2012 reading recap

Well, I had a goal to read 100 books in 2012--and that definitely didn't happen. It was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to after I didn't read like crazy all summer like I was expecting to. I got to 83 though--and I'm pretty sure that's just about where I was last year too. But I feel like it was kind of cheating because I counted the Hunger Games trilogy, the Harry Potters, and the books I read about childbirth over the summer! Still, I'm not sure I'll read quite as many this year--or maybe I will! Somehow, I always end up reading too much when I feel like I should be cleaning or taking care of other projects. It's always hard to find a balance.

For my own benefit, my favorite books of 2012 were (and of course, I couldn't choose just one for each category):

Fiction: A Town Like Alice, Gone with the Wind, and Bel Canto.

Memoir: Great With Child, The Happiness Project (more for the idea than the actual execution, perhaps)

Non-fiction: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, The Millionaire Next Door

I don't think I need to narrow it down more than that. Looking back over the year, I really did read a lot of books that I loved this year. And I also read a bunch that were good, but not amazing. It was a great year for reading.

I am so happy that I started this blog (and even happier that no one else reads it!) so that I can look back at what I read and remember how much I loved them. It also makes me feel more accomplished, like I actually did something by finishing another book, when I write it down and write my feelings about it. All in all, a great decision on my part in the beginning of 2012. I'm excited to keep it up for 2013. I don't think I'm going to set a numerical goal for books this year, because who knows what this year is going to bring with Dane changing so much every week (every day!). I will try to read at least one per week, I think--somewhere between 50 and 83, my accomplishment of this year. I think that's doable.

Book #83: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I'd wanted to read this book forever--I'd put in a request at the library almost a year ago to get the audiobook, but it took forever, and then I forgot about it, and I finally remembered about it a few weeks ago. I'd gotten a recommendation from someone about it, and I did really enjoy it. I think (not sure) that I read on the cover blurb that Eugenides was trying to put the Jane Austen-esque plots about love and marriage into today's modern society, asking questions about how novels about marriage would be affected by feminism and other complicating factors. So it's a story about love and marriage that doesn't actually end with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy getting married, being rich, and living happily ever after--there's a love triangle (boy loves girl, girl loves other boy, that boy loves girl but also has bipolar disorder, etc.) and today's real life that gets in the way. The book doesn't end in a marriage (actually, it ends with a divorce, kind of) but it doesn't give up on marriage--it just kind of seems like marriage is more complicated nowadays than it was back then, when marrying a rich, handsome man was the end of all of your problems (or at least that's how Mrs. Bennet saw it).

It's been a while since I actually finished the book, but I did really like Eugenides' style of writing and the plotline itself. I don't know if I will ever read it again, but I did get really into the story while I was reading it.

Book #82: Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from Storycorps edited by Dave Isay

This book is basically the sequel to Listening is an Act of Love, but all of the stories that people tell are related to their experiences with their mothers, or in being a mother themselves. I felt basically the same as with Listening--the stories were just fascinating to see a look into people's lives. But there's not much more to say about it that I haven't already said!

Book #81: The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks

I waited for this book to become available at the library for FOREVER, and I finally got it and got around to reading it. It would have been interesting to read this book at the same time as Nienie's memoir because they're pretty polar opposite--Nienie is so just flat-out Mormon and Joanna Brooks is very "unorthodox," a word she uses to describe herself about a gajillion times. But they started out in the same place--growing up in a very traditional Mormon household and very enmeshed in their Mormon faith. It was kind of unsettling to me to read the beginning chapters of Brooks' memoir, while she was describing her childhood and introducing her faith and life to her readers. I felt a bit like I did when I was reading Bound on Earth--like it was too personal and too close to my own life for comfort. Brooks describes herself as a "root beer among the Cokes" and talks about how she felt different from all her friends growing up--but how comfortable she felt in all that difference because she was a part of this bigger group of the Saints. She describes the ward activities and members and Girl's Camp, but it's all with a tone of being an outsider looking in and being amazed at how odd it all is. And I totally understand why she did that: first of all, she's very far from that feeling in her life now, and second, her audience is people who aren't members of the church and she's writing partially so that they can become more understanding and familiar with the LDS faith. But man, it still felt weird to me to read all of that.

