Book #60: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

This book follows Anna Frith, a young widow in a small 1666 English village, in the year that their town is set about by the plague and in which over half of the town dies. They decide to quarantine themselves instead of spreading the disease to the neighboring towns around them, and in doing so save the lives of many other people--although many of them die themselves. (That is based on a real town in the 1600s that did that very thing in England, which is probably the most interesting thing about the whole book.) Anna's home is the one with the first cases of the plague, and her two children die from it, and then she basically spends the rest of the year working to help others who are suffering from it, along with the preacher and his wife. The book shows how they all go through a crisis of faith and shows Anna particularly grappling with the cultural expectations for her as a woman and as a widow in this time period. She ends as a heroine, saving a baby from drowning, and escapes, randomly, to the Middle East.

I liked this book, but then parts of it felt kind of random and unnecessary. The whole last few chapters, with the climax and culmination of the book, took me totally by surprise and didn't seem related to the rest of the book at all. Particularly the epilogue, where Anna is somehow a wife to this Arabian doctor. It seems so unlikely. Also, I felt like sometimes Anna thought like more of a modern woman than could be expected from the 1600s. But I think I sometimes think that any time there's something semi-anachronistic, when it's pretty likely that a woman in that time period could have been not completely shocked by another woman who sleeps around, or something more modern like that. Overall, I liked this book, and if you can get past the pretty depressing topic where basically EVERYONE DIES, it's a pretty interesting look into this time period in history.

Book #59: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Chalk this one up to life experience--a book that I felt like I HAD to have read. I kind of hated it while I was reading it, but not because it was bad or even that boring, but because it was taking me so long. Because there was no plot or even one specific point, I read it in ten- or twenty-page spurts over the last six weeks and I felt like I was getting nowhere. But I was determined to read the whole thing and to get a lot out of it. I even took notes (on my phone) of the things that stood out to me. This is what I got out of it:

- Thoreau is like THE ORIGINAL HIPSTER. He's advocating for tiny houses way before they became a "thing" (saying "Consider how slight a shelter is necessary" and suggesting that people live in the toolshed they built for railway tools) and arguing that people shouldn't buy new clothes (forecasting the thrift store movement already). About five pages into the first chapter he's arguing that old people are stupid and can have nothing important or interesting to teach him about life, and claims that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." He's SO much cooler and smarter than the rest of the world. Total hipster.

- He's got all these ideas and is trying to convince the reader that they should jump out of the rat race and stop trying to get ahead so that they can buy more stuff and make more money, and instead live a life of simplicity and make a living off the land so that they can enjoy their lives and not spend all their time working to make enough money to live off of. Half of the point of this book is to show how easy it is, and how enjoyable, to live like a hermit in the middle of the woods, fishing for your food and going berrying and communing with nature the rest of the time. But I feel like he's neglecting the glaring fact that most people are not single, without any responsibilities to any other human being, where they only have to feed themselves and that's all they have to worry about. It's not feasible to go live in a cabin in the woods when you have kids to take care of. Although I'm sure there are some hipster parents these days that are doing it (aka tiny houses).... It just is way, way harder if you've got responsibilities other than yourself.

- So this book is like 25% that sort of argument about getting out of the rat race, and then 75% nature writing about the beauty of Walden Pond and the surrounding forest and the animals there. Some of the nature writing was really beautiful and evoked some pretty amazing imagery of what Thoreau was describing. He talked about sitting in a rowboat on the lake at night and I could just see what he was talking about. Some of those passages were just stunning and made it worth the reading.

- A lot of Thoreau's claims seemed very gospel-centered to me (even if he didn't know it). Like:
- "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
- "If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome."
- "We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature." (The natural man!)
- "I learned this, at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." (This sounds exactly like a quote I have read by Elder Ballard--"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.")

Although I think Thoreau was a little bit high-minded and too full of himself and his accomplishments--he thought he was way, way cooler than he really was--I really did like his goal of living deliberately. He says, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life." And really, that is what I want to. That's what we ALL want, right? But I think that you can do that even if you are living a normal life, in a town with other people, at a job--everything that Thoreau despised. Living deliberately is not necessarily about what you are doing during the day, but how you do it. I have phases where I feel like I am living more deliberately than others. Lately I have been much more coasting and surviving and not doing as many of the good things that add pleasure and meaning to my life. I think that maybe with the new year and New Year's Resolutions I may have some stamina to get back on track doing some of those deliberate things that I CHOOSE to do instead of just getting swept along by only doing the things we have to to survive.

One of those things that I have recognized that I need is time outside. I loved what Thoreau said: "Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend the most valued part of the day [outside]; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly." I really, really value and get a lot of happiness from getting to go outside, especially when the weather is nice and it's not too hot or cold outside. I love these days when we can go to the park every day. And even when it is too hot, I really like going for a walk early on in the day. It's not at all the nature experience that Thoreau was having, out by Walden Pond, but it's something. And it's helping me to live deliberately.

I have to say--the parts that were truly thought-provoking in this book were so good. I can see why so many people are inspired by this book. (They probably read the Cliffs Notes.) And there were some really beautiful parts of things that Thoreau observed and watched around his cabin home. But there were also a lot of pretty dry parts that took me a while to get through. Now that I've finished it, I'm really glad to have read it and to have gotten a lot out of it. I am going to try and keep this book in mind while I make New Year's Resolutions for 2016.

Book #58: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

I read this book in about two hours last night. It was burning a hole on my nightstand for the last few weeks, and I only have it because I promised to pass it along to my aunt when we see her on Sunday, and I really wanted to read it before we did. My cousin Brittney said that she really loved this book, and I'm glad I read it. The book tells the story of Niamh, later called Dorothy, and then Vivian, who is orphaned and left alone after a fire kills most of her family in New York City in 1929. She's taken in by the Children's Aid Society, which sends her and hundreds of other orphans out west on a train to be hopefully taken in by a family there. As we learn about Niamh's journey in the 20s and 30s, there's also a parallel story about Molly, a seventeen-year-old foster care kid who is assigned fifty hours of community service for trying to steal a library book. She ends up being assigned to help Vivian, now age 91, clean out her attic--and despite her best efforts, they begin to find out the similarities in their difficult childhoods and to make a bond with each other.

The part of the story that I liked best was the present-day storyline, with Molly and old-lady Vivian cleaning out her attic together. I of course thought that the 20s orphan train storyline was interesting, but it was so dang depressing. How awful for a nine-year-old girl to be orphaned, not cared for by anyone in the world, sent on a train to Minnesota, and then taken in by several successive families who just try to abuse her and don't care for her at all. I know that is real, and that sort of thing really did happen, and that people really had and have such terrible lives--but sometimes I don't love reading about things that are so depressing. Even though it ended up well, with her getting taken in by a kind couple and falling in love and getting married. I felt like her love story felt a little contrived--she randomly finds a boy that she met on the orphan train and they fall in love and get married, until he gets killed in WWII and basically ruins her life. So even that was a little depressing. Everything seemed to fall a little too nicely into place in the modern-day storyline too, with everyone becoming just one big happy family so easily. Those are my only complains about it. It was really interesting reading about this period and episode of history that I never knew all that much about.

