Book #51: By Your Side by Kasie West

Okay, folks. My last Kasie West novel for a while. (Because I've read all of them now, ha!) This book is about Autumn, who accidentally gets locked in the library over a holiday weekend with Dax, the school mystery kid who is known for having gone to juvie for something. They can't get out and end up getting to know each other and, eventually... fall for each other, even after they get out and things somewhat go back to normal.

I liked the premise of the book--I think it goes back to "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," but the idea of spending the night somewhere different like that sounds so exciting and not that scary (although I'm sure it would actually be scary in real life). I really liked how it was based off the Provo Library (I could tell it was even before I read her acknowledgements at the end) and set in Utah Valley, although there was just no mention of Mormonism. Most of West's books are set in California, since she lives there, so this was a little different. However, this book wasn't as good as P.S. I Like You and the romance seemed a little weird, especially once they escaped the library and Autumn was trying to decide who she liked best, Dax or Jeff (her original love interest). She seemed like she was using Dax shamelessly, and he didn't seem to notice. But this was a cute, really short book.

I love having really easy books like this to balance out the more heavy ones I'm reading too. But I really want to get to a heavy classic I've been meaning to read for ages, and I don't want to be someone who just reads these light YA novels. This is a fun way to offset that.

Book #50: 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker

I read For the Love by Jen Hatmaker a few months ago (aka I listened to it) and it mentioned her earlier book 7 in it. I looked it up after finishing that one, and the premise seemed interesting enough that I wanted to check it out. I am a sucker for books that are experimental memoirs, like The Happiness Project or in A.J. Jacobs style, where the authors decide on some shtick that they're going to do for a year or however long and write about it. I just kind of love those. So I decided to read this one too, since it is kind of in the theme of minimalism which I am semi-interested in (without really having to do any actual work towards getting there). Jen (I would normally call authors by their last names but it's hard not to feel like she is your friend when you listen to her writing style) chose seven areas of her life where she could pare down and stop wasting/buying/overdoing it, and focused on one of those things for a month at a time and reduced their usage of it in seven ways. In the food month, she only ate seven foods. In the clothes month, she only wore seven items of clothing. In the media month, they turned off seven of their screens/types of media. Her reflections on each month were about how each of these months positively impacted her family and her own mental outlook on the world, but also about how they play into her Christian religion (since she is predominantly a Christian author, after all). I really like listening to her musings about "the Church" and how they can improve it, and thinking about the difference between these Christians and Mormonism.

I am pretty pleased that it's the last day of May and I've already finished 50 books this year. If I can keep this momentum up, I should totally get past 100 books by the end of the year. I think the audiobooks and the Kindle are really making the difference in my number of books read during the year. Yay!

Book #49: P.S. I Like You by Kasie West

Another super-quick Kasie West read. I liked this one even better than The Fill-In Boyfriend which I read over the weekend, because Lily, the heroine was so much more interesting. She is a total hipster with a big family and is really shy and awkward. One day she writes some lyrics on the desk in her chemistry class, and the next day she sees that someone else has written back on the desk to her. She begins a conversation through letters to this mysterious person, first about music they like, and then about more personal family issues--while keeping it totally anonymous. The rest of the book she gets more and more interested in this person, and spends a lot of time trying to figure out who they are and once she does, what to do about it.

I liked how Lily had a big family (three siblings) and they all seemed to get along and work well together, even if they were always in each other's stuff. She liked her family, even if they bugged her sometimes. I also liked how the mysterious love interest turned out to be her arch-enemy (not totally surprising), but it was cute how they both overcame their antipathy towards each other through their letters. The romance was really cute in this one, and I really liked it. This book went really fast too, but it was a really cute, fun read.

Book #48: The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West

I love Kasie West's easy-to-read romances. This book probably took me less than two hours to read--ha! So it's definitely not something that you need to invest a lot of time or energy in. But each of her books are well-written and fun, and the characters are easy to follow. I'm never distracted by any poor writing and the storyline seems fun. This book was about Gia, whose boyfriend broke up with her in the parking lot of her prom, so she gets another guy who was waiting there to come and pretend to be her boyfriend so she doesn't get embarrassed in front of her friends--but she starts to like him instead and a whole process of changes happens as the story unfolds. I thought it was interesting how Gia begins to discover things about herself through this comedy of errors, and how she does some self-introspection and begins to change some things about how she treats other people because of what she's learned about herself. But the romance was cute, the characters were pretty believable, and I liked that it wasn't all tied up in a bow and perfect at the end. A lot of the conflicts that arose during the book (like with her friends and with her parents) weren't resolved--but there was hope for it to continue being worked on. Overall, another great Kasie West read.

