My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South by Rick Bragg

I don't think I would have loved this book if I had read it--but I did love it as an audiobook. It is 100% necessary that you listen to this book instead of read it, so that you can listen to Rick Bragg's crazy strong Southern drawl reading his essays about football, southern food, and the red dirt of the South. All of these essays were put together from being previously published in magazines, mostly Southern Living, and all of them are about Bragg's life, childhood, and experiences of the South. And all of them give you the strongest feeling of the South. It made me want to go eat a grouper sandwich, something I have never even heard of and doesn't even sound remotely appealing to me, and to move to New Orleans and feel the liquid dirt there. I loved all of his family members who he wrote about so lovingly, and loved the imagery of all of his huge family gatherings and his strong sense of a family tree and his Southern heritage. This book made me feel like I want to move to Alabama, which is a huge accomplishment considering how little I actually want to do that. The only other book I've read that makes me feel that way is To Kill a Mockingbird. I wish I could have written down what some of the best lines were, but I couldn't since I was listening to it. This wasn't a page-turner by any means (or whatever the equivalent would be for an audiobook), but everything in it was so good. I'm wanting to read much more Southern literature now.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

I started off listening to this as an audiobook, but I found that I couldn't focus enough to get out of it what I wanted to. So I bought a copy of this (this is one that I want to have on my shelves) and read it while listening to the audio. It took me a few months to get through it--I've been reading a lot of other things so I just did this a few chunks here or there--but I feel like this is one that you can't just rush through anyways. I wanted to be slow and savor it, and really get something out of it. I read a few parts of this in college, but never the whole thing, and I don't really know that I knew what the whole thing was about. I didn't realize how grand of scope the whole epic poem is. It's about the Fall, of course, but it's also about the great war in heaven between God and Satan and their followers, and about what happens to Satan and where he goes, and about the Creation and what is going to happen after the Fall on the earth as well. When this poem is described as an epic poem, it really and truly is Epic.

I feel like there is a lot of LDS doctrine in this poem. (There's a lot of very, very wrong doctrine as well, particularly about Eve and her role in the Fall and about women in general, but that's just to be expected, I guess. It still was annoying to read.) There's a lot of focus on men's agency and the agency of the spirits in heaven, and about obedience and the consequences of our choices. Satan is a full-fledged character in the poem, particularly in the first half, and he's delightfully wicked and prideful and vengeful, as Satan should be. I kept thinking while reading this that the title Paradise Lost is kind of about two different paradises that have been lost: Adam and Eve lost the Garden of Eden by eating of the fruit, but it is also about how the spirits who followed Satan were thrown into hell after their rebellion and they lost the paradise of living in heaven with God. I think that loss is almost more poignant and heart-breaking (particularly when looked at through the lens of LDS doctrine, since we know the Fall from the Garden was supposed to happen and not actually a terrible thing after all). I kind of liked how Adam and Eve were such fallible characters, especially after they ate the fruit and they began to see the consequences of what they had done and they began to blame each other and fight and have to work through their actions. I like to think that Adam and Eve were so mature that they truly saw the bigger picture, but we know they hid themselves from God when they knew he was coming, so they may not have been and there very well may have been some fault-finding and blaming going on there. I feel like reading this made me think so much about Satan and how he works, and about the Creation and the Fall in a different way.

As I read, I kept finding quotes and things that were especially meaningful or beautiful and underlining them. Here are some of the best:

Satan: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" (Book 1).

God: "They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formed them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves" (Book 3)

Satan: "O then at last relent, is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission, and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath...
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear.
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my good" (Book 4)

Satan: "Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve,
Partake thou also; happy though thou art,
Happier thou may'st be, worthier canst not be:
Taste this and be henceforth among the gods,
Thyself a goddess, not to earth confined" (Book 5)

Raphael to Adam: "God made thee perfect, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, ordained thy will
By nature free, not overruled by Fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires; ...
Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall:
And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n,
And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall
From what high state of bliss into what woe!" (Book 5)

Adam: "I now see
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my self
Before me; woman is her name, of man
Extracted; for this cause he shall forgo
Father and mother, and to his wife adhere;
And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul" (Book 8)

Raphael: "Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command; take heed lest passion sway
Thy judgement to do aught, which else free will
Would not admit" (Book 8)

