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.