2013 Reading Recap

Well, 64 books in 2013 isn't too shabby! Not quite up to the 80+ that I read last year but I was definitely more busy (than last summer when I was doing nothing and the fall when I was sitting around nursing an infant all day every day).

Here are my favorites from this year:

Fiction: An Assembly Such as This and These Three Remain, The Grand Sophy and Frederica, the LOTR trilogy

Memoir: Global Mom

Non-fiction: Team of Rivals, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking

And least favorites: Someday My Prince Will Come, Ella Minnow Pea, The Age of Miracles

If I had to choose a #1 favorite for this year, I would unhesitatingly give it to Team of Rivals. It blew me away by how awesome it was, how I couldn't put it down even though it was a BIOGRAPHY, people! Highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in history.

I am really proud of myself for reading War and Peace and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, two classics I had never gotten around to but always wanted to. They were also the books that took me the longest to read, because I kept putting them down and procrastinating reading them. I enjoyed them, but they felt more like voluntary homework than fun reading. (I'm still in the middle of a few other books like that that I didn't finish before 2013 was over--hopefully I'll be able to write about them soon!) I do LOVE many classics, but I also love books that are quick reads since I rarely have long chunks of time to read huge heavy books like that any more.

I think I'll keep the same goal that I had for this year: at least one book per week. I'd love to reach 100 every single year, but I feel like I go through stages of wanting to read a lot and then stages of needing to do other things. I'm looking forward to what good things I read in 2014.

Book #64: Global Mom: A Memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

It's only five hours before 2013 is over, and I wanted to be sure that I reviewed the last book that I read in 2013 before it ends. I asked for this book for Christmas from my mom, because I had read about it in a bunch of different places and heard just stellar, amazing reviews about it. Global Mom is a memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford, an LDS woman who has raised her family of four kids in eight different countries (and still adding to that list). The book is a lot about her experiences living in all of those different places and all the richness this variety and these different customs have added to her life and the lives of her children, which is really inspiring and beautiful to learn about in and of itself, but what makes this book so powerful is when she writes about the loss of her eldest son in a water accident just one week after he left for college at BYU-Idaho. Dalton-Bradford writes so powerfully about the way she and her family has survived that earth-shattering loss and how their international lifestyle has continued and affected their healing process as well. This quote on almost the last page of the book defines well what I think this book is about:

"Of all the borders I've crossed, of all the addresses I've inhabited and of all the lands I've been privileged to call my home, there's but one terrain that's defined me more than any other: that is the land of loss. The very soil that no soul wants to visit. The one topography no parent ever wants to feel underfoot. The haunted land of loss has taught me more than any foreign land ever could. Unlike other geographies one might know for a year or two or even decades, the landscape of loss becomes a kind of permanent overlay to whatever and wherever follows. As much as I 'know' France or Germany, and as much as I at times feel quite Austrian or deeply Norwegian or even a little bit Singaporean or Swiss, no matter where I go or what language I speak, I am always and primarily a mother who buried her firstborn child."

I won't deny that I cried long and hard through about three chapters of the book while reading about her son's accident and the aftermath, not just because of hearing about the raw facts of the incident but also understanding and sharing Dalton-Bradford's experience with it and hearing her voice and her longing and sadness. I really can't emphasize how beautiful and poetic her writing is--you can tell it has been crafted by an experienced poet or musician (the latter of which she is) but it doesn't feel forced or fake. The language was just part of why I thoroughly loved this book. The experiences Dalton-Bradford shares from her time in different countries and the lessons she weaves through her stories about community and "blooming where you are planted" (as cliched as that saying is, that's really what she emphasizes again and again) are compelling all on their own as well. I also admired how she shared her testimony through the book--it was never outright or even explicit, but she mentions again and again her reliance on prayer through difficult experiences and her knowledge and love of God and what He is to her. Not that I mind explicit testimonies in books or anything, but I felt like how she wrote about it felt very organic and worked extremely well with the book as a whole.

I really, truly loved this book--it's one that I think I will want to re-read as a mother as I grow and change.

Book #63: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

After a long, frustrating day with a sick baby who wouldn't nap or go to sleep at night, all I wanted to do was take a bath and read something not taxing. So I picked up Little House in the Big Woods, which I don't think I've read in over a decade. It really, really, really made me happy to revisit this amazing book. I have a soft spot in my heart for these books, as I'm sure millions of other people do as well, after reading them so many times and loving them so much when I was younger. I just remember loving all of the details and stories about how they made their living in those days. It was so fascinating to read about how they ate maple syrup on snow and how Pa smoked their meat in a hollowed out log and how Ma makes cheese out of stuff from the stomach lining of a cow--and it still is pretty fascinating to me today!

Nowadays, with Dane getting into everything and being this crazy baby boy, I always think about pioneers and wonder, "How did they keep their babies alive back then?" Pa was out getting food all day long and working and Ma was busy making the food and all of this crazy housework--how did they ever keep an eye on their kids and keep them from being eaten by wild animals or from falling into a big vat of boiling water? Reading these books still makes me wonder--and it makes me think I would have been a TERRIBLE pioneer woman.

After we get back from our Christmas trip visiting our families, I think I will re-read all of the other books in this series as well. They just make me happy to read!

Book #62: My Story by Elizabeth Smart

When this book came out I didn't really even think about reading it at first--but then I kept hearing about it and decided that I would. It isn't a book to take up lightly, because obviously the story that she tells is terrifying and depressing to the core, all the more so because you know that it is real. We all lived through Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping, and I was at BYU at the same time as her (even lived in the same dorm building our freshman year!). And reading about her experience made me so impressed that she has overcome the horrors she went through, at such a young age. She comes across as a very solid, mature narrator with the benefit of hindsight to help her make sense of everything that she went through, and she refers again and again to her testimony and shows how much that sustained her through the nine months she was held captive. Her testimony, her belief in God and his goodness, and her love for her family are themes that she strongly emphasizes throughout the book as the reasons why she was able to survive and why she has been able to recover emotionally and spiritually from her experiences. As the reader of this book, I felt strengthened by HER strength and amazed by her maturity as a fourteen-year-old able to hold onto her beliefs in such a situation. As I read, I thought about who her audience might be, and it seems like this book could really introduce many people to the core, most fundamental beliefs of our Church, because Smart focuses so strongly on our belief in God, our love of God, and our reliance on the Atonement to help us get through trials and to recover from them.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It was a page-turner in some ways, because I couldn't help but keep going to figure out how and when all of it would end for her. And it was nice because it only took a few hours to get through. After reading this, I admire Elizabeth Smart even more, for how she survived and for the work she has done since.