Satan: "All good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heav'n much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no nor in Heav'n
To dwell, unless by mastering Heav'n's Supreme;
Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such
As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts" (Book 9)

Eve: "For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss,
Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious soon.
Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot
May join us, equal joy, as equal love" (Book 9)

Satan: "That which to me belongs,
Is enmity, which he will put between
Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel;
His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?" (Book 10)

Adam: "Pains only in child-bearing were foretold,
And bringing forth, soon recompensed with joy,
Fruit of thy womb" (Book 10)

Michael: "Yet doubt not but in valley and in plain
God is as here, and will be found alike
Present, and of his presence many a sign
Still following me, still compassing thee round
With goodness and paternal love, his face
Express, and of his steps the track divine." (Book 11)

Michael: "The rule of Not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
Till many years over thy head return:
So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease
Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature" (Book 11)

Michael: "Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
Live well, how long and short permit to Heav'n" (Book 11)

Michael: "Judge not what is best
By pleasure, though to nature seeming meet,
Created, as thou art, to nobler end
Holy and pure, conformity divine" (Book 11)

Adam: "Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His Providence, and on him sole depend" (Book 12)

My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

I listened to My Lady Jane, the first in this series, last year, and loved it so much that I immediately cast around to be able to listen to the next one. Unfortunately, it didn't come out for another year or so, but I got this one as soon as I could. The first book took the story of Lady Jane Grey, the nine-days queen of England, and turned it completely upside down and added magic and made it way funnier and less tragic. (Spoiler: Jane Grey doesn't die in their version.) This book is a sequel in that it's written in the same style and by the same authors, but it's actually a re-imagining of Jane Eyre, with the addition of ghosts and seers and a bunch of changes to the storyline. The book is completely separate from My Lady Jane but is just as funny and fun and enjoyable as the first. So I am once again, waiting around for when the next one will be published.

I've never really liked Jane Eyre. I've read it several times and I just don't like it. Mr. Rochester isn't very nice or agreeable, and I don't really see any compelling reason why Jane should like him or he should like her, and it's all too dark and brooding and kind of creepy to me. (I think I'm much more of a Jane Austen fan than a Bronte sisters fan. I didn't like Wuthering Heights either.) This book basically takes all of the annoying things about the original story of Jane Eyre and gets rid of them or makes fun of them. And it also makes Charlotte Bronte a character in her own right (one of the three narrators of the story) and a love interest of her own. But basically, instead of Jane and Mr. Rochester getting married, she learns that he has his wife hidden up in the attic and they realize that he's been possessed by a ghost that's making him do everything, and then Jane and Charlotte and their other friends have to go stop the bad guy from possessing the King of England and everyone turns out much happier in the end. I loved all three characters who were narrating the story (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, and Alexander Blackwood), and I loved all the changes to the original story (since I don't like that one much in the first place). I love how the authors are happy to throw the original story/history to the wind and throw in as much random magic/fantasy/etc. into the story as much as they want. And I love how funny the asides are and how witty the book is. All in all, I think these three authors are fantastic together and I hope they write more.

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

I just love these books. It's amazing that they are each over 1000 pages and yet they are still so engaging and such page-turners. I normally get tired of books that are so long (although I usually try to push through once I've read a few hundred pages) but never with these. Brandon Sanderson is a master. I can't wait to read the third one for the first time soon. I don't have the time to write a full on review right now, plus this is a re-read.
Things I love in this book:
-Shallan and Kaladin meeting and getting to know each other.
-More background about Shallan. Her story is horrifying and depressing and amazing at the same time.
-Kaladin's struggle to make the right choice and his eventual ability to do so.
-The whole discovery of Urithiru and the dramatic climax at the end.

Yep, Lucy just dumped water all over everything. Got to go.

