Book #55: The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

Oh man, Sophie Kinsella's books are just like cotton candy--light, fluffy, and easily inhaled. I can get through one of these in no time, and enjoy myself thoroughly while I do it. I said that one of my least favorite things about her books is that all of her heroines seem flighty and ridiculous and they still somehow get boys to fall in love with them even as they're being stupid. This book had that problem to some degree, but I felt like it was alleviated by the fact that Samantha was (supposedly) the smartest lawyer ever, so she couldn't be COMPLETELY brainless. She did have the problem of being thrown into a situation completely beyond her, into being a housekeeper, so naturally chaos ensues. (One complaint: She seems to pick up and figure out cooking and cleaning things far too quickly with far too little help. One weekend of cooking lessons and she is already whipping things up on her own? Come on!) And naturally there's the guy that she falls in love with and all that jazz. This was a cute book, quick to read and easy to get through, but I think I liked I've Got Your Number better.

Book #54: Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

I've only just realized how many Jane Austen rewrites and fan fiction books I read. I just recently made a Jane Austen tab for all JA and JA-related books and this is the 16th book in that category already haha. I don't know why, but even when books don't necessary live up to the expectations, I love reading Austen-related stories (and I still have a few more on my to-read list that will hopefully be coming up soon). I ran across this one kind of randomly; I'm not even sure how. But I found out that this group of authors were rewriting all of Austen's novels for the modern times and calling it the Jane Austen Project, and I was already enthralled. This and the Northanger Abbey version are both published already, but this was the only one at the library so far.

I really, really liked this book. The author stuck to all of the main premises of the original novel, even those that don't necessarily hold up in today's culture (like Edward staying engaged to Lucy against his own will) but changes the reasoning behind the actions to match our modern-day assumptions, and I feel like it works really well. She stuck very well to the original characters, and I loved seeing them from a modern-day point of view. Margaret was hilarious as an angsty pre-teen listening to her iPod non-stop. I like how she kept Edward as interesting and not as a complete pushover (although kind of)--but it made him slightly more appealing and you can see why Elinor likes him. I even liked the little things in the voice and modern adaptation of the book, like how each of the characters has little nicknames that really fit them, like Ellie and M and Mags. Very cute and this was definitely an awesome read. I can't wait for the other ones to come out.

Book #53: Persuasion by Jane Austen

I remember that the last time I read this book, I read it at the same time as Mansfield Park, and I thought the two heroines were very similar and equally boring and I wasn't the HUGEST fan. Fanny from Mansfield Park is especially quiet and impotent and does basically nothing interesting the whole book. But Anne, in Persuasion, is actually much more interesting. She is less outspoken than Lizzie Bennet, and probably more conventional and respectful towards her undeserving parents (even in thought), but I like how she stays interested in Captain Wentworth even after all hope is supposedly gone, and how she is completely unprideful and unmercenary in her aspirations and opinions about herself. She also talks a lot more about marrying someone who is intelligent, and the narrator mentions a lot of times how Anne Elliott is very intelligent and well-reasoning herself, but she still gets nervous and overthinks things when she's around her love interest and spends hours wondering about what he meant when he said X. I love how ridiculous her father and sister are, especially how her father talks so much about whether the people around him are beautiful or not.

It's kind of interesting to think about what the plot is for this story. There really ISN'T that much of a plot, and a lot of the principal characters in Anne's life at this time are really kind of random people (like the Musgroves) and there are a lot of them. But it's all plenty engrossing and you root so hard for Captain Wentworth and Anne to end up together!

Book #52: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

I am a long-time fan of Bill Bryson, ever since I discovered him while I was in college. I've read maybe seven or eight of his books, although most of them were before I started this blog so I don't know if I've written about any of them here. So many of his observations and his writing style just make me laugh, and his writing is so easy to follow and always in such an accessible manner that I am always pleased with what I read from him. So when I saw that he'd written another book (whether this is that new or not, I am not sure), I put on my to-read list. And I was not disappointed!