Book #61: The Associate by John Grisham

A road trip, like the one we just took to the Outer Banks, is always a cause for us to find a quick and gripping book on CD for us to listen to while we drive. It makes such a huge difference for how long the trip feels for us to have something good to listen to! John Grisham and Tom Clancy are some of our favorite authors for that sort of reading/listening because they're so easy to follow and they keep your interest really well. I went into the library with Dane while picking up the sister missionaries from the library and had about .4 seconds to choose a book on CD while the sisters were waiting for me and Dane was trying to escape from me, so I just grabbed three John Grisham books and hoped for the best. We chose this one and enjoyed it while we drove. It seemed very similar to The Firm, which we listened to while we drove across the country last summer, but it wasn't as good. The Firm was awesome because it kept you jumping and wondering how the guy would survive, and it had a great ending where he beat everyone and got away. The Associate was almost exactly the same idea, where the new lawyer gets blackmailed/forced into doing something he doesn't want to do, but it seemed kind of anticlimactic in comparison. I did enjoy the peek into the corporate lawyer world that Kyle works in, as it confirmed to me how happy I am that we don't have a lifestyle like that and that Tommy is going to have a very different work experience. Thank goodness! It was a great, quick read (listen) that definitely fulfilled our goal of getting us to the OBX and back.

Books #58-60: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I feel like I'm kind of a slacker re-posting about books I've already read when I read them again, but I guess it all goes back to what I think the point of this blog is--and I like to know how many books I read over the year, and it counts to me if I'm re-reading. The Hunger Games trilogy is especially bad because I think this is the fourth time I've read all of the books--possibly even the fifth. I started reading these books again because I was preparing to go see Catching Fire in theaters with Tommy, and I'm glad I did. It was a good vacation-y book (or set of books) for me to read while we were in the Outer Banks with the Sines. (The other books I'm in the middle of are much heavier and more serious--not at all the type of book you want to read curled up on the couch while you're on a trip.)

And I know I wrote this before when I've posted about the books, but every time I read these books I get so into them and can't pull my head out of the storyline for about a week afterwards. I just catch myself dwelling on the story and thinking about the characters and remembering specific parts. And I guess that's a sign of how compelling the plot is and how much I identify with the books! I still am not sure what exactly it is about them, but I do just love them and I am very happy to indulge in them every once in a while.

Book #57: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Greatest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

I was babysitting at a friend's house the other night and happened to see this book on their bookshelf. It sounded interesting enough to me that I checked it out from the library and read it this week. The book was really very interesting because of the magnitude of the 1918-1919 pandemic and also because of how little I'd ever heard about it. It's also interesting because it was published in 2004, before the swine flu and bird flu epidemics that everyone was so worried about in the last decade. (Interestingly, Barry says that the deadly flu strain in 1918 was H1N1, which should be instantly recognizable to everyone from the swine flu epidemic.)

It seemed to me that this book was a very ambitious project. Barry didn't just want to talk about where and how this flu pandemic started and spread, but he tried to discuss the actual medical and physiological processes that are going on in the body with viral and bacterial infections and diseases. He also talked a lot about the developments in the general scientific community in the few decades before and after the epidemic (which is obviously a huge topic and probably could be an entire book or books by itself). I was very fascinated in his history of how science and the field of medicine changed in the United States over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; according to Barry, at least, prior to Johns Hopkins University being set up, medical schools and the field of medicine in the U.S. were absolutely terrible and had no standards or expectations at all. Most medical schools didn't expect their students to have any prerequisite education (any, at all) and had no opportunities for their students to practice on patients, but around the turn of the century there was a lot of momentum for change in the system and Barry discusses how that happened. That was a really interesting part of the story for me. I wasn't so interested in all of the really technical and scientific chapters about how the immune system works and how the flu attacks different parts of the body, etc. I remember enough from my high school and college science classes to understand it, but it was pretty dry. I was also fascinated by the spread of the disease and how it literally covered the entire world.

One other thing I wasn't too energized about with this book was a few small things about Barry's writing style. He really liked to be a little dramatic with his writing, and emphasize certain sentences by setting them off in their own paragraph, like this (I'm making this up as an example, it's not from his book):

"The scientists worked really hard. They thought they were close to finding the cure to the disease and solving this epidemic.

They were wrong."

That "They were wrong"-type sentence happened over and over and over again. It's a good thing to do sparingly, but I noticed it enough that it started to bother me. Again, just a silly little thing, but I feel like if you start to notice elements of the writing style it distracts from the actual reading of the book.

Book #56: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (a re-read)

It seems odd to be writing about this book again when I only just posted about reading it the first time four months ago. But I am in charge of our book club for this month and when I suggested this book as an option, everyone was very enthusiastic about reading it. I looked forward to the chance to revisit it again too.

As I read the book this time, I realized that I think I was over-exaggerating my introversion when I read it a few months ago. I am definitely not a true-blue introvert, but I am definitely more introverted than I thought before I read this book. That's why it was such a revelation to me to think about being an introvert at ALL. I realized as I read it that a lot of the elements she described do apply to me, but there are lots of other elements that don't--I do look forward to parties and socializing, most of the time; I don't feel nervous about speaking in front of groups, usually. But I am perfectly content a lot of the time to just hang out with Tommy every evening. In one of the later chapters of the book, Cain talks about the debate over situation vs. personality--that psychologists are divided over whether people have core personalities that hold true all the time, or whether the situation decides what how people act and feel. (The answer, of course, is a combination of both, I would imagine.) But I think that's a good indicator of how I feel about whether I am introverted or extroverted--some nights I am dying to get out of the house and go have a girls' night out, and other nights there's nothing I would rather do than take a bath. It changes from day to day.

Some things I want to talk about with the book club when we meet tomorrow:
-how Cain says our culture has morphed from a Culture of Character to the Culture of Personality--100 years ago people were more focused on inner accomplishments like being an honest person and now it's all about having a "good personality," being outgoing and friendly
-her discussion of extroversion in evangelical Christianity and how that relates to Mormonism
-the "person-situation" debate
-relationships between extroverts and introverts--any experiences?
-creativity and collaboration

Book #55: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

While I was in Ithaca, I was telling my grandma about the books I was reading and she recommended a few to me as well. This was one of them. My mom also told me about it, and it sounded cute and intriguing enough that I checked it out from the library at the same time as all of those Georgette Heyer books. It's a memoir of Mildred Kalish's time growing up in rural Iowa during the Great Depression, when she was a young girl. She details all of the things they had to do in their everyday life, all of which is fascinating because of how time intensive and pioneer-ish it all sounds to us living our cushy modern life today. It's been probably a decade since I last read Little House on the Prairie (and reading this makes me want to revisit them . . . maybe I will!), but it's amazing how much this book reminded me of the lifestyle that the pioneers had to live, bringing most of their food in from off their farm and living very much by all of their own self-sufficiency. And yet this was nearly a century later! Mildred Kalish is (probably) still alive today! My grandpa grew up on a farm in Montana and had a life very similar to this--and it's no wonder that there is a huge generational difference in how they see things and how people who have grown up worlds away from them in terms of work expectations see things.

Kalish makes it very clear (by repeating over and over again, "Can you imagine young children doing this today?") that modern kids and people are totally spoiled and not at all held up to the same standards of work ethic and expectations that they were back then. (And it's true--I CAN'T imagine a five-year-old today being handed a pig's head and told to clean it and help make the headcheese out of it.) I like how she tries hard to represent the good and the bad about their lives then, and she very honestly writes about her feelings about her childhood as she's considered it and grown older (both positive and negative). She writes at the end that she was probably sugarcoating a lot of stuff about her childhood, but that she really does remember a lot of it as a very free, independent, and wonderful time, despite the hardships that she wasn't even aware of until she was older and looked back on her experiences.