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

I listened to this book because it was our book club book for September, but then after I was about halfway done with it book club ended up getting canceled, so we aren't even talking about it at all. I probably wouldn't have bothered listening to it if I hadn't had it for book club, because there are just so many good books that I want to read/listen to. And this one was so long! It was maybe 14 hours? And 14 hours of history, not a novel. I really did enjoy it and get caught up in it, but I felt like it could have been condensed wayyyy down. This book reminded me a lot of Hidden Figures--they are pretty much the same book, just about two different groups of women working in a field where they usually wouldn't have been admitted and where they made enormous strides. It also reminded me of Hidden Figures because I had some of the same complaints about it--it just seemed like it should have had more of a cohesive storyline. But it was about a bunch of disparate women characters, so it was hard to keep each of them straight and to really get invested in any of their lives or their choices. I know it was about the group as a whole, and it was really amazing and interesting to learn about the codebreaking units of WWII and what they accomplished. But it was hard to care too much about any one girl's fiancee dying or something like that when you don't remember if you've heard her name before or not. It was also hard to understand or keep track of all of the different types of codes and codebreaking skills the girls had to learn, but that was mostly because I was listening to it as an audiobook--it probably would have been much easier to read. But I didn't really need to understand each of the specific codes to understand the achievements of these women.

I am glad to have learned about this small pocket of history, and especially to have learned more about the war and how codebreaking played a role in it. It was fascinating to learn about how during WWII, the radio messages and the radio traffic were such an enormous way that each side was keeping track of the enemy. There were no satellites or any way to check up on how large the armies were, so the main way that they got intelligence about each other was by intercepting and breaking each other's codes and reading about their armies and navies. I loved the part about D-Day, how the Allies kept D-Day a secret by convincing Hitler that there were several huge and nonexistent armies stationed in different parts of England that were going to be striking in Norway and Calais, and the Normandy invasion was just a distraction. They made him believe that by spending months and months sending fake radio traffic to and from these false armies, in the same patterns and types of messages that a real army would be sending. They did it so well that the Axis powers really did believe that whole armies existed that really didn't. I love that and how that could never happen today because of satellite surveillance. So fascinating!

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

I don't think I ever read this book, but I saw the movie countless times as a kid. So many times, in fact, that as I was reading this aloud to Dane and Graham, I was envisioning whole segments of the movie. I felt like the movie followed the book so closely that I felt like I'd read it before. This was SUCH a hit to read aloud with the boys, and Dane really loved it (Graham didn't so much--he still doesn't like sitting to listen. He will kind of listen while doing puzzles). I loved the story of Charlotte doing this great act of service for Wilbur to save his life. But I never realized how totally selfish, self-absorbed, unaware, and annoying Wilbur is. Why does Charlotte even like him? He is totally unaware of Charlotte's needs and problems, and he doesn't even care about her when she says she's about to die. He just is sad that she's leaving him. What the heck?! I was really annoyed by him in that part. But oh well. The story was really sweet and we all really enjoyed it. I wanted to finish this one before Dane's school starts, and we managed to finish it today, the day before kindergarten. So bittersweet.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe by Melissa de la Cruz

This was bad. I started reading this because I'm pretty sure it came from a Modern Mrs. Darcy post about good P&P rewrites, and Modern Mrs. Darcy almost never leads me wrong. But she must not have actually read this one, because it was just bad. Which is such a shame, because it had such potential. The story is basically a rewrite of P&P but with a gender-swapped Lizzy and Darcy: Darcy Fitzwilliam is a rich businesswoman going home to visit her family in Pemberley, Ohio, and Luke Bennet is a carpenter who has always stayed home. I thought it sounded potentially interesting and I am always up for gambling to try a Jane Austen rewrite. However, this gamble was not rewarded. There were so many issues. Darcy Fitzwilliam is apparently a multimillionaire at the age of 29 (a partner in the Wall Street world), with no proof that she actually works or does anything useful at all. She flew home to see her family but they never actually spend any time together. She goes awkwardly caroling with the Bennet family, on their own. People keep asking her why she's not married or wanting to have kids yet--in 2017! Luke's rejection of Darcy's first proposal was forced by his then-fiancee? So many ridiculous and obnoxious conversations in this book that were completely unbelievable. It started out okay and just got worse and worse by the end. I finished this in only an hour and a half or so because I was skimming by the end to not have to dwell on any of it any more. I don't rate very many books with only one star on goodreads, but this is one of them.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

I read The Nightingale by Hannah last year, and liked it enough that when I kept hearing about another book by her that had come out this year I decided to add it to my list. The reason why I had hesitated on reading The Nightingale was because it was just another WWII book, which I am way done with, but the setting for this book was completely different than any other book I've read--Alaska in 1974, with homesteaders who move up to Alaska and learn to live off the land. That setting alone was compelling enough to get me to read the book, and the way Hannah wrote about Alaska was beautiful and convincing in a way that was obvious she'd spent years of her life there. I loved reading about Alaska and about the people who lived there. The story was about Leni, a thirteen-year-old girl (when the book begins) who moves to Alaska to live a more pure life off the land. But the story is a lot more about her father's abusiveness and the fear she and her mother experience and the choices they have to make, over and over and over. The land of Alaska is almost a character in the book, with the danger and the different characteristics that the people face there.

