Thursday, August 31, 2017

Book #89: Galapagos: Islands Born of Fire by Tui de Roy

Obviously I read this because we are planning a trip there when we go visit my parents in November. (Ahhh!) I decided I wanted to learn more about it and to actually be able to enjoy and appreciate what we get to see while we are there, so I've checked out a few books from the library, including this one. I thought this book was actually pretty fascinating from the author's perspective, as someone who actually grew up on the islands of the Galapagos starting in the sixties, when there were hardly anyone living there and no tourist industry at all. De Roy's childhood and life sound like something out of a book--not real. They traveled around on a boat from island to island, just learning about things and trying to visit new places and see all the different species and shells and volcanic eruptions they could see. De Roy became a nature photographer after her childhood there and has had a ton of crazy experiences, especially back here in the Galapagos, from what she writes about. I found it very interesting just to picture her life and to read about her experiences and the things she's seen with her own two eyes in this book, and to see the pictures that accompanied it. For example, she visited the Island of Floreana while the volcano there was erupting, because it was erupting, because she wanted to see it and to be able to photograph it, and watched its effects on the wildlife in the area and how the lava killed animals and how it made the water boil, etc. I mean, I have this fear of volcanoes and would definitely NOT have been rushing towards it to see how it happened, so it was really cool to read about her experiences and live vicariously through her (although I definitely don't want her life, that's for sure). She also was very good at writing about the different species there and I felt like I learned a lot about the islands as a whole, although it didn't help me to try and distinguish between the different types of islands.

Book #88: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I was shocked to find that I'd never reviewed this book on Goodreads--or on here, I think. That means I haven't read it in the last five (5!!!) years, and that's pretty unfathomable. I am pretty sure I've read it at least ten times, and I don't think I can overstate my feelings about this book: I absolutely, deeply, truly LOVE it. Everything about it. I love Scout's naive, childish voice we get the story through and her incomplete perspective and her feisty, troublemaking personality and her total lack of embarrassment about her life. I love Atticus's determination to raise his kids the way he thinks they ought to be raised, and to teach them these very difficult but important life lessons. I love Jem and how Scout looks up to him and how we watch him start to grow up through her eyes. I love how much we learn about the town and the street where they live, and how well Lee creates the sense of place that allows us to envision their childhood and their entire empty summers roaming their street. I love how hard Atticus fought for justice in Tom Robinson's case, and how Lee didn't let him win, even though he should have, and how Scout and Jem learned about real life and how things were in their old sleepy Southern town. I love their childhood obsession with Boo Radley and how he turns out to be their hero in the end. I kid you not, I. love. this. book. It had been so long since I read it that I wasn't sure if I would still love it as much, and I forced myself to go slow and read every word and not skim to get ahead to the story like I sometimes catch myself doing. And I was reading with a smile on my face almost the whole time (except for the sections where I wanted to cry).

Whenever people would ask me what my favorite book was, years ago, I'd always say this one. And I'd let it fall into the background and forgotten about it, kind of. I also think I started to feel like it was too cliche to say this was my favorite book, because it's so many people's favorite.

But seriously. I think this just may be my favorite of all time.

Note: I read this again because I'm going to read Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, next, for book club next week. I am a little nervous because people have said they didn't love it and that it changes the perspective of what happens in this book. But I won't let it. It's a totally separate entity to me. So here we go with that one.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Book #87: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I swear that I thought I'd read this book--sometime in college or shortly thereafter? But I honestly had no recollection of this story reading it this time around, so I'm doubting that I actually did. I'm glad to have finally crossed this one of the proverbial "to-read" list, but OH MAN it was painful. This was definitely not my favorite book in the world. I think it would have been easier to swallow if I'd had the appropriate expectations for it--if I'd known it's like a darker Count of Monte Cristo with twisted revenge fantasies as the main impetus of the plot. But I feel like everyone talks about this as a love story, and that is NOT what it reads like for me. I understand that Catherine and Heathcliff have this dark, all-consuming love, which governs their whole lives and makes him obsessed with her and with torturing and avenging himself on everyone who kept him from her, and he spends his whole life trying to find her and catch her and get close to being with her. But I'm sorry, that is not at all appealing to me. I really hated the abused child turning child abuser plotline, where Heathcliff's bad childhood twists him into being a basically evil person to everyone around him, and how all the children around him get warped because of his terrible treatment of them. (Why was I not prepared for this? Why doesn't anyone talk about THAT part of it when they talk about Wuthering Heights?) I also really didn't like the double framing of the story (two different narrators talking to each other about the story?), and felt like it was super awkward and totally detracted from the plot. But I can excuse Bronte for that, maybe she didn't know about having a third-person omniscient narrator or something back in the day.

