2019 Yearly Recap

I feel like I had a good reading year this year. The last quarter was not as productive, and it wasn't as filled with good books (a lot of them were mediocre). But I am super pleased with everything I accomplished this year. One of my goals for the year was to read 5 plays by Shakespeare, and I did that--I read Hamlet on December 30 to finish it off. I haven't read much Shakespeare (other than the sonnets) on my own, and it was such a pleasure to read those this year. I hope to read some more in 2020.

Here are my favorites for this year:

Best of the year: A Gentleman in Moscow. I listened to it once and read it another time. I just loved it so much and have been trying to get everyone to read it.

Best non-fiction: Being Mortal, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (I didn't read much non-fiction this year, but these two were excellent)

Best classics: Count of Monte Cristo, David Copperfield, All Creatures Great and Small, A Little Princess, Little Women (okay, basically all of the classics)

Best read-alouds to the boys: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (of course!!), The Penderwicks

Best audiobooks: The Mother-in-Law, The Bookshop on the Corner, Pride, One of Us Is Lying (all of these were great books and great audiobook productions)

Best fiction: Station Eleven, Unaccustomed Earth, Oathbringer

I was feeling a little bit blah about my reading for this year until I went back and saw all of these really excellent books I read earlier this year that I forgot about. Almost all of these were from the first half of this year, which shows how I've been in a sort of slump and choosing all sorts of lame books to read lately. I'm excited to read some more high quality stuff next year. I'm setting a goal to read 25 Newbery award winners next year, so hopefully there are some really good middle-grade books to add to my list.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I read this several times, in high school and college, but this was my first time reading it on my own, for pleasure. There is such a difference reading it on my own, now, as an adult, as opposed to the torture of reading it as a high schooler. Shakespeare's plays really felt impenetrable in my tenth- and eleventh-grade English classes, but they feel interesting and fresh and relatively easy to read now. I don't know if that's just because I'm a better reader, or if it's because I don't absolutely need to understand every line and every symbol that shows up throughout the play; it's just nice to read them and actually like them instead of suffering through them. I listened to this while reading along, because I've found that I like the plays best when I do both--I can understand what's going on better when I hear it, but I don't zone out and stop listening if I'm reading along. I know I'm not getting the most in-depth reading of Hamlet, but I really enjoyed it.

It's a little absurd to try and write a review of Hamlet, considering it's one of the most famous works in the English language, so I'm not even going to try. I am really happy to have read it, and I'm very proud to have reached my goal of reading five Shakespeare plays this year. I may try to do it again next year--because it turns out they aren't really that hard to read.

There was one line in particular that stood out to me: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." I feel like that goes along with a lot of the psychology/life coaching things that people talk about today--you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it. I like how Hamlet said it better, though.

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

I hated the premise of this book, but got far enough in that I wanted to finish it. If I had really known what it was going to be about, I probably wouldn't have listened to it. It's basically the story of an affair from the perspective of the "other woman." And I hate stories about people cheating and infidelity... so this really wasn't one that was up my alley. The story is about Rachel, who sleeps with her best friend's fiance one night when they are both drunk, and then continues the affair because she realizes she has feelings for him. The story was supposed to be rationalizing this affair and making it seem okay (it reminded me that line from The Office where Pam says, "I guess affairs look different to the people inside them"). But it really just made me think of how spineless and unprincipled Rachel was. Giffin made Darcy, Rachel's best friend, seem worse and worse throughout the book, to the point of her being almost completely unbelievable that people are really that selfish and self-centered. I felt totally unsympathetic to Rachel's sad "Will he ever dump Darcy and be with me?" whining and plight, and super annoyed by her unbelievable passivity throughout the whole thing. She refused to ever ask Dex what he was going to do. And I absolutely hated Dex trying to stay with both women the whole time. No matter how Rachel justified it, that was completely sleazy and unjustifiable. So basically I didn't like any of the characters or any of their motivations. The book was well-written, but I hated the story so much that it didn't even matter.

The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

I haven't done much to add to my goal of reading all the Newbery award winners the last six months. And this is one of them that I'd technically already read! But I hadn't read it for maybe 20 years, and I didn't feel like it actually counted if I couldn't remember anything about the book. This was one that I actually really enjoyed, and I kept thinking that Dane would really like it too (maybe in another year--it might be a little above his reading level still). It's basically a much more enjoyable and readable Robinson Crusoe about a young girl who gets left on an island on her own for almost two decades. And the most exciting thing about this story is that it's based on a real historical event, a real woman who was abandoned on an island off the coast of California for that length of time. After I finished this book I started reading on Wikipedia about the real woman and the Channel Islands and I was just fascinated. This was a really good read and I'm glad I re-read it. Well worth it (plus it only took me about two hours).

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

I've heard so much about this book from various sources, and I kept putting off reading it because I kind of wanted to read it aloud to the boys. However, my read-alouds with the boys have died off a little when I got so sick at the beginning of my pregnancy, and I have so many books I want to read to them, that I decided I wasn't going to wait to read this one on my own. I read it in a couple of hours right before Christmas--which was one of the days in which this book is set--and it was a very cute, adorable family story. It definitely was reminiscent of the Penderwicks family, with five children who all love each other and aren't perfect, but have good intentions and very distinctive personalities. I love happy family stories, and this is one of them. I also really liked how Glaser made their neighborhood in Harlem seem like a small town, where everybody knows everybody, and it made me want to be more like the Vanderbeekers who are friendly and know everyone. I hope Dane will read this one sometime--it is a little above his reading level now, but will be a great one soon. Overall, definitely worth a read and a very cute addition to our bookshelf.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

I think I may have read this once when I was a kid, but I don't remember ever having read it. I definitely did see the movie several times, at my Grandma Myres' house, so that was what I was picturing as I read this book. I didn't remember much about the story, though--I pictured Uncle Alp being kind of scary and grouchy (which he definitely is not, to Heidi) and I had no recollection of Heidi ever leaving the mountain like she does for a few years in the book. The best part of the story was the beautiful setting in the mountains. The mountains are such an important part of the story--they are almost a character in themselves because of how important they are to Heidi.

