Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This book was so good. And it was completely unexpected, which was a nice surprise. It's kind of hard to summarize without giving away spoilers. The main question that this book confronts is what happens with the road not taken? How do you know "what if" would have been so good, and how do you not take for granted what you have? The story has to do with the concept of the multiverse, where there are infinite numbers of universes with all sorts of possible lives and outcomes going along next to each other, although we just can't access them. But in this book, Jason Dessen is accidentally dragged into the multiverse and taken away from his loving family, and he has to figure out how to make his way back to his world, his universe, one of infinity, and to get back to his family. There were some twists that totally surprised me; some people might have foreseen some of them, but I didn't, and I loved it. I thought the ending came kind of abruptly, but it was fine, and I was happy with how it all ended. And I really was fascinated with all of the science in this science fiction: the physics of the multiverse and the hidden worlds we don't know exist. I don't know what exactly of the story was fiction and what was actual science theory, but it was fascinating to me nonetheless. I loved that this book was kind of a romance at its core, about one man's love for his wife and son and his desire to do anything to get back to them.

A few disclaimers: I listened to most of it, and then I couldn't handle the suspense any more and didn't want to slowly listen to another hour and a half, so when I had two more chapters left I broke down and borrowed the ebook from the library and read the rest. And it was way better to listen to than to read--the writing looks very choppy with hardly any paragraphs but just short sentences all the way down the page. But when you're listening you have no idea how it's formatted, and I enjoyed it a ton. The narrator did a great job and like I said, I had to finish it ASAP. Also, there were some kind of annoying quirks about the author's writing that I can't imagine why an editor didn't fix. Like, EVERY TIME Jason turned off the lights or finished a drink, he said he "killed" it. Like "I killed the lights, I killed the lantern, we killed the bottle of wine." Over and over and over and over. It's totally a fine phrasing to do once or twice, but he said it every single time and it got to be distracting and annoying. Nobody says they killed something every time they do it. Also, there was some language.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

I had a goal to read five biographies in the last year or two, and this is the fifth since I started. I loved the other Massie book I read (Nicholas and Alexandra) so I decided to continue the Russian theme and read his book about Catherine the Great. I knew literally nothing about her; her name sounded vaguely familiar but I didn't even know which century she'd lived in. It was really interesting to learn more about Russia in the eighteenth century--I feel like I have read so much about England and France and America in that time period but I'd never once thought about Russia back then. I am surprised that I didn't know that Catherine was the empress at the time when the American and French Revolutions happened.

I found the beginning of the book fascinating, learning about Catherine's youth and her life in her marriage. That part was well-written and easy to follow, and I found it easy to relate to Catherine in some ways. But it was almost unbelievable that Catherine could have been so patient and forbearing through the insanity that she had to live through. Her husband sounded seriously insane, with an obsession for playing with toy soldiers (even in his twenties and thirties), and was incapable of consummating their marriage so for nine years Catherine was never touched by him, and the Empress Elizabeth was extremely hard to deal with--yet according to Massie, Catherine was always patient and dealt with this craziness appropriately.

The later part of the book about Catherine's reign as Empress was a little harder to follow, since the author no longer was writing chronologically but more thematically. I understand why he had to do that, since Catherine as Empress had so many more facets and responsibilities than she did in her life before, but it made it harder for me to place when things were happening and to feel like I really grasped it. He wrote quite a lot about her revolving door of lovers, which were quite accepted in the Russian court, but also a lot about her attempts to modernize and liberalize Russia because of her acceptance of Enlightenment principles and correspondence with philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot.

Catherine had a ton of ambition and had her eye on the prize of gaining full power as the empress, and she didn't intend to share any of that power, even with her son. I feel like I would have had a hard time relating to her ambition--because of the things she willingly gave up in order to achieve her goals. Some of her experiences were so heartbreaking, like when she finally gave birth to her son Paul and then he was effectively kidnapped by the reigning empress immediately, so Catherine literally never bonded with her son. After all the reading I've done about how important the bonding that a mother and child do in the first few years, it makes sense how twisted that made her relationship with her son. It seemed like Catherine and her son were both shaped by their rejections by their own mothers and that affected their relationships for the rest of their lives.