Book #47: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

This book was really dang interesting. Moss delves into the processed food industry and focuses on how they use three main ingredients--sugar, salt, and fat--to get us addicted to eating their food so that we buy more and more of it. Moss basically is claiming that this processed food industry is responsible for the obesity epidemic, by putting in almost endless amounts of each of these things in their foods, camouflaging them so we don't notice how unhealthy they are for us, and then deceiving and misleading us about what is inside them to convince us to eat more and more. All these food industry companies want to do is to make food that is so good and alluring that it's impossible for us to put it down and stop eating it, and with a few exceptions, they don't really care that much if it ends up being absolutely terrible for your body. Of course, most foods (like soda or potato chips) are not meant to be healthy, and the food industry isn't trying to pretend otherwise--but people love them so much because of their ingredients that are calibrated to be as satisfying as possible to our taste buds, that they eat way way more of them than they should.

This book isn't much of an expose as much as it is an exploration of how much science and research and planning goes into making these foods, and how much we know about the effects of salt, sugar, and fat in our desires to eat and on our bodies. I feel like my eyes are opened a little bit to some industry machinations behind the scenes--I mean, obviously these foods don't just appear out of thin air, but I don't think I had ever thought that much about them. I feel really motivated after reading this to try and avoid these foods a little more. I feel like we do a pretty good job--we eat a LOT of fruit and a decent amount of vegetables, and we don't usually have TOO many processed snacks at our house. I never drink soda and rarely buy chips (except for special occasions like fun BBQs). But I think I have been taken in by claims about foods that claim they are "healthy" but actually are loaded with tons of sugar or salt and should be avoided more often than not. Eating a low-processed-food diet is a lot more work but really worth it in health benefits

Book #46: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

I loved this book. LOVED it. It's about a grumpy old man named Ove, who is super angry at the world and who hates everyone. When we meet him, he's all alone--then some new neighbors move in and knock over his mailbox with their moving truck. As the story progresses, you find out more about his life and his story, and his love for his wife (who has just passed away), and you can't help but loving Ove. He misses his wife so much that he tries to kill himself to get back to her--and he tries again, and again, and again, but every time his neighbors get in the way and he gets swept up in something like having to take someone to the hospital, and he has to put it off for another day. And eventually his neighbors become like a family.

Seriously, this story was just so sweet. I teared up a number of times and laughed out loud as well. I loved Ove's black-and-white personality and his view on his "principles," and especially his relationship with Sonja. And I loved Parvaneh, the neighbor who moves in, and how she doesn't let Ove's gruff exterior bother her.

Definite 5 stars.

Book #45: Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

I loved All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr so much that when I read that he'd written a memoir about a year he spent in Rome (ostensibly) working on his novel, I wanted to read it. His writing style is so beautiful--descriptive, but short sentences, easy to read--that I wanted to get more of it. He tells about the year he and his family spent in Rome while he was a fellow at the American Academy there--with his wife and his six-month-old twins. Obviously their kids being so young made the timing of this opportunity less than optimal, but their year in Rome was so intertwined with his experience with his new sons, as a new father, that this memoir is thoroughly about both. It was also interesting because they were there in the year that Pope John Paul II died, so they experienced the enormous mourning and funeral and he writes about that as well. I loved the details about his sons, how they grew in the year they were there, and the obvious joy with which Doerr writes about holding them and being their father (along with the inevitable and obvious struggle of parenting twins). But I also loved the intricate detail he wrote about Rome, and how they got to know the city and experience it there. It makes me want to go there--more than I even thought about it before. This was a great audiobook to listen to, and both aspects of his narrative (parenthood and travelogue) were very appealing to me.