Book #57: Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

I can't believe I'd never read this before. I somehow escaped from reading it in high school and I never got around to it somehow. But I was trying to hit some of the cultural must-reads this year and so I am glad to have finally read this one. I almost let my library hold on it expire and I'm so glad I just slammed through it instead of returning it unread.

Holden Caulfield, our narrator and main  character, tells us about one specific weekend of his life, when he gets kicked out of his prep school he's been attending and returns home to New York City, although instead of heading home he wanders around the city drinking and getting into things so that he doesn't have to confront his parents yet about getting kicked out of school. The events of the weekend, of the whole book, are not actually important or all that interesting, but Holden's attitude and character and observations about life and the people around him are what makes this book memorable and resonant for people who read it. Although he's only 16, Holden is seriously jaded and disgusted by all the "phonies" (one of his favorite words) he sees, and he cuts through all the crap he sees everyone around him doing--although his definition of phony is basically all encompassing (and Holden himself is definitely phony whenever he interacts with other people). He even hates movies and plays because the actors in them are just people acting phony like they're someone they're not. He gets depressed by how fake everyone acts and because of this, he refuses to try hard in school or to follow the expected life path for him. But he likes people who really seem like good people, even as he notices their occasional phoniness, like the nuns he saw in the subway, and his old history teacher at his school. He loves his little sister Phoebe, and his older brother D.B., and it seems like a lot of his problems stem back to the death of his younger brother Allie a few years ago. I liked him for his connection to his siblings and for his constant searching out for something good and real out there.

I knew a few basic things about this book before reading it, one being how many times it's been banned and taken out of schools. I can see why people would have wanted it banned, in some ways--Holden Caulfield is definitely not someone you want high school kids to be emulating in any way, with the constant language, drinking and smoking, and dropping out of school, etc. But I think teenagers (and everyone) can feel a little disillusioned (or a LOT) sometimes, and like the questionable Mr. Antolini says, it's helpful to grow up, get educated, and to learn that you are not even close to being the first person to feel like this and to be disgusted by human nature or by the way people behave or think in such self-interested ways. 

I have felt like Holden sometimes, thinking that people are the worst. Donald Trump running for president is proof of that. But I honestly think that people are better-meaning, and better, than I and Holden give them credit for. I have to.

Book #56: Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

This book is the sequel to The Way of Kings, which I read last month and raved about. It is the beginning of a supposedly ten-book series, so this is book #2 in that series--but only these two have come out so far. And I feel like they've done so much already! In the first book, you follow all of these distinct characters who are all starting off in different places, but in this book they all begin to come together and make progress towards, well, saving the world from its ultimate destruction. The same main characters of Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan are still the people we follow here, plus a whole bunch of others, but these three all come together in this book and begin to progress in becoming the Knights Radiant, by honing their powers and following their oaths that they've made. Something that I love about these characters is that they are so distrustful of others--they have to be, because they've all been painfully betrayed--but they are each really and truly honorable and trying to do the right things for the right reasons. In fact, when Kaladin begins to go down the wrong path and make the wrong choice, he loses his powers--so he HAS to do the right thing for the right reasons, or else he becomes nothing. He is focused on protecting others around him, even when he continually fails, while Shallan is focused on finding the truth even when she has to lie to get to it. It is so uplifting to read a book about these totally flawed and broken people who continuously sacrifice themselves for a greater good and make these hard, good choices because they want to do what is right. I read this book over two weeks and it got taken away today so I HAD to finish it last night, and read for about five hours because I couldn't see it get taken away without finishing it. I can't wait to see where else the series goes after this. They defeated the Parshendi in battle (their main enemies) and found the ancient hidden city of Urithiru, but they still have a lot of stuff to do still apparently.

Small aside note: My favorite scenes in this book were the duel where Adolin is fighting four Shardbearers to one, and then his brother steps in to help him and then Kaladin--and they defeat them despite all odds. The other was when Kaladin and Shallan were in the chasms together and have to make their way back to camp, and how they have hints of having feelings for each other. There's only about 8000 more pages to get through for the end of this story, so maybe they won't end up together, but you know. I liked it.

Book #55: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims

This book is both breaking my brain and making me scribble a bunch of notes of things to do at the same time. On the one hand, I CANNOT BELIEVE SOME OF THESE STORIES ARE REAL. Lythcott-Haims has a lot of anecdotes and stories from her time as a freshman dean at Stanford to perfectly exemplify the twenty-first century "helicopter parent"--parents who show up to college with their kids, who show up to GRAD SCHOOL with their kids, who go with their kids to their first job interviews and try to negotiate their salaries for them, who try to handhold their kids through life and never know how or when to stop and let their kids finally grow up. These parents have one goal in life--to help their kids get into the best college they can so that they can get a good job and make good money and become successful. And they will do everything they can to make sure their kids get there, from waking their kids up every day for school, doing their homework, and yelling at their coaches to get them on the varsity team, to paying thousands of dollars for SAT coaching and helping them to get into Stanford. These stories are so crazy and yet totally believable--because we all know people like that.

But Lythcott-Haims is trying to fight against the pressure and the craziness and to get parents to CALM DOWN. She argues that we cannot prevent every bump and bruise and scrape our kids get into. That is life--they need to learn how to fail, how to get hurt, and how to get back up again. This is called resilience and it's an important life skill they will not survive without once they get into the real world. Kids need to learn how to work and how to do things for themselves, life skills, other than just doing homework and doing well in school. They need to be able to make themselves breakfast, to get themselves up in the morning, to manage their time, and to call and make their own doctor's appointments. And you can start very young to make sure that they are able to do things on their own that they are capable of. She says that you should make sure you're NOT doing things for them that they are capable of doing by themselves. I was thinking about that, and today I asked Dane to try and buckle his bottom buckles on his carseat by himself. He's been trying to do it for ages, but today I pushed him a little bit and he DID it! Without my helping or coaching him at all! He was so proud of himself, AND it makes my life a lot easier because now he can get in the car and buckle himself in all by himself. Hallelujah! I knew he was capable of it and he could try to do it.

I've always thought that raising independent kids is one of my main goals as a parent. There are other important traits that are high up there too, but if you think about it, the whole POINT of being a parent is to give your kids the life preparation they will need to eventually grow up and be on their own. So it has been really interesting reading this book and getting specific ideas about how to help your kids be independent and self-motivated and hard-working. I don't really think we were in much danger of overparenting like some of the parents in her book--when you come from a big family, and plan to have a big(ish) family, I don't think that's usually the mindset you have--but this gives me even more motivation to consciously work on helping my kids to develop individually and to give them the chances to do things on their own, whatever age they are.

In the final chapter, Lythcott-Haims summarizes her point into these four principles, that I wanted to write down just for me to remember:

1. The world is much safer than we've been led to believe, and our child needs to learn how to thrive in it rather than be protected by it.
2. A checklisted childhood designed to lead to a narrow definition of success robs children of the proper developmental opportunities of childhood and can lead to psychological harm.
3. A child learns, grows, and ultimately succeeds by diving into what interests them, doing and thinking for themselves, trying and failing and trying again, and developing mastery through effort.
4. Family life is richer and more rewarding for all when parents aren't hovering over and facilitating every moment of a kid's life.

