2016 Yearly Recap

Ha--57 books this year. I was trying to see why I didn't read much this year, and I realized why. The second half of the year really messed with me--we had too many trips over the summer/fall, I got thrown into morning sickness, Dane got sick and went into the hospital, and we were really busy the last few months with the holidays and I felt so much pressure to get everything ready/done well. I just couldn't mentally handle a lot of reading. I also didn't spend any energy trying to decide what to read or finding good books that I was actually excited about, so the books I did read were only moderately interesting to me (at least the last six months or so). Almost all of the books that were my favorite this year were from the first half of the year. I feel like it's been forever since I've read anything really GOOD. So, here's to hoping next year's reading will be better--in quality (since I'm sure it won't be better in quantity, adding baby #3 to our family).

Best Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See, The Chosen, Mistborn series (1, 2, and 3)

Best Quick Read: Death Comes to Pemberley

Best Non-fiction: How Will You Measure Your Life?

Best Parenting: No-Drama Discipline, The Collapse of Parenting

All the Light We Cannot See was probably the best book I read this year, followed closely by the Mistborn series (which were so so good)! And I also loved How Will You Measure Your Life? and think about it a lot.

I hope to read some good books that I really love this next year. Here's to hoping!

Book #57: Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

Tommy and I actually listened to this as an audiobook from the library while we drove down to Houston for Thanksgiving. We only got about halfway through and I finished it on my own. It was hilariously funny. Jim Gaffigan does an excellent job of pointing out things that are way too true about parenting and how ridiculous and hilarious the whole parenting process is, and making us laugh about it. I really liked his chapters about Disneyland ("there are adults who go to Disneyland without kids. They're called weirdos."), taking kids to restaurants ("bring the bread. We need bread. Now."), how we take nine hundred million pictures of our kids that we will never look at, meeting other kids' parents ("How old is your kid?" is the new pick-up line), and all the crazy comments and experiences he gets as a parent of five kids in New York City.

I laughed out loud a bunch of times while listening to this, and I have repeated a whole bunch of things he said to other parents, because they come up as being SO TRUE just in our normal conversations. It's awesome.

Book #56: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

I vividly remember hearing about this play when I was a senior in high school, in AP English, reading Hamlet and my teacher talking about this play written about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two mostly insignificant characters in the original play. I have meant to read it ever since, and I finally requested it at the library and got around to it. I was surprised by how short it was (of course, plays do seem pretty short when printed) and it only took me about an hour to get through. I know that it is an ironic comedy, where we see the action of the tragedy of Hamlet through the eyes of two pretty hilarious and unintelligent characters, but that is the problem with reading a play. It is meant to be staged, meant to be viewed and experienced in an entirely different way--so it really isn't fair to judge a play by reading it, similar to Shakespeare's plays. I could see a lot of the funny parts as I was reading, but I imagine it would have been funnier if I'd been watching it. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can't tell themselves apart from each other, and are like two sides of the same coin. They are summoned to come help Hamlet and find out what's wrong with him, but they spend most of their time deliberating about which way to go to find him, and when Hamlet comes across them, they don't know what to say or just watch him as he walks past. They are extremely passive when it comes to their fate and get thrown into situations without even knowing where they are--and they have no idea that they are heading for their own deaths (although we, as the audience, do, from the ending of Hamlet). There was a lot of self-aware commentary on acting and actors, which is appropriate for a play and for the people acting in it, but not all that interesting to me since I have no involvement in that world. Overall, it was an interesting look at the play, and made me want to go re-read Hamlet, and I wish I could see it staged live because I bet it would be a lot more enjoyable.

Book #55: Eve and the Choice Made in Eden by Beverly Campbell

Campbell's main claim in this book is that if we--as in, everyone in the world--had a truer and better understanding of Eve, there wouldn't be as many problems, particularly between men and women. She makes the case that Eve knew exactly what she was doing, that she had been tutored in her role before the earth, and that of course gives a lot of discussion to the LDS doctrine that Eve's choice to partake of the fruit was essential to the entire plan of salvation. I liked how she addressed the apparent contradiction between the two commandments Adam and Eve were given: to multiply and replenish the earth, and to not partake of the fruit of that tree. She talks about how agency has always been the central element of the Plan of Salvation, and Heavenly Father wouldn't force the Fall to happen without someone making that choice, and he wouldn't force us to come to earth in imperfect bodies and in an imperfect world without us, or our predecessors, choosing it. She also makes some very interesting points about how the Garden was a place of preparation, and all of the training that Eve and Adam when through there. I loved reading all of those chapters about Eve and learning more about her life and some very smart guesses as to what may have happened there.

However, I felt like this book could have been way better. There are so many parts of the story that Campbell doesn't discuss fully--like the actual confrontation between Eve and Satan, and Satan himself. I also was a little annoyed with the last third of the book, which was more about "general principles that are good LDS doctrine" and not really related to the story of Eve and Adam, which was the reason why I was interested in this book. I love, love, love Eve's courage and have a strong testimony about her choice in the Garden of Eden. (Eve is actually one of the names I am thinking about for our baby.) And I love pondering their story and gaining strength from her amazing choices.

Book #54: I Am a Mother by Jane Clayson Johnson

I don't remember where I read about this book. I feel like I have read a LOT of books about mothering/parenting lately or in the last few years, and this one didn't stick with me nearly as much as some others. There were some really excellent quotes from General Authorities or well-known authors, though, and those were some of my favorite parts. I also loved Johnson's stories about her personal experiences as a mother and with giving up her fancy career to become a mom (she was a TV anchor until she got married and wanted to have a family). I felt like the majority of what she said in the book was repeating the same theme: You're not JUST a mom, being a mom is worthwhile and awesome even though it's hard! She had a good chapter about not judging other moms too, but most of it ran together and most of what she wrote wasn't distinctive enough or written beautifully enough for me to feel like it was new or for it to really strike me. It was really very short and a quick read, so it was fine--I may not have sat through the entire book if it had been twice as long--but there isn't too much to say about it.

My favorite part was actually a quote by Joseph F. Smith about Eliza R. Snow: "She walked not on the borrowed light of others, but faced the morning unafraid and invincible." I want to get that as commissioned artwork and put it on my wall to look at every day.

Book #53: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling

Similar to the Tales of Beedle the Bard, I had never really considered reading this book but then I thought, why not. Especially since the new movie is coming out about this book and I am excited to go watch it. Of course, the movie is named the same thing as this book, but it is about Newt Scamander and his fantastic beasts more than it is about this book, which is the supposed textbook that was assigned to students at Hogwarts. The book is basically a run-through of all the creatures they mention in the book, plus a bunch more--but just a few paragraphs per creature. (I feel like in a regular textbook, there would actually be a chapter about each one, or at least a few pages, but then nobody would really be interested in even skimming this book for fun.) It was a cute read, and there were some interesting parts. It was super short--only about 90 pages--and I feel almost like it's cheating to include it here since it's hardly even a real book. But there you go. I'm glad to at least have seen what it was about. And I am still excited to go see the movie.