I really enjoyed this book, but I had some serious issues with it too. The story was gripping and the characters were well-done, particularly Leni's, but I was bothered by the last 1/3 of the book, which veered into soap opera land with all the tragedies and changes that happened. I felt like Hannah gave up on the deepest and hardest storylines just by letting something big happen to end it. I didn't like the abuse plotline, and I hate reading about women going back to their abusers. (Every time Leni talks about her parents, she uses the word "toxic"... it got old.) I felt like some of the best parts of the book were about the homesteading, and Hannah let that fall apart just to focus more on the more dramatic, exciting things she forced on her characters. I really did not believe the whole Matthew storyline--the romance and the whole recovery thing at the end. Leni at one point said, "How many conversations had they had when they talked about what would happen when they graduated from college?" And it seriously could not have been many. At all. It could only have been like 5, when you consider how often they were actually allowed to see each other. I hate it when people write romances based off of like three conversations--Leni and Matthew were supposedly best friends, but we know that Leni wasn't allowed to go anywhere near him, and you're asking me to believe they knew they loved each other from six months together at the age of 13? I don't know. It didn't work for me. And OH MY GOSH I hate the teenage pregnancy plotline so much. Gahhh.

However, the Alaska stuff itself was worth the annoying ending. And it definitely sucked me in and kept me interested the whole time.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

I love, love this book. Just like I love everything Jane Austen. I love Anne Elliot's sensibility. I think I was (am?) much more like Anne Elliot than I am Elizabeth Bennet. I was never very capable of talking to boys I liked (Anne is always embarrassed and unsure of what to say), and I spent a lot of time wondering and worrying if I was doing the right thing or saying the wrong thing. I am definitely not as patient with my annoying relatives as Anne is--every one of her family members are the worst and drive me nuts. But I love the way this book resolves and how it ends--although I could definitely wish for more detail in how they confess their love for each other. I think it's so funny how Jane Austen never really writes what they say when it comes to the proposal--she just writes around it. People would never go for that today!

I don't have much time right now, and I don't have much to say about this book that I haven't already said in the past. But I just thoroughly enjoyed it and I am so happy to re-read it.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

After reading Unequal Affection last week, it got me on a natural Pride and Prejudice kick and I watched both the Keira Knightley version and Jennifer Ehle version, and then I watched Death Comes to Pemberley on Netflix, and then I needed to re-read the book. There are few books that bring me as much joy as this one. I told Tommy that I think I could be happy re-reading a collection of books every year or so--Jane Austen, Harry Potter, Betsy and Tacy--with a few other books thrown in. There is just so much here to love. Every time people watch the movies, they focus so much on the romance between Elizabeth and Darcy, and the hilarity and ironies of the book become so much less of a focus. But it's impossible not to love that about this book when you read it. I laughed out loud many times while reading this, and I even knew almost every line what to expect. Jane Austen was such a genius that even two hundred years later we can still understand and accept her humor about her characters and their follies, even as we don't understand all of the rules of their society and manners. I think I am going to read Persuasion next and maybe, maybe a few other favorite P&P rewrites.

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

We read this in two days. Dane wouldn't let me stop reading, and it's so short that we made it through it in only three sessions. Even Graham enjoyed a lot of it--he probably would have listened to more if we'd only done fifteen minutes at a time. He really liked the pictures of the diggers and the hill after the farmers had gouged out most of it. But we all liked the story of Fantastic Mr. Fox, who manages to outsmart the three mean farmers who are trying to kill him for stealing their chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys. There's nothing too deep to say about it, but it's definitely a fun read.

I caught Graham singing to himself, "Boggis and Bean, Boggis and Bean" (the names of two of the farmers) after we finished reading this. So cute.