Book #54: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

I read this book last year (I think--no, two years ago!), but I joined a book club here in Frisco and they were reading this for November, and I thought it would be worth a re-read. When I read and summarized it before, I didn't think all that much about it. I just got through it, thought Flavia was a little weird, and moved on. But this time, I tried to think more about why I wasn't totally absorbed by this book either time I read it. I think part of it is the dynamics in the relationships for the main characters. Flavia is only eleven years old, but with a dead mother and a disconnected and still-grieving father, she might as well be on her own. She has little obvious relationship with her father or sisters--other than trying to annoy them as much as possible--and she doesn't have any friends or go to school or do... anything other than mess around in her chemistry lab. It's a little sad to think about how little love she has around her--and I think that affects how much I care about this book. She's a total one-man show, and there are no other rounded or interesting characters to follow. I know Bradley has written a number of other books in the series, but I don't really feel interested in reading any of them because I don't see any evidence there will be any change in that.

Not to make it sound like I don't like this book--I did! But I'd probably give it three stars instead of four because of that problem.

Book #53: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Fantasy is obviously not my main genre. In all the years I've been keeping track of what I read here on this blog, I've only read six "fantasy" genre books--and four of those are the LOTR series and prequel. And the other two are basically kids' books. But I've been meaning to read some Brandon Sanderson for a LONG time--he's a BYU professor (or at least he was when I was there) in creative writing, and all I ever hear about him is that his books are SO GOOD. But I finally was convinced by my friend Amanda to pick up this book and I am so glad I finally did. It's something like 1000 pages long (I'm not sure because I read it on my Kindle) but it was OH MY GOSH so good. I couldn't stop reading it and I couldn't get over it and I can't stop thinking about it! It's everything a fantasy epic novel should be--and the beginning of what will supposedly be a TEN-BOOK series, although only two have come out yet (which is super disappointing, like starting a TV show only to catch up to where it is already in real life--I hate having to wait).

Clearly from my numerous all-caps words here you can tell I am enthusiastic about this book. Basically everything was fantastic--from the way the world was built, to the quality of the writing (I loved that there weren't any boring or obvious moments where he slid in explanations for things--he built the world without any explicit explaining to the reader), to the characterization and the characters themselves. There's a number of main characters who we switch between their points of view throughout the book, and you get to know each of them fairly well through their perspective and through what they do. The story is set in Alethkar, a country built up of independent nations in the midst of a war against a country that assassinated their previous king. One main character is Dalinar, the brother of the murdered king and uncle to the current one. He is an honorable leader and one who cares about his men and the means before the end--and he's having crazy visions and dreams that he's worried about driving him mad. Another character is Kaladin, a soldier reduced to a slave after some horrible treachery done to him in war--he is almost driven to suicide before trying one more time to help himself escape, along with those suffering around him. You also follow Shallan, a would-be scholar who wants to apprentice herself to a powerful woman leader, and also has the goal to steal that woman's source of power and bring it home to save her family. All of these plots seem distinct and unrelated, but as the story goes on you begin to find out the connections between all of these characters and how their goals and struggles are all interconnected in the greater fight to keep Alethkar united--and to survive before the great Desolation comes.

I can't wait to read the next book in the series--and to hopefully check out some more Brandon Sanderson books soon too!

Book #52: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

This 105-page novella follows George and Lennie, two migrant workers in 1930s California, as they begin a new job at a ranch. George and Lennie have known each other since childhood, and George kind of takes care of Lennie, who is huge, enormously powerful, and very mentally challenged. They have huge plans for how they're going to eventually save up their money, buy some land, and have a farm together--but as the reference in the book title hints at, their dreams don't seem to have much of a chance of being fulfilled.

The friendship between George and Lennie, as unlikely as it may seem, is the center of the story, and it's obvious that they both really care about each other and always stick together. And this relationship is what is the propelling force through the action of the story--and what makes the ending so hard to swallow, and so sad to read. I knew what was going to happen at the end (I can't help spoiling it for myself and reading the last few pages every time! It's the worst!), but I still felt some serious emotions as I read it. I loved George and Lennie and how they talked, and I loved their simple, unassuming dreams of stability and having a home, even thought their conversations about their dream become extremely bittersweet at the end when it is obvious they'll never happen.

I really liked the genre/style of the book--I've read that it was a novel written in playable format, that people would be able to turn it into a play exactly as it stood. I liked understanding that as I read, because that made the stark, clear style make more sense and I could almost picture it being acted out on a stage.

Book #51: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Okay, so here's a confession. I didn't actually finish this book. I read 1/3 of the way through it and after reading some reviews of it, I feel like what I read is representative of the rest of the book and I am not interested in wasting more of my life on this book when there are other, better books I want to read. So I did NOT like this book and I don't really think it's worth the energy.

This book is one of those "top 100" books that make those book lists all the time, because of its place as a defining novel of a certain generation and time in American history. That really is the only reason people recommend it and read it. The writing follows the narrator's stream-of-consciousness and is therefore muddled and really unnecessarily verbose in places. And the story--the story is just a very thinly disguised memoir of Kerouac's travels across America after WWII with his buddies. The narrator, Sal Paradise, follows around the wild and crazy Dean Moriarty around America and they spend their lives just hitchhiking around the country, sleeping with random girls, doing drugs, spending all their money, stealing cars and food, and talking about life. Besides that I fundamentally disagree with their lifestyle and how ridiculous and presumptuous they seem, I found the characters to be super problematic, chauvinistic, and crazily unaware of how horrible they are to everyone around them. I just could not believe how often they just breezed into somewhere, got drunk, hurt other people's lives or even destroyed or ruined them, and then just disappeared and moved on to something else. This is the problem with the ridiculous Beat Generation, hitchhiking and road-traveling lifestyle that the book promotes--if everyone fell to the premises that are shared in this book and started living this way, society would absolutely fall apart with everyone's irresponsible and damaging habits. I really hated the way the characters acted and I really didn't want to read any more. The rest of the book was all exactly the same and there was no need to read any further.

I will say that if I were willing to put in energy into analyzing and studying and actually paying attention to the characters of the book, that I'm sure there are some redeeming and interesting things to learn about the Beat Generation and the mindset of WWII vets and America in general after the war, but I will leave that to other people to do and just assume they're taking care of it.

