Books about Home🏠🛖

 

    I suspect Gretchen Rubin isn't for everyone, but I like her. This week I read her book, Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life, and I liked it. This is a sequel to her book Happier which I reviewed here: theology-nihilism-and-self-help-or-im.html. She takes a large concept and breaks it down into pieces, and then explores each piece. She examines parenting, romance, interior design, and other things relating to the home. These are things that I am experiencing, and her book addresses my life right now.

"The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn't be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life." 
― Gretchen Rubin, Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life

    Both books revolve around her Eight Splendid Truths (link here: https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/the-eight-splendid-truths-of-happiness/). What she has to say encourages me to thoughtfully consider this life of mine. 

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    Binti, Binti: Home, and Binti: The Night Masquerade, written by Nnedi Okarafor, are award-winning science fiction. The three books are more novellas than novels, but the story is rich and deep. With space science fiction, it is difficult to deviate from the formula of there's a war; how will the good guys win? Then a chosen one arises to bring order out of the chaos. The main character, Binti, a master harmonizer becomes more than she imagines or wants. Okarafor creates innovative characters that are fully orbed--they have desires and drives that are sometimes misunderstood, leading to unforeseen conflicts and consequences. I found the books absorbing and was so glad all three were available because it would have been hard to wait! 

    The central theme of her books is home--leaving, returning, and finding. Binti wants more than home can give her and her family wants her to stay. 

    Nnedi Okarafor's parents are from Nigeria, and she draws upon African culture to inspire her work. She coined the phrase African Futurism. Her work reminds me of Haruki Murakami, a Japanese science fiction writer, in its not-what-I-anticipated plots and characters. These will likely be the best science fiction books I read this year.

    The cover art on the three books is evocative of what happens on the pages, a great pairing of story and picture. 

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