I was a little bit bored by some of the chapters, particularly when she started including all of her family's old recipes for things (although I can understand her desires to include them). I wished she'd given more details and stories about her family--she hardly ever even named her brothers and sister and when she wrote about them it was always just in passing. I didn't really have the sense of what her siblings were like and they obviously featured a lot in her adventures growing up and I wanted to know more about them. I feel like it would have been a more compelling story if there had been a better balance of personal stories and explanation of what Life Was Like Back Then, which is what the book seemed to lean heavily towards.

Book #54: The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer

This Heyer novel is the first one that I've read that doesn't end in a marriage. Instead, it starts with a marriage, one based solely on money and status and "convenience," as the title of the book would suggest, and then the husband and wife grow to love and care for each other after they are married. The Earl of Rule proposes to the eldest Miss Winwood, who is already in love with someone else. So her younger, very fiery and impish sister Horatia goes to talk to the Earl and to offer herself as a wife instead. The Earl is enchanted and accepts that switch and eventually falls in love with "Horry" (what a terrible nickname!), while she gets into some scrapes and needs his help to get out of them. I liked this story, now that I've finished it, but I was bugged by certain points in the story as I went on, like how stubborn and childish Horry was. I also hated how Horry had a stutter--why make the heroine of the book have a stutter? It was obnoxious to read and obnoxious to imagine. But it was funny to read through the comedy of errors (at one point her brother dresses up and gets together with some highwaymen to try to rob someone for her, and it was really hilarious) and I enjoyed it all in the end.

Book #53: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

I've heard a lot about this book, like everyone else, and I read a lot of articles and arguments that people have written about. So I finally decided to get to actually reading the book itself, and checked it out from the library. Sandberg's "feminist manifesto" of sorts is not as dramatic as many people made it sound (but that of course is probably because I have already read so much about it so I was already familiar with her argument). She argues that in addition to all of the external obstacles that women face to success, there are also internal obstacles and de-motivators that women struggle with and need to overcome before we can live in a world that's truly equal. The first few chapters are outlining the main problems women are facing (within themselves and without) and the rest of the book is Sandberg's suggestions for how working women can solve those problems and what they can do to become leaders and reach the point in the career that they want. She sprinkles personal anecdotes throughout the book to illustrate points that she makes, which I found to be compelling and interesting. It definitely was illuminating to read about her lifestyle and her experiences working at the U.S. Treasury, Google, and Facebook.

I think Sandberg makes some really important points, and I feel like she was gives all women, whatever their career path, leeway to apply her points to their lives. I appreciate how fair she tried to be to women who chose to work, chose not to work, or chose to scale back on their work. All the same, it was interesting to read this book as a non-working woman, who isn't necessarily planning on a big career. I think she is really writing this book for women who want to be CEOs of companies (and are able to consider that as a career goal)--which, she points out, there are far too few of in our society. And on the one hand, I agree with her. She lists many, many depressing statistics about how few women there are in leadership positions and how women are viewed in workplaces for exhibiting ambitions and aggressive, hard-working habits that are usually associated with men. And I feel strongly, like Sandberg, that those inequalities should be evened out and that the world would be a better place if things were more fair in all of those situations. But then, I also think that it's hard when you get down to individual situations. I imagine most of the business school colleagues that she talks about who end up dropping out of the workforce and having children would agree with her, but they also did what they wanted to do (hopefully) by deciding to stay home. As a current stay-at-home mom myself, I think that things should be evened out--but I'm happy for other people to do that while I do what I'm doing. I want gender norms to be equal in the workplace, but I don't want to have to do it. It's a lazy position to be in, but it doesn't work to shame people who aren't participating (not that I think Sandberg is doing that at all--she definitely seems fair and even-minded to whatever choices women decide to make).

I did really enjoy her chapter on making your husband (or partner) a real partner in all of the childcare and homemaking responsibilities. One point she stresses is that men should be respected for staying at home as much as their wives might be, and also that men and women need to balance their careers together so that both the father and mother are helping pick kids up from school when is needed. I think that's always true--even when one parent is staying at home. (And of course, Tommy is a great example of doing this--just to clarify!)

Book #52: False Colours by Georgette Heyer

Don't worry, I don't have any more Heyer novels checked out from the library! (Although there might be one or two more waiting for me on hold there.) I read this one today while watching Dane and Indie play happily on the floor together. (And might I just say--they have finally, happily, made the turn to playing together instead of whining and crying the whole time they're with each other? Or at least, it seems like they have? We'll see how they hold up . . . but I am very happy about how they were today.) I liked how this book was different than the others, not focused on the romance between the main heroine and her lover specifically, but actually on the male character instead. Christopher "Kit" Fancourt returns home from living abroad to be forced into impersonating his twin brother to his new fiancee--and eventually, of course, they get into all sorts of situations and scrapes with the mix-up. Spoiler alert!--Kit falls in love with Cressy, his brother's fiancee, and they have to work things out with each other. This was a fun read, and I am glad to have worked my way through it. I think I'll read a couple of different books next before I read any more Heyers--I need a change of pace.

Book #51: These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

Man, I am really busting through these Georgette Heyer books! I guess that's a good sign that I'm enjoying them and that they're very nice, easy, quick reads. (Although I am reading Anna Karenina as well--just much more slowly!) I started (and finished) These Old Shades last night, and I have to say right off--I did not love it as much as I did The Grand Sophy or Frederica. The heroines in those novels were much more realistic and believable, and the hero in this one absolutely not lovable at all.

Here's the basic storyline: the Duke of Avon, while in Paris, buys a random peasant boy he finds on the street to be his page. The boy, Leon, turns out to actually be a girl, Leonie, who's been forced to dress as a boy for years (starting to get weird, right?). He makes her his ward, his adopted daughter, and introduces her to Paris society and figures out about her family who she didn't know. The Duke is this terrible, evil person whom everyone calls Satan, but Leonie is totally devoted to him and thinks he's perfect. Eventually he falls in love with her too and after a bunch of stuff, they get married.

First off, the storyline is just too weird. She was dressed up as a boy for the first 100 pages of the book, and then you find out she's actually a girl. And then you find out she actually has good parentage and this whole crazy story behind her upbringing, which the Duke just figured out by just guessing. And secondly, the Duke of Avon is 20 years older than her, and her guardian, and this seriously bad guy, according to everyone, including his friends. He isn't the sort of person you want to root for, even after he starts helping Leonie out. I more wanted Leonie to fall in love with his younger brother, Rupert, who was much more human. And thirdly, Leonie was really pretty boring as a character. She was outspoken, and impish, and beautiful, but there really wasn't anything there for me to make me like her. I wouldn't really recommend this one as much as I would the other two Heyer novels I've read so far.