Book #52: For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards by Jen Hatmaker

I have no idea why I heard of Jen Hatmaker but for some reason I am now following her updates on Facebook and I think she is super funny. She's a super-Christian Evangelical lady who lives in Austin and writes a blog. This book is a collection of essays kind of similar to funny memoirs that I have read (it reminded me a lot of the Real Moms book I just read from a Mormon perspective, but this is more Evangelical and talks a lot about JESUS IS AWESOME). I liked reading from this perspective and seeing how this Southern-Christian audience thinks and believes. I think a lot of it--the deep, important theological stuff and love of the Atonement--really lines up with LDS doctrine. Some of the essays were really religious and focused, and others were just about fashion concerns or pop culture references, so it was a good balance. She made me laugh several times and I think I will read one of her other books at least. Although I've said I "read" this book, I was actually listening to it in audiobook format, and that's why I can't be any more specific about what I liked/didn't like about it--I can't go back and refresh my memory about it. I listened to it while I was doing some serious cleaning at our house, and planting our new flowers in our front yard, and it was perfect to listen to while doing those sorts of chores with my hands.

Book #51: Three Tales of My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

I have looked at a bunch of kids' reading blogs and websites for recommendations on best first chapter books for kids and this was one that was all over the place. Everybody mentioned it on their list somewhere. I had never heard of it! So I ended up actually buying a copy (shocker!) because I figured if it was universally recommended then it would be a good purchase. And it was. I read this with Dane and he didn't want me to stop reading. We actually read this in only two sittings because he kept saying, "Keep going! Don't stop!" I was surprised again how much he absorbed and understood and remembered from the storyline. The story is about a boy (the narrator's father) who goes to a magical island to rescue a dragon he knows is tied up there. Along the way to finding the dragon he runs into a whole menagerie of animals whom he has to distract and surprise using all of the tools he brought along in his backpack in order to keep them from eating him. Like the lion who was upset about his mane being messy, until the boy gave him a comb and some ribbons to braid his mane. It was silly and nonsensical and very cute, and Dane was really, really into it. Definitely a good read. I ended up buying the rest of the trilogy too because he loved it so much. I just need to figure out a good time of day for me to read one chapter a day with him, instead of just occasionally reading 5 chapters at once. I want it to be part of our routine somehow, but it's hard with having to balance reading to Graham as well (who is always, always bringing me books and begging me to read to him).

Edit: We read the rest of the trilogy and really enjoyed the other two books too. Dane REALLY loved reading and listening to the story--he was completely enthralled and had no problem remembering what we'd read previously, even when I thought it would be too complicated. I'm very impressed at his reading comprehension skills, because he definitely doesn't understand most of the bigger words, but he gets the majority of it anyways. It's pretty awesome of him.

Book #50: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Well, I am cruising to a new low of books read this year with only 50 when hitting November. Oh well! This was another book club read--one that I've already read, but I was looking forward to re-reading. This book is one of the best at pointing out the flaws held by general humanity. Its format is so startling and different from our normal viewpoint (from the perspective of a devil trying to tempt a man) that it makes you think more and become more aware of how you have been tempted and worked on.

I was in charge of the discussion at book club last night and basically I just wanted to read half of the chapters out loud. But these quotes were my favorite parts.

This part was my absolute favorite. It is absolutely terrifying to read, because of how applicable it is to us today--particularly with social media. How many people spend the majority of their time doing exactly what Screwtape is talking about here--scrolling aimlessly looking for nothing to entertain them? And it's so important to remember what he is saying about how this habit isn't just neutral--it is actively bringing us away from God and closer to Satan:
"You will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life doing neither what I ought nor what I liked." The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong." And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
    You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters , you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters in the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." (pages 59-61)

This following part also stuck out to me because of how much it applies to me (yikes!):

“Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury…. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright... The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift… He is also, in theory, committed to a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day he would not refuse." (page 110-111)

“The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship… Just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty" (page 135).

“But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere” (page 155).

Lewis had just such a sense of human nature. It's amazing to me how much of his work strikes a chord--and particularly how much of it seems to relate to LDS doctrine. That must be because it is filled with truth.

Book #49: Real Moms: Making it Up as We Go by Lisa Valentine Clark

I've read Clark's sister-in-laws' blogs for years and years now (C. Jane and Stephanie Nielsen) and I've read about her being mentioned in those spaces. I remembered her because of her maiden name being Valentine and of course, that is cute and distinctive enough that it stood out. From what I've gathered about her, she is an actress and her husband is a playwright and director and they are very talented people, and this book just confirms that. She says that this is the book nobody asked her to write, that any mom could write a book about mothering, and she's definitely not trying to give advice, but she does share a lot of thoughtful ideas about parenting, mothering, and the struggles we all face, whether it be fears of our children resenting or rejecting us, or just trying to live in this era of Pinterest-style motherhood. Each chapter is like an essay with some funny moments, lots of real confessions about things that she has done and experienced as a mom, and musings about how we make our lives more difficult than we need to be and the amazingness of being a mom even with it all. I wish I had marked some of the chapters or places that really stood out to me, because I want to be more specific, but I can't really remember anything great right now except for the last chapter, where she talked about how the Atonement can make up for all of our fears of what our children will use their agency to do, and how we are all unified together through the Atonement. (The book isn't very preachy or churchy the majority of the time. It's clearly meant for an LDS audience with a few references to church stuff throughout but mostly she talks about things that apply to any mom out there.) At the end she talks about a race she did with her son, where he sprinted off at the end and she was trying to keep up with him, but then she realized in this race, like life, she was training him to run off without her. That's what we all do as moms; we are trying to create independent beings and work ourselves out of a job. It was a great way to end the book. I will re-read this one again, I'm sure, because she made me laugh and think and it helped me get out of a grumpy mom funk without being too sentimental and felt like someone was listening to me and understood why some days can just be junk.

Book #48: The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker

I heard about this book on my favorite podcast (Stuff You Should Know) and I downloaded the audiobook version to my phone from our library website (a first! I figured out how to do it!). It was super interesting and I really enjoyed listening to it. The main premise really struck me: Schatzker's thesis is that the current obesity epidemic is caused not by the unhealthy ingredients in foods, but instead by the lack of natural flavor in foods, which means that most foods (even foods like raw meat and chicken, and even fruits and veggies) are only getting their flavor by chemicals being added by food scientists. (Like Doritos, everything is over-flavored now.) He strongly makes the claim that our bodies have natural nutritional wisdom, where our bodies crave the foods that give us the nutrients we need, but only if the flavors we eat match the nutrients we are eating. All foods taste blander now than they did even fifty or sixty years ago, because they have been bred for yield and bug resistance and not flavor, and this blander food requires the addition of flavoring to make them palatable. Since so many of the foods we eat have added flavorings that make them taste like what they're not, our bodies are totally thrown off and we end up eating and needing more and more. When we eat things that are truly flavorful, we are fully satisfied by the end of the meal and don't need to keep eating and eating. And as an added bonus, truly flavorful foods in nature are also the most nutritious, as all of the chemicals that provide taste in foods also are linked to the vitamins and minerals and nutrients in each of those foods.

