What I Read September

I am once again linking up with Modern Mrs Darcy's Quick Lit linky.  IF you need to find some new reads, check out what everyone else is reading. (Doesn't everyone need a few new reads) I am always on the lookout for some good reads.  

This year our National Parks celebrate a 100 years of service.  So in the spirit of that, I read Ranger Confidential.by Andrea Lankford. I think when we think of Park Rangers we think of all the work they do as naturalists.  The gritty reality is the law enforcement aspect of their jobs.  This book I believe does a good job of looking beyond the hat to share the rescue operations and other unique characteristics of their job. Being a ranger is a dangerous job.  Crime doesn't stop at the borders of parks.

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie. This book is about Patsy Jefferson daughter of Thomas Jefferson.  I wasn't sure what to think about this book at first.  This is a fictional account of Patsy's life but I liked how the authors tried to use their words whenever possible. This book explores what Patsy contributed to her father's career and the presidency.  What Patsy had to give up as a daughter of political figure.  I like how Sally Hemmings relationship was explored and how Patsy may or may not felt about it. I enjoyed this book immensely and I really learned some new things about Thomas Jefferson and his family without this feeling like a boring history book.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison is our county's read for 2017 - Whatcom Reads - One Book. Jonathan Evison is a Pacific Northwest writer and the book is set in Washington State. This book was OK for me. I think there is some interesting discussion material here. The main character is Benjamin Benjamin a man forced to take a caregiving job for Trev who suffers from MD.  This also a book about fathers and the often complicated relationship they have with their kids.

Ben Benjamin, all has been lost--his wife, his family, his home, his livelihood. Hoping to find a new direction, he enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving, where he will learn to take care of people with disabilities. He is instructed about professionalism, about how to keep an emotional distance between client and provider, and about the art of inserting catheters while avoiding liability. But when Ben is assigned his first client--a tyrannical nineteen-year-old boy named Trevor, who is in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy--he soon discovers that the endless service checklists have done nothing to prepare him for the reality of caring for a fiercely stubborn, sexually frustrated teenager who has an ax to grind with the whole world. (excerpt from Whatcom Reads)