I was somewhat relieved that there was a redeeming ending with at least one semi-happy relationship coming to pass after he died, and I guess the hints that Heathcliff and Catherine are together again after death make it a somewhat happy ending as well. And, I can see why people like how she writes about the setting and the moors (although really, I don't see a ton of imagery or setting descriptions--it's not like it's Prince Edward Island in Anne of Green Gables or anything). But I just don't understand why this is so many people's favorite book and how they love it so much. I liked the last fifty pages the most because I was moving quickly and coming to the end--the first half of the book especially was painful.

My favorite lines were when Catherine was talking about her love for Heathcliff (before everything became depressing): "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire" (80).
"If al else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it... My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff--he's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself--but as my own being" (81-82).

Monday, August 28, 2017

Book #86: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

I was drawn to read this one because it was a YA romance with two Indian lead characters, which I thought was neat, and I am always interested in something a little more diverse than just the same old same old YA romance. Dimple Shah goes to a summer coding camp in San Francisco and meets Rishi Patel there--only to find out that their parents have been arranging their marriage and hoping they would meet there. Dimple is COMPLETELY against marriage in general (at age 18) and arranged marriage in particular, so this starts them off on the wrong foot. But they quickly get to know each other and overcome their differences.

So, the first half of this book was CUTE. Cute cute cute. They have a bad misunderstanding about the whole arranged marriage thing in the beginning, but then they have to get over it and get to know each other through the coding camp, and begin to fall in love. I loved how that all happened and really enjoyed it all, even if it was relatively predictable/unsurprising (but I guess all romances pretty much are?). But it started to fall apart for me close to the end. The things that bothered me:
-The author never actually writes about them working on their coding or attending class or working on their project. According to this book, they spent the whole six weeks going on dates, hating the popular kids in their group, and preparing for the Bollywood dance they performed at the talent show. No coding is ever mentioned, which is weird, since Dimple is apparently OBSESSED WITH CODING and nothing is as important as coding, ever.
-Dimple's personality really got to bugging me by the end. She was super anti-Rishi, but then in like a day decides, actually, no, I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. Then she decides, no, this is moving too fast and I don't want to talk to you ever again. Then she decides, but I really love you. Seriously, I had whiplash from trying to follow her random decisions about their relationship that had no prelude or warnings. Rishi was way more understandable, but Dimple really did not make sense to me.
-The author writes really in detail about the first three weeks of their coding camp, and describes all of their dates super clearly and really shows how and why they fall in love. Then all of a sudden, you turn the page, and the camp is over. She completely cops out and you turn the page and they're all like, "Wow, I can't believe camp is over! I can't wait to find out who won the prize!" She gave up on helping to build up to it all and skipped over a TON of important information, I felt like. Not cool.
-Both Dimple and Rishi were way over the top in their expressions of love for each other. I don't know, I never talk like that. Also, they both had their insides turn to liquid like 5 times and that was really overdone.

Overall, the second half of the book totally ruined it all for me. It was going really well and then I lost interest and was just groaning through the rest of it trying to push through without stabbing Dimple in the eye.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Book #85: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

I'm pretty sure Tommy and I read this book right after we got married, and I've thought about it a lot since then. A lot of times it helps me to realize that something is somebody expressing love in their love language, even if it's not something that I appreciate. But I didn't remember much of what he actually talked about, so I picked this up and read through it the other night after someone mentioned it in their talk at church (it only took about an hour and a half to get through this, because it's short and because I'd read it before/knew the main gist already). I think the main thing that is important about this book is the idea that people feel and express love to each other differently, and if you aren't sensitive to how your spouse feels love from you and you aren't expressing love to them how they feel it, they won't know how you feel. Chapman fills his book with stories of different couples who go from being completely unhappy to blissful just by realizing that they need to change how they express love to each other. I like this main idea, although I'm not totally sold on his claim that there are five main love languages. I feel like it's like personality tests that say there are four types of personalities--like, you're going to say EVERYBODY in the world feels love in one of five ways? The five languages (according to Chapman) are Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gift Giving, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Of course, there are lots of different ways to use the five languages (dialects, he says), but I still feel like the main benefit of this book is just understanding that main idea and then applying it to your partnership/family as it works.

