Books I’ve Read Recently – The Fitnessista

Share a summary of the books you’ve read recently and whether they’re worth adding to your collection.

Hello friends! How are you? I hope you have a nice morning. We had a lot of rain here in Tucson and the dream was positive. I’m looking forward to walking in the cold weather this afternoon!

In today’s article, I wanted to share with you a summary of the books I’ve read recently. Well, reading is still at the bottom of my list of priorities at the moment. I haven’t made a lot of time to read this year because we’re still trying to find our groove from homeschooling, working, and squeezing it in while flying. I’m also making my way IHP3 and Peptides for practitioners couse. couse. Usually when I’m a solo parent, by the time I put the kids to bed and fold the laundry, I almost fall into bed.

So needless to say, I’ve been a little slower on the reading front, but I’ve still been able to read some great books lately!

Here’s a recap of what I’ve read recently and if I recommend you add this to your list!

Books you’ve read recently

From here to the great unknown

I’ve always been a huge Elvis fan and had a huge crush on him when I was in high school. (Elvis in his prime, okay? Haha) I’ve always been fascinated 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. Includes clips recorded by Lisa Marie and also narrated by Julia Roberts (Very Good) and Elvis’ granddaughter Riley Keough.

The book follows Lisa Marie’s unusual and turbulent life as the only child of Elvis Presley. It explores fame, identity, addiction, heartbreak, and the profound grief of losing her son. Through Riley’s reflections and the discovery of her mother’s tape recordings, 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 knowing the passionate, joyful, caring, complex woman that Riley loved and now grieves.

Riley got the tapes her mother had made for the book, and she lay on her bed, listening to Lisa Marie tell story after story about crashing golf carts together on the Graceland grounds, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about them being upstairs, just the two of them. About being dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, being sent to school after school, always getting kicked out, always getting into trouble. About her unique, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, her marriage to Michael Jackson, and what they have in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About constant sadness. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these vivid, painful memories to the world.

To introduce her mother.

This extraordinary book is written in the voices of both Lisa Marie and Riley, as a mother and daughter connect – from this world to the next – as they try to heal each other. Deeply moving and deeply revealing, From here to the great unknown It is a book like no other, the final words of the only child of an American icon.

Paris engineer

The Architect of Paris is a beautifully written and suspenseful story set in Nazi-occupied Paris. The film follows Lucien Bernard, a talented architect who is hired to design secret hiding places for Jewish families – work that could cost him his life if discovered. What begins as a job for extra money soon becomes something much deeper as Lucien’s courage and conscience grow with each risky venture. It’s a story about courage and redemption and how ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they choose compassion instead of 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 an enormous fortune – and possibly a death sentence. He must design a secret hideout for a wealthy Jewish man, a place so invisible that even the most determined Nazi soldiers will not discover it. When one of Lucien’s designs fails miserably, the problem of the Jew’s invisibility becomes a personal one, 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 breathing becomes air

When breathing becomes air Written by Paul Kalanithi is a deeply moving memoir about a gifted neurosurgeon who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer while building his life and career. He grapples with what it means to live and die—the transformation from doctor to patient—and explores how to make life meaningful in the face of death. This book gave me a lot to think about, and somehow remained fun and light despite being such a heavy topic. 10/10

from Amazon:

At the age of 36, and about to complete a decade of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dead, the next he was a patient struggling to live. Thus, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. “When Breath Becomes Air” chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naive medical student “obsessed, as he wrote, with the question of what makes a life virtuous and meaningful, knowing that all living things die,” to a Stanford neurosurgeon working on the brain, the most important locus of human identity, and finally to a patient and new father facing his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future is no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, but rather a permanent present? What does it mean to have a child, to live a new life while another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this deeply moving and wonderfully observed memoir.

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

Okay friends: What have you been reading lately? Anything you recommend?

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

xo

Jenna