May Book Picks
Since Mother’s Day is just around the corner I thought that this month’s book picks should be all about moms! Motherhood can be funny, exciting, terrifying, and confusing all at the same time. Below is a collection of memoirs and real-life stories from moms of all kinds. Enjoy!
Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words 
Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. CON: They’re really crappy.”) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways, highlighting this time in the middle—midlife, the middle years of childhood, how women are stuck in the middle of so much. It’s a place of elation, exhaustion, and time whipping past at warp speed. Finally, it’s a quiet space to consider the girl you were, the mother you are, and the woman you are always becoming.
Confessions of a Domestic Failure
There are good moms and bad moms—and then there are hot-mess moms. Introducing Ashley Keller, career girl turned stay-at-home mom who’s trying to navigate the world of Pinterest-perfect, Facebook-fantastic and Instagram-impressive mommies but failing miserably.
When Ashley gets the opportunity to participate in the Motherhood Better boot camp run by the mommy-blog-empire maven she idolizes, she jumps at the chance to become the perfect mom she’s always wanted to be. But will she fly high or flop?
With her razor-sharp wit and knack for finding the funny in everything, Bunmi Laditan creates a character as flawed and lovable as Bridget Jones or Becky Bloomwood while hilariously lambasting the societal pressures placed upon every new mother. At its heart, Ashley’s story reminds moms that there’s no way to be perfect, but many ways to be great.
Motherhood: 55 Reflections on What It Means to Be a Mom
A collection of thoughtful quotations paired with sophisticated illustrations by Sarah Cray; a heartful gift for any mother, mother figure, or mom-to-be.
Whether she carried you for nine months or embodies the meaning of mom in your life; whether it’s to celebrate your best friend’s baby shower, or your very first grandchild, Motherhood is a beautiful keepsake for every kind of mom. Celebrate the powerful love, inimitable strength, and indispensable humor it takes to be a mom with this intimate collection. Imaginative illustrations in watercolor, gouache, and ink paired with inspired quotations–some silly, some solemn, all true–serves as a standalone token of affection or the perfect finishing touch to a gift.
Mother Daughter Me
It sounds like the set-up for a sitcom: a mother, daughter, and grandmother sharing a roof. And maybe all would go according to plan if it really were a made-for-TV comedy. In real life, however, things were much rockier when journalist Katie Hafner invited her mother to move in with her and her teenaged daughter, Zoë. Hoping to bond across the generations, Hafner instead found herself confronting difficult memories of her own childhood — and learning more about her mother than she ever expected.
Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps
The genius of StoryCorps is its simplicity: Real people telling real stories. That’s it. Yet the impact of these deeply personal stories is immediate and profound. In this collection, editor Dave Isay compiles some of the funniest, most moving, least likely, and relatable tales about moms — what it means to have one, to be one, to lose one, and to find one. It just might inspire you to write down your own reflections.
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
No list of memoirs about motherhood would be complete without Operating Instructions, a book chronicling Lamott’s first sleepless year as a single mom. With brutal honesty, humor, and plenty of self-deprecation, she captures the many extreme emotions that the experience sparked, from pain and fear to joy and extraordinary love. A perfect pick for readers deep in the trenches of new motherhood and looking for a kindred spirit with whom to laugh and cry.
A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother
Some mothers bring home their babies from the hospital and are over-the-moon in love. Others have a more ambivalent relationship with the newest member of the family. But the complicated feelings of new motherhood are rarely explored as candidly as in this memoir by novelist Rachel Cusk, who admits to both adoring and resenting her children when they were tiny and their needs were endless. Her openness may make you feel better about your own impatience or frustration with the many unexpected, conflicting obstacles that motherhood can bring.
Want more books?
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Choose now from the six titles selected for May — you’ll get one Kindle book for FREE!