Book #50: Frederica by Georgette Heyer

I finished The Grand Sophy yesterday, and then started and finished this one yesterday too! (It was a rainy day, so all we were doing was hanging out inside, and I got to read while sitting next to Dane playing with his toys on the floor. And also he took two good long naps yesterday, giving me plenty of reading time.) This was a fun read along the same lines as The Grand Sophy, with a fun, determined heroine who somehow ends up catching the hero at the end. But it's fun to compare how they are different too: Sophy planned everything that was happening in the book--she was in complete control; she planned on her cousin falling in love with her; she wasn't surprised when it happened. Frederica, on the other hand, had no thoughts of marriage and was only focused on taking care of her siblings, since they had all been orphaned a few years ago. She was the oldest of the five siblings, and brought them all to London in order to help her stunningly beautiful sister Charis have her "season" in London society. All of her goals centered around Charis being comfortably married and taking care of her younger brothers, which unselfishness was appealing enough in her character. Of course, the distant relative she applies for help to, the Marquis of Alverstoke, who is the most eligible bachelor in town and has long been considered the most selfish and uncaring man in society, discovers that Frederica and her younger brothers are some of the first people he's ever met who don't bore him excessively and he gradually falls in love with her.

So far, after reading two Heyer novels, I've found that I love how she includes events that seem totally out of the regular path of everyday life in her stories. In this novel, one of the climactic events is when Frederica and family go watch a hot-air balloon lift-off from one of the main parks in London (and all sorts of chaos ensue with Frederica's youngest brother!). It just is such a novel event to read about in a story set in this time period, when all of Jane Austen's novels are very centered on the regular, everyday lives that people lead (which I very much enjoy too--I just appreciate the contrast). I loved Frederica as the heroine and I also very much liked the Marquis of Alverstoke--he's a semi-despicable rake at the beginning of the novel but you can kind of see why, through his circumstances and surroundings. He becomes much more approachable and less self-centered through his attachment to Frederica and her family, and leads to a happy ending.

Book #49: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

I've never read any of Georgette Heyer's books before, but I've checked out five of them from the library and I'm planning on working my way through them in the next few days. My sister-in-law Melissa recommended them to me (after I mentioned my Jane Austen kick), and I looked up what her best books were on Goodreads. The Grand Sophy was the highest rated, so I wanted to read it first.

Sophy gets dropped off to visit her aunt and uncle and finds out that their family has a number of problems they need help fixing: Charles, her oldest cousin, is engaged to a meddling bluestocking; Cecilia, her cousin her age, is in love with a poet who has no idea of how to make a living; Hubert, another cousin, has lost a lot of money gambling and has no idea where to go. The great thing for them is that Sophy knows exactly how to fix all of these situations and decides to help all of her relatives through her own matchmaking and problem-solving. She does end up fixing all of these problems in her aunt's family, to the most wonderful solutions for everyone, and through the most unexpected means. Sophy is an extremely lovable character--she is opinionated and strong-willed but only uses her stubbornness for the best efforts and most helpful causes. You can't help loving her determination to do what she wants to do and laughing at how well everything turns out for her through all of her hard work.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this Regency romance--I liked how Heyer's style is a mix between the formality of Jane Austen and the informality of today. Sophy seemed like a very modern heroine (even though Heyer was writing in 1950) and not at all encumbered by the concerns for propriety that seems so important to all of Austen's heroines. Sophy's last desperate measures she takes to make Charles and Cecilia break off their engagements to marry the right people absolutely do not fit in with my understanding of the culture at the time. It seems like it would have been far too improper for any woman to pretend to elope with someone for anyone to even think about taking it on. But of course, if anyone would do it, it would be Sophy.

Book #48: Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson

I emailed my sisters-in-law and told them about the two Mr. Darcy books I read last week, and got a few good book recommendations in return from them. Kristen said she was reading this one, and that it was a Jane Austen-esque novel and that it was "heartpoundingly romantic!" So of course I requested it at the library and read it tonight while Tommy was at Priesthood session. (Yeah, it was that quick! I love it when books go by that fast.) It's a Regency-era romance novel, with a modern style and plot pacing. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl doesn't like boy, girl falls in love with boy, something bad happens, boy saves girl, boy and girl get engaged. That's basically the whole plot. It was a cute story, and I liked the main character, Marianne, even though she kept saying how she was so plain but her love interest is always telling her how he thinks she's so beautiful. Stop being all boring and talking about how ugly you are all the time, Marianne!

The one thing about this book was that it all seemed very cliche. I knew what was going to happen before it happened. And I wasn't really convinced about why Philip should have fallen in love with Marianne so quickly and desperately in the first place. After about three days of knowing each other, he was already writing her love letters about how much he loved her and blah blah blah. Not believable at all. And the most un-believable part was the plotline about the guy who first dressed up as a highwayman and tried to kidnap Marianne for her newfound inheritance, and then randomly came to her house and called on her and proposed to her, and then eventually kidnapped her and stole her away. Seriously? That was completely unconvincing to me and seemed so random and out of place. I think the whole story would have been stronger without any of that extra random added drama that the author clearly just included to make it move along faster or something like that.

But all in all, I liked the book (really, I did!). Even though some of the dialogue made me cringe and some of the story was kind of out there, I liked the characters and I'll be happy thinking about them and the story for the rest of the evening at least.

Books #46 and 47: An Assembly Such as This and These Three Remain by Pamela Aiden (Books 1 and 3 of the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy)

Okay, so this last week, I've been on the ultimate Pride and Prejudice kick, which was started by reading Among the Janeites a week or two ago. I read the book (but I won't count it since I've already read it this year, and don't have anything interesting to say about it), watched every movie/miniseries version I could find (both the 1980 and 1995 miniseries, the Keira Knightley version, and the Bride and Prejudice Bollywood version), and then I ordered this P&P fan fiction from the library and POWERED through them in less than 2 days. I could not put them down--it was really very fascinating because they were the story of Pride and Prejudice but from Mr. Darcy's perspective, and I actually really enjoyed Aidan's interpretation and Mr. Darcy's character from her point of view.

These books are specifically mentioned in Among the Janeites, when the author interviews the author of the trilogy and talks about how every raves about how the style of her books is so similar to Austen's. I saw that they got mostly good reviews on Goodreads as well, although many people did not really like the second novel in the trilogy, which covers a "silent" period in P&P, or a few months when nothing really happens and Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth don't see each other. Meaning, the second novel of this trilogy is just randomly made up by the author with no real relation to the P&P story, and so I didn't feel at all interested or obligated to read it. I think I would have been annoyed to be reading through that one and trying to find out what was happening with Elizabeth, only to find out that they NEVER see each other in that book.

But anyways, lots of people said that Aidan had a style similar to Austen's, which made this trilogy a very popular P&P fan fiction. But I did not believe her style at all--and I think that Austen would have been offended to hear that. It was MUCH cheesier and more flowery and ridiculous than Austen's. Absolutely EVERYTHING that Elizabeth did was "heavenly" and "lovely" and "graceful" to Darcy (our narrator) and he was always longing to see her and hold her and when she walked by "a dart of hope would cleave his chest and force his limbs to stand still" and her laugh was like "cascades of pure joy." It was obnoxious to read this description of Elizabeth because it did not seem to accord with my view of her from the book itself. But I guess it did kind of accord with how Mr. Darcy was "bewitched" by Elizabeth, so I'm not sure how else you could have depicted that.