Book #44: Seeking Mansfield by Kate Watson

I started and finished this one today--I couldn't put it down. It was really well done! It was a modern retelling of Mansfield Park, and I am really impressed that Watson was able to do it so well. That story is so difficult to translate to our modern audience, and Fanny is a really difficult (read: boring) heroine to us, so I was really impressed by how she managed to be inspired by the original characters and story but make it believable and interesting to us today. For example, Finley (aka Fanny) is living with her godparents (so her love interest is not her cousin) after her father died and her mother abused her. So she is suffering from PTSD from that abuse, which makes her really shy and unable to speak up for herself. I liked how that twist helped to justify Finley's push-over-ness, whereas Fanny is just a pushover. I also liked the romance between her and Oliver--instead of her secretly pining away for her cousin (ew), he is actually secretly pining away for her, and I liked how we got his perspective scattered throughout the book to let you see that side of the romance. However, I think my favorite part of this adaptation is the growth that Finley goes through, and how she goes from letting everyone else speak for her to being able to speak and act for herself--and the growth that Oliver goes through as well, in realizing that he was wrong for trying to make her decisions for her. Her relationship with Harlan Crawford seemed a little creepy and almost emotionally abusive by the end, when he was trying to blame her for him cheating on her--but that's how it happens in the original book too! It was satisfying when she realized what he was doing and moved on from him.

I thought this book was VERY well done and really fun. This was a really cute, quick, but awesome read, and a satisfying Jane Austen rewrite. The author is a Mormon mom from Arizona as well, which is pretty cool.

Book #43: Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

This is the book club book for June. I wouldn't have heard of it and probably wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. Susannah Cahalan writes about her seemingly random experience with a severe autoimmune disease that came out of nowhere and started attacking her brain. She began acting crazy and almost completely insane, and spent a month in the hospital where doctors tried to diagnose her without success. They thought she probably needed to go to a psychiatric ward, until one doctor came in and realized that the right side of her brain was inflamed and completely not working. They managed to treat her and she slowly recovered and came back to her normal self (although it took almost a year to fully get back to normal). She was/is a journalist for the New York Post, and she decided to write about her experience and to learn about the disease she had and what happened to her while she was in the hospital (none of which she actually remembers).

It was a pretty interesting story, but I feel like it could have been condensed in half and still been as interesting. It really didn't need to be a 250 page book. The whole story also seemed anticlimactic, since there wasn't a really obvious end to her situation--she was released from the hospital but was still needing tons of treatment, and slowly just trickled on to getting better. I also didn't think she wrote about the scientific/medical stuff in a very interesting way, although, of course, that's hard to do. But the very idea of her change from normalcy to being completely out of it and almost insane is gripping and scary and she does a good job of tracing how she descended in that direction. I liked how she wrote about her family and her boyfriend and how they were so devoted to her while she was in that state. She had only been dating her boyfriend for four months and yet he stuck with her and came to the hospital every night and helped her get back to normal for the year after she came home--I was pretty amazed.

The thing that really struck me was that her experience was really pretty similar to Dane's Kawasaki disease last fall. Her brain was inflamed and she was treated with steroids and IVIG; Dane had an autoimmune disease causing inflammation of the blood vessels and he was treated with IVIG. I just kept thinking about him and our experience in the hospital--very different from hers, but similar in the medical principles behind each disease.

Book #42: Still Alice by Lisa Genova

I started this tonight and just plowed through it in one evening. I didn't expect it to be as compelling as it was. I knew the main premise because of the movie--following a woman as she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease--and I thought the book does an excellent job to depict what would happen to someone in that situation. You can feel Alice's desperation and fear and sadness as she notices what is going on and as her symptoms degenerate. I liked how there were some positive aspects to the disease too--that it seemed like her relationships with her family members changed in a positive way because of her diagnosis. Her family got closer and she healed some problems between her and her daughter, and she re-prioritized her life (which seemed inordinately heavy on her career and less on her family, which always seems sad to me). Overall, it was a definitely wrenching book to read--although I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly it went and how easy it was to read--and it was also wrenching to imagine how it plays out in real life, and I am definitely interested in watching the movie now too.

Book #41: Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

This was a book club read for last month, which I didn't end up attending because of the new baby and all. But I figured I wanted to read it anyway, and oh man I am so glad I did. I think I may be a sucker for frontier stories, like Laura Ingalls Wilder. This one was set in 1918 Montana, which hits even more close to home for me because my grandpa was born in Montana just 20 years later. So it can't have been all that different for him in his growing-up years. In the afterword to the book, the author says that the main character, Hattie Inez Brooks, was actually her grandmother who went and proved up on a claim in eastern Montana (although she took liberties with the details of the story). I LOVE that! What a great way to honor your family history.

