Books I’ve read lately – The Fitnessista

Sharing a roundup of the books I’ve read lately and if it’s worth adding them to your collection.

Hi friends! How are ya? I hope you’re having a lovely morning. We’ve had tons of rain here in Tucson and it’s been positively dreaming. I’m looking forward to a walk in the cooler weather this afternoon!

For today’s post, I wanted to share a recap of the books I’ve read lately. tbh, reading is still towards the end of my priority list right now. I haven’t made as much time to read this year because we’re still trying to find our groove of homeschooling, working, and holding it down while the Pilot is traveling. I’m also making my way through IHP3 and Peptides for Practitioners couse. Usually when I’m solo parenting, by the time I get the kids to bed and the laundry folded, I pretty much collapse into bed.

So needless to say, it’s been a little slower on the reading front, but I’ve still managed to read some amazing books lately!

Here’s a recap of what I’ve read lately and if I recommend adding these to your list!

Books I’ve read lately

From Here to the Great Unkown

I’ve always been a huge fan of Elvis and had the biggest crush on him when I was in high school. (The Elvis from his prime, ok? haha) I’ve always been intrigued by his life and family, so when I heard about this book, written by his daughter Lisa Marie Presley, I knew I wanted to listen to the audio version. It includes recorded clips from Lisa Marie and is also narrated by Julia Roberts (soooo good) and Elvis’ granddaughter, Riley Keogh.

The book traces Lisa Marie’s extraordinary yet tumultuous life as Elvis Presley’s only child. It explores fame, identity, addiction, heartbreak, and the deep grief of losing her son. Through Riley’s reflections and the discovery of her mother’s recorded tapes, the memoir is an example of resilience and a love letter between mother and daughter. I highly recommend the audio version – 9/10

From Amazon:

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and now grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.

The Paris Achitect

The Paris Architect is a beautifully written, suspenseful story set in Nazi-occupied Paris. It follows Lucien Bernard, a talented architect who’s hired to design secret hiding places for Jewish families – work that could cost him his life if he’s discovered. What starts as a job for extra money quickly becomes something much deeper as Lucien’s courage and conscience grow with every risky project. It’s a story about bravery, redemption, and how ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they choose compassion over fear. This was an amazing story – I also loved the architectural details throughout – and I loved the ending. 9/10

From Amazon:

1942, Paris. Architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him huge wealth – and maybe a death sentence. He has to design a secret hiding place for a wealthy Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined of Nazi soldiers won’t discover it. When one of Lucien’s designs fails horribly, the problem of hiding a Jew becomes personal, and he can no longer deny the enormity of his project. What does he owe his fellow man, and how far will he go to make things right?

When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is a deeply moving memoir about a gifted neurosurgeon who, in the middle of building a life and career, is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He grapples with what it means to live and die – shifting from doctor to patient – and explores how to make life meaningful in the face of mortality. This book gave me so much to ponder, and somehow remained enjoyable and lighthearted despite being such a heavy topic. 10/10

From Amazon:

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Ok friends: what are you reading lately? Anything that you’d recommend?

I just started two new books… my goal is to finish them before the holidays 😉

xo

Gina