Book #50: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Marie Kondo is a Japanese tidying and decluttering expert, and this book is the new trendy craze in the home/lifestyle world right now. She basically is explaining an entirely different way to go about cleaning and organizing your house until you get to a state of nirvana (my words, not hers)--the KonMari method (which she named after herself, which seems a bit weird to me). A self-proclaimed tidying expert who has spent "over 80% of her life focusing on this," she has lots of wacky ideas about thanking your objects for fulfilling the purpose they had in coming into your life, greeting your things when you return home for the day, and making sure you run your hands over your things you haven't worn or used in a while to infuse life into them. But despite all the wackiness, she's also got a bunch of really practical, interesting advice that I think makes a lot of sense. Such as:

-When you decide you want to organize your house, you first declutter and discard everything you don't want, THEN organize the remainder.
-You only should keep the things that spark joy to you--that truly make you happy. Everything else can/should be tossed out (or donated).
-You should view decluttering as a one-time Big Event--something you do once and then you should never have to do it again because you will never again clutter your house with unnecessary stuff. Go through your things by category (clothes first, then books, then papers, etc.), getting rid of everything that doesn't spark joy.
-Once you've decluttered, you should make sure that every. single. thing. has a place and that you know where it goes. Once this happens, you will never have too much stuff and things hidden away that you've forgotten. (She claims to have a 0% rebound rate among her clients, because this system is so effective.)

All of these tips make sense to me and seem like they should work, in theory. I know several people who have completely adopted this entire method and literally changed their lives because of it. I am not necessarily planning on doing this, but I really like the idea of getting rid of things that don't make you happy and the idea of living a somewhat minimalist lifestyle. It's very easy to get overwhelmed with stuff, especially with kids and their accompanying STUFF, but I think it's lucky for us that we are relatively young in life and have been relatively poor so far, so we don't have too much already. Plenty of extra closet space everywhere in our house still. We also are classic underbuyers, where we refuse to buy things until we are way past the point of needing to.

So even though I am not planning on instigating this into my life plan exactly, I folded all my shirts the way she suggested and I am absolutely LOVING IT! It's so awesome to be able to see all of the shirts that I have at one go--instead of only wearing the same 4 or 5 that always end up on the top of the stacks--and it's so much cleaner and fits perfectly in the drawer. I am totally happy with this and now this definitely sparks more joy. (I also found that I have five BYU football t-shirts--which I could probably discard at least four of without feeling too guilty or worrying about it either.)

Also, our previously overflowing and totally unorganized kitchen towels drawer--with the aprons added in as well because there is so much extra space now! If I don't do anything else with this, these two drawers are worth it completely. 

Book #49: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

After reading this book, I feel like I've read it before, even though I was sure I hadn't when I picked it up. It's one of those books that's been on our shelves for years, and one that I've heard about from so many different sources, that I feel like I basically knew what it was about before even picking it up. Basically, this was the dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel before the Hunger Games became a thing, but in this future, firemen are sent to burn people's books instead of putting out fires and people spend all of their time isolated and staring at the interactive TV screens. Guy Montag is a fireman, who has always totally enjoyed his job of burning people's books and homes, but one day he meets a young new neighbor girl, who introduces him to other ways of thinking and the potential for living life with other people, and not being afraid. Guy begins to question his job and his life, and he begins to want to read the forbidden books he's spend his life burning--and he suddenly decides to break with his past and rebel against his norms and expectations.

It's a pretty freaky vision of the future, really. Bradbury seems to be predicting people's obsession with screens and social media long before it was ever a thing, based on Millie's character and how all she does is watch TV and talk to the interactive TV characters. It seems a little prescient of him to see that and to have predicted it, because in a small way, that's a lot of what is going on today. The book burning is obviously a much more vivid theme throughout the book though, and more indicative of the problems with this futuristic society. A lot of characters throughout the book also talk about why the books are being burned, and what started it out in the first place, and one thing they say is that they began banning books that offended minority groups, and that snowballed into having basically all books being banned, because everyone could be offended by something in every book. Books were also banned because all the books have different opinions of what is right and wrong, and it was too confusing for people to get such mixed signals from books. Bradbury is clearly warning against the problems of being too PC and too concerned about offending people, instead of writing what holds true for you, yourself. I thought that was a hugely significant commentary for today's society.

I really liked this quote about why books are so important for us as a society today: "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. . . . Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us" (89-90).

Book #48: Middlemarch by George Eliot

One of my MAIN GOALS for this year was to read this book. This book more than any other book. And it took me until August to actually get started on it! (The first half of the year was so dominated by getting settled in our new house and having a baby that my reading was all the literary equivalent of stress eating junk food.) I've tried to read this book before but always been too intimidated by its length to ever actually even open it up (it takes a lot of mental preparation to start an 800-page book like this). But as soon as I started it, I loved it. I loved it! I loved how much depth and honesty and emotion this book has. There are so many scenes and conversations and omniscient narratives in this book that make some of the most realistic insights I can remember reading in a long time.

This book is so all-encompassing and deep that it's almost impossible to summarize. It gives you an in-depth look into a variety of characters' lives, all of whom are interconnected, living in the rural English county of Middlemarch. I've heard this book described as a depiction of marriage and its difficulties and rewards. I really liked what Eliot herself said in the beginning of the finale: "Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic--the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm, and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world" (793). And that is kind of the gist of the book, told through the stories of a number of different relationships and marriages.

The main character is Dorothea Brooke, who we meet at the beginning as a young woman with huge ideals and great ideas about life--that whatever we do in life should be heroic and aimed at making life better for others around us. Another main character is Tertius Lydgate, a newly minted doctor who has just moved to Middlemarch and has super high ideals for what he wants to accomplish in his professional life--he doesn't want to be motivated by money, but he wants to make scientific discoveries and make a difference in his field. Both of these characters enter into marriages (not with each other) that change them and their ideals, for better and for worse. Dorothea marries an old man who she believes will be able to teach her everything she doesn't know--because she feels so powerless to make a difference in the world with her limited knowledge and understanding--but she ends up being trapped by his jealousies and small expectations for her. Tertius quickly marries the prettiest girl in town and slowly and surely gets into debt and begins losing his focus on his goals and priorities. Meanwhile, there is a whole score of other important characters, with their own struggles and relationships that we are also privy to, who give us other views on the town of Middlemarch and the effects of love and marriage for people who enter into it. One of these couples is Fred Vincy and Mary Garth--they are in love with each other, but Mary refuses to allow Fred to court her because he is a lazy guy who places all his hopes on a distant relative giving him all his property instead of working to get a good place in something. Mary pushes Fred to become better and work harder, and his love for her made him shape up and become a truly better person. They eventually are able to get married and have a good, happy, solid foundation based on their mutual respect and shared goals. Theirs is the happiest love story in the whole book.

Dorothea is a different character than one I feel like I've encountered in literature before. She's beautiful and almost perfect, but not in a stereotypical feminine way. She's perfect because she's so pure in how earnestly she strives to put everyone else above her, and how she only wants to make a difference in the world more than she wants anything else. But the way the narrator describes her is almost winking at her unworldliness, understanding that she is naive in her goals and the way she looks at the world, but admiring how earnest she is all the same and feeling proud of her for sticking to her guns. I really loved that. I love how she didn't turn bitter and angry after making a bad marriage choice, and how she didn't hate her husband even though she easily could have.

