Book #50: 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker

I read For the Love by Jen Hatmaker a few months ago (aka I listened to it) and it mentioned her earlier book 7 in it. I looked it up after finishing that one, and the premise seemed interesting enough that I wanted to check it out. I am a sucker for books that are experimental memoirs, like The Happiness Project or in A.J. Jacobs style, where the authors decide on some shtick that they're going to do for a year or however long and write about it. I just kind of love those. So I decided to read this one too, since it is kind of in the theme of minimalism which I am semi-interested in (without really having to do any actual work towards getting there). Jen (I would normally call authors by their last names but it's hard not to feel like she is your friend when you listen to her writing style) chose seven areas of her life where she could pare down and stop wasting/buying/overdoing it, and focused on one of those things for a month at a time and reduced their usage of it in seven ways. In the food month, she only ate seven foods. In the clothes month, she only wore seven items of clothing. In the media month, they turned off seven of their screens/types of media. Her reflections on each month were about how each of these months positively impacted her family and her own mental outlook on the world, but also about how they play into her Christian religion (since she is predominantly a Christian author, after all). I really like listening to her musings about "the Church" and how they can improve it, and thinking about the difference between these Christians and Mormonism.

I am pretty pleased that it's the last day of May and I've already finished 50 books this year. If I can keep this momentum up, I should totally get past 100 books by the end of the year. I think the audiobooks and the Kindle are really making the difference in my number of books read during the year. Yay!