This book follows Hattie Inez Brooks, a sixteen-year-old who inherits her uncle's Montana claim and has to go work for a year to "prove up" on the claim. She is an orphan and goes out there hoping to find a home, since she never really had one growing up. She arrives to find out that there is a long list of requirements for "proving up," including building 480 rods of fence and planting 40 acres. However, she digs in, and she makes friends with her neighbors. WWI also plays a role in the story, through her letters with her old friend Charlie off fighting in France, and through the anti-German sentiment that shows up in her county (affecting her best friends, the Muellers).

I really enjoyed this book. I listened to it, which I think may have been part of the appeal. If I had been reading it, it probably would have taken me an hour and a half to finish, and I may not have had enough time to get really into it. But listening to it made me slow down and appreciate the story and the descriptions of rural Montana at the time. I liked how close-knit the community was that Hattie created, and the descriptions of the work that she had to do (although it didn't seem like one girl could really accomplish all that was required--by the end of the book there wasn't as much talk of her working at all and I felt like there should be more of it). But I loved the character of Hattie--she was simple but mature and determined. I'm glad to have been introduced to this book.

Book #40: Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins

This was a very cute read-aloud chapter book that I read with Dane. We both enjoyed it enough that I read multiple chapters each day, and he was begging for more. The book, a seeming knock-off of Toy Story, follows three main toys in their very average day-to-day lives as a toy: Lumphy, a buffalo, Plastic, a ball, and StingRay, a sting ray. Each chapter relates a cute little story about something that happens to them (like Lumphy gets dirty at a picnic and is scared to get washed in the washing machine, or when Plastic gets taken to the beach and almost gets eaten by a dog). The thing that is really cute about this story is the little personalities of the toys and their interactions and conversations with each other. They are very innocent and unaware of the real world, and it makes the story very child-friendly. It isn't as complicated as Toy Story in some ways; they don't seem worried that the Little Girl will discover that they are animate (sometimes I wonder how their adventures go unnoticed, like when the dry-clean-only StingRay gets soaking wet in the bathtub and is still wet when the Little Girls gets home) and they happily roam around the house and do all sorts of things without being discovered at all. I really liked how sweet the story was, and really would like to check out the sequels.

Book #39: All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

I put this book on my to-reads list on Goodreads three years ago, mostly because it was written by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward themselves, and I remember reading about them and their coverage of Watergate in my US history textbooks in middle school and high school. Since they were at the forefront of uncovering what happened at the time, it seems really appropriate to read their accounting of it and how it happened. This book was pretty much a blow-by-blow account of Bernstein's and Woodward's reporting, and how they put together what other activities were behind Watergate. They detail all of their calling of sources and trailing around behind people and many conversations they had to put two and two together. They started out with there just being one small break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at Watergate and digging to find that there was more and more and more actually going on behind the scenes, eventually incriminating even the President himself.

This book really reminded me of The Pelican Brief by John Grisham--Grisham must have used this as a model for his investigative reporter. Of course, it wasn't so easy to follow as Grisham, because this was actually real life and it was much more complicated than one small fictional investigation. The thing that made this book a little hard to read is that it was published in 1974, almost concurrently with what was happening at the time, so there isn't very much explanation or background to bring you up to date with who each character is or why they are important, especially for someone reading this 40 years after the fact. It was really weird to get to the end of the book and to find out that it ended before Nixon resigned--this was published before the investigation even ended (which seems a little premature). They apparently wrote a sequel to it explaining the end of Nixon's presidency, although I'm not sure I'm going to read it. The thing that I really enjoyed about this book was how we get a behind-the-scenes look at how journalists piece together their work and make executive decisions about what sorts of stories they are planning to write. They get their information and then have to decide what lead and what story and what angle they are planning to write from. I obviously knew this, but it was great to see this process firsthand and to get a greater appreciation for the importance of the press.

Book #38: Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

I listened to this book purely because of the movie. I haven't seen it yet (but I hope to as soon as it comes to Redbox), but the premise sounded super interesting: black women working at NASA who were responsible for helping put the men on the moon. It sounds almost impossible that there was this group of black women in the 50s and 60s who overcame all the prejudices and impossibilities of that time and were able to not only earn the education necessary but to also survive and thrive in the competitive environment of NASA as mathematicians and engineers. But there were these women and they sound pretty amazing. This book is specifically about three individual women--although there were plenty more--and about the development of NASA and its changes from segregation to integration throughout the decades of the Civil Rights movement.