I don't know how realistic Dorothea is, truly (marrying an old, grumpy man just because he seems to know everything seems very unlikely even for the most saintly of young women), but I loved her just the same. Dorothea in the end remarries and is happy and loving but does not make universal change through her life. But Eliot seems to be making a point by this--she says: "Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it." And the last sentences of the book are about her: "Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels with had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs" (799). I just absolutely loved those thoughts and the truth behind them.

The storyline between Lydgate and his wife, Rosamund, is probably the most depressing of the story--because it seems so real. This is a relationship that probably plays out EVERYWHERE even today. They see each other and like each other, and Rosamund especially tries really hard to impress him and to act like a perfect young potential wife for him until he falls in love hard enough that they get married. But they don't actually know each other at all--they just know each other from conversation at parties in her parents' drawing room. So when they get married she starts complaining about him working long hours, starts spending lots of his money, starts ignoring him and wanting to get other men to discreetly fall in love with her, and stops wanting to share her thoughts and feelings with him. She slowly closes herself off from him until she has no love left for him, and despite his efforts to heal their relationship, she stays bitter and cold. And they stay married like that for another 25 years--without any real love in their relationship. I wish I could go into more detail about their relationship and how selfish and horrible Rosamund seemed to me, but this post is already getting ridiculous and I don't really know what more to say other than Eliot really knew how relationships can go sour. She really seemed to nail it here. It's nothing more than small instances that never get forgiven and slowly harden over time.

I loved how Fred and Mary worked together and how Mary refused to cave to her emotions without thinking about the future. Mary was so practical and smart--not only waiting until Fred had a steady income that could provide for them before getting married, but also making sure that Fred was someone that she could respect and love before she ever married him. Fred could and probably would have been a good-for-nothing layabout if he hadn't been influenced by Mary, and that was such an interesting and positive message from the story.

All in all--such a true and revealing and meaningful book. I am so glad I read it. It's 800 pages long exactly--longer than probably all of the YA novels I read while on our trip combined--and infinitely more worth it because of what I got from it. If people read this book and would try to internalize the lessons from the relationships portrayed in here, I think they would make less mistakes in marrying the wrong people and ruining their relationships once they were in them. This book is a great example of why literature is important.

Book #47: The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Just after the Taliban fell in 2002, Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad came to Afghanistan and while there, met a bookseller named Sultan Khan. She got to know him and his family, and she ended up moving in with them for three months to see what it was like being an Afghan woman and living in a (somewhat) typical Afghan family. She introduces all of the members of the family to the reader, and gives a good look into all aspects of their lives, as best she can, and particularly looks at the difficulty of being a woman in Afghanistan at that particular time. Over the course of her stay, she learns about when Sultan Khan took a second wife, about his sisters' yearnings to marry, about the squabblings between Khan's mother and wives and sisters (as they all live under the same roof).

Although I thought it was a very interesting look into the Afghan culture, an area which I am very unfamiliar with, I was annoyed with some aspects of Seierstad's writing. She comes across as very judgmental and biased against the men in the family, and really comes down hard on them again and again. I DEFINITELY agree with her and understand why she would find it hard to NOT do that, but it really makes the book feel more like her social experiment in trying to argue with these Afghan social and gender norms than investigative and unbiased journalism. In fact, her prejudice is so obvious, it makes me wonder if she was even trying to write journalism here (although I don't know what else it would be). It also made me wish that I had a more contemporary sequel, where we could find out if anything has changed or progressed for women in Afghanistan, since the Taliban's supposed fall, over the last decade, or if they've stayed the same or gotten worse.

Book #46: No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I have been meaning and wanting to read this book for a while. Goodwin's Team of Rivals was one of my favorite books I've ever read--so I've wanted to read more books by her but haven't gotten around to it until now. This book obviously is about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and their relationship and what they accomplished on the home front in America during WWII. The narrative starts in 1940 when Hitler began invading other countries in Europe, and then ends when Roosevelt dies in 1945. I really enjoyed reading this book and learning more about FDR and Eleanor individually and as a team, and about the country's development and change during WWII and that crazy time. Although Goodwin doesn't discuss much about what they did before WWII, even though FDR had been president for six or seven years before WWII starts, it's obvious that FDR and Eleanor had a great working partnership established well before this time period because of all the things they were able to accomplish together. Goodwin paints a portrait of Eleanor as insecure in many ways but extremely morally focused and motivated by wanting to help others, and FDR as kind of self-centered and much more politically motivated by what the public wanted and would accept rather than what he believed was right. It makes FDR seem like less of a good guy, but he was also much more realistic and accomplished much more than Eleanor could have on her own. They were such a good team because Eleanor pushed him in forward-thinking directions while FDR helped her see what was possible.

During the war, FDR made a lot of logistical decisions that made a huge difference in the ability of the US to help win the war. He was focused on spurring manufacturing to build up the "arsenal of democracy," stopping strikes that were causing problems with war manufacturing, and helping Great Britain and Russia to stop Germany's advances. Eleanor, on the other hand, was seriously concerned with making sure that the strides of the New Deal towards helping labor improve their circumstances were not curtailed because of the necessities of war. She focused on improving Negro relations at home and in the armed forces, tried to represent to FDR when strikers had good reason for striking, and spent weeks and months traveling around the world visiting US soldiers to try and boost morale however she could. They both did so much, it's unbelievable to see how they managed--and kind of unsurprising that it basically killed FDR in the end. He died of a brain hemorrhage a month or so before V-E day.

After reading the book, Eleanor definitely comes off as maybe a little of a workaholic but more of the sympathetic character of the two to me. I really detested FDR's womanizing personality and how he always wanted to be around beautiful, simpering women who wanted to lavish him with praise. Eleanor may not have understood him in a lot of ways, like always wanting to make him work when he needed to relax, but I hated how they both had these somewhat intimate relationships (not necessarily romantic, but mentally intimate) with other people and not with their spouse. I respect them both for how well they maneuvered the country at this time but I didn't love that about them. But nobody's perfect. And I just came away from this book feeling like our country could not have survived that era without the two of them.

Book #45: The Bride Wore Size 12 by Meg Cabot

This is the last of the Heather Wells mysteries, and probably the most mundane of the murders she investigates. An RA dies in the hall before the new school year even starts, and nobody is sure what happened. And by mundane, I don't mean the story itself is boring--it's just the least sensational and most normal/likely sounding of the murders that have happened in Heather's residence hall. There's also the added storyline of Heather's engagement and wedding preparations with Cooper, which keeps things moving in the right direction.

Also, honestly, I'm a little over these "Size 12/14" titles. As much as I enjoyed the books, these titles seem so demeaning and belittling--like that's all that matters about Heather is that she wears a size 12. I know that Cabot is probably trying to do the opposite--but it doesn't come across that way. The book itself doesn't REALLY talk about sizes all that much--and I feel like by this book she's stopped talking as much about what she eats and what she weighs--maybe because she's in a fulfilling and happy relationship, so she doesn't have to think that much about it any more?--but the title doesn't accurately reflect that and doesn't really show what the book(s) are about.

