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.