Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I have meant to read this book for years! And years! And years! But this is just one that has slipped through the cracks for me and I have never gotten around to it, until now. I had started it several times but the first few chapters were so slow that I got put off. But this time I powered through because it was for book club, and I could not put it down. Once you get just a few chapters into it, it's hard to put down. The book is about a nameless narrator who marries a dashing widower and goes to live in his fancy manor home in England called Manderley, and realizes that the whole home and everything is still controlled by Rebecca, his first wife. The book is creepy and somewhat dark (in a 1930s way, not in a gross modern way) and way way way more exciting and engrossing than I thought it would be.

We had such an awesome discussion about it at our book club meeting, which raised all sorts of issues that I didn't consider the first time when I was reading the book. I was so engrossed in the story that I didn't even think about all of the ethical questions like, [SPOILER ALERT] isn't it wrong that he killed his first wife? Isn't it wrong that she's helping him to cover it up? Why do we feel compelled to root for them being able to cover it up? What is so wrong with her that she doesn't care that her husband is a murderer? I honestly didn't even care about those things when reading it--I was just so absorbed in the story and in identifying with the narrator and hoping that she would get the happy ending she wanted so badly with her husband she was so (for no apparent reason) desperately in love with. I think that's a sign of what a good book it was, and what a good writer Du Maurier was. I also kind of loved how she would give you a sense of the narrator's internal thoughts and her insecurities. I felt like her issues were really so general and universal, and written about in such a way that everyone could identify with them. I loved it. And I read almost the whole book on Halloween, which seemed like the perfect day to be reading a kind of spooky, creepy book like this.

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

I listened to this cute Newbery award winner, but I think I should have just read it. It says it's "the Illuminated Adventures" and I missed out on the cartoon strip drawings that are apparently in the book. However, it would have taken me much longer to get around to reading it.

This was a cute story about a girl and her superhero squirrel friend who gets new powers after getting sucked up by a super-powerful vacuum cleaner. Flora has to try to take care of Ulysses when his arch-nemesis--her mother--decides he must be vanquished. I loved how there were deeper parts of the story, about Flora's worry that her mother doesn't really love her, and William Spyver's (her neighbor) feeling of neglect when he is "banished" by his mother. I loved the squirrel poetry that Ulysses types on the typewriter, and the many sweet things he learns from the hilarious Dr. Michum ("I will always turn back towards you" and true love is getting up in the night to get sardines for someone who can't sleep and sitting there while they eat them in bed). However, I wasn't necessarily obsessed with this story and I don't know that I would read it again. It was cute, but not super memorable to me. I didn't actually blame Flora's mother at all for wanting to get rid of Ulysses, because who would want a squirrel in their house?

Ignore It!: How Selectively Looking the Other Way Can Decrease Behavioral Problems and Increase Parenting Satisfaction by Catherine Pearlman

The title of this book basically says it all--it provides a program to ignore specific behaviors to improve your kids' behavior (specifically, annoying, attention-seeking behaviors). You're supposed to Ignore (when a bad behavior starts), Listen (to hear when they stop), Re-Engage (once they've stopped), and Repair (have them apologize if necessary or for you to apologize to them if you lost your temper before). I think she had some great points, and I feel like I would have learned more from reading it instead of listening to it, but I don't necessarily know that you need a whole book about this. Maybe a long blog post would have worked fine. She had some great examples and stuff, but I feel like if you read one or two main chapters of this book you could basically get the gist of it.

I am definitely a believer in this tactic, though. This basically goes along with what I was already thinking about from Ralphie's instagram stories on Simply On Purpose, and I know that this can be useful. It's just hard to implement all the time. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm already pretty good at ignoring lots of these annoying, bad behaviors because I honestly don't think that my kids do those things very much. There's not much whining or begging or negotiating or whatever at our house because I never, ever give in to those things. (Except for Lucy, because she still can't really talk and is just a baby... but once they get old enough I am a stickler about those sorts of things.)

Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks

I'm pretty impressed by Tom Hanks' writing chops in this book. These stories were all really well-done. They all seemed to incorporate a typewriter somewhere in the story, which is where the title comes from, I guess. The ones I really loved were about the extremely type-A personality Anna dating a much less interesting guy and keeping him on his toes, a guy who goes viral by bowling six perfect games in a row, a time travel story about a guy who goes back in time and falls in love with a woman in the 1930s.

Many of them stood out and were hilarious or touching. I really enjoyed listening to them, especially since Tom Hanks himself read them. But I don't have the brainpower or time right now to write too much more about it, even though I did have other thoughts about them at the time.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I read this book for a class in college and I remember loving it, but I didn't remember anything about it. (It's sad how many books I've read that are like that--that I can literally not remember a single thing from the plot or the characters or anything. I wonder how many times I need to read something for it to actually sink in and for me to internalize it.) I've been meaning to re-read this one for a while, and I suggested it for my book club and am leading the discussion on it tomorrow. I am glad to have been forced to read it again, because I would definitely not have made it a priority to read it right now (this week and next are so, so busy!). But it was so, so good and had so many great moments.

This is an interesting book. It's definitely high on character development/the voice of the main narrator and low on plot. The book is formatted as a long letter, a journal of sorts, written by John Ames, an old preacher, to his young (very young) son, who he knows he will not see grow up. It's filled with his deep thoughts about things, including his calling as a preacher, certain doctrines, his relationships with his father and grandfather. The main drama in the story comes when his best friend's wayward son Jack (named after the narrator) comes home to visit and creates all sorts of upheaval in John Ames's life and in his soul. He recognizes all sorts of resentment he's built with his relationship with Jack, and shares all of these deep thoughts with his son.

I think the real beauty of this book is in the quiet, thoughtful wording of these beautiful thoughts. There are so, so many spots that I underlined and want to remember. I absolutely loved the sweetness of Ames's love for his son, his much longed-for son who was born when he was already in his late sixties. He spent 45 years wishing and waiting for a family after his died, and his love for his young wife and son is written about so simply and beautifully. Here were some of my favorite quotes about his son:
"I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you" (52).
"I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not" (73).
"Harm to you is not harm to me in the strict sense, and that is a great part of the problem. He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me" (190).
"I can tell you this, that if I'd married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, I'd leave them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother's face" (237).
"I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful" (247).

There are so many other beautiful passages, some of them so beautiful they made me want to cry. I feel like I am getting better at appreciating really beautiful writing on an emotional level--I may not be able to express what I'm thinking and why I love it, but I can tell what I love. And I love so much of the writing in this book. It is very slow-moving--although there are parts with more narrative structure that move more quickly--but it is very worth it. It was so uplifting and hopeful. I would love to read the next two that are companion books to this one. I am going to request them next week when we get back.