I felt less uncomfortable when she started talking about how/when she started to fall away from the Church, oddly enough. And I can understand why she did--the mid-nineties were a pretty stressful time for feminists in the Church (to say the least). For someone who feels so strongly about the issues that were being fought over, it would have been traumatizing to be a part of it. I am just more amazed by her strength and courage in coming back to the Church and in dealing with her history and the Church's history, and how strong her love is for the Church despite her experiences with it's faults. I think that's the really beautiful thing about her story, and I really enjoyed hearing about that part of it. I'd really love to talk to her and find out more about what she really believes. For example, she's married to a Jewish man and is raising her daughters "Jewish-Mormon"--how on earth do you reconcile those two faiths? The central tenet of Mormonism is that Christ is our Savior, while Judaism believes the opposite. LDS doctrine states that to be with your family forever you need to be sealed in the temple--what does that mean to you being in an interfaith marriage? I am sincerely interested to know what she believes about these things in more detail, and I think her book and blog are very interesting.

Long story short, despite her unorthodoxy, I think Joanna Brooks has done some really valuable PR for the Church (maybe even because she IS so unorthodox) and I really admire her dedication and courage in sticking to her guns in being a part of the Church AND in disagreeing with the Church over some of the things she feels strongly about. It definitely has given me things to think about.

Book #80: Listening Is an Act of Love edited by Dave Isay

Listening Is an Act of Love is a collection of oral histories collected by the Storycorps project. I'd never heard of Storycorps before (or maybe I had, and forgotten about it), but it's apparently this amazing, fantastically cool organization that goes around collecting people's stories, and the vast collection is really a big part of "the American Story"--a total ground-up version of history. Anyone who wants to is invited to come to one of their booths (one in Grand Central Station, one at Ground Zero, several traveling booths) and be interviewed (by a family member or a facilitator) and just tell their story. If they want, their story can be collected in the Storycorps archives or they just get a copy of it to keep for themselves. The book version is a compilation of some of the most interesting stories people have told and given to Storycorps to share. And, oh, they really are so interesting! They're mostly short snippets, mostly about very individual memories that in theory aren't very meaningful to anyone else, but just knowing how important they are to the speaker makes them fascinating. I LOVE oral history (I worked a bit with it while I was an undergrad) and I love the vision that Storycorps has of history. I would love to do something like this with people--interview them and collect their stories. Wouldn't that be just a great career to have? It's such a meaningful thing to collect and do--like the title of the book says, it's an act of love.

I'm looking at the Storycorps website (www.storycorps.org) in the hopes that the mobile station will be coming around here sometime--or more interestingly, around Utah to get my grandparents to do it--but it doesn't seem like it is. But I definitely want to keep checking this out.

Book #79: The New Kings of Nonfiction edited by Ira Glass

This book is a collection of nonfiction essays that editor Ira Glass read and enjoyed over the years and eventually brought together to be published in one book. Glass is the producer of the NPR show "This American Life" (which is also a podcast that Tommy listens to) and from what I gather, these essays are somewhat similar in style to that radio show. Glass's introduction laments that there isn't a  snappy name for this type of writing; some people apparently call it "literary non-fiction," but he says that that's too stuffy and boring for what it really is. What it really is is really great storytelling--using real facts and real live people and real things that happened in real life, as much as real things can happen and be described and told in a story. Each of the essays is really fascinating: one about a fourteen-year-old kid who got called up by the SEC for "manipulating the stock market" (because he was doing what actual stockbrokers do every day), one about Saddam Hussein and what he was really like (written back when he was alive), one where the author goes and befriends and becomes a part of a gang of marauding and vandalizing soccer fans in Britain, one about the man behind a violently right-wing talk radio show and how he and the show worked, and about ten more. This book went right up my nonfiction alley.

Book #78: The Moment edited by Larry Smith

The subtitle of this book probably says it best: "Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists, Famous and Obscure." Each artist wrote a short (from one paragraph to just a few pages) story about a life-changing moment in their past, one that dictated who they became. It was like a bunch of mini-memoirs, and since I'd only heard of a handful of them, it was just neat to read about a bunch of these people's lives and interesting things they had done. It was also so fast to go through and read all of these really short excerpts, which helped.