Aidan started writing the book to talk/find out about how Darcy truly could have made his transformation from the prideful, rude man at the beginning of P&P to the considerate and caring one at the end, and I think that's where the real strength of this rendition lies. I do really enjoy seeing how he changed himself and the specific steps and mindset that came about through and from his efforts. I also loved hearing Mr. Darcy's thoughts in relation to Caroline Bingley and Georgiana and it was fun to see these other secondary characters who aren't in the original book come to life to help illuminate Darcy's character and the plot. All in all, I stayed up reading both of these until 2:15 this morning, even though I had to get up early to teach, and I don't really regret it. It was totally engrossing and I loved it enough to overlook the occasional annoying language that Aidan uses to describe Elizabeth.

Book #45: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Dun dun dunnnn! The big one! I am so glad I FINALLY finished this book. I've always meant to read it but I've always been so intimidated by how huge it is (over 1100 pages), which makes it so difficult to even want to start it. But a few months ago, our book club decided to make this our summer book, which was a good enough motivation for me to start it--and once I was into it, I didn't want to give up! It's kind of hard to think of what to say to "review" War and Peace, since it's such a iconic work, but I'll start with this: I really enjoyed it and I'm very glad I read it.

The narrative of the novel is amazing and engrossing. It tells the story of five main families throughout the early decades of the 19th century in Russia, through Russia's wars with Napoleon and Napoleon's invasion of Russia. There are several main heroes and heroines who we follow specifically (part of those families), namely, Pierre, Andrey, Marya, and Natasha, and we follow them in their romances and disappointments and discoveries about the meaning of life. The intertwining of these people and these families was the true heart of the book and definitely my favorite part. I loved seeing how they all fell in love with people and how they were searching for meaning and goodness and truth in their own ways.

I think my favorite character in the novel was Princess Marya, a quiet and very religious young woman who was terrorized by her father her whole life but forgave him and basically only tried to be kind to everyone. But she was humanized for me too by how she didn't like some people, even though she tried to be Christlike and patient with everyone. Natasha, arguably the main heroine in the novel, kind of drove me crazy. Someone said that they'd read that Natasha was even more likeable than Lizzie Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, but she seemed very overly dramatic and selfish to me. She was a teenage girl for most of the novel, though, so it is maybe understandable. Pierre and Andrey, several of the main male protagonists, both tried throughout the novel to find meaning in their lives in a number of different meaning systems (Pierre becomes a Freemason for a while, Andrey tries to find glory in serving in the army, they both try to find it through women, etc.) but all of their attempts fail and when terrible things happen, they find that they can't find answer so the question of "Why did this happen?"

But I love by the end of the book how they both find similar, very simple answers. Pierre is captured as a prisoner of war in Moscow, and during his captivity finds his answer: "In old days he had sought Him in the aims he set before himself. That search for an object in life had only been a seeking after God; and all at once in his captivity he had come to know, not through words or arguments, but by his own immediate feeling, what his old nurse had told him long before; that God is here, and everywhere. . . . He felt like a man who finds what he has sought at his feet, when he has been straining his eyes to seek it in the distance. All his life he had been looking far way over the heads of all around him, while he need not have strained his eyes, but had only to look in front of him" (1005). Andrey is consumed by bitterness after a bad break-up with Natasha, but is wounded in the war and comes close to dying. While in the army hospital having his wound dealt with, he feels an amazing charity towards everyone, and realizes that that is the secret he had been searching his whole life: "Sympathy, love for our brothers, for those who love us, love for those who hate us, love for our enemies, yes the love that God preached upon earth, that Marie sought to teach me, and I did not understand, that it why I am sorry to part with life, that is what was left me if I had lived" (745). I love how they both find these simple, everyday answers to their questions about life and how they both went on this search for meaning to find that their answers could have been found in front of their eyes years before if they had been willing to see them.

I loved the ending of the book especially though, how people get married and have babies and are happy together and live together as one big happy family. I love that they all love their spouses and their children and each other. I love what Nikolay says to Marya, "It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome. . . . When you are away, and any misunderstanding like this comes between us, I feel as though I were lost and can do nothing. Why, do I love my finger? I don't love it, but try cutting it off. . . ." (1051). It makes me happy to know that even though their lives aren't perfect, that everything turns out generally well for them in the end.

It was fascinating to me to learn about the history of this time, because I only vaguely remember learning about Napoleon and Russia. I had had no idea that Moscow was destroyed during Napoleon's invasion and that it was almost completely burned to the ground. I really liked learning about the culture in Russia at the time and all of the events that were covered during the book.

The book can be hard to read, though. First of all, there are tons and tons of characters who Tolstoy will name once and then expect you to remember later, and all of their names sound the same, and all the characters have tons of nicknames that everyone refers to them by. Andrey is called Andryushka and Marya is called Marie and Marusha and Natasha is called Natalie and Natalia and all sorts of variations. But once you figure that out (after about 400 pages of it), that's not too bad. I also was kind of bored by all of the chapters that went so in depth about the war and the generals making decisions about what to do, and I ended up skimming a lot of that. The harder part is getting through all of Tolstoy's philosophical discussions about the true meaning of history and power and life and war, which he sprinkles throughout the book in solid chapters of philosophy. It's concentrated a lot near the end of the novel, especially in the last Epilogue. He is really arguing against the theory that individual people can make decisions that can impact the course of history, and claiming that events happen because of the momentum of events that are already happening and because of the will and power of all individuals together. It's a pretty interesting argument and I really liked some of the points he makes, but man, he goes on and on and on about it all over the place and by the end of the book I was saying, "I GET IT ALREADY!" I think reading an abridged version would have made it more enjoyable, because it would be easy to take out most of those chunks and just keep all of the narrative, which was what I loved anyway.

I'm thinking about reading Anna Karenina now, since I'm already in the Tolstoyan mood. We'll see if it actually happens. But I need a new project!

Book #44: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Reading Among the Janeites piqued my interest in Jane Austen fan fiction (although this is a very specific type of JA fan fiction--not rewriting or continuing any stories she wrote or anything like that), so I checked out another book at the library that I'd heard about that was in a similar vein. I feel like I'd heard about this book a year or two ago, but for some reason never picked it up. But I read it all today (Dane napped for a long time--yay!) and it was definitely an enjoyable, quick read. It's a novel about six people (five women, one man) who start a Jane Austen book club and discuss a new one of her books every month, and about their lives and their relationships.

I liked how Fowler intertwined narratives about each book club member's personal life with the discussions and themes of each JA book they were discussing. I liked learning about each character and member of the group. And that was my main complaint about this book, too--that it didn't happen enough. I felt like I barely got to know the characters as much as I would like. You learn a lot of stories from their background and childhood, but you hardly even learn what each person did for their day job and what their personality is really like. I don't know if the book just needed to be longer and more all-encompassing, or what, but I felt like we didn't get enough from it. It was a great premise though, and I had a fun time reading it.

Book #43: Among the Janeites by Deborah Yaffe

Tommy saw this book on the shelves at the airport bookstore while we were stuck at our layover on our way home from Montreal, and he walked back to where I was sitting and said, "I saw a book I think you'd like." And I liked the idea enough that when we got, I requested it at the library.