Near the end of the book, he summarizes his points with these three statements:

1. Humans are flavor seeking animals. The pleasure provided by food, which we experience as flavor, is so powerful that only the most strong-willed among us can resist it.

2. In nature, there is an intimate connection between flavor and nutrition.

3. Synthetic flavor technology not only breaks that connection, it also confounds it.

I was very interested in a lot of the research that he discusses in the book. He talks a lot about the experiments done by a researcher at Utah State with sheep and goats, and proving that nutritional wisdom truly does exist. The most interesting study that stood out to me was in 1926 when a woman took fifteen children and for six years let them eat whatever they wanted from a list of 34 foods that provided a balance of nutrients (fruits, veggies, meat, etc.). The children naturally fed themselves balanced diets, even as their preferences and needs changed. Their bodies knew what nutrients they needed, proving that anyone can be a nutritionist if their bodies can make the connection between what they're eating and what's in it. 

Schatzker suggests that you avoid eating things with flavorings (which means processed foods, plus a whole lot of other "natural" foods), but I think that's pretty difficult to do when you don't have farmer's markets easily accessible and lots of money to put towards buying heirloom chickens or tomatoes. Maybe someday we could have chickens, but not now. I really enjoyed this book and the perspective he included (he seemed very balanced and not super aggressive against Big Agriculture, just a little bit), although the last chapter really bugged me. He ended the book with a big meal made of all these heirloom foods he'd talked about through the book, and dragged out how dramatic it was to get the meal ready at the same time, and blah blah blah. It was pretty annoying. But I appreciated his overall argument nonetheless.

Book #47: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley: Go Forward with Faith by Sheri L. Dew

I've been thinking about reading this book forever. I took it from my parents' house before they moved so that I would actually start it, and then it sat on my bedside stand for three months. I loved reading about President Hinckley and learning more about his character and personality. I was surprised by how many of the stories or anecdotes in the book I was already familiar with, like he had told them in Conference talks or people had included them in lessons in church that I have heard.

Things I loved learning about President Hinckley:

-How hardworking he was. He really valued a strong work ethic and had one himself. He may have been a sort of workaholic, but he was always dedicated, particularly since he saw himself as working to further the work of the Church.
-He built their entire house with his own hands. He was extremely handy and knew how to do everything, from the plumbing to electrical, etc. He was constantly making up projects and remodeling their house just for fun or for major events. He would take down walls and put them back up for any little reason.
-He came home from his mission in England and went to report to the First Presidency on something for his mission president (asking for more and better missionary materials). Then he thought he would apply to journalism school back East. But two days later, the First Presidency asked him to work for the Church and be in charge of the project he had proposed to them--and to be their main PR guy. He basically became the PR and missionary departments at the Church headquarters. And he worked for the Church for the rest of his life (except for two years during WWII when he worked for the railroads). This really prepared him to be a leader later because he knew every aspect of the Church and its functions.
-He spent many years traveling to Asia and getting to know the people there, in Hong Kong, Korea, the Philippines, and all over. He went to tiny towns and talked to individual members, and he saw their sufferings and their lives. He may have only lived in Salt Lake City his whole life, but he was very aware of the issues of the world.
-His sweet relationship with his wife. He always wanted her to travel with him, even when they had young kids at home, and he hated being separated from her. They were a completely equal partnership (even though he didn't do all that much of the parenting at home, because he was always gone)--he never tried to tell her what to do. Pretty awesome when they got married in the Great Depression.
-He was very humble. He was very shaken every time he was called one step up the chain of command--when he was called to be an Assistant to the Twelve, then an apostle, then second counselor in the First Presidency, then first counselor, then of course when he became the prophet. Every time was very nerve-wracking and scary to him, and he struggled with a lot of self-doubt and concern. But he always felt relieved reminding himself that it was the Lord's church and not himself that mattered. He didn't love it when people would all stand when he'd come into the room and sing "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet", because he didn't want all the attention. He struggled with the loneliness of leadership and being separate from everyone else, especially in the First Presidency and as prophet. It's so interesting/nice to know that even the prophet has moments of self-doubt.

I was disappointed in this book for several reasons though. First, it was published right after he became President of the Church, so it only covered about 18 months of his term as President. I didn't realize that when I started reading it, and I wished it went longer because I wanted to learn more about the years in which I remembered him as prophet. He is the only prophet I remember as a child (although I was six or seven when he became prophet, so I should probably have remembered Presidents Hunter or Benson) and I was disappointed that I didn't get to read more about what he did as prophet. I was also disappointed that this book was so focused on what he did every year. It seemed like there was so much minutiae about every trip he took and every assignment he had that it dragged a lot. I didn't feel like this format gave me as much information about what he was really thinking or feeling, like you usually get from biographies. (Probably part of the reason of that was that he was still alive while she was writing/publishing this, and he didn't want the book to be written anyways, so he may not have wanted it to get too personal.) But it felt like she just got a hold of his calendar and journal from his whole career and just expounded on everything he did each year. It really was dry. I feel like it might have been more interesting if she'd had a whole chapter just on his trips to Asia over the years instead of every chapter talking about another trip to Asia, and another trip to Asia, and another trip to Asia. All of them sounded the same and all of them were a ton of work and he loved the people there, yadda yadda yadda. That might have been an abnormal format for a biography but it would have helped to keep it feel like it was dragging.

Book #46: Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

Since I just got off this Harry Potter kick (and Tommy and I are watching the movies again, on the rare nights we're both home and available), I thought it would be fun to check this book out. It's super short--seriously took about an hour to read. It's a collection of children's fairy tales for the magical world, the most important of which is The Tale of the Three Brothers, as any Harry Potter reader knows. There are only about six stories in the book, but each story has some commentary about it, written theoretically by Albus Dumbledore. The commentary was the most entertaining part, with lots of interesting information about the wizarding world. It was a cute book.