One Summer is basically a look at everything that happened in America in the summer of 1927, and at the culture and lifestyle of Americans in the mid-twenties. There were a lot of really important historical events that went on at that time, namely and especially Charles Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic and Babe Ruth's home-run record. Bryson writes about the aviation race to be the first pilot across the Atlantic and all the different people who were hoping to do that, and it was mind-blowing to learn about the worldwide reaction to that and how Lindberg was received after that (literally mobbed by people for years). And he details lots of other lesser-known but also fascinating events that went on that summer, like several tabloid sensational court cases, major flooding across the Midwest, and the first "talkie" movie with sound. Bryson has a very strong sense of the absurd, and peppers all of these random tales about very tangential people that add a lot of hilarious asides. All of those events that went on give you a really good look into what it was really like to be living back then in that time and how cultural perceptions of "normal" have changed. This was really a fascinating read--I do love historical stuff.

Book #51: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

After reading the Jane Austen Pocket Bible last week, it reminded me of how little I remember from Northanger Abbey, the only JA novel that I'd only read once and never revisited. I remember liking it a lot and laughing out loud at parts, but whenever I think about rereading Jane Austen, I want to read P&P or one of the more obvious novels and then I never get around to this one. So I checked it out from the library (my copy is still packed), and thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and remembering Catherine Morland and her funny travels.

The thing I love about Catherine is that she just seems like such a normal, cheerful girl. She isn't super intelligent or super accomplished or super beautiful, but she is very "good-natured"--as Henry Tilney observes--and she is not very dramatic or drawn to hysterics. I love how Austen is so funny about that--she points out all over the place how you might expect the heroine of a novel to be tossing and turning all night and not able to sleep because she is so caught up with thinking about her lover, but Catherine slept for nine solid hours and felt totally refreshed the next morning. Haha--I love how she is making fun of so many common things with novels at the time! I took a Gothic Romanticism class at BYU, actually, and we read The Mysteries of Udolpho, the main novel that Catherine is interested in while she's in Bath, and it is totally dramatic and filled with hidden skeletons and dark castles and dangerous situations. But Catherine's life is not like that, as she remembers after embarrassing herself by being overzealous in her imaginings about what life is going to be like visiting a big castle of her friends'. I love that she also gets Henry to fall in love with her by just being herself, and by loving him openly so that he knows how she likes him.

I think it would be so fun to write a modern revision of Northanger Abbey, by the way, especially throwing in all of Austen's asides about how dramatic people are sometimes and comparing it to modern life. Maybe someday I'll feel creative enough.

Book #50: The Jane Austen Pocket Bible by Holly Ivins

Okay, I feel a little bit like I'm cheating by adding this book to the list, but I did read the whole thing and I enjoyed myself, so why not? I found this book while perusing in Strand Books in NYC this weekend, and read it on the plane on the way home. It's like a reference guide for all things Jane Austen, with lots of information about her novels, the time period, and Jane's life. I honestly don't know if I really learned all that much from it--I've read all the books, I've watched many Jane Austen movies, and I've seen Becoming Jane and read her Wikipedia page before. But it was still cool to see it all put together in one place and to get a refresher course. It's so sad that she died so young (at 41, I believe) because look at how much enjoyment she's provided for the world through her six novels--imagine if there were twenty! I would read them all--I really would. Just reading this made me want to re-read Northanger Abbey again--since it's been probably 3.5 years since I read it. And really all of her books--but I have so many on my list I want to get to!

Book #49: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I just happened upon this book in the library while I was trying to quietly peruse the shelves with Dane stampeding along behind me, and it was a total winner. I feel like I'd heard about it before at some point, which was why it caught my eye, and it was definitely an interesting read. It seemed to correlate a lot with 168 Hours, mostly because I just read that one too, and it's a lot about how we can improve our time and lives by changing bad habits and starting good ones. Duhigg follows the excellent non-fiction format of having a thesis, developing it, and proving it by providing numerous real-life examples that are interesting and easily applicable (like about Rosa Parks and Procter and Gamble and Target, etc.). And I think he does a great job of proving his thesis: that the key to doing anything you want to achieve in your life is to understand how habits work and to attack the problem by working that way. He argues that there is usually a cue that signals us to do the habit (like putting your shoes by your bed if you want your habit to be running in the morning), and a reward that comes from following it (the endorphin rush that comes from running), and if you figure out what the cue is or what the reward is, you can tweak them or the habit in order to make it more likely that you will follow through. I think Duhigg makes some really interesting points, and the examples and stories he provides are really compelling for his argument. I dog-eared some pages that I want to talk to Tommy about and I might even come back and add some more stuff from those later.