If you're a woman, and you read, you probably love Jane Austen (or at least Pride and Prejudice). But there are whole hordes of women (and men, let's be fair) who take that love to a whole other level--and they are called Janeites. The type of people who read all of her books twice a year and have read all of her letters and other, unpublished works and dress up in Regency clothes for the Jane Austen conferences. The author goes through all the different aspects of the Jane Austen obsession that "Janeites" today have, interviewing groupies who write P&P fan fiction and comment on Austen fan blogs every single day, and scholars who analyze her work and write academic journal articles about it. She visited all of the Austen historical sites and a number of Jane Austen conferences. It was all really pretty interesting, but I kind of felt like this book was a little more fluff that she got from her interviews than was really necessary--a lot of other people talking about their feelings and experiences with Jane Austen than actually explaining the Austenmania phenomenon, I guess. It did really make me want to revisit some of her books again (although it hasn't really been that long!) and it made me want to go to a Jane Austen conference. (Coincidentally, my aunt and grandma are going to the Jane Austen conference in Milwaukee next week, and it's the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, so I'm guessing it's going to be a big one.) I don't know when I'll make it but I think I'll put that on my bucket list.

Book #42: Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

I'm still working my way through War and Peace (that's going to be the book of the year, I can just tell) and I'm really enjoying it. But it's so BIG and heavy that it's hard to even tell if I'm making any progress, so it's sometimes nice to squeeze in a quick and fast book that makes me feel like I can check something off my list. I was at the library with Dane and Indie for library storytime and I walked through a few aisles with the two babies afterwards, and happened upon the Agatha Christie shelves, so I picked up two of her books I hadn't read before.

This one is a Hercule Poirot mystery, where Poirot is asked to dig up a long-ago supposed murder to shed some more light on the case. Amyas Crale, a famous painter was poisoned, and his wife was committed for the crime and nobody questioned it at the time. But their daughter comes to Poirot sixteen years later and asks him to clear her mother's name. And not to spoil the whole book or anything, but Poirot does it. It was a really interesting book, and it wasn't one where it felt like Poirot was just some magician who somehow managed to figure out the solution without any actual reasons. It only took me a few hours to read (I finished it in an evening) and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And now, back to War and Peace!

Book #41: Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection by A. J. Jacobs

I really liked Jacobs's book where he reads the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way through. I thought it was a fascinating idea and I loved learning all of the trivia tidbits along the way, and I liked how he intertwined the narrative about he and his wife trying to get pregnant. I also enjoyed his second book about living the Bible rules literally. But I don't know, it kind of seems like it's getting old. His wife and family must be getting tired of all of these hijinks he keeps thinking up (he wrote another book where he tried a bunch of experiments on himself or something--I didn't feel like it was compelling enough). The only reason I decided to read this book was because it was about health and diet, which is something I'm vaguely interested in right now (even though we're not working that hard on becoming the healthiest eaters ever or anything).

In this book, he decides to spend two years becoming the healthiest person in the world (why does he have to qualify it by saying he wants to be the BEST? Can't he just say he wants to spend two years living as healthy as possible?) and focuses each month on improving different parts of his body and trying different diets and exercise plans. I just felt like he didn't go into enough detail about what sorts of exercise he was doing and what he was eating, and he skimmed a LOT when talking about each body part (which, of course, he had to do, but it still just felt like we were getting the most bare minimum possible and I didn't feel fulfilled with it). I feel like he should have condensed it and just written it in twelve months and not focused on random body parts like the nose or ears, which weren't very interesting to me. I liked it enough to finish it, but I wouldn't read it again. There are better books about what to eat and how to exercise and be healthy out there.

Book #40: The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

I heard about this book along with everyone else in the world, after it was revealed that Robert Galbraith is actually a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling and that she'd somehow secretly written and published a crime/mystery novel! I wasn't really planning on reading it specifically, but my friend Ruth picked it up at the library and offered to let me borrow it before she returned it. I started it last night and then plowed through it--I basically did nothing else other than reading and keeping Dane alive today. (We went on three walks so that I could just push him in the stroller and read the book balanced on the top of the stroller, haha!) It was definitely a page-turner.

The main character is Cormoran Strike, a down-and-out private detective who gets a stroke of luck when asked to investigate the supposed suicide of a famous model. The storyline is basically what you'd expect from there--the investigation carries on and you find out what really happened a little at a time from interview to interview, and then Strike does his big reveal to the killer at the end. But that's not to say that it was formulaic or boring in any way--I just am not sure how else to describe a mystery without giving up too much information. Galbraith (or, okay, Rowling) does a really cool job of giving you just a little information at a time and making it all coordinate and collaborate. I also thought it was a nice touch having the main subject of the investigation be a famous celebrity, because it added the extra intrigue factor of the tabloids and celebrity excess and such. I did kind of suspect who the killer was partway through the book, but I think that's just because I've read a good number of mysteries lately, and at least one of them had this same set-up with who the killer actually was. I also liked how Strike's past and his life was revealed to you gradually as you read the book as well--you didn't find out everything all at once. (That really reminded me of Broken Harbor, actually, which I also really liked.) All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am really glad I took the chance to read it. It's always refreshing to get back into a book you can't put down.

Book #39: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Wow. It sure has been a long time since I've posted on here--and frankly, it's been a long time since I've read any books! I feel so ashamed of myself. My big excuse is that we were traveling for six weeks (from the end of June to the beginning of August), and traveling with a baby is SO much less relaxing than it used to be. There just wasn't that much time for reading. And I was reading War and Peace on the Kindle while we were there, so I WAS reading, but I'm still not even halfway through it, so I can't even report on it yet. (I'm enjoying it, though!) Looks like my goal of 100 books is definitely down the drain for this year, especially since I'm now teaching a class at the community college this semester, so a lot of my free time I used to use for reading is going to be taken up with planning and grading and such. But it's all for good reasons, so I don't mind that much!

But I finally can report that I've read Ben Franklin's Autobiography. I am ashamed to admit that it's only a little over 100 pages long, and I started it something like three years ago--and never finished. I just never really got that into it (obviously). I read part of it in one of my American Lit classes at BYU, and then right after we got married, Tommy read it and enjoyed it. So I started it and just never really got around to finishing it. It is really fascinating to read Franklin's stories and to kind of put yourself in his mindset, in his time period. It's all pre-Revolutionary War stuff, and mostly, he tells little anecdotes about how he started his business and how he began his life of public service. A lot of the stories have morals to them, because the whole point of his writing his autobiography is to show up his life as an example of how hard work and virtue pays off.

My favorite part of the book is when he talks about his project to perfect himself, where he chooses 13 virtues and tries to live those virtues without fail every day. He's so methodical about it--he chooses the virtues, defines what they mean in everyday life, and then makes a chart where he marks off every day how he does at living them. The Happiness Project author, Gretchen Rubin, basically rips off his idea (she gives him the credit though) for this when she makes her goals and keeps a checklist to see how she does every day too. It seems like it's got to be the most effective way to remind yourself of your goals and to keep tabs on yourself.

I just wish the book were a little more organized and more extensive, if anything. It feels so incomplete (probably because I bet it is)--it ends before the Revolutionary War even starts and there are whole decades of Franklin's life that you don't really know anything about. It's hard to really feel like you've got a good appreciation of his life as the book is, and that's what I really love about biographies/autobiographies. But it really is an interesting book when you look at it as a period piece of literature and you appreciate it for what it teaches you about that time and their mindset.

