2018 Yearly Recap

At the end of last year, I decided not to keep track of the number of books I read this year because I didn't want to feel obligated to read more and more. And it turns out that I read just as many as I did in 2017, almost exactly. I am kind of surprised by that, but it makes me happy. I read a TON in the first half of the year, but not as much in the last quarter. I don't know what it is about the holiday season, but I feel so busy that I can't let myself sit down and read (or at least that's how it was this year).

But in looking back at the books I read this year, I'm super happy about everything I got to read and listen to. There were some really, really good ones. I re-read a lot of classics that I loved (all of the Betsy-Tacy books, and I'm in the middle now of all the Anne of Green Gables ones) and I've found that those are the ones I gravitate to when I am in the need of comfort or just being comfortable.

It's interesting--most of these books that made the list (other than the obvious classics) were audiobooks that I listened to from the library. Thank you, Frisco library!

Best Fiction: My Plain Jane, The Great Alone, Unequal Affection, Dark Matter

Best Classics: Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca, Emily of Deep Valley, Cheaper by the Dozen, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Best Non-fiction: Educated, 1776, Shoe Dog, The Read-Aloud Family

Best YA/middle-grade: Okay for Now, The War that Saved My Life, Echo

Best children's/read-alouds: All-of-a-Kind Family, all of the Betsy-Tacy books but particularly Betsy's Wedding and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, James and the Giant Peach


I have several goals for this year. We are talking about going to England in August for our tenth anniversary, so I want to read a lot of British books and histories. I can't wait. I also want to re-read a bunch of Shakespeare's plays as well, and some Jane Austen? And I'm going to continue working my way through some favorite series, including Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter (as both of those are British series, they fit in well with my other goal). So many good things to look forward to for this year.

Mercy Watson Collection by Kate DiCamillo

I had never read these books, but they seemed really cute and I hear so much about Kate DiCamillo that it seems like her books can't be terrible. These were really cute stories about a pig named Mercy Watson, with two owners who think she's a "porcine wonder" even though all she's really thinking about is her next snack. I thought these were so cute, but not my favorite kids' books. I thought the boys would like them better, and maybe they would have if I were reading them and they could see pictures. But we were just listening to them in the car, and they enjoyed them but never really laughed out loud or anything. I think they would be worth a re-visit, maybe when Graham is learning to read (because they are really early chapter books and are too basic for Dane now).

Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery

Anne goes away to college, finally, in this book, after having worked and saved up money for several years and helped Marilla save her eyes. I love how it wasn't this huge sacrifice of her ambition that Anne had to make; she never once questioned that this was what she wanted to do. She valued her family and the people she loved: Marilla, Davy and Dora, and her friends. I loved her time she had at college and the little house she and her friends set up together--it sounded just like the apartments I had with my roommates (without a live-in housekeeper, of course). And I loved the romance story of Roy Gardiner and how Anne realized she was wrong about him and how she really was in love with Gilbert all along. The only thing that could be changed about these books is more details about Anne and Gilbert's romance... but they are pretty wonderful as they are.

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery

I read this a few weeks ago and have read several more Anne books since then. Although my very favorite of the Anne books is the first one, I love this one so much as well, where Anne is working as a teacher in her old school (I always think that must have been so weird to have your old school-mate come back and be your teacher like happened in the old days). I love the stories about Davy and Dora coming to live at Green Gables, and the magical Miss Lavender. It makes me wish I had Anne's ability to befriend so many people so easily and to discover kindred spirits everywhere. Definitely a classic.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

There are few books I love as much as the Anne of Green Gables books. I can't tell you how many times I must have read these books in my tween and teen years--dozens of times. The books were falling apart. But I cannot believe I haven't read them once in the seven years I've been keeping track of my reading. This is why I set the goal for 2018 to read books that make me happy--so that I would make a conscious effort to read the books that I want to, not that I think I should. I think I got a little sidetracked with doing that towards the end of this year, as is evidenced by the fact that I read far fewer books in the last quarter of the year than in any of the first three quarters. I felt too busy and stressed to read, which means I didn't actually want to read any of the books I had on my bedside stand. But the week we were packing up to go to Utah and I was so busy with Christmas stuff, I made myself sit down and start reading Anne of Green Gables, and within half an hour I felt happier and better and I was laughing out loud at Anne and her predicaments and her long speeches and her hilarious personality. I could not get over what a difference it made in my mood and in my reading life. I love, love, love these books and I have nothing I would change about them, except maybe more of Gilbert and Anne together... and maybe changing Gilbert's name to something that's actually good so that I could name a son after him. My favorite part of the book is Anne breaking her slate over his head, and her unrelenting scorn of him for years after, and then finally making up with him. There's so much else that's good though. I will never stop loving these books.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

I loved this book as a child, and I meant for months to read it with the boys at Christmastime. However, we didn't get the chance before our trip to Utah, but I luckily found an audiobook copy at the library that we listened to as we drove. It's so short and easy to get through, but I just love the story of the Herdmans and how bad they are, but how they are affected by the story of the birth of Christ. The boys loved it too, even if they were a little scandalized by some of the parts (like the Herdmans smoking--that's a little dated these days, haha). I want to make it a Christmas tradition to read this every Christmas season (along with A Christmas Carol, although that's a little more high-minded than this one).

