Where Have I Been and What Am I Thinking?

June’s reading list is a little later in the month than May’s, but I hope you are still looking for a few more reads to round out your month! Before I get to what you should be reading this month, I wanted to share my thoughts about what has been going on in America. Since posting about May’s reading list, America has been turned upside down a bit. In my What to Read in May post, I recommended the book Just Mercy. At the time of the writing I just thought that it was one of the better books I had come across in the last year, so I decided to put it on the first edition of what is more or less my extended reading list. Little did I know that about 20 days later the United States would see one of the biggest movements for civil rights in recent memory. If you haven’t read the book yet, I recommend it once again. It is one of the most successful books at opening your eyes to the systematic racism that African American’s endure on a daily basis. If you have a problem with the riots, if you have a problem with the protests, if you have a problem with how they are protesting whatsoever, you need to educate. Enough has been enough for a while now, but people have not been listening. Listen to what African American leaders have to say, assist them with calling out the complacency in local law enforcement and local/state/federal governments. Be an ally right now and be on the right side of generational change for society. At the end of the day, I hope I can leave you to think with this sentiment at the very least: (Continue Reading)

This is the inaugural version of “The 3 Books to Read in ______.” At the beginning of each month I intend to put out a reading list of sorts, to share some of the good books I have been reading lately. Quarantining appears to be slightly dissipating, but nonetheless it would be smart if we continued to do our best and stay inside when possible. One of the best indoor activities, besides puzzling, is sitting down with a good book. Reading a book can take you to an entirely different world, and most importantly it can help distract you from everything that is going on in the world right now. I love to learn about new things, or about different people’s lives, so I tend to read mostly non-fiction books exclusively. Knowing that, most of the books on my list of monthly reads will be non-fiction. I like to think there is a good amount of variation in the kind of non-fiction titles to keep things interesting. Every now and then, I may have my wife suggest some books she has been reading, because she tends to have a nice variety of non-fiction and fiction reads. Without further ado, the following titles are what I recommend in May. I hope you enjoy! (Continue Reading)

For the first 22 years of my life I considered “home” to be in Indiana. Indiana was always safe, it was always comfortable, and I never thought there would be another place I would call home. Maastricht changed that for me. As a 22-year-old, newlywed, with zero stamps on a newly minted passport, being dropped in Europe and more or less told to “figure it out” was a daunting task. Fast forward nearly three years, here I am writing a makeshift travel blog to talk about the 30-plus different countries I have been to. Life is pretty mad isn’t it? Before we even boarded our flight to Dusseldorf, Katie and I were pretty sold that Maastricht was where we wanted to settle. Nearly twenty-four hours after landing, our sponsor picked us up from our Hansel and Gretel style guesthouse and took us on a tour of Maastricht. A few pints and an ice cream cone later we agreed, oh yeah this is the place. A month later, we were moving our life’s possessions, via moving elevator, into the third story of our 19th century apartment on the Vrijthof. (Continue Reading)