There was so much I had never considered or learned about before in this book, and I'm glad to have read it. But I think I'll take a break on the heavy, long biographies for now. I liked Nicholas and Alexandra much more than this one, although it was still a worthwhile read.

The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

This is the sequel to The War that Saved my Life and it was just as good as the first. I am blown away by how well Bradley writes about Ada's character and her slow and gradual recovery from her abusive childhood. The book begins with Ada getting surgery for her bad club foot, and she learns to walk and get around on two feet for the first time. They move into a home on the Thorntons' property and eventually a German Jew also moves in with them, and all of the characters learn a lot about judging people based on their nationality alone. Throughout the book, she also begins to make baby steps towards feeling safe and feeling trust towards Susan, her new adopted mother, since she says she never felt safe before in her life. It was this process that was so moving and believable about these two books. As someone who hasn't experienced an abusive childhood, I want Ada to love and trust Susan right away, but it takes Ada years to really believe that Susan isn't going to hit her or put her in a cupboard when she does something bad. And Susan understands her--so well. In fact, it's surprising to me how well Susan understands her, especially in a time when there aren't really resources for how to handle children who have lived through trauma. That seems almost a little unbelievable, but oh well. It was really nice to read anyway. I would love for there to be a third book in this series, because it was so well done and such a great introduction to life in England during WWII for kids. (There are references to Susan's past same-sex relationship with a "friend" named Becky who died, but it's never explicit and I bet most children reading this book wouldn't think much of her being more than a friend.)

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

I've meant to read this for years, and I'm not sure why. But I finally got around to starting it when we went on our trip and I had to download a bunch of books to the Kindle to read instead of bringing hard copies of books (best reason to have a Kindle--while traveling!). It had been a long time since I'd added this book to my to-read list, so I didn't remember that it was actually a biography of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia and not just a novel about them--which was kind of what I expected. So when I saw that it was 583 pages of solid biography, I started to get a little bit bogged down in it, but I powered through, and I'm really glad I did. I thought this book was so incredibly fascinating. I learned so much about Russia's history, recent and long-ago, and I learned so much about these two people specifically. (I have always loved all the Russian books I've read by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky--they have such a distinct flavor to them and I felt like I was reading one of those again while reading about life in St. Petersburg and Moscow). I didn't know very much about the Romanovs other than the Anastasia supposed mystery, but I do know a lot now. And I love them. They sound like they were amazingly nice, good-hearted, hard-working people who legitimately thought they were doing what was best for Russia. They were wholly devoted to their family and viewed taking care of Russia as their reason for living. I'm sure there is more to the story and that Massie isn't a completely impartial viewer of the situation, because it seems like there wasn't much negative he had to say about the couple other than their mistakes that they made in governing the country.

Because they made some incredible mistakes to bring along their own downfall and that of Imperial Russia. Tsar Nicholas was terrible at listening to advice from people at crucial moments, and was determined not to take away from the power of the monarchy until it was far too late and his kingdom had been completely taken away from him altogether. And, dare I say this? He was too accommodating to his wife, even when she had completely gone off the rails of normal beliefs and behavior--in her faith in Rasputin. There was almost two years during WWI, just before they were deposed, when Nicholas was off at the front leading the troops (from their headquarters) and Alexandra was basically taking over the running of the government from home, and she uprooted almost the entire set of ministers from the Cabinet based solely on who liked Rasputin and who didn't. Massie quotes tons and tons of her letters to Nicholas about removing such-and-such minister pretty much because he doesn't like Rasputin, and putting in so-and-so who does, no matter how good the minister was at his job and how inexperienced or useless someone was who she wanted to put in. She sounded seriously insane. She had no criteria other than someone liking Rasputin, because she had such faith in him as being basically the embodiment of good and of godliness (even though he was anything but!) so that anyone who didn't like him must be bad. And Nicholas never did much to check her or try to take any other control over the situation, and those few years pretty much drove the government to ruin. It sounded unbelievable.