So at least I've finally crossed this off my list! Even though I didn't love it, I won't have it sitting on my shelf mocking me.

Book #38: The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life by Terryl and Fiona Givens

Terryl and Fiona Givens came here to our stake to give a fireside a few months ago, and we pulled it together enough for both of us to go (with a sleeping Dane in his carseat--those were the days when he would sleep anywhere!). The fireside was about having faith even in the midst of having doubts, and it was a really beautiful and thought-provoking fireside. They talked a little bit about their book, and Tommy bought it for me as a gift for Mother's Day.

The book is basically explaining the basics of LDS theology. I'm interested in thinking about who the audience of this book is, because it's kind of hard to tell who they're writing for. It's not specifically meant for LDS readers (although obviously it's very applicable to us), but it is for people who accept the basic tenets of Christianity (that there is a God, that Christ is our Savior). The Givenses explain certain things that are clarified in our LDS scriptures and beliefs, like the nature of God as a loving, merciful Father instead of as an all-powerful, unknowable being; the necessity and benefits of the Fall and the reasons why coming to earth was more of an ascent than a descent, as a stepping-stone to eternal life and divinity; the reality of heaven as more than just angels floating around on clouds but instead as the glorified versions of the relationships that we have and cherish now.

I was interested by the logic the Givenses used as they explained all of these points. Like I said, they started from the assumption that they (and the audience) believe in God, and instead of trying to prove empirically that He exists, they simply point to elements about ourselves as humans that make the idea that there is a God reasonable and resonant. For example, to justify the idea of a premortal existence, they discuss "the sense that we are pilgrims in a strange land" that is "one of the most universal themes in human culture" (page 40). They quote many different poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Herbert) and philosophers who wrote about this deep feeling, which the Givenses claim is "a simple longing for our true home." I personally feel like this explanation resonates with me, but I don't know if it would be accepted by people who don't share our faith or basic assumptions of Christianity. (Although maybe those people just haven't yet felt this yearning.) I think that discussion of feelings and emotions, and basing decisions and beliefs based on those, is not given the same credit in our society as logical, empirical knowledge. Religion is based on faith and trust and feeling the Spirit, so people who don't give those things much credence wouldn't be swayed by these arguments. But I believe both types of knowledge are important, and the Givenses are kind of mixing the two of those, it seemed.

Both of the Givenses are incredibly well-read. This was obvious in the fireside, but it is incorporated into nearly every paragraph of this book--there are quotes from famous poets, novelists, and philosophers, as well as from the scriptures. I really liked how they included these quotes as evidences of the points they were making--lines from poems to explain what we humans long for and quotes from plays to show snippets of human character. These quotes gave a lot of depth to their arguments and emphasized the universality of the theories and thoughts about God and life that the Givenses were claiming. The writing in this book is also clearly affected by their reading, because it is beautiful, metaphorical, and poetic.

These were some of my favorite points made in the book (there were many more, but these are the only ones I marked and could therefore find again):

"The philosopher Bertrand Russell may have stopped short of seeing the giver behind the gift, but he was right about the poverty of puritanism for its own sake. 'The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible,' he said. He then made his point with the simple example of a taste for strawberries. 'There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good, to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. . . . The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has'" (pages 70-71). I think this is so true! People's lives seem so much more rich when they have deep interests in things and when they have a positive outlook on life. It's part of living an abundant life.

"We are becoming what we love and desire. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. . . . What we are worshipping we are becoming.' Every moment of every day our choices enact our loves, our desires, and our aspirations. And we are molding ourselves into the God or gods we thereby worship" (page 87). The authors are here talking about becoming more like God, and how we do that every day (if we choose to). And I think it can also be applied on a more mundane basis as well: if we look up to people who are well-read and love them, we can work to become that type of person every day. Our actions every day impact what type of person we are becoming (all the way up to becoming like our Heavenly Father).

Book #37: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

When I was around the age of 9, I did two things for fun. I would read, and I would go kick the soccer ball into the backstop across the street and tell myself stories as I did it. I did both of those things for hours and hours and HOURS on end, and I never got tired of it.

When I was in school, I hated groupwork with a passion. I didn't have a birthday party the entire time I was in high school. I hated the whole dating game SO MUCH, and first dates were pretty much torture. When I found out about the whole business school ethos of networking, I instantly knew that I never, ever, ever wanted to get an MBA and have to schmooze with anyone, ever. (It seriously sounds like worse than having to go get a PhD.) In every workplace I've ever been in (temping, internships, grad school cubicles), it takes months or even years for me to get to know the people around me.

Now, I still love to read. I also hate small talk, but I love talking about "deep" things that are important to me--I feel so happy and connected with people after those conversations. I am surprisingly happy staying at home and not seeing anyone else all day long (although that changes depending on Dane's whininess). 90% of the time, Tommy and I will spend time together playing Boggle, doing crosswords, or curling up and watching a movie together. I fluctuate between feeling guilty that we don't do enough social things with other people and feeling guilty that we aren't best friends with everyone we know. I often let calls go to voicemail, not for any specific reason but more because I often feel like I need to be in the right mental spot to talk to someone over the phone. I have a horror of awkwardness. None of this is to say that I'm antisocial or anything, but I don't thrive on all social interactions.

Guess what? I'm an introvert. After all of these facts about myself, you'd think it would have been obvious before reading this book, but I had honestly never thought about myself in that way. One major reason is because of our culture's fascination with the Extrovert Ideal, as Cain puts it--we value extroverts far more than introverts and push employees, students, kids, and friends to be more extroverted so that most everyone learns how to act like an extrovert, no matter how much they don't like it. Introverts tend to feel guilty (like me) or wonder if there's something wrong with them when they don't enjoy large dinner parties or networking events or when they feel exhausted after giving a presentation at work. But Cain's whole point is that there's nothing WRONG with being introverted--there's actually a lot of value in introversion that our culture is missing out on by forcing everyone to act and work like decisive and talkative extroverts. It's okay to be introverted! There are times when it's important to use extroverted skills (like when teaching Relief Society, for me) but it's even more important to be aware of where your natural preferences and skills lie and to know how to recharge your batteries and interact with the introverts and extroverts around you. (Luckily for us, Tommy's an ambivert--according to a self-test in the introduction to the book, and yes, that is a real word!--so we don't have any real conflict over how we want to spend time together. He's just as happy reading in bed together as I am.)

I really liked this book. I think Cain did an excellent job of incorporating scientific studies and real-world experiences into her points in the book, and the final chapter included specific tips for dealing with children or students who are introverts (for parents and teachers), which I think is a fantastic resource. But mostly, I liked it because it gave me so much to think about--and it really helps me to legitimate my desires and my interests. I like hanging out with people, but it's okay if I don't love big events with lots of people and if I want to leave early. And it's okay if we spend almost all of our evenings doing nothing exciting. It's just some cultural expectations that make us feel that way.