Book #48: I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

This is a perfect summer vacation read. I read all of the Shopaholic books back in the day (like, while I was in high school) and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I don't think I've read any other of Kinsella's books ever since. This book is basically exactly what you'd expect from her. Poppy, the main character, loses her phone and finds a working one in the trash at the hotel she's at. She takes it and keeps it and ends up connected with the man whose phone it is, and then follows a comedy of errors and romance, basically.

My one complaint about this book (and about Shopaholic, really) is that Poppy gets into such dumb situations and somehow has to get out of them, and the guy falls in love with her anyway even though she's kind of ditzy and always doing stupid things. (It's even worse in Shopaholic, really, because she's always going into crazy debt and it's ridiculous.) I also felt that it was a little too convenient how the ending wrapped everything up. In real life, she would not have been able to end things so easily with the other guy in that situation (not to be too specific and give so many spoilers though)! The storyline in this book was really fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed it though. A fun romance novel where the good guy and girl win out.

Bok #47: Elizabeth the Queen by Sally Bedell Smith

I picked up this book as one of my choices for an audiobook for my mom and I to listen to on our drive from NC to TX, on the off chance that Dane would nap or be watching a movie and we would be able to pay attention. We only got through about three of the CDs while driving, but it was still pretty interesting, so I decided to finish it on my own over the last few weeks.

It has been fascinating to learn more about Queen Elizabeth, someone I really didn't know all that much about. It has been very interesting to start with her early life before WWII and then during the war, and then to progress seemingly quickly through the decades to the current era, and to realize that she has been alive throughout all of it--and queen of England for most of it! It is unbelievable that she was basically my age when she became queen, and that she's been doing her royal duties for her entire life. It was also very interesting to learn more about what those "royal duties" are, since I'd always kind of imagined the royal family were more of just centerpieces and ornaments rather than actually accomplishing anything, but the queen and her family are really very busy and do lots of important things for Great Britain. She is a kind of ambassador to the world and to the country, and she has made a huge difference in a lot of events through her presence and her actions. This book also lightly covered British history over the period of her lifetime, since her life and the events in her country are so tied together. There are seemingly two whole chapters on the Diana era and her death and funeral, which seemed a bit overdoing it, but I imagine that's something that a huge number of readers associate with the royal family and want to learn more about. I enjoyed reading about the different changes the monarchy has made over the decades to remain relevant in today's culture and how the queen has had to remain flexible over changes in government and public opinion.

Listening to this book, I can't help but wonder how biased the author is. Basically in every story and situation the queen comes out untarnished and the author explains how she is just amazing at everything and basically always made the right choices. I really do admire the queen after listening to this book and everything that she has accomplished. I'd heard that she (and the royal family) had not treated Diana very well, but it really seems like it was more the other way around (although I'm sure it was on both sides). However, the queen is expected to be completely neutral on political topics (which is very interesting to me) and this forced neutrality has probably helped her to remain in good light for many experiences in her life, like that one with Diana.

It does seem sad to see how her children have acted and how they've turned out--almost all of them had affairs within their marriages and got divorced at one point or another. The author points out that the queen had a "laissez-faire" view of parenting and hardly ever intervened or got involved in disciplining them or telling them what to do, and she was apparently not super involved with some of them when they were young, and this has turned out to haunt her in later years. Honestly, that just seems so sad to me. It reminds me of the LDS quote: No success can compensate for failure in the home. She has done amazing, wonderful things for her country and the world, but her relationship with her children and their actions towards others must be a source of regret and frustration for her (as described by the author of this book).

Book #46: 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

I started reading a few new book blogs and this was a suggestion one of them mentioned that I instantly picked up on. I am a sucker for ways to be more productive and use your time better. Seriously, I love self-help books (which is totally dorky and probably NOT a great use of time, ironically . . .) because I like the new motivation I feel to be more conscientious about how I use my time and what I choose to do every day. This is especially important for me now, as a stay-at-home mom, with nothing that I absolutely HAVE to do. I was very, very good (if I do say so myself) at managing my time when I was a busy student--I am motivated by busyness and get more done when I have more to do--but now I notice myself wasting more time, or at least not being as productive as I LOVE being. I feel so good on days when I can point to things I've done or accomplished, even if it's as simple as taking Dane to the park and reading books with him and making a good dinner. (This motivation, by the way, is one of the main reasons behind this blog. Having a blog where I record what I read and my reactions to it gives me a lot of satisfaction and makes me feel like I've accomplished something by adding it to my digital "collection" I've read.)