Book #44: Size 12 and Ready to Rock by Meg Cabot

This book may have been my favorite of the Heather Wells mysteries. Heather's past as an ex-pop star comes more into the front of this story, which gives it more depth and gives some side characters a lot more interesting personalities than they seemed to have originally. When she was a rich and famous teenie pop star, Heather dated the son of her record producer, Jordan Cartwright, but they broke up when she found out he was cheating on her with their new up-and-coming star, Tania Trace (and that's when she left the whole music scene altogether). But now she's engaged to Jordan's brother, Cooper (who's not much in touch with his family) and turns out that Tania Trace's tween rock star summer camp is happening in Heather's dorm over the summer, so she has to deal with Tania and all of Jordan's family--while trying to figure out who is trying to kill Tania and almost succeeding.

The thing I really liked about this book was how it stopped portraying Tania and Jordan as one-dimensional, ditzy, boring characters, and showed that they had souls and insecurities and that they were human. She'd always thought of them as idiots and only caring about superficial things, but as she (and we) got to know them and Tania's past, they became much more sympathetic characters--which I felt made the story so much more interesting. The mystery was pretty creepy and realistic too, with the creepy stalker-type factor, so I thought this book added an interesting twist to the series.

Book #43: Big Boned by Meg Cabot

Heather Wells does it again in this book, where her brand new boss is shot in the back of the head while sitting in his office in "Death Dorm," where people just can't stop dying. Heather suddenly finds herself as one of the suspects this time, so she has no choice but to try to investigate.

There's not much more to say about this one, other than it's more of the same as the previous two--funny, quick, light-hearted, Heather solves the crime. I enjoyed it just as part of the overarching storyline in Heather's life and job.

Book #42: Size 14 Is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot

This is the second book in the Heather Wells series. After solving the murders in the first book, Heather thought they were in the clear--until one morning someone finds a cheerleader's head in a pot on the stove in the dorm kitchen. Nobody knows what happened to her or to the rest of her body--so Heather starts trying to figure it out. She gets much more over-the-top involved in this one--she goes undercover into a fraternity to investigate the guys she suspects there, she involves a student that she's befriended to help her, and she ends up in a dangerous situation in the end after she's figured out who it was. Thank goodness for her or else nobody would know who did it!

The other funny aspect of this series is Heather's obsession with her landlord and ex-boyfriend's brother, Cooper. She is totally in love with him even though she paints a picture of him as being totally unreachable and unattainable: smart, educated, hardworking, mysterious, into artsy things and not reality TV--and yet he's obviously interested in her even though she's kind of the opposite in every way. I don't know if the whole romance is totally believable to me--mainly because since we're inside Heather's head, and she sounds kind of ditzy, in a fun and friendly way, but not in a way that Cooper would really be interested in her. But oh well--it's still fun to read.

Book #41: Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

I read basically all of the Princess Diaries series when I was in high school, and always enjoyed Cabot's easygoing and fun writing style. While I was in Utah, I found out about the Oyster reading app, and downloaded the free trial--and read all five of her mysteries with heroine/amateur sleuth Heather Wells. Size 12 Is Not Fat is the first one--and you wouldn't have any idea what the book was about from its title. Heather Wells is a washed up pop star who lost her recording contract when she gained weight and her money when her mom ran off with her agent and her savings, so she ends up getting a job as an assistant residence hall director at New York City College. I loved this backstory and persona for Heather--I thought that was a super interesting and hilarious aspect of the story. But the main plot actually had nothing to do with Heather's past--it revolved around her trying to figure out what happened to several kids who died falling down the elevator shafts in her building. It doesn't feel like she gets obnoxiously involved, but she just does her job and keeps stumbling on questions and problems--and she ends up solving the mystery and finding out who is murdering people and why--and ends up getting in serious danger at the end with the murderer as well.

Like I said, Cabot's style is so funny and easy to read, it really feels like you are in Heather Wells' head and that you get to know her specifically as you read the book. She's got insecurities about things (like her body, as you might imagine from the title) but she's also really funny and frank about them and doesn't mind admitting that she eats cream-cheese-and-bacon bagels every morning for breakfast and that she wears Spanx when she needs to.

Book #40: The One by Kiera Cass

After America's obnoxious ambivalence about her two suitors in the previous two books in this trilogy, I was ready for her to make a decision (and luckily, she HAD to, since this was the last book). However, Cass was determined to turn America into a sort of Katniss overthrowing-the-evil-government figure and got her into developing and meeting with all these rebel groups even as she's deciding (spoiler-but-not-really) that she wants to marry Maxon and take on the responsibility of being a princess. I just didn't really understand the rebel groups in the whole series--they were really terrible at what they were doing and it wasn't clear at all what they wanted. It was seriously contrived and didn't feel like a real conflict at all. I know I've said this in the last two posts about the other books in this series, but that was the main problem about these books--they would have been a lot stronger with a much more condensed plot and a lot less convoluted journey to the climax. I think the main idea behind the original book was interesting, but this money-grubbing idea to turn everything into trilogies that everyone has lately really ruined what promise it had. But in the end, America ends up with Maxon (after one final huge rebellion) and they live supposedly happy ever after. And, to be fair, I felt like Cass's writing style improved over the three books, and even though I didn't ever love how she wrote, her dialogue stopped making me want to hit her and it was much easier to get through by the end (or maybe I was just desensitized to how bad it was).

I know I'm making it sound like these books were terrible, but obviously they weren't that bad because I finished all three of them. I guess that's the thing about these love-triangle stories--even when there are lots of annoying things about them, it's hard to put them down until you know what happens.

Book #39: The Elite by Kiera Cass

I can't honestly say why I decided to read through this book. It's been over a week since I finished it and I can't remember anything about it--other than America just goes back and forth between her two love interests, Aspen and Maxon, and cannot make up her mind about which one she wants--and they both still apparently really love her and are perfectly happy waiting while she just tells them she needs more time. I really didn't buy the whole love triangle here--Aspen definitely wasn't very developed as a character and her problems with Maxon seem very contrived (he's forced to abide by the laws of his country, as the prince, and do things she disagrees with, so therefore she gets mad at him). Mainly, this book shouldn't even exist, since this series should really have just been ONE book instead of three, so there wasn't enough action to keep it going. And yet I finished!

Book #38: The Selection by Kiera Cass

I have seriously seen this book around for a year or more, and never forgotten it because of that unforgettable cover (such a beautiful dress!). But I've avoided it because after I read the blurbs about it I decided not to read it--all I kept seeing about it was that it was a cross between the Hunger Games and the Bachelor--and the main character is named America Singer. That seriously is enough to turn me off. America Singer? That is the dumbest thing I've heard in forever. But my sister-in-law Kristen persuaded me to read it, if only to make fun of it with her, and it seemed like the perfect beach read while we were hanging out at Bear Lake all week for the Leininger family reunion. So I read it, and on the one hand hated it and on the other hand really enjoyed it--enough that I did end up reading the next two in the trilogy (although it TOTALLY should not have been made into a trilogy--seriously only had enough material to be one book).