Book #45: Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

This book basically takes you through the high and low points of Kennedy's term as president and the time leading up to his assassination in Dallas. (Which is actually very interesting to read about for me now since we live in Dallas and have visited Dealey Plaza several times now to show people.) I honestly was bored out of my mind through a lot of this book. I skimmed quite a few pages because I didn't pick this book up to read about JFK's affairs or a blow-by-blow rehearsal of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I thought it was going to be a lot more about the theories behind his assassination. I am not a conspiracy theory person but I think it could be interesting to learn (in an unbiased way) what theories are out there and what evidence there is to support them. But O'Reilly specifically avoids all of that and just tells what happened on the day of the assassination, from Oswald's perspective as well as the President's. After building up to the assassination throughout the whole book--O'Reilly literally calls JFK "the man who has three months left to live" (or whatever length of time) maybe 30 times throughout the book, which was VERY melodramatic and annoying--it felt very short-lived and not worth all of the build-up he promised throughout the whole rest of the book. He really could have and should have included a lot more information about Jack Ruby and that whole shooting, and all of the other conspiracy theories out there that might explain a lot about what happened. He didn't even explain anything about the Warren Report or what the official stance on the assassination is. I don't know; it seems like there was a lot missing.

Additionally, it felt very morbid to read about his shooting in detail. I felt really uncomfortable and sad reading about it after thinking about him as a person throughout the whole book. Overall, not my favorite book I've read and I don't plan to read any others by him. It was kind of interesting reading this book so soon after finishing Upstairs at the White House and comparing the portrait of JFK and Jackie that I got from both. Both books made me feel very sorry for Jackie and not a huge fan of JFK as a person. This book especially paints him as a sex addict (which maybe he was).

Book #44: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

I feel like this is a book everyone was assigned to read in high school. Or should have been. Or it used to be. I don't know why, but it was a book I felt pretty ashamed of not having read. (This and The Good Earth fall into the same category for me. Still haven't read The Good Earth but planning on it in a few months for book club.) My book club read this one for September but we were actually out of town for it and I never got around to it, but I finished it this week because I didn't want to totally miss this opportunity to be forced to read this book.

Potok writes about two young Jewish boys in Brooklyn in the forties during WWII (as the book opens). Reuven Malter, the narrator, is an Orthodox Jew but his father is also open to English learning and the need to be open to the rest of society. He attends a Jewish yeshiva that teaches both Talmud and English classes, with an equal emphasis on both (which many other Orthodox Jews look down on because studying more than the Talmud is not important). Malter meets Danny Saunders, a Hasidic Orthodox Jew, from a sect that is totally hardcore, when their baseball teams play each other and Danny hits him on purpose in the face with a baseball, and Reuven has to go to the hospital. Danny comes to his hospital room to apologize to him and they actually become best friends. They find that each of them are different than the stereotypes they would expect, and meeting Danny opens Reuven's eyes to different perspectives and viewpoints on the world. My favorite part of the book is how amazed and astounded Reuven is after getting to know Danny, and finding out how different he is from what he looks like. Reuven's experience in the hospital is life-changing to him and gives him much more appreciation for his health and his eyes after seeing the people without any hope to get things fixed. I loved how he came home and walked around thinking that everything looked different, even though it was all the same--his perspective had simply changed, HE had changed.

The other thing this book is about is the relationships that Reuven and Danny have with their fathers. Reuven is very close with his father, who is open-minded and scholarly. Danny's father is raising him "in silence," literally never speaking to him except for when they study the Talmud together. Reuven thinks this is barbaric and begins to hate Danny's father by the end of the book. But at the very end, his father explains to Danny (through Reuven) why he has been doing this: Danny is so brilliant that it was impossible for him to understand or care about others' feelings or sufferings, but he needs to be able to do that to be a rabbi like he is supposed to become. This "raising him in silence" was to teach him empathy for the sufferings of others because of his withdrawals from having a relationship with his father.

After WWII ends and they discover about the horrors of the Holocaust and the extent of the deaths of their people in Europe, Reuven's father becomes very involved in the Zionist movement. Reuven is concerned that his father is working himself to death. Reuven's father tells him something that was so moving to me--and seemed like almost the crux of this book to me:

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”

Book #43: Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies by J. B. West

This is the book for book club this month, and I almost wasn't going to read it (I have only gone to book club maybe twice, because of being on trips and not having read the book), but I did think it sounded interesting. And our library had an e-copy that I could instantly download and start reading. I really enjoyed it. This book is exactly what it sounds like: West was an usher and the Chief Usher at the White House for twenty-eight years, from the Roosevelts through the Nixons, and he spent a lot of time interacting with the First Ladies of those presidencies. The usher basically runs all of the complicated details of the White House, from event planning to decorating to answering any of the First Family's demands. He therefore spends a lot of time writing about each First Lady and their personalities, and hardly any time at all about the Presidents (who were less involved with the day-to-day running of the White House). I loved how West was very complimentary about each First Lady--I'm sure that there must have been many annoying things about working for each one of them, but from the way he wrote, they were all amazing, generous, opinionated but nice human beings. I bet a lot of people wanted to read this book and get some dirt about some of these First Ladies, but he definitely did not give it to anyone. He spent a lot of time trying to give each one the benefit of the doubt; when writing about the Kennedys, he talked about how they possibly could have been closer, but they had only been married for ten years and they were trying really hard to spend time together and be on the same page (which maybe hints at the fact that they weren't that close?). I think Bess Truman sounded like the nicest, and Mamie Eisenhower. (Two women I have literally never thought about.) I liked how the Trumans were such a close-knit family--he said that they spent all their time together and Bess was Truman's top advisor. He spent a lot of time talking about how the ladies redecorated the house, the types of entertaining they did, the huge renovation of the White House to make it safer during the Truman administration, and what each lady's priorities were as the First Lady. I thought that was so fascinating to learn about, and to just see what it's like working right up close and seeing these families in a closer light.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was that there wasn't really an overarching point to it. Each section just goes through each administration, and then moves on to the next. I feel like there could have been more of a theme running throughout, or more discussion of each transition (sometimes I felt left hanging). But overall, this was a very enjoyable book and I am glad to have read it (even if I had to read it on my phone, which is NOT enjoyable to me. The Kindle is way better, but it doesn't seem to work for this specific library app that this book fell under). And after reading this, it made me wonder about the more recent first ladies--what was it like for the rest of them? I'd love to know how it has changed in the recent era with First Ladies that are more involved and do more than just running the house (although some of his First Ladies did that too). I guess we need to get the more recent Chief Ushers to write memoirs too.

Book #42: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

I think I read a review of this book two years ago and it's been hanging out on my "to read" list on Goodreads ever since. I only left it on there because the original review was such a positive one, and I really trusted the reviewer and her taste, and because the cover looked so awesome, but the story itself sounded a little too fantasy-whacko for my general taste. It's a magical/sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty has been trained her whole life to marry and then kill the Beast, who is a demon who's in control of their whole land, and once she does that, they will be free of his reign. But of course once Nyx (the Beauty's name) does marry him, he turns out to be charming and demonic all at once, and she fights against falling in love with him as she spends her time trying to defeat him and his magical, ever-changing castle.

