I started January ambitious for reading, and even set my Goodreads goal for 40 books, slightly higher than the amount I read last year. And then I didn’t really make much progress. I only read two books, and one of those I sped through on the very last day of the month. But still, they were good, easy reads, and I enjoyed them both, so that’s a fine start to my reading year.
After You by Jojo Moyes. Even though I didn’t love how Me Before You ended, I still wanted to read what happened next. I was also semi-convinced that I had liked the characters of Louisa and Will together so much that Moyes wouldn’t be able to replace Will with someone new, so I was curious.
And in this sequel, I still liked Louisa. She was snarky and vulnerable and real, without getting too whiny and mopey like she very easily could have been. And Moyes did a good job of replacing Will with a new male lead, who I also liked, although maybe not quite as much.
One thing that really threw me for a loop was the introduction of Lily, because it immediately aged the rest of the characters. And I had been placing them in a slightly-younger-than-me age bracket in my head, so to realize that they were actually older than I am just threw me off. Maybe it’s just me, but in pretty much all rom-com books or movies, I imagine the main characters as mid-to-late-20s. I did not realize that until I read this book, but there you go. Does anyone else make these random generalized assumptions, or is that just me?
I liked the way this one ended much better than Me Before You, because it felt more uplifting, but still open-ended enough to continue, so I requested the third one, Still Me, from the library. And then as I got it, I discovered it just came out like last week. So that was a bit of library good luck there – I happened to request it right after the librarian put it in the system.
The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Make Your Life Better by Gretchen Rubin. I really enjoy Gretchen’s writing (see my review of Better Than Before here), so I’ve been wanting to read this one pretty much since it came out. I finally just requested it from the library, because that seems to be my motivation to actually read and finish a book lately (more about that in a minute).
This was a super quick read about Gretchen’s personality typing system. Basically, everyone falls into one of 4 tendencies in how they are motivated by both inner and outer expectations. You can take the quiz here to find out your tendency.
I’m an Obliger, which I’ve known for awhile. But where the quiz and Gretchen’s previous writings talked about these four tendencies a little bit, this book went further and talked about how they affect different types of relationships, and the spectrum within each tendency.
For instance, I’m an Obliger that leans toward an Upholder, while my husband is an Obliger that leans toward a Questioner (at least from my observations). So while we behave similarly sometimes, I can understand and appreciate where we’re not exactly alike, and why he researches and asks so many questions before committing to something.
So not only does this book give insights into why you behave the way you do, you can also understand more about the people around you. If you like personality books, you’ll like this one.
February is a short month, but I’m hoping to sneak a few more books in. I’ll have to continue to use library deadlines to my advantage. That’s totally an Obliger thing, by the way. Having some outside accountability is a strong motivation for me to do things. Look at me using what I’ve learned!
Have you learned anything new from a book lately?
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