In this dystopian version of future America, a monarchy has been set up and the masses are divided into numbered castes, each caste being assigned a specific career path (the higher castes getting the better jobs and more money). The prince, in order to choose a bride, has a Queen Esther/Cinderella type lottery for all the young women in the land to submit themselves as his potential new princess. So of course America Singer, a 5 and a musician, submits herself, despite the fact she's madly in love with Aspen (seriously, these names), and she's chosen as one of the few to go to the palace and meet prince Maxon to see if she's the prince's bride. She meets Maxon and immediately goes into angry chick mode, fighting with him and somehow making him fall in love with her anyways, and they become friends despite the situation. America stays at the palace as one of the prince's favorites as the pool narrows down.

There are so many ridiculous things about this book that it's hard to describe it all at once. The thing I hated the most was how obnoxious the dialect was. Cass obviously does not know how to talk if that's how she thinks normal conversations between people go. When she meets Prince Maxon for the first time, he calls her "my dear," and she says something like, "Don't call me your dear when you're keeping me in your gilded CAGE!" Seriously? Also, the whole plotline seemed pretty far-fetched to be set in the future--sure, maybe that happened in Queen Esther's time, but a super-strict caste system and lottery for the prince in future America? And Cass's version of American history is completely hilarious--America gets so in debt to China that China invades and makes it the American State of China until people revolt and set up the monarchy of Illea. Yes, that seems very logical and believable. I really shouldn't have liked it at all, but for some reason I was driven to find out what happened between America and Maxon (because she obviously will end up with him, despite her dumb obsession with Aspen), so I kept reading the sequels despite it all. This was the best plot of the three books, but probably the worst writing of the three (she seems to get better as time goes on).

Book #37: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I've been using a chapter from Bird by Bird for my writing classes for years now, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me that I could/should check out the whole book until a few months ago. I loved the chapter I've used in the past (titled "Shitty First Drafts," don't get mad at me, Mom) because it helps my first-year students break down their fear of writing and their worries about perfectionism; she writes in very approachable and easy language about how hard it is to write in drafts and how important it is to get rid of our goals of writing perfectly the first time. My students over seven or eight semesters have almost universally loved this essay and many of them have said it really helped them appreciate the importance of draft writing, especially knowing that such a capable and professional writer (although they don't know who she is) has to do this too. In that essay, Lamott writes very hilariously about how hard writing is and how much work it takes to get anything worthwhile out on the page, and she gives very concrete and manageable tips for new writers to try and improve their writing. And that is basically all the entire book is: lots of mini-essays dedicated to what Lamott thinks are the most important elements of learning how to write. Lamott is mostly a fiction writer--she's written five or six novels (and I don't know if I've actually read any of them) but she honed her craft writing magazine articles and you can really tell by her skill at writing here in these essays. I totally enjoyed reading this book, and if I ever get interested in writing anything seriously, this will be one of those books I will revisit to help me do that.

Book #36: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I feel stupid, but for some reason it had never occurred to me that the movie Stardust was based on a book by Neil Gaiman. I loved that movie, and thought it was so creative and fun, so when I found out it was a book I knew I had to check it out. Tristran Thorn enters the magical world of Faerie in a quest to find a fallen star for the girl he loves, and in the process of bringing back the star he had lots of adventures, meets lots of magical people, and runs into lots of danger. The movie actually follows the plot of the book pretty closely, so it was easy to keep track of what was going on--but I wonder if I wasn't familiar with the movie if I would have been confused at all with everything that went on. The book was actually surprisingly short with not all that much detail in a lot of the scenes or in describing the characters--which might be more a part of the style of fantasy writing instead of the modern fiction I'm more familiar with--although it did give a lot more backstory at the beginning than the movie does. But it was a lot of fun reading about the adventures of Tristran and Yvaine (the star), and it went very quickly. Anyone who likes the movie would enjoy reading this book.

Book #35: The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

This is a modern rewrite of Jane Eyre, and although I've never REALLY liked Jane Eyre in the first place, I thought this sounded interesting. Turns out it wasn't, really, basically for the same reasons I don't like the original. But I still pushed through it because I felt dumb putting it down after reading halfway through it, and I'm glad I did, because the best part was last 1/5 of the book.

Like Jane, Gemma Hardy was raised by her aunt and uncle, but when her uncle died, her aunt sends her away to a boarding school as a working student and basically relinquishes any interest in her. When the school shuts down, Gemma gets a job as a nanny at Blackbird Hall in the Orkneys of Scotland, where the whole falling-in-love-and-then-running-away thing happens. The best part of the book happens after she gets back on her feet, with a job as a nanny for a cute boy and having made some friends, and she goes to ICELAND to try to find some family (because that is where she was born and where her parents died).

I never understood why Mr. Rochester falls in love with Jane in the original (and vice versa--how is he lovable? There's no compelling reason there!) and the same applies here. There's seriously no believable reason for why Mr. Sinclair should fall in love with Gemma. He's over twice her age! She's only 18! Also, I don't see why she feels like she has to run away altogether from him--it's not like he had a secret wife hidden in his attic like in the original; he just did some things like twenty years ago that she didn't agree with. But I really liked the people who ended up befriending her and her life that she had afterwards, and especially her trip to Iceland where she finally meets her aunt and learns about herself and her parents. I loved reading about Iceland--especially because I actually WENT to the exact little villages she writes about and did the same trip. It was nice that Gemma ends up with a happy ending after being completely alone for all of her life, although I don't know why it had to be with Mr. Too-Old-For-You Sinclair.

Book #34: Run by Ann Patchett

I have loved all of Ann Patchett's books I've read, but this is probably my least favorite so far. On Goodreads, some of the commenters say that Patchett clearly wrote this book for the Oprah's Book Club readers of the world, and after finishing it, I can kind of see why. Run is about the Doyle family, a wealthy white Boston family who adopted two black baby boys after not being able to have any other children of their own. Most of the action of the book happens within a twenty-four hour period, when the boys' biological mother, who had been watching them, pushes Tip out of the way to keep him from being hit by a car and ends up being hit herself. The Doyles take care of her young daughter while she's in the hospital, and her reappearance into their lives creates a lot of questions for all of them.

Although I did really like how the Doyle family seemed like a normal, happy family (even though they lost their mother to cancer, and they had problems with their older brother, but they love each other), I feel like some issues in the book seem a little unexamined. How is it possible that Tip and Teddy have never, ever wondered about their biological mother or father, and the thought of this mother coming into their life is such a shock? How come there isn't more tension for them being black boys adopted into a white family? There's one little line about Tip feeling less tension at the Jesse Jackson lecture they go to, because there are more black people there, but that's it. Why on earth is Tip so obsessed with fish? (He wants to become an icthyology researcher.) I felt like this book really was kind of a let-down and not nearly as thoughtful as Patchett's other books that I've read.