I was really into this book for the first 9/10ths of it. I couldn't put it down and was really sold on Nyx's character and her motivations. She was bitter and angry about her family's betrayal towards her in selling her to the Beast, and she was tough and fierce in all of the situations she got put into in the castle. I liked her personality and all of her conversations with Ignifex (the Beast's pseudo-name), and the romance between the two of them was really compelling and believable. Ignifex's character was kind of snotty and charming and even vulnerable at the right times, and Nyx was smart and tough but not over-the-top like in some YA novels. And I like all of the Greek/Roman mythological characters/references that got worked into the story--it felt so interesting. But I really got lost at the end. I just didn't understand how all of the drama got resolved and why it worked out. Spoiler alert: Nyx and Ignifex basically rewrite history so that he never becomes the demon in the first place, but then she forgets all about being married to him and has a completely different life. But somehow she remembers everything and goes and finds him and gives up her soul to be with him in torment forever, and that helps to defeat the evil ones in charge? I don't know, it just didn't make sense to me and I didn't love how she amazingly remembered everything about her past life and didn't think it was weird that she had a past life and immediately knew what she had to do to get back to her demon husband. But the rest of the book was still worth the read, even if the ending was a little too abrupt and confusing.

Book #41: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

This was definitely one of my favorite books when I was young. I have read it so many times there's no point in trying to count it. But it's been a long time since I've revisited it, and after re-reading all the Harry Potter books a few weeks ago I wanted to read something equally relaxing to my mind. It was fun to read this book this time because I have read more fantasy books in the last year (thank you, Brandon Sanderson), and thought more about the genre of fantasy, so it was interesting to see how this one added up. I think Levine does a great job of creating the expectations of the world that Ella lives in. There are all sorts of magical creatures, and magical rules, and she doesn't overdo it in trying to tell you what those rules are. It falls together very naturally. The beginning of the book, when Ella's mother dies of a preventable fever, has always been heart-wrenching to me, but the romance is very sweet. It still holds up for me, even though this is a middle-grade novel and not obviously as sophisticated of a plot as even a YA novel really would be. I still like Prince Char and Ella together, and I never feel like the language or conversation is stilted (like bugs me in so many other YA romances). But maybe that's just because of my over-familiarity with this story, so I can't be a totally unbiased reader!

Anyways, this was a perfect book to read this week. It took longer to get through (seriously should only take a few hours) because I was so, so busy this week, with planning/teaching my class, planning/teaching Joy School, and getting ready for Dane's birthday. I have some other books checked out from the library that I am excited to read soon too though. I want to get back into reading more now that I think I'm about to start feeling better!

Books #34-40: The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Okay, I know this is kind of cheating to include these books AGAIN in my book list. I have read them maybe three or four times just in the four or five years I've been writing on this blog. (But of course, this blog is purely for my own benefit and I do love looking back to see what I've read and when.) I don't know how many times it's been before that--but I do know that I read the first one MAYBE 100 times in my pre-teen and teenage years. I got the urge to read through the series again after reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (surprise, surprise), which was fun to read and all but not quite the same investment and satisfaction as the full novels. And since it wasn't written by J.K. it really isn't the same thing at all. I haven't had the energy to do much serious thinking lately--I'm deep into the first trimester of pregnancy and throwing up regularly and all I've wanted to do is lie down and not move--so these books were the perfect escape for this month. And for that same reason I'm not going to go to all the work of writing a separate review for each book.

I am always blown away by how Rowling successfully builds her world. My favorite chapter in all the series is, I think, when Harry goes to Diagon Alley for the first time and sees what being a wizard is all about. The details that Rowling includes--like the ingredients in the Potions shop and the name of the ice cream shop and Harry's ride to his vault in Gringotts bank--completely suck you in and make you feel like you are walking along with Harry seeing all these mind-blowing things with him. And the great thing is that Rowling does this again and again throughout the series whenever Harry encounters a new element of the wizarding world: going to Hogwarts for the first time, visiting the Burrow, at the Quidditch World Cup, at the Ministry of Magic and the wizarding hospital. Every one of those chapters isn't essential to the plot of the story--she could suffice with some basic description and skate along to some more action. But it's so important that we can wander along with Harry, wide-eyed and amazed, and feel like we're experiencing it with him. I think that is some of the real magic of Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling.

It's amazing to read these again and again and to notice new things about the series and how it develops. The first three books, for instance, are clearly of a different caliber than the last four. You can tell that Rowling is a younger, different writer, and that the overall plot hasn't been developed as fully at that point. It's really in the fourth book where the full story of the series comes to fruition, where you can see where things are going, where Rowling clearly has developed a backstory to Harry's young life and Voldemort's goals. I can see why some people (like my brothers) never made it past the first two books and didn't care to finish--the last four are much more interconnected (although I do LOVE LOVE the ending of the third book with the Time-Turner--it's AMAZING every time). I am going to try and convince my brothers to read them again and to get past the first few books--although now that the semester has started for them, it's probably futile until next summer. I truly think that you are missing out if you haven't read these. It's such a good action story, but it's so, so much bigger than that as well. Like a true fantasy story, it's about good versus evil and how one person can make choices to do good. It's emotional and it's moral and it has an satisfying climax to the series, and somehow Rowling managed to answer every question she raised in the series before she finished it. I love many, many, many books, but these are some of the ones that I can always come back to and never be disappointed by (like Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables). Thank you for helping tide me over the throes of morning sickness this time around, Harry. I'm sure I'll be back soon enough!

Book #33: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have read the other three books that have come out from the Austen Project--modern retellings of all of Jane Austen's books--and this, of course, was my most highly anticipated. Can anyone really retell Pride and Prejudice in a way that will be satisfying to anyone? (I mean, I read plenty of Jane Austen fan fiction, but it's a high bar.) And yet, I totally loved this book. Once I started it this afternoon, it was hard to put it down. (Obviously, since I finished it this evening and it's 500 (short) pages.) I think my favorite part of it was how Sittenfeld (Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, surprisingly) updated the Bennet family for the 21st century, how the three youngest Bennets are boomerang kids who went to college and moved back home and never got jobs, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have spent all their money and are bankrupt, and how Jane and Liz live in New York and rarely come home to visit their family in Cincinnati. And Bingley! Was a contestant on the "Bachelor" (or "Eligible" as it is called in the book)! I loved that twist, and how they incorporated it into the end. I think some purists would not appreciate all of the twists and things in this book, but I didn't mind them and it was pretty fun to pick out the events of the original book happening in today's world. The thing that I REALLY didn't like at the beginning was Liz's relationship with Wickham and how he was a sleazy married man--someone she had spent 15 years of her life pining after? That does NOT sound like the Lizzy that we know and love, and it really irritated me. And I also didn't love Jane's whole artificial insemination situation either--it seemed a bit contrived. But everything else was fun and definitely worth a read. I do love me some Jane Austen though. It never gets old.

