Book challenge update

Remember way back in the beginning of the year when I joined the book challenge? My goal was to read 36 books this year. I haven't been making good progress on that front.

Here are the books I've read this year:

1. Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden
2. Teacher Evaluation to Enhance Professional Practice
3. Mornings on Horseback (biography of Theodore Roosevelt)
4. Connecting Mathematical Ideas
5. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
6. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
7. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
8. True Compass (autobiography of Teddy Kennedy) - I "read" this in the car on CD
9. The Infertility Cure: The Ancient Chinese Wellness Program for Getting Pregnant and Having Healthy Babies
10: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

My thoughts on these books:

I like books about people named Teddy. I was not a fan of A Mercy. Outliers was a good, quick read. The Help was my favorite in this list, although you should be warned that there is a character that suffers from recurrent pregnancy loss. I was not aware of this when I started reading the book, but once I got to a point where it said this character looked away and changed the subject when her maid said she would soon fill the big house with children, I knew IF would be a topic somehow.

If you are interested in traditional Chinese medicine (including acupuncture), you might want to read The Infertility Cure. It describes the principles of Eastern medicine and the major ideas. It has many details so if you wanted to try to self-medicate with herbs or acupressure, there is good information. Although I didn't think it was quite detailed enough for me to actually try out what they were saying. Although it is good to understand what my acupuncture guy is doing. It focuses heavily on female factors and gives brief attention to MFI. There is a section on treating each diagnosis. Going through these sections reminded me of reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I first skipped over the section on IF, thinking it wouldn't apply but I will keep it for reference in case it did. I had the same thoughts when I saw the section on advanced maternal age. Except now I'm filled with dread that I will need to go back to that chapter.

I decided that books I read for work count. Ten points to the first person to guess what I do.