As an aside, my love language is definitely Quality Time, closely followed by Acts of Service and Words of Affirmation. Physical Touch is pretty far behind, and Gift Giving is almost non-existent for me. It's funny to realize how much of a disparity there is for me between the different categories.

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Book #84: My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

This. Book. Was. Hilarious. I loved it. First off, DEFINITELY was a great audiobook listen, because the reader, Katherine Kellgren, was AMAZING. Absolutely amazing. She had the most fantastic British accent, and did excellent voices for every single one of the characters. This was one book where having such a good narrator made me enjoy this book 900 times more than I might have just reading it. Although, the story was fantastic itself as well. This book is a re-telling of the story of Lady Jane Grey, the nine-days queen of England after Edward Tudor died and before she was dethroned and eventually decapitated by Bloody Mary. But that one-sentence summary, which is all you'll ever find about Jane Grey (as the authors say tongue-in-cheek in the book), is not the whole story. Instead, they change everything and make the story awesome and make it so that Jane does NOT die--and, actually, neither does Edward--and even add in a bit of magic into the world to spice things up. Instead of the Catholic vs. Protestant feud that Henry VIII started (look at my British history skills coming into play), this book claims it was Ethion magic vs. Verity non-magic that was the big dividing point. Ethions are able to transform into an animal form, and Verities believe they should be exterminated. This Ethion magic becomes a major point in the story as Jane's husband who she is married off to at the beginning of the book is an Ethion... and he is a horse. For half of the time. I loved how there were three different viewpoints that each chapter rotated between: Jane, Edward, and Guilford (Jane's horse husband), and how these three viewpoints all felt very different and had their own voices. Both of the different romances, between Jane and G, and Edward and Gracie, were very sweet and cute and funny as well.

The authors say that they are writing in the spirit of The Princess Bride and their hilarious, irreverent tone definitely follows in the same sphere. I loved how the narrators continued to "check in" with the reader and break the fourth wall of the story by telling us things behind the characters' backs and how they would give little asides like, "He looked like a regular Casanova--although the comparison didn't actually cross his mind, since the actual Casanova wouldn't be born for another two centuries." All in all, this was a really fun and excellent read.

Side note: I saw some people on Goodreads label it as YA but there's nothing YA about this, in my opinion.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Book #83: Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner (Boxcar Children #2)

Dane LOVED the first Boxcar Children book so much (yay!) that we are moving through the first ones together, slowly but surely. This is the second one in the series--I found a set of the first eight that I bought on Amazon. (There are apparently like 120 of them so there's no way we are going to own all of them... but the first, original set I wanted to get.)

I feel like reading this book, Warner must have been kind of unsure how to recreate the magic and independence and self-reliance that is the main theme of the first book for a sequel. Now that the kids have been rescued and live with their super-wealthy grandfather, they have servants to do everything for them, so what's the fun in that? So she has the grandfather send them to fend for themselves and live on a private island he owns for the summer, because he thinks that would be fun for them. (It's so hilarious that this was considered okay back then--for four children to go live alone on an island unsupervised all summer long.) They forage for food and dig up some surprises and make a museum out of the things they find, and discover an unknown cousin in the process. It definitely wasn't my favorite of the Boxcar Children books, but not bad. Dane loved it and has been making little museums out of his toys and stuffed animals in his bed at night, and is begging to move on to the next one during our reading time.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Book #82: A Tangled Web by L. M. Montgomery