Book #32: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I hadn't planned to buy this, but I decided to last week and thanks to the real-life magic of Amazon Prime, I had it in two days. I sat down and read it in just a couple of hours--it moved really quickly since it was a play script and not a traditional novel. And that right there is the main difference between this and the other books--the format interferes with your total immersion into the story like you get from the books. But I think it is really important to not let that get in the way of the enjoyment of this--since it is a script and you're not actually getting the real, full experience from seeing it as a play. I have read several places that it is amazing on the stage--or at least better than just reading it. As much as I wish I could see the play sometime, that seems unlikely unless it comes to Dallas, or at least the U.S., so reading the script will have to be all we get.

I didn't really realize that this script/play wasn't actually written by Rowling. It was written by Jack Thorne, the director of the play--although she helped to come up with the story. I feel like some places it does read like fanfiction--like when Severus Snape shows up again, and a few times whenever Albus and Scorpius refer back to specific small events that happened during Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts that seem unlikely that they would have known about (but everyone reading the books knows every one of them). I didn't love how Ron was portrayed as a total joke/jokester, never saying anything serious or being taken seriously--I feel like that was taking his role from the books wayyyy too far and I liked him less for it. I thought it was a little too neat at the end to have Harry and all his pals rushing off into danger again--but it was kind of satisfying. AND I really didn't like all the crazy effects of the time-travel--it didn't seem to jive with the time-travel from the books, where they don't make any changes but just see what already happened from a different perspective. This was totally different from that, and I think that's where it doesn't seem like Rowling wrote it. I did like seeing some human sides to Harry as a grown-up and the real-life things he's struggling with, and I liked seeing the relationship between Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny as grown-ups. And also Malfoy! As a multi-faceted character! With a son who is totally unlike him! I loved that.

Overall, a pretty satisfying read that is pretty much required reading for any Potter fan. Maybe not the best ever, but necessary.

Book #31: The Collapse of Parenting by Leonard Sax

I've heard lots of good reviews about this book and really enjoyed reading it. Sax talks about how parents these days are far too concerned with being their kids' best friend instead of actually trying to teach them how to grow up and the expectations and rules of being members of society. They're afraid to make them follow the rules or speak respectfully because then their kids won't love them any more. Unfortunately, this is really negative for kids, because they don't learn how to make responsible choices or to develop any discipline. Sax is arguing that parents need to re-assert their authority and make sure that their kids aren't taking their screens to bed, that they're sleeping normal hours, that they're eating all types of foods, etc. He also is very anti-medication for ADHD and other psychiatric medications and spends a whole chapter on why those are bad. He says that we really need to teach our kids humility--help them realize they're not more important than everyone else around them--and grit--help them to survive failures and other people not liking them--and to strengthen our individual family relationships so that they want to be with us and don't value peer relationships more than parents. (I thought that point was probably very important, but I just don't know how realistic that really is. I feel like almost every teenager spends years caring more about their peers than their parents. How can you really fight that? I don't know.)

The funny thing is--I basically fully agree with everything he said in this book. I already thought these things were true and I totally think that there is too much psychiatric medication, too many kids with too many screens, too much free rein for kids too young. I am all about strict parenting, etc. But half of this book just kept rubbing me the wrong way. I felt like Sax was very one-sided and completely not sympathetic or interested in what other people believe or feel. Particularly when he was talking about medications, he never once even hinted that there might be cases in which the medication might be necessary. He just kept saying that parents give their kids medication instead of bothering to give them expectations and hold them to it, so the medication is basically a substitute for bad parenting. I felt like it was a little harsh--maybe true, but maybe not, and definitely not in all cases. I felt like that throughout the whole book, and that held me back from wanting to recommend it wholeheartedly to other family members who may have been interested.

Book #30: Happy Times in Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren

This is the sequel to The Children of Noisy Village that I read with Dane a few weeks ago. So we moved on to this one after we finished--I loved that one so much that I bought it and this one on Amazon before we'd even finished it. It's the exact same format--each chapter is just a little vignette of something the kids did together and all of their goings-on. I loved the stories about them building caves in their hay barn and making a "cherry company" to sell their cherries. It makes me feel so reminiscent of the pure joy and "flow" that comes from really good play time when kids are just running around outside and being totally creative and unsupervised. I want so badly to give my kids that experience--although, of course, it will be a few years before they can do that. But I would just love for Dane to be able to run around like these kids do--but I don't know how much that would even be allowed in today's society. Maybe when he's 9 or 10 like these kids are? Hopefully.

The only bad thing about this book (literally--the only thing) is that occasionally the kids call each other "brats" or "stupid" and I don't want Dane hearing those words yet! So I just edit them out as I read and it's worked out fine.

I am so happy to have discovered these books. So much fun.

Book #29: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp

I picked up this book at my aunt and uncle's house while we were there, and since, like everyone in the world, I love The Sound of Music, I thought it would be fun to read, and it was. I don't have a ton to say about this book. It was very interesting to learn more about the real Maria and the family, and I loved reading the story about them in Austria. However, the part covered by the movie is only maybe the first 1/3 of the book, and the rest ends up blending together--all about the years of them touring America giving concerts to make money, and buying their farm up in Vermont and turning it into a music camp for the summers. I did like Maria's writing style and how she would sometimes go off on these artistic tangents (like, "Oh, applause! You could write a book on the different types of applause!" and so on for two paragraphs, in the middle of another story), and honestly, I thought she was a very good writer considering that this wasn't her Thing. It was a fun read, but definitely not something I would feel like I need to re-read someday.

Now I feel the need to re-watch the movie.

Book #28: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

I started reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and somehow it made me want so badly to revisit A Room of One's Own, which I read as required reading in English in high school, so I set that one down halfway to finish this one. I don't know why I wanted to read it again, since I didn't like it very much when I originally read it--I remember feeling like I was dragging to get through the few chapters assigned for reading each week and trying so hard to keep my attention. But this time, I think, since I have much more of a background and understanding of feminism and women's rights and Life with a capital L--not that I am well-versed in any of those things, but definitely more so than when I was 16--it was extremely interesting to me to read and I felt thoroughly absorbed in the major points that Woolf was making throughout the book. It's only 113 pages, so its length makes it easy to read and not to be intimidated by, but it includes a very good overview of Woolf's opinion of why women haven't written as much as men, and what women need to do in order to produce art like men have done over the centuries. So much of it seems almost commonplace or obvious now, but I think that is because of Woolf herself and the impact her writing and her thinking--and those of others in her generation--has had on us today.

