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.