunching: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
I learned a lot about the Klan, and how hard it is to overcome racism in America.

The Bees by Laline Paull
This was sold to me as a dystopia...and it is, but it is LITERALLY about bees. I'd love a science teacher to weigh in on the science in the book (fictionalized, as the bees are sentient), but other than that, I was a little bugged out.

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
A holocaust novel with a unique twist, as a Turkish family deals with prejudice inside their family and country while trying to save Jews from Hitler's reach. (Rumors there is a movie...?)

Broken Angels by Gemma Liviero
A novel that weaves together the story of a Jewish woman, reluctant Nazi, and Polish child. Very cool.

Elsewhere by Richard Russo
The author's memoir focused on his mother, who you get the sense was both wonderful and not quite right....who'da thought a Pulitzer winner comes from such interesting people ;)

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Sci-fi time traveler meets Roots. How would a woman of the 1970s handle going back to slave-state Maryland to save her white slave-owning ancestor? This book offers no easy answers. Oh, and that mystery of how her arm gets stuck in the wall? SOOO cool, and it came with a critical essay at the end that made me want to reread the whole novel to appreciate it even more.

Freakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. You will never look at data the same way!

SuperFreakonomics by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
LOVED this book. Where else will you find out how a street prostitute is like a mall Santa?

Think Like a Freak  by Steven B. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
 Can you tell I loved the series so much that I gobbled all three of these?


Happy reading!

EDIT: I completely forgot to include the hard copy books I managed to read!

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
Not as good as Running with Scissors, but this is an interesting story of growing up with a (likely sociopathic) distant father. As a teacher, I squirmed when I read about how his mother took him out of school to hide from his father on several occasions, and I worry about how many stories that might require similar intervention are likewise hidden behind seemingly free-spirited parents.
I also wondered at the relationship between Burroughs' father and mother. Granted, much of their origin story is second-hand and skewed through the eyes of Augusten, but it made me wonder how someone could be so deceived as to the nature of another. If you like watching Criminal Minds, you might find this story psychologically intriguing.
 
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens

I'm not a big "mystery" reader--in the sense of a genre-specific book--but I really liked this story of a college kid who procrastinates until he goes to a nursing home out of desperation to find an interview subject--and finds more than he bargained for. The characters and conflicts felt real, and even the protagonist's quest to find out the truth felt authentic (until about 3/4 of the way through the book, by which point I didn't care). Joe Talbert is a protagonist you can't help but root for, especially with his troubled family life, and Carl Iverson is a fascinating character of focus, accused of a horrible murder and claiming he wants to tell "the truth"--which isn't a simple case of innocent or guilty-- before the end of his life.
And, unlike many mysteries/thrillers, this story wasn't super predictable (until the very end, but again, I didn't care by then). This was a great beach read, but also an inspiring read in general.