I liked reading this cute story. It wasn't my favorite ever, but I think it would have been if I'd read it when I was younger and had some nostalgia built into this read. Now I kind of want to watch the movie with my kids and see if they like it at all.

A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay

This is my third Reay book I've read this month, and I haven't loved any of them like I loved Lizzy and Jane and Dear Mr. Knightley, which I read years ago and don't even remember now. So either, I have to re-read those books and decide whether my tastes have changed and they weren't as good as I remember, or maybe I just didn't love them as much as I thought, or, maybe they were just better than the other books Reay has written. I didn't dislike any of them, but none of them have gripped me like those other two did. This book was about Emily, an art restorer who is really good at her job (a much more interesting job than I ever thought of, though--that was a cool part of the book, learning about that) and who loves art, who meets Ben, an Italian visiting America for a few weeks, and falls in love and spur-of-the-moment marries him and moves to Italy with him, and then things are harder than she thought they would be with his family when she moves there. I liked Ben and Emily together, and liked how they worked things out and worked together. I don't usually like rushed romances, but that didn't bother me in this story.

I just didn't feel like the story flowed very well--I liked the part set in Atlanta, where she was working as a restorer and helping Ben with his restaurant, and then I liked the part in Italy, where she was learning about this new culture and family and restoring other art, but I just didn't see how they fit together very well. They felt like two completely different stories, like maybe Reay should have written them longer made the second half a sequel to her first half. It felt like Emily didn't really have emotions--she did, but not nearly as many as I felt like she should have when she, oh, married a practical stranger, left her home country, and moved in with a family of strangers in a country where she doesn't speak the language and knows NOBODY except the stranger she married. She seems like she just goes along and is sad sometimes that her mother-in-law doesn't like her, but doesn't seem to mind anything else. And she all of a sudden doesn't have a job, and it is totally fine because she's married now and still gets to restore art for fun and for free in the church down the street? And all of a sudden, moving to Italy fixes her bad painting skills and now she can paint masterpieces and gets her own art show? And I don't feel like the reference to The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man works in this book--it plays such a minor role in the story, and I don't feel like she really understood it, and I feel like it was faking it to make it a part of the title of the book.

All of that makes it sound like I hated the book... I didn't. I liked a lot of the ideas of the plot, the characters, and the setting of Italy (who wouldn't??). I just never really bought into it and didn't feel very excited about finding out what happened.

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

I think I read or listened to this some seven years ago (according to Goodreads) and I hadn't had any desire to read it again, until Tommy has been listening to them and got me interested. And then we watched the movies again, and despite all the fighting (I'm a total wimp when it comes to watching people fight/kill each other, I close my eyes the whole time), I was totally into them. This is the first audiobook I've listened to since I got sick over two months ago--for some reason, I couldn't handle audiobooks and just needed to watch The Office while I worked out--and it was just what I needed: engaging, fast-paced, easy to follow and intense. There's nothing more to say about it; there's nothing deep here, but it is fun to follow along and see what happens.

The Printed Letter Bookshop by Katherine Reay

A novel about a bookshop--was I going to read this? Yes or yes? I am always drawn in to stories about books and bookstores, but I don't know how I felt about this book--I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but part of it just always fell flat for me. I loved the idea of this super-welcoming, adorable bookshop in this little town, that everyone loves and shops at, and I wanted to go there. But I never really got into the main character of Madeline, the young and high-powered Chicago lawyer who accidentally inherits her aunt's dying bookshop and decides to give it a go making it work. I didn't really get her vibe or care about her as a character at all. I don't know what it was about her, but she just seemed aloof, to me and to everyone else. I also never really understood the relationship between her and Janet and Claire, the other two women working in the bookshop, and how they became so tight so quickly. And where did the romance come from? Why would anyone like Madeline, and how did the guy fall in love with her? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I just couldn't quite get past all my barriers there, and I couldn't quite believe that they were going to make this bookshop work in a tiny town, when we all know bookstores are going out of business everywhere forever. It was good, but I am lame and didn't like it as much as I maybe should have.

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

I feel like I am drawn to books about Indian characters and families (or other South Asian countries--I hope I'm saying this correctly and not being annoyingly American by overgeneralizing!). I really like books that talk about the cultural differences between groups, and I love reading about these Indian characters and how they integrate--or don't--with other countries. In this book, the Shergill sisters were born in England, but are asked by their mother to go back to their native country of India for the first time together in her letter she leaves them after she dies, to scatter her ashes and to take a trip together. These sisters have never gotten along and don't talk much together, but they are thrown together on this trip and experience India almost as outsiders--and each of them has a dramatic, serious secret that they are trying to hide from the others. I loved the differences between the three sisters, and I loved their dynamics and how they loved each other despite being stuck in their lifetime habits of annoying each other in certain ways. It seemed so realistic to me, how family are the people you reach for and care about the most, but they are also the ones who can wound you most deeply and drive you up the wall. I was driven to find out what each of their secrets were, and what they