I thought each story about each individual woman was fascinating. They all sounded like extremely strong women, who knew what they wanted and were willing to work incredibly hard to get it. They were each very independent, most working as single mothers to raise their children and also trying to have a job with prestige and which they loved, and they were very smart. I was inspired by how they were willing to work and sacrifice to achieve their goals (trying to lift their children up to a better place in life). I also really liked the general overall institutional story of NASA and the United States and integration, etc. The thing that bugged me about the story was that it seemed like the author chose the three women she wrote about at random. Maybe they were the main three she was able to interview and get the most information about. They definitely had excellent qualifications and did really amazing things, but they didn't actually interact that much with each other. I felt like the beginning of the book focused a ton on one woman, but then halfway through it shifted to being more about another, and there wasn't sufficient closure about what happened to the first woman or what she accomplished. It seemed a bit random and I wanted more interconnection between their stories. But overall, it was still a very interesting book and it told a story about a "hidden" part of US history that I had no idea about, so it was definitely worth the read (or listen).

Book #37: Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

In this book, Orenstein talks about many different aspects of girl culture today, and how many of those things (like the obsession with things being pink, Disney princesses, Miley Cyrus, etc.) can be damaging to girls by making them overly focused on their appearances and hyper-sexualized from far too young of an age. She does a lot of reporting/visiting places like Disney World, the American Girl store, a Miley Cyrus concert, and also shares her experiences with this topic with her own daughter. Some of those experiences were rather heart-wrenching, like when her husband told her daughter she could have a Barbie, and she disagreed, and it ended in tears for both her and her daughter as she tried to negotiate this tricky question of what sorts of influences she wanted to allow her daughter to have.

I thought this book sounded mildly interesting, and just having had our first girl, I wanted to see what Orenstein had to say about raising girls in today's world. I have noticed many friends whose daughters wear only princess dresses and can repeat all the lines from the latest Disney princess movie and I have been bugged by that overwhelming obsession among little girls these days. However, I totally am aware that it's hard to keep kids from becoming obsessed with what they want. Before Dane was born I was determined that I wouldn't get into "brands" and get really into certain shows like Thomas or Disney characters--and yeah, that happened pretty quick. As parents, we definitely have some control or influence over what our kids get into but not total control. However, I think that Orenstein is overly concerned with this. I totally agree with her about the importance of giving girls good influences and not being too immersed in the Disney princess culture. (I didn't realize that "Disney princesses" weren't a thing until 2000!) But I think it shouldn't be that hard to just say no to buying ridiculous amounts of princess gear and to expose your kid to different types of activities and interests. Kids don't have to come pre-programmed to be obsessed with one thing. I also don't think girls should have NO ability to dress up or play princesses--I remember the Pretty Pretty Princess board game, where you got to put on pieces of jewelry as you went around the board, and LOVED it (and I was pretty darn tomboy-ish). I think the trick is moderation in all things. Of course.

I was annoyed by Orenstein's tone through a bit of the book. This book could DEFINITELY have been more in-depth and analytical about the research that has been done on this issue (because of course tons has been done)--it was a super quick read and was really light on actual information. I feel like it could have been a lot better researched. It also felt like a step back in time, since it was written seven years ago, and she talked a lot about kids being on Facebook and Miley Cyrus and Hillary Duff--all of which do not really apply today.

Book #36: What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

I have checked this book out from the library three different times without reading it. For some reason it looked bigger than it actually was, intimidating enough that I felt like I needed a significant commitment to start it, and I never felt that. So when I finally did start it yesterday, I was excited to find that I couldn't put it down and finished it within 24 hours of starting it. The book is about Alice, who falls down and hits her head and loses ten years of her memory, waking up literally thinking that it's 1998 and that she's pregnant with her first baby. She is surprised and horrified to find that in the present day, she's alienated from her sister and old friends, has three kids, and is getting a divorce from her beloved husband Nick. The book follows her discovering all the things that she did that she's forgotten and her decisions of what to do to fix them.

I really enjoyed this book. I think part of the reason I never picked up this book in the first place was because I knew it had to do with her getting a divorce from her husband, which always leaves a sad taste in my mouth (I don't love reading about divorces). But I loved Alice's personality and how she dealt with this new experience, and how she began to work things out. I thought the other story about her relationship with her sister, and Elisabeth's journey through infertility and how it changed her dealings with her, was heart-wrenching and sad and real. I also liked that things didn't work out magically and get fixed all of a sudden, but that it took some time for her to put things back together. This book was definitely worth the read for me and I'm glad I FINALLY checked it out (it's one that seemingly everyone has read except me).