What are you reading? Here are a few of the books I’ve been reading while not sleeping. (Yay, newbornhood.)

First up, I recently read Band of Sisters: Coming Home by Annette Lyon, a birthday present to myself. The sequel to Band of Sisters, Coming Home follows the same five National Guard wives as their soldiers return home (or don’t), following the problems of re-entry. Some of the storylines that were left hanging a little bit in the first novel (especially Jessie’s!) are more fully resolved in the sequel. And, of course, I cried many times, like you’re supposed to with any good women’s fiction novel 😉 .

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In case you’ve missed it, I’ve spent the last year reading nonfiction about the CIA. I really wanted to see the movie Argo, but I’m not so big on violence. When I saw that there was also a book version of Argo by Tony Mendez & Matt Baglio, I jumped on it.

If you missed the movie trailers, in 1979, Iranian “students” overran the American embassy. They held the staffers there hostage for 444 days. But six Americans escaped from the embassy and became “houseguests” of Canadian diplomats. Argo tells the story of the audacious rescue mission: turning the minor diplomatic officials into a movie crew for a fake movie to get them out of Iran safely.

If you’ve read Tony Mendez’s first book, The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA (currently <$4 on Kindle), there’s a lot of repeated information from Mendez’s POV. However, this book does add a more in-depth account from the houseguests’ point of view. Even having read Master of Disguise, I enjoyed this account.

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I read almost everything my best friend recommends to me. I’d heard some praise for Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein before she recommended it, but once she said she enjoyed it, I put a hold on it at the library that day.

So. Worth. It.

Code Name Verity is the “confession” of a captured Scottish spy, a teenage girl, in World War II. But it’s not just a story about the war. It’s the story of two friends, the spy and her pilot Maddie, and the sacrifices they make for one another—and the true price of friendship. I bawled. Okay, I read this the same week I had the baby, so it’s not like it’s hard to make me cry, but still.

What are you reading? When is the last time a book made you cry?