Massie basically makes the case that their son Alexis's hemophilia drove Alexandra to complete despair and complete dependence on Rasputin's unexplained ability to heal her son's drastic bleeding episodes, and it was this decade-long relationship with Rasputin that seriously undermined the people's opinion of her and pretty much led to the Revolution (at least partly). Basically, hemophilia --> Rasputin --> Revolution. If Alexis had been a healthy boy, the whole history of Russia in the twentieth century might have been different. I found the many what-ifs that Massie entertained here and there so fascinating and interesting.

There were some other mind-blowing facts about older Russian history as well. I loved the story of how the first Romanov tsar came into power: he was just the nephew of Ivan the Terrible's wife who died and drove Ivan insane with depression, and he was the only person the group could agree on to elect as Tsar. So this random sixteen-year-old kid was elected as tsar in the 1500s, and then his family were the tsars for the next four hundred years. I just thought that was hilarious and so insane!

Overall, this was such an interesting read. I am toying with the idea of reading Massie's biography Catherine the Great next because I enjoyed this so much, and I would love to learn more about Russian history. But maybe I'll wait a little longer between big heavy biographies...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

I had never really even considered reading this book, but I kept running across it on "best classics" lists every once in a while and I finally checked it out and listened to it. Much of the book is extremely close to the movie, which everyone has seen and knows by heart, although there's a whole section of the book after the wizard goes up in the balloon and Dorothy has to go find Glinda on her own. This extra section was random and didn't really add that much to the the overall story by any means, so I see why they cut it out of the movie. I didn't really love this book, to be honest, although I think it might be a fun one to read to kids (since it is a children's book, so that's fair). It didn't really have much in the way of character development or even suspense, because each scene was so short and nothing was drawn out or surprising. Even when Dorothy melts the Wicked Witch it literally just randomly happens one day and Dorothy says, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" But it did make me want to watch the movie again.

The War that Saved my Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

This book was fantastic. I am always so impressed by people who can write about WWII and make it interesting (after so, so, SO many WWII books). This book is about Ada and Jamie, a few children who were evacuated from London during the Blitz and their experience for the first year of the war. Their evacuation was not typical and not terrible for them--they actually were leaving their abusive, neglectful mother and were placed with a woman who took great care of them and ended up loving them. Ada had a deformed foot which meant her mother forced her to stay in their one-room apartment for her whole life without ever leaving, until she ran away to leave London with her brother Jamie. The book is really kind of her story of overcoming that abusive past and learning to trust Susan, their new guardian. I loved how you got to see into Ada's head and to understand how she was thinking, especially when she couldn't say what was bothering her or what she was thinking. You got a really good sense of how traumatized kids might feel and act because of their fear and how they've been sensitized to their surroundings. It was so sad, but also hopeful, to see the small bits of progress Ada makes over the year she stays with Susan. The climax of the book was a nail-biter, and I loved how it ended. This is definitely a chapter book I would want to have on my shelves later on.

The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

I love Heyer's books and am always happy to read more of them. I downloaded several to the Kindles in case we had some down time to read while on our trip and I was able to read this one. Sir Richard Wyndham is about to enter into a terrible marriage of convenience when he accidentally stumbles across a girl, Penelope Creed, running away from her home by climbing out the window, and he decides to help her run away by going with her. While they run away, they end up getting entangled in all sorts of problems like being slipped some stolen jewels and being the witnesses to a murder, and while all these things are happening, Wyndham falls in love with Penelope and she with him. The end.