Matilda by Roald Dahl

I have a major love for Roald Dahl books, as do most people who read them as children, and I couldn't wait to read Matilda with the boys. It's been hard to figure out how to work in reading with them once Dane started school, however, and it took a while for us to finish this. But finish it we did, and I'm very happy with it. I LOVED the boys' reactions to this book and how much they loved it. They were so angry about Miss Trunchbull, and they still talk about her even weeks after finishing it because she was so evil. One of the best moments of my reading-with-kids experience ever happened when I was reading the chapter of Miss Honey's story to Dane and when we got to the end and she said that her aunt was Miss Trunchbull, and Dane looked at me SO SHOCKED with his mouth wide open and eyes blazing, and we just stared at each other like we couldn't get over how crazy that development in the story was. He was so into the story and loved it, and I did too. It was such a good book to share together.

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

I loved, LOVED The Wednesday Wars, which Schmidt wrote first. I'd never heard of it until a few years ago, when a few of the book blogs I follow recommended them. And then I kept hearing about how Okay for Now was just as good and I was so excited to get to it. And yes, it WAS just as good. It was fantastic. The Wednesday Wars uses Shakespeare in this kid's life, and Okay for Now is more about the art of John James Audubon and how art impacts Doug Szwieteck's life (I actually don't know how his name was spelled, since I listened to it, and I'm not going to look it up right now). Doug was a minor character in The Wednesday Wars, but he becomes the narrator and main character of this book. He and his family move away from the original town and move to a small town in upstate New York, and he hates it at first and people assume that he and his brother are "twisted criminal minds" because maybe they are. But he finds a copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America on display at the library and gets sucked into the beauty of the paintings and trying to learn how to draw them. I love how Schmidt paints these stories of kind of unhappy families, but doesn't leave them totally unredeemed--there's a happier ending with a hopeful slant to it, after Doug's brother comes home changed for the better in Vietnam, and after his dad does something that isn't totally terrible for once. I was totally absorbed in this story, and Schmidt is such a great writer who never, ever breaks character or writes something that feels out of place. Even when kind of extraordinary things happen, like Doug getting drafted to act in a Broadway play, it feels totally understandable and believable. I loved this and will definitely be buying a copy for our house.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I read this in college--I'm not sure if it was for a class or just because I was wanting to read Pulitzers more then too--and remember loving it. But then I am pretty sure I lost my copy or someone took it and never gave it back, and I re-bought it several times until I had three copies this weekend, haha! I gave two of them away at my two book club Christmas parties this week, and finished my own copy tonight. It was just as good as I remember. It's a collection of short stories by an Indian-American author and each one is about both of those countries and people navigating between them. Several are set fully in India and not involving any Americans (but I felt like those were my least favorite), but I loved the ones where Indians have moved to America and are adjusting to their new lives in America and the new culture here. I love how Lahiri really helped me feel like I was one of them and like I understood what it was like to move to America from India and to lose all my family and to have everything change so drastically. It says on the back of the book that "Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner," and that's exactly how I felt. My favorite story might have been "The Third and Final Continent" about a man who moves to America for the first time, and how he comes to know his wife after their brief arranged marriage, and also "Interpreter of Maladies," which I remembered from reading the last time. I really loved this book--it rekindled my love of short stories.

Forest Born by Shannon Hale

This was the last book in the Bayern series by Shannon Hale which I listened to in November (and which I'm only just now getting around to writing about!). I felt like this was the worst of the four books--the first half of it especially was annoying. It was almost 1/3 longer than River Secrets and could definitely have been cut down, I felt. But it also was kind of odd to read from yet another different character's perspective and to hear about all these other characters that were main characters in the other books, and to see them being so one-dimensional in this book after seeing them so well-rounded in the other books. Enna in this book is tough and fierce, almost to an extreme, always wanting to fight people and beat them up, basically, and that's pretty much all you see about her. The conversations between Enna, Dasha, and Isi seemed completely unrealistic to me, and kind of annoying, and it was totally unbelievable that Rin could just show up and follow them around and they would be fine with it. I also was a little confused about Rinna's powers as a tree-speaker, and with the whole scene where she avoids all the arrows and stuff by acting like a tree, but it didn't bother me that much. Overall, I was glad to get through this just to finish the series, and I was glad with how it ended, but I didn't like it as much as the others.