So, anyways, this book seemed right up my alley. I like Vanderkam's main thesis: that most of us don't use our time very well. She makes the excellent point (that I hadn't really considered much before) that if we look at our time by the week instead of by the day, we actually have quite a lot of extra hours every week that we don't all use very productively. If there are 168 hours in a week, and you sleep for 56 of those and work for 40, you still have almost 70 extra hours to do other things with them. Obviously, you need to do things like eating and showering and driving with that time, but even when you build those activities in, we all have extra time that we could use to build towards extra hobbies or volunteering or whatever we really want to do. So the excuse "I don't have time" really doesn't hold water for most of us. She sprinkles plenty of examples of people who are crazy busy (with six kids and running their own business) but still manage to have fulfilling lives with personal exercise and time to themselves, which make me feel like a lazy slob for not having started a charity to help African orphans or something yet.

One section of the book is how to use your time better with your job, which I kind of skimmed through since it obviously doesn't apply to me at this stage of my life. (Vanderkam doesn't seem super enamored with stay-at-home parents, by the way, talking a lot about how too many women choose to stay home with their kids because they think they won't have time to do both.) But she has a few chapters on how to use your time better at home, like with your housework and your hobbies, etc. I don't necessarily agree with everything she advocates, like how she suggests outsourcing many household chores (like cooking, laundry, cleaning, shopping, etc.) so that you can use your time better. It sits wrong with me for several reasons: that is a very privileged view of the problem that not many, including myself, can afford, and also because I don't think our goal here in life is to get rid of all not-necessarily-thrilling chores that we have to do. What sort of example about work are we setting for our children if we outsource every single unpleasant chore that we have to do? When are our kids going to learn how to do those sorts of chores themselves? She argues that getting rid of those chores leaves you more time to spend time with your kids, which I definitely agree with, but I also think you're not just supposed to spend leisure, fun time with your kids but also working time.

All in all, I do like a lot of her suggestions and just the general theme of being more conscious about your decisions and scheduling yourself out more before you waste your time away. I've already started making some lists of time use and goals of what I'd like to accomplish to follow some of her suggestions. One thing I liked that she did was to make a "List of 100 Dreams"--basically a bucket list--of everything you could possibly think of wanting to do in your life, and then focusing on spending your time so that you CAN accomplish those things, whatever they may be. I also liked her idea of a time log so you can see what you spend your time ON in real life, so that you can see where the problems may lie and what you can do to improve. I want to do both of these things (in fact, Tommy and I started a "List of 100 Dreams" for FHE last night!) and really be good about this.

Book #45: I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

I didn't really have any intention of reading this book when I'd seen it in the media; although I have heard of Malala and was very sad about what had happened to her, I didn't think it would be necessary to read a book about her getting shot. But the book turned out (of course) to be much more than that--it was practically a history of her area of Pakistan and the increase of the Taliban there and how her parents and she became involved in standing up against the Taliban and the oppression against people and women in their culture. It was absolutely fascinating, and terrifying, to hear about the changes that ensued in their culture over the last twenty or so years, how the situation for women has worsened and what specific tactics the Taliban used to grasp power and change people's opinions. It sounded a lot like what I have heard about the Nazis rise to power in Germany, and it is very, very scary to imagine something like that happening in the place where you live. You live a certain way, and then all of a sudden people come along and take control and change peoples' minds about what you should and should not do. Very scary and intimidating. Malala seems like a very, very bright girl who was very, very lucky to have such encouraging and accepting parents who gave her such opportunities to learn in such an environment. I really do hope she can accomplish what she wants.

This book reminded me in a lot of ways of other books I've read in the past. Obviously it reminded me of Greg Mortenson's books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools because of the discussion of girls' education in Pakistan (even a lot of the regions she mentions seem familiar to me from having read/listened to those books a few years ago). I loved reading about her culture and her life in Pakistan. Her memoir-type writing also reminded me of Elizabeth Smart's book about her experiences. It made me sad how Malala (and Elizabeth) had to write disclaimers at several points to respond to attacks people have made towards her and her family, saying that it was her father's fault that she was attacked or that she just wanted to get out of Pakistan to live a life of luxury in England. It also makes me sad and amazed to think about all of the other victims of the Taliban and terrorists, in that region alone, who do not receive 1/10th of the care or attention that she's received, but she's received this basically free hospitalization stay and therapy from a world-class institution. Very good for her, but very sad for so many other people.