Basically, Woolf's thesis is this: women must have an independent source of income, and a room of their own, in order to be able to produce good writing. That seems representative to me of the idea that art cannot be produced when the author is slaving away to provide the necessities of life, or when they are being distracted and taken away from their work by the demands of everyday life. So artists must be above those things--but women never have been throughout the ages. Women have been bearing children and taking care of those children and have been traditionally impoverished and at the mercy of their (commonly abusive) husbands for millennia, so it is no wonder that they have been unable to produce art like Shakespeare's in the time of Shakespeare. Because of this reality of women's circumstances, they also have a paucity of female authors as a heritage to trace back to or lean on as they write their own works, which are separate from the tradition of male writers. And many women who do write get caught up and twisted in their anger about their lack of freedom and abilities, which detracts from their finished products because they are writing about their anger instead of about their story. "Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot" (69-70). So women who want to write well--she holds up Jane Austen as one of the only women who has done this successfully--need to write of their stories and not of their grievances, and cannot think about their gender as they write. Writing about your gender (as a male or a female) only brings up anger and the need to justify yourself.

I thought it was interesting how in a few places Woolf makes it very clear that she is not advocating for women to become exactly the same as men--equals, yes, but genderless, no.  "It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education out to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities? For we have too much likeness as it is . . ." (88). This stood out to me because it seems like many people in our society have taken this to the opposite extreme (like the recent law which passed in the Senate to have women sign up for the draft). Woolf celebrates the differences between women's and men's writing and doesn't wish to see the decline of one, rather the increase of another which would complement both--and this applies not just to writing, but to all aspects of both genders. Woolf is not very sympathetic to mothers bearing children--she seems to be of the view that having babies is a necessary evil which is important to populate the earth but which detracts from the ability of women to reach their full potential. At the end of her lecture, she cautions the young women in her audience that they should no longer be having ten or twelve children like previous generations but instead only two or three. I obviously do not agree with her viewpoint on this--that children are just detracting from women reaching their full potential--but I think it is obvious that when women are having lots of babies, they are obviously spending their time elsewhere than being able to write the Next Great American Novel (or British, or whatever).

(I feel the irony of writing about this right now because in the middle of writing this, I had to stop and help clean up a poopy accident, a mothering distraction which Woolf would have despaired of.)

Book #27: The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren

I feel like I saw this book a few different places while I was looking into finding some chapter books I could read aloud with Dane. I figured that he was probably getting to the point where he could handle a longer story and that he doesn't need pictures to keep his attention any more. I saw this recommended as a good book to read with kids, and since it was written by the author of Pippi Longstocking, I knew it would be a fun read for him. I am SO happy that we read it. It was so cute--it reminded me a lot of the Rainbow Valley book from Anne of Green Gables, with each chapter being an individual story about these kids and their adventures they get up to. There are six kids who all live in three houses next to each other, and everyone calls their little row of houses "Noisy Village" because there are so many children who get up to mischief. Each chapter was only 5-6 pages long and had sweet, fun details about what sorts of things Lisa (the narrator) and her brothers and friends got up to.

This was a perfect, super fun book to read aloud with Dane. We laid on the bed and read 2-3 chapters a day, and he stared up at the ceiling listening and picturing what was going on. He totally absorbed it all and has been calling us "draggletail" from one of the chapters. I loved, loved, loved doing this with him and I cannot wait to read more books with him like this. We ordered this and the sequel from Amazon because just borrowing it from the library is not enough. And I decided I am going to write about them here on this blog so that I can remember what chapter books we read together so I can remember for reading with later kids too.

Book #26: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

I have loved Elizabeth Gaskell ever since I discovered her five years ago, but I don't think I've re-read this book since then (I liked Wives and Daughters more, which I think I'm going to re-read soon too!). North and South tells the story of Margaret Hale, who is uprooted by her father's crisis of conscience, when he leaves his profession as a pastor and they move from rural southern England to the industrial town of Milton in the north. At first, Margaret is prejudiced against the tradespeople of their new town and hates their new hometown, but the more she gets to know the people, both rich and poor, and the more she learns about their town and the way things work, the more she learns to appreciate it. She meets Mr. Thornton, one of the owners of a cotton factory, and he naturally falls in love with her despite her initial disdain and they have an up and down relationship that lasts throughout the book--until the final resolution in the last two pages.

This book is clearly a social commentary on the change and upheaval going on in their time during the Industrial Revolution in England, but it is also a great romance--two genres that don't seem to be readily mixed. Obviously most readers are probably more interested in the romantic aspects of the story, and I felt like a lot of the discoursing on the different classes and the differences between masters and men could have been condensed and still kept its value. I skimmed a lot of the seriously long paragraphs where it was clear they were only going on more and more about the economy of Milton or arguing about strikes--I felt like I got the gist of it, but I wanted to get to the good stuff. I loved Margaret as a character--the book uses a lot of words like "haughty" to describe her, but I don't get that sense at all. She seems clear-headed and brave and not afraid of people's opinions, all of which I like. Mr. Thornton is an awesome romantic hero--he loves Margaret, proposes to her, she rejects him, and he vows to continue loving her despite knowing she doesn't like him. (It's seriously the same love story as Pride and Prejudice, just with the added social commentary and socialist viewpoints thrown in.) The moments we get from his perspective are definitely heart-throbbing in his love for Margaret. I actually watched the BBC version of the book before re-reading it this week, and it was fun to compare the book-character with what I remembered from the movie; the endings are completely different and both very romantic and satisfying to me as the reader/viewer.

I don't have any more deep thoughts about this right now--I'm trying to finish this fast before Skyping with my family. But it was the perfect book to read this week while Tommy was gone. I love it.

Book #25: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Well, I hit 25 books before halfway through the year, so at least maybe I'll read 50 books this year! Haha. I don't know if I will ever make it up to 100 books again. But I feel like my reading less is perhaps an example of me living the "essentialist" lifestyle that McKeown is espousing in this book. Basically the book is promoting a lifestyle where we get rid of all the nonessential distractions that are making us too busy, and focus on living and working in a way towards our most important and beloved goals and purpose. McKeown spends some time detailing what being an "essentialist" really means, what are some of the things an essentialist must do/value, and what processes we can use to focus on only doing what we truly want. These are some of the most important points that stood out to me:

- Almost everything is nonessential. I think this is very true.
- If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. He tells some excellent stories that exemplify this. You need to decide what your boundaries and priorities are, and stick to them.
- You cannot do it all. There are trade-offs for everything. If you want to add a new opportunity, something else will suffer.
- "If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no." If you can't say with 100% certainty that you want to do something, then you shouldn't be doing it. Learn to say no gracefully if you're being asked to do something you don't want to do.