Book #36: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

I feel like I've heard about this book several times, but finally got around to reading it after a friend wrote about it on her blog. I love a good mystery, and this one won the "Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award," according to the cover, which I have no idea what that means, but it seems like it must be a good thing.

It's interesting, because the main character is an eleven-year-old, but it's not a book written for children. It would probably work as a YA novel, but it's definitely not specifically for that audience. Flavia de Luce, though, is not your typical eleven-year-old girl. She is a precocious chemist obsessed with creating poisons, with an instinctive way of manipulating the adults in her life to get what she wants/needs and a very good sense of how to solve a mystery. She wakes up one morning and finds a dead man in her yard, and decides to be the child detective and find out who the killer was, managing to uncover a lot of her father's personal history (and recover an extremely valuable stamp stolen from the king's personal collection!) along the way.

When I read The Age of Miracles just a few weeks ago, the thing that I hated about it was how the heroine was an eleven-year-old who did not act or think or talk like an eleven-year-old. That was still the case with this book, but Flavia was quirky and crazy enough that it didn't really seem to matter that she wasn't a typical eleven-year-old. And this book wasn't meant for the same audience as The Age of Miracles so it made more sense. I liked this book very much, although I kept putting it down and not coming back to it for a few days, so I wasn't as totally invested in the story as I am with many books.

Book #35: Thirteen at Dinner by Agatha Christie

I stayed at a friend's house today watching their kids all day while she was in surgery, and this book was on their bookshelf in the front room. And would you believe that I read the whole thing during the day while watching three kids (their two and Dane)? Because I did! Ridiculous, I know. I still felt totally wiped out and exhausted at the end of the day (and, I was there for eleven hours so it makes sense) but obviously I wasn't too crazy busy because I managed to read this entire book while I was there.

A famous actress, Jane Wilkinson, approaches Poirot and asks him to help her get rid of her husband. She jokes about killing him but mostly asks him to help her get a divorce. A few days later, her husband actually ends up dead--and the actress has a solid alibi. It's a classic whodunit!

Honestly, I don't have too much to say about this book. It was a Hercule Poirot mystery, and of course I didn't figure it out until the end, so it was a success. That's the great thing about Christie's novels. I don't know, but I feel like many of Christie's novels with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot don't have very satisfying reasons for how the sleuth figures out the mystery in the end. Usually it's just that they just get a lightbulb to go on in their mind and that helps everything to fall into place and then they can explain how they knew the whole thing happened, but it's not usually that it's something that anyone (such as the reader) could figure out. AKA, sometimes I feel like Christie makes things a bit too convenient for her sleuths. But you know what? Whatever. She does do a fantastic job of weaving the mystery and making it too hard to guess, so she does her job as the author just fine.

Book #34: The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I read a really good review of this book on a book blog, and there are really good reviews of it on Goodreads, so I thought I'd try it out. I think the genre for this book was actually even a bit younger than YA--more of a middle grade book (so probably way too young for me to be reading). So maybe I just don't understand or appreciate the genre or audience very much, but I just did not agree with the many good reviews of this book.

Quick plot review: The king, queen, and crown prince of Carthya are murdered in their beds, and in order to save the country from civil war, one of the regents goes to a bunch of orphanages to find a young boy who will act as the long-lost younger prince to unite the country and become the king. Sage, a defiant and angry pickpocket orphan, is one of the boys chosen to try and become the prince. Conner, the regent, trains them and tries to break them to his will--and the boys not chosen are promised that they will be killed.

The plot itself for this story was actually pretty interesting--I liked Sage as a character and felt myself rooting for him. But man, I just felt like the writing in this book was WEAK. None of the dialogue was believable and so many of the characters were just stupid. I found myself rolling my eyes at so many conversations in this book and skimming through them because they were so obnoxious and unrealistic. I think it may have been Stephen King in his book On Writing (or it wasn't and it was someone else) who said that good writing doesn't let you remember that you're reading writing at all. You forget that you're reading anything and you think you're in it--and you KNOW when you're reading something terrible. But that was not the case with this book at all. I'm glad it only took me a few hours to read, and even though it's a part of a trilogy I'm not planning on reading any of the other ones.

Books #31, 32, and 33: The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I've already written about these books a year and a half ago when I read them back then. And I've really read them four times by now. But I guess since the purpose of this book blog is for me to keep track of how many books I've read and for me to be able to record/work through all the thoughts I have while I'm reading and have no way to share them, I'm going to write about them again. (And I probably will do so again, haha. These books just keep popping up for me.)

When I bought the trilogy on Amazon, I remember putting them on our shelf and telling Tommy, "I don't think I'll ever really read these again. I'm glad I read them once, but I don't think we needed to buy them. Oh well." But obviously I've proved myself wrong, because every time I think about the books I end up needing to sit down and read them again (like Harry Potter). So I'll just go ahead and say it: Suzanne Collins did something right with these books, because I love them. I really do. I get sucked into them SO HARD that every time I read them I finish wanting more, more detail, more explanations.

Mockingjay is definitely my least favorite of the three. I know she must have had so many expectations to finish off the trilogy, but I honestly feel like a lot of it was a cop-out. Katniss gets knocked out about 15 times in the book, over and over and over again, and every time all the action happens while she's asleep and someone just tells her what's happened after she's woken up.

And I'll also say this: I'm team Peeta, all the way. So glad she ends up with him in the end.

I had a lot more comments in my head while I was reading, but I've forgotten them all now. So we'll just call that a wrap.

Book #30: Broken Harbor by Tana French

I started reading this book last night and I kept reading straight through until 3 am this morning. Not the brightest decision I've ever made, since we had to get up and clean the church this morning and I agreed to make cream puffs for a baby shower and we have a baby who doesn't sleep in, but I just really wanted to finish the book. It's a murder mystery set in Ireland, and the narrator is Mick Kennedy, a detective in Dublin. Kennedy has always followed the rules and has a great solve record on the Murder Squad, but when he gets put on a case set in Brianstown, erstwhile Broken Harbor, he gets challenged by a lot of his personal past while trying to solve the murder of a family of four.

I really liked this book. I liked Kennedy--he clearly had a lot of issues in his past (mother's suicide, crazy sister, etc.) but he says in the beginning that he worked through them and it shows. Although he clearly has a temper, he (almost) always keeps it and stays in control, even when presented with the most ridiculous situations (although he gets tested more and more throughout this case). He is clearly a pretty tough-guy cop who is very focused on doing the job right more than anything else, but he takes a lot of time taking care of his sister at the same time. I also Kennedy's partner and the interplay between the two of them--it was interesting reading about the interactions between police partners and how Kennedy's training them. And the mystery itself was pretty intriguing--I was actually pretty surprised by the ending (which is as mysteries should be, right?).

One thing that I didn't love about the book was that I thought that some of the conversations/discussion scenes in the book seemed to go a little long for my attention span, if that makes sense. Kennedy's interrogations of suspects or chats with his crazy sister could go on for pages and pages and PAGES, it felt like. The confession of the actual killer at the end seemed to go on forever, and it was mostly rehashing stuff that you already knew, just from the killer's own perspective. (But that might have been because it was almost 3 in the morning when I was reading it too.) All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it was a great mystery and it was pretty well-written. Not much more I could ask for.