Book #33: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I can't tell you how many times I have meant to read this book before. I absolutely LOVED Eleanor and Park when I read it last year and thought I would immediately jump to reading this one by the same author but for some reason it kept falling through the cracks. I'm really happy I finally read it. This book is about Cath Avery in her first year at college, in the dorms. She has major anxiety and stress about new situations and new people, so this is a very stressful situation for her--and to make things worse, her twin sister Wren isn't rooming with her. So she does what she's always done--buried herself in her fan fiction, writing a fanfic sequel to her favorite series about Simon Snow (a Harry Potter twin), which gets tens of thousands of hits online. The book has small tidbits of her fanfiction and snippets from the original books that she's writing about, in addition to the main storyline about her freshman year and her relationship with her sister, her dad, and the new life she makes and the way she changes and grows up and tries to take herself out of just living to disappear into her writing. This was such a great story (warning: some language and a few questionable situations) with really awesome characters. I really enjoy Rowell's books.

Book #32: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes

I think this book was pretty short; I don't even know if it totally counts as a full-on book. I don't really know how long it was though, since I downloaded it on my Kindle from the library. (I really don't do that all that often; I much prefer reading actual books. But this was VERY convenient... I think I will start doing it more often!) The book is basically exactly what the title sounds like--a memoir about making The Princess Bride movie. And like everyone, I love that movie, so I couldn't help but check this book out. And it was moderately interesting--who doesn't like to get an insider look at something as familiar and beloved as this movie? However, I feel like enough time has passed that Elwes doesn't really seem to have all that much distinctive information to contribute. He tells a couple of funny anecdotes and talks about training for the big swordfight, but he even says at one point something about how over time you forget a lot of bigger things but some small things stick out from what he remembers. I wish he would have thought to write this memoir twenty-five years ago, because as it is, it feels a lot like he's just trying to cash in on how much people love this movie, knowing that people like me are going to be tempted just knowing it's by him. Also, maybe 60% of the book is Elwes talking about how brilliant and hilarious and amazing and ridiculously awesome every single person involved with the project was, and how they are all the absolute best at everything they did. That's very gracious and nice of him, but it seriously got overdone after a while.

Book #31: Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

It's hard to believe that this year marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I feel like I was pretty oblivious to everything that was going on, as a 16-year-old watching the news and hearing about the destruction--and particularly after reading this book, I know I was oblivious and had really no idea how extensive and severe it all was. In Five Days at Memorial, Fink investigates and reports on what happened at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, one of the hospitals that was flooded out and lost power during the emergency. The hospital, like most hospitals in the area, didn't evacuate its patients beforehand, because of the difficulty of moving so many of them--and usually, in the case of these emergencies, the hospital usually served as a safe home base for people to wait out the storm. In the case of Katrina, though, the destruction was so much more overwhelming than was expected, and there were between 1500 and 2000 people (hospital workers and their families, and patients and their families) to evacuate from the hospital--in addition to the hundreds and thousands of other people stranded at their homes in the area that also needed to be rescued. In the panic and craziness of the situation, doctors and nurses began to be sure that not all the patients would be able to be rescued--and in the end, they injected some 20+ elderly and very sick patients with morphine to hasten their deaths. There was a huge investigation after the fact and several doctors and nurses were put on trial for what happened. Fink interviewed hundreds of people to try to find out what really happened, during and after the emergency, and compiled it all into this book. Although the doctor and nurses accused of murdering these patients ended up not being indicted, Fink seems to think that they were guilty, although she turns it into a kind of "decide for what you think about this issue" at the end. I think they were guilty--they gave up on these patients and didn't even try to evacuate them and gave them drugs to hasten their deaths without even asking them or their families for permission. That is inexcusable. The first half of this book, detailing what happened during the disaster, was very interesting, but it really started to drag in the second half about the investigation and how the doctor and nurses were trying to clear their names and all their lawyers' tactics to clear them. Blah blah blah. I ended up skimming the last 50 pages because it wasn't worth all the effort to keep reading it all the way through.

Books #24-30: Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

After reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiography, I couldn't wait to get into her books again to revisit all the scenes she writes about--which is funny, since the books and the autobiography have a lot of the same stories. I'd read the first two books a few months ago, but hadn't re-read the last six or seven for years, so it was really fun to get back into them. It was especially enjoyable after re-reading the autobiography to compare what I knew had really happened in her life (like, 90% of what's in the books) with the fictionalizing that she did.

As I read, I was so blown away by how resourceful and independent they were 150 years ago. Sure, I know that those were the themes that Wilder wanted to emphasize in her stories, and therefore she told them in a way that made those themes most obvious, but no matter how you look at it, it's really amazing how strong they were and how they survived. The hardships they went through just to make a living are just amazing--the grasshoppers eating their whole crop, illnesses that go through the whole family, babies dying, an entire winter without any supplies and being shut up in the snow for months. When reading these books as a kid, I never really noticed or thought about how ridiculously hard and stressful that would have been to live through, particularly as a parent. And it's unbelievable how they were able to make a meal from nothing but potatoes and wheat and a happy life from nothing. I read these feeling like I am such a whiner with no real trials in my life, compared to them--it was a good, uplifting series to help me stop being such a baby with my easy, easy life that we have here.

Books #22 and #23: Baby Sleep Book Knockdown!

These are totally only interesting to parents of newborns who are really lacking in sleep--but obviously, that's the intended audience for them anyways. As we've been getting used to having a newborn and remembering what all of that entails, I've been trying to remember what we did with Dane and what works with getting your baby to sleep enough--and enough sleep for us along with that. I read both of these books and wanted to remember what I thought about them so I know what to look at next time around. And these two books recommend kind of different things, so it was interesting reading them so close together. First off, I HATE Babywise. I wish I'd remembered how obnoxious it is before I read it, because even though I disagree with it, it still adds to my stress by making me think that I'm doing something wrong. Babywise suggests that you should start sleep training your baby when they are ONE WEEK OLD--that you should put them down and make them learn how to go to sleep on their own from the very beginning. And it tells you that if you don't do this, you will NEVER EVER get your kid to learn how to sleep and you will hate your life forever. It doesn't tell you that NO one-week-old baby is going to go to sleep on their own and you will just hate your life and be extra stressed from the very beginning, causing unnecessary stress from the very beginning of your parenting. I really regret reading it because even just when Graham was two weeks old it made me start feeling panicky that I wasn't already working with him to learn how to sleep on his own--which I know is ridiculous. I don't need that extra stress.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child has a different approach. The book is very poorly organized, which makes it annoying to read (I want to go in there and be Weissbluth's editor), but amidst all the chaos in the book there is some really good information that is really helpful to new parents. The thing I like about this book is that he emphasizes that it's very important that your baby get enough sleep, and that it's your responsibility as a parent to help that happen, but that there are any number of different ways to accomplish that, not just ONE right way. He presents tons of research to back up his claims and explains the natural sleep cycles of infants and children to help you get them to nap and sleep easier at night and during the day, and he talks a lot about helpful tactics to soothing and calming crying babies (which is really important at this stage!). And he doesn't make you feel guilty about not getting your baby on a schedule right away--the main thing about this age that he emphasizes is that babies can only stay awake for 1-2 hours (and sometimes not even that) in between naps during the day, so try to let them get back to sleep quickly after that. This book has been very helpful to me and I think about it 25 times a day when I am wondering if Graham is tired or what I could do to help him--it's got some great tips and things that I am always remembering and thinking about.