I read this book feeling the whole time like, "Yes, mmhmm, yep, I agree." They all seemed like great points, but none of it felt all that earth-shattering to me. Maybe that means I am already living a pretty essentialist lifestyle--which I think may be true. Being a parent of small children has meant that I have learned to remove the temptations to do things which sound like they may be fun (a day-long outing to downtown Dallas?) which would not make my life easier, and I have learned to consciously thrust aside many of the voices which say I should be doing lots of other things and trying to cause me mom-guilt. Like McKeown says, almost everything is nonessential. On any given day, I don't have to do anything other than keeping my boys happy and me sane. Of course, I have other things I want to do--projects for me, learning for the boys--but if they don't happen or if it's going to cause me stress, then we won't do it. I think there are probably lots of ways I could be more focused on prioritizing, and this book and How Will You Measure Your Life? have both made me want to actually verbalize those priorities and start taking steps to deliberately be working on them.

Book #24: Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

Personally, I'm a little surprised I hadn't read this book yet. I feel vaguely like I'd heard of it, but never was all that interested in it. But I actually really enjoyed it, especially the mixing of Jane Austen with the mystery genre. To briefly summarize: the Darcys are getting ready for a ball to be held at Pemberley when they find out that there has been a murder committed on their property. The murder involves Wickham, who was coming to drop Lydia off to visit (unannounced and uninvited) at Pemberley and he is arrested as the main suspect, although none of the main characters believe it is him. The book follows the trial and decision of whodunit. Most of the book follows Mr. Darcy, as Elizabeth wasn't very involved in a lot of the legal stuff, but we do get a bit from her perspective too.

I loved the post-Pride and Prejudice timeline, so we got a look into Darcy and Elizabeth together and what their life is like (very happy, don't be worried). I loved getting a look into all our favorite characters and seeing how they are getting along six years into the future; even Mary has gotten married to a preacher! I had just read the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy so it was a little jarring to read these two alternate takes on the story. I especially liked some of the insights into the questions that P&P left hanging--like the fact that Elizabeth believes that Charlotte was jealous of her and was the one who leaked Darcy's interest in her to Lady Catherine (which spurred her visit to Elizabeth). Oh, and the fact that Mrs. Younge was Wickham's half-sister! I thought those were some of my favorite parts. I also liked how a few places tied the story to other Jane Austen books--like Wickham worked as a secretary to Sir Walter Elliot and a baby was sent to live with Robert and Harriet Martin (although sometimes it was done a little clumsily; it wouldn't be natural to give all that much detail about very random people in normal conversation).

There were a few things that seemed very unlikely and unbelievable. Like why did Darcy concern himself so much with Wickham's outcome? He was super invested in making sure he wasn't convicted of being the murderer. Why? What was his concern? He hated Wickham. It seemed to go far beyond what I would expect of him. Also, I kind of saw most of the plot twists coming (like who the actual murderer was, and whose baby it really was of the cottagers'), which never ever happens, which means either I am getting better at this whole mystery-reading thing, or this book was way too obvious. So the main enjoyment of this book was the P&P tie-ins more than the mystery itself.

Book #23: How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

This book really resonated with me. I don't know why I picked it up in the first place, but, like many people, I enjoy inspirational self-help books and this one is on a higher plane than most other "quick fix" self-help books. Christensen (and his co-authors) argue that getting specific suggestions for how to improve our life is not the way to become better; we need to gather theories on what works based on observation and experiences gathered from large sets of data. And that is what he has done with his business work, and he suggests that many of the theories that apply to making a business successful can also be made more specific to us as individuals, which is what he does very successfully in this book. He tries to tailor his advice to three questions, things which he has seen many of his business colleagues and students struggle with over the decades: How can I be sure that:
1. I will be successful and happy in my career?
2. My relationships with people become an enduring source of happiness?
3. I live a life of integrity--and stay out of jail?

All of the chapters have individual theories that he explains how they apply to businesses and also to us as individuals. The first few chapters are about being successful and happy in your career, which are very important but not super applicable to me, so I didn't focus too much on those. But I really liked the chapters about relationships with your family.

• One section that really stuck with me--because it says exactly the same thing that I have been thinking about lately about parenting and why being a stay-at-home mom is so important to me--was when Christensen talked about the problems some companies experience when they outsource one part of their business, and then another, and another. They eventually lose the competencies that they once had and don't have any control over their business any more. He makes a parallel between this issue and outsourcing our parenting to outside activities and other people. So many people these days sign their kids up for numerous activities and their kids basically are doing everything outside of the home (not to mention that they're not doing any WORK inside the home any more). So all of the learning that children are doing is being done with the parents not being involved. And therefore, when they learn, they often learn from people that the parents don't even know--and eventually, all of the children's priorities and values and understanding of the world has come from all outside sources and none of it from the parents themselves. He says, "If you find yourself heading down a path of outsourcing more and more of your role as a parent, you will lose more and more of the precious opportunities to help your kids develop their values--which may be the most important capability of all" (138-139). I have been thinking so much about this lately!! I feel so proud of myself for being on the same wavelength as Clayton Christensen, although he was able to use language to articulate it that I have been struggling with. But the older Dane gets, and the more sponge-like he becomes, the more I realize that this is so true and so important--and I imagine it only becomes more important the older they become (and into teenage-hood). 
• He also makes the point that many people try to build their resume for work by checking boxes off a list--instead of trying to build skills and competencies that will allow them to truly succeed at their goals for the future. This is something we need to work at as parents as well. What skills and capabilities do we want our kids to have? We need to provide experiences and opportunities for them to get the experiences we want them to have--not just things like piano lessons, but experiences with failing something and getting back up again. Or missing a deadline and suffering the consequences. This is our job as their parents, and we can't be fooled by the desire to just build their self-esteem and helping them get good grades and allow them to miss out on the experiences they will need to survive in the real world.
• Christensen describes companies that focus on expressly creating a company culture--which can be so strong that eventually all employees in that company will follow the same procedures just by knowing that this is what we do at this company. Similarly, we should try to deliberately and consciously create our own culture for our family and our children, because then kids will know, "This is the way our family behaves." You need to decide what characteristics you want to encourage in your family, and those elements become your family culture--which will then help you focus on what activities you want to choose as a family, and what goals you have to accomplish. He says, "Make no mistake: a culture happens, whether you want it to or not. The only question is how hard you are going to try to influence it" (169). 

All of these ideas, plus several more about the overall goal from the book in the epilogue, have been very thought-provoking and motivating for me. The thing that really was emphasized to me, and which I know and have thought a lot about in the past, but which is hard to follow through on, is how important it is to be conscious and deliberate about my choices in all aspects of my life. It is so easy to let everything slip when I'm not feeling well or when I'm tired (like when I've been pregnant or with an infant), but since we want to have several more children, I can't just let 10 years slip by without deciding deliberately about how I want to spend my time and what decision we want to make about our life. I hope that I can get Tommy to read this book next so we can have some serious discussions about things and maybe make some overall goals we can work towards together.