Some Great Books I Read In June

Once again, a month has sped by and I'm not ready for it. Maybe you're feeling the same feeling today. I have had much more time recently to read, so at least there's that, right?

I picked up the most eclectic collection of books at this year's Pages for Pennies, so I have dozens upon dozens of books to pick from. I always have more than one book going at once, and during June it was such a wide range of topics.

Ten years ago I would never have believed that I would be interested in reading history books, but now I love them. Four of the six books I got all the way through this month were historic in some form or fashion, and they were so interesting. Treasures of Tutankhamun is actually the catalog of an exhibition in the 1970s that the Cairo Museum lent to several American museums. It combines history lessons, documentary photos of King Tut's excavation, and color photos of the pieces on display, and the details of the significance of each item were fascinating. Definitely one for my permanent collection.

Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses couldn't have come into my life at a better time. In April we began a chronological study of the Bible with our youth group, and after all these months we just made our way to Genesis 14! Of course, we had to skip ahead to Job after Genesis 11, and that took a few weeks, but now we're back and ready to go. In this book, the author visits the Holy Land and Egypt to try and visit the historic locations we read about in the Penatuch. I learned so much about what we know ... and what we think we know ... and how the people who live there have the same or differing perspectives of the land than ours.

We've been getting ready for a yard sale for several weeks now, and we're finding many things that we'd like to have more than yard sale prices for. So I've been putting some of them on eBay to find collectors and enthusiasts, and the Three Weeks to eBay Profits jumped off the table at me. It's a little dated, and I am already utilizing many of his practices, but there was still tons of information to unpack. Some could be put to use immediately, and I've been seeing some great results.

Again, teaching youth twice a week means studying all week long. When we got to Job, I found this book from 1971 that is absolutely falling apart and yet absolutely fascinating. It goes through Job's story almost verse by verse, outlining the major plot points and breaking down who said what to who and how it happened. It was great to combine with Matthew Henry's commentary on Job and present to teenagers who haven't delved into it before.

I will be the first to admit that I don't know much about the details of history - I hated history class in school and I purposely learned just what I needed to pass the tests. But now, the things other people lived through and knew about is all fresh and exciting for me. I learned more from this one book Called Dead Wrong, about conspiracy theories and their debunkers, than I learned (and remembered) in 13 years of school. This one will definitely have to be reread so I can learn even more.

And I reread an old favorite, Every Storm, which is a historical novel set in 1945-47. There's something special about the storyline of a young woman who survived a horrible plane crash that killed her sister and stranded her on an island for several weeks, was rescued by a PT boat crew in the middle of the war, and eventually fell in love and married the crew's Lieutenant. One of my faves, and yes, I still cry every time.

What books were your favorites in June?