Before a year ago, I'd never read any L. M. Montgomery books except for the Anne of Green Gables books, although I'd read those hundreds of times. I LOVED those, but I'd never really considered reading any others of hers. This book was exactly like those ones, especially like Rainbow Valley and some of the later books that had a lot of short stories in the chapters. A Tangled Web is about two families, the Darks and the Penhallows, who are all intermarried, and want to inherit the hugely important Dark jug that Aunt Becky is giving away when she dies. She decides that she won't allow them to know who inherits it for a year, and make it based on people's behavior (as judged by her executor)--and this book is about that year after her death and how the whole clan acts in trying to be the ones who get the infamous, all-important jug. There are about seven different main stories that get told throughout the book, and the nice thing about Montgomery stories is that they always end happily, so there are about five weddings and everyone kind of gets what they want in the end--even though they are all surprised by what happens with the jug in the end.

I liked how this felt so classic Montgomery to me, with hilarious, quirky, opinionated characters that seem to come off the page (I think Grandpa Murphy would have fit right in with some of these clan members). I especially liked the story about Gay Penhallow, who was young and in love and goes through her first heartbreak, and her emotions and realizations during that year felt very realistic. But I couldn't seem to quite get into it; I was kind of waiting for it to be done. I think maybe because there wasn't one main story to tie it all together? And I felt like some of the stories were a little silly and unbelievable, like the couple who got married ten years before but on their wedding night they separated and haven't spoken since, but the man still secretly loves her and the woman just needs a nudge to go back to him and they will live happily ever after? I'm sorry, but no, that would not have happened. Any of it. But it was a fun read and I'm happy to have it on my shelf.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Book #81: Lucky in Love by Kasie West

I've read maybe four other of Kasie West's YA romances, and have usually been pretty charmed by them. This one COMPLETELY fell flat for me. I didn't even finish it; I skimmed through the last half because I totally lost interest in it. The premise of it was that Maddie wins the lottery in her one random ticket she bought on a whim, and everything and everyone in her life changes. It was... completely and totally stereotypical. I feel like I've read this exact story before--all the unexpected bad things that happen when someone wins the lottery. Gasp! She wins the lottery and people start asking her for money and cheating her and treating her like she's popular and she makes stupid decisions about her newfound wealth! I honestly don't know why this book even got written, it was so cliche.

The two things I liked about this book were:
-Asian love interest--a nice difference from most YA novels, and appropriate for being in Southern California, where it was like 50% Asian (at my high school)
-Based in Tustin, five minutes from where I grew up, and at the Santa Ana Zoo, which I've visited many times and where I have pictures of Dane riding the exact carousel in the cover. So I was able to picture it all myself and enjoyed that.

But otherwise... not so much.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Book #80: Jane of Austin by Hillary Manton Lodge

I've read a lot of Jane Austen retellings. I have a whole category dedicated to that group (and other Regency books). This one was a REALLY GOOD Sense and Sensibility retelling. Usually, most retellings seem to lose out in the characters' personalities or the plot just doesn't seem to translate to the modern era very well, and even if I enjoy them, it requires a little bit of suspension of disbelief to make it work really well. This book may have stood on its own, even without the Jane Austen connection--although, of course, half of the fun of a retelling is anticipating what is coming next in the original plotline and figuring out how they make it work in a modern storyline.

In this story, Celia, Jane and Margot Woodward are left to fend for themselves when their pretty much good-for-nothing father leaves them and the country after embezzling money at his company. Celia and Jane decide to set up a tea shop to make money, and things work well for a while, until their new landlords up the rent and kick them out of their San Francisco shop-space and apartment. So they move to Austin, as a new place to start fresh and find a new place to set up shop, moving in to the guesthouse of a cousin of their (dead) mother's. And... you can guess what happens from there. I really liked how Lodge was able to modernize the Dashwood sisters and their predicament, and how she wrote them in a way that made them seem almost less charicature-ish than most retellings and even the original story, where Elinor is SO logical and Marianne is SO emotional. In this book, the two sisters definitely had more of those personalities, but the story was told from Jane's perspective (the Marianne of the story), which I feel changes the whole point of the overall story. Instead of looking on at Marianne's hysterics and obsessive romance and thinking she's totally overdoing it, you are in Marianne's shoes and seeing her get swept off her feet by the picture-perfect guy. I also liked that we got into Callum Beckett's perspective as well (the Colonel Brandon), which also gives the story a lot more depth. AND I really liked all the quotes about Texas and tea before each chapter--I thought that was cute. The author must live in Austin or Texas, because she really knew her Texas food places--Torchy's was mentioned several times, and Amy's Ice Cream, and a lot of Austin favorites. I thought the focus on tea throughout the story was pretty cute. And I thought it was kind of neat how there were recipes sprinkled throughout the story, since Jane was a huge baker/cook herself (for their tea salon) and that was a major hobby and interest of her character's.

All in all, this was a riveting audiobook--I kept sneaking a chance to listen every time I was nursing or sitting down for more than a minute, and I thoroughly enjoyed this twist.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Book #79: The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines

Like everyone under the sun, I have watched and loved Fixer Upper, and loved Chip and Joanna Gaines. I've also made the pilgrimage to Waco (which everyone under the sun has also done if you live in or travel to the Dallas area) to visit their shop at the silos. But I'm not like a super-fan or anything, I only watched whatever episodes were on Netflix and whatever I've happened to see at the gym while working out. But Chip and Joanna have always impressed me as the real deal, cute parents with a cute family who are hardworking and relatively normal, living in a pretty average town (Waco is really nothing special, even if they make it look like heaven on earth on their show). It was fun to read more of their backstory in this book, and hear about how they met and started off their marriage. I can't imagine Chip's serial entrepreneurship lifestyle working for us--we are wayyyyy too risk-averse and stable. But it was super interesting to read about and see how people do it, because I've always wondered what that's like and how they manage starting new businesses and stuff. That was possibly my favorite part of the book, and hearing about how they got started with the show, and hearing their very distinct voices showing up in the writing. I also liked how open they were about talking about their faith and how they attributed everything to God and revelation. This book was really extraordinarily short, but it was a fun read for anyone who has read and liked the show.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Book #78: Winter by Marissa Meyer

Okay, this was a LOOOOONG BOOK. And it FELT long too. Cinder, the first book in this series, was only eight hours long on audiobook--and this one was 21. Twenty-one hours. I was kind of tired of it even before I started. But I finally got the e-book and was able to speed up the process by reading it and listening to it in intervals and am finally done. This book is the conclusion of the four or five-book Lunar Chronicles, where all the characters from the earlier three books come together to take down the evil queen Levana and put Cinder on the throne of Luna to make her the queen, as the long-lost princess of Luna. All the couples from each of the books pair up and are happy together at the end. Everyone ends up happy in the end.

The title character of this book is Winter, whose story is based off Snow White (and Queen Levana is the evil stepmother). She is a Lunar princess who has refused to use her Lunar gift to manipulate people, which is driving her mad. Literally. She is having hallucinations and acting crazy, and the only person who understands her and can take care of her is her childhood friend Jacin, who only wants to protect her. The queen is overwhelmingly jealous of Winter because of her beauty and tries to have her killed--multiple times.

I felt invested in this book because I'd already read the other four. It was just so. long. I understand that she had to wrap up the whole overarching storyline and write about Winter too and it's hard to have a whole revolution in one book... but man. Also, I felt like it was hard to really care about the revolution, since we never really learned about or experienced what their lives were like--and most importantly, Cinder never did either. It's not like in the Hunger Games where Katniss lives this hard life for forever so she has really good reasons to hate President Snow. It was kind of unbelievable that she could just sweep in and take over with so little preparation and understanding of Luna. Also, I just could never get behind the Kai-Cinder relationship. There is just no reason why Kai would ever be interested in her; she doesn't really do anything interesting or defining, ever. BUT the other relationships, between Scarlet and Wolf, Cress and Thorne, and Winter and Jacin are more compelling. My favorite parts of this book were the Winter-Jacin chapters, following them and the Snow White retelling. All the same, I'm glad that I read it--and I'm glad to have finished it and to be able to move on.

This series was definitely not the highest quality. The writing wasn't terrible, but there were so many things that I had problems with in each story. But it got into me and I didn't want to stop reading it. If I had known how long it was going to be I may not have gone past the first book... but it was worth my while in audiobook listening while rocking Lucy to sleep for endless hours over the last month or so. So it works out.