This book seemed highly unlikely to me--I was pretty unable to stretch my imagination far enough to believe that all of the random occurrences in this book could actually happen. But it was still a fun, quick read. It seemed a whole heck of a lot like Frederica, where a hardened, not-interested rich man is incapable of admiring the quirky qualities of the girl and eventually falls in love with her against his will. Except that Frederica is a whole lot better and more believable. Not Heyer's best, but it was still a fun, quick read.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

This book is basically a sister to Ella Enchanted in my mind, except that I didn't read it when I was young so I don't love it like I do Ella Enchanted. It's very similar--set in a faraway land, about a determined, young girl who is going to meet the prince, etc. This book is about Miri, who lives in a tiny rural mining community with her family, far away from the rest of the world, until the soothsayers announce that the prince's new bride will come from their little town. So they set up an academy to teach the girls in the town everything they will need to know, and the girls have to learn to get along with each other and how to become like a princess.

I think this would have been a definite favorite for me if I'd read it when I was the right age for it. As it was, I still liked it, but there were definitely some annoying parts (like when Miri is way too outspoken and annoying). But it was very sweet at the same time. I would definitely like to own this for my bookshelf once Lucy is old enough to read it--and its sequels.

The Mystery in San Francisco by Gertrude Chandler Warner

I started reading this out loud to the kids before our trip because we were going to San Francisco and I wanted them to be able to picture the places we were about to visit. I only managed to get through the first two or three chapters before our trip, but we read the rest of it in the car while driving around SF and in the Sequoias. This is definitely not the best Boxcar Children book, with the terrible twist of a surprise identical twin helping to answer who was doing what at the end, but it was perfect for our purposes--they go to Chinatown, go on the Golden Gate Bridge and down Lombard Street and to Fisherman's Wharf, they ride on a cable car, and I just wanted to get the kids excited for doing all of those things. It was great. And Dane loved it, so it was fine.

Frindle by Andrew Clements

I absolutely loved this book as a kid, and have fond memories of reading it when I was younger. This was another audiobook that we listened to on our drive in California, after we finished all the Ramona books I had brought with us. For anyone who hasn't read it, it's about a boy named Nick who makes up a new word for "pen" by calling it "frindle," and the word takes off. I thought this one might be a little too complex for Dane, but since we ran out of other audiobooks I figured we might as well. And oh my goodness. It was such a hit. Dane absorbed every word and was fascinated by it. I thought he wouldn't understand it, but he did. There is a small scene at the beginning of the book when Nick pretends he is a blackbird warning other blackbirds of a dangerous hawk by "peep"ing super loud in his classroom, and Dane spent the rest of the weekend going "peep!" And Dane has now, as of today, made up his own word for pen instead of frindle: "soro." We'll see if it makes it to the dictionary.

I loved listening to this too, by the way. I wouldn't have chosen this, perhaps, but the CD audiobook collection at the library for kids was slim pickin's so I grabbed it and I'm glad I did. The ending was so sweet and happy and I just loved the whole thing.

Ramona and her Father and Ramona Quimby, age 8 by Beverly Cleary

I had the brilliant brainwave of getting some Ramona books on audiobook for us to listen to on our trip in California, and it was such a lifesaver. We spent a lot of time in the car, driving into San Francisco and then to Fresno and Visalia and to and around the national parks, and our kids only played on the tablets for maybe 45 minutes of all of that time. They were so happy listening to these books that whole time. I don't know that Graham was really listening or if he understood anything, but he kept asking for us to put "Wamona" on, and Dane was riveted to every word. These are the fourth and sixth books in the Ramona series--I didn't realize that Ramona and her Mother came in between (but I also didn't want to read that one since it was a lot about her parents fighting and the girls wondering if they were going to get divorced. A little too heavy for our five- and three-year-olds.). I love so many episodes in these books--Tommy and I were enjoying listening to them too--like when Ramona and Beezus try to stop her dad from smoking by putting signs all around their house, and when Ramona cracks an egg in her hair. That was something that stuck with me for years--I always remembered that! Anyways, these were such a wonderful part of our trip, I only wish I had brought more with us! (We also listened to Ramona the Brave first, but since I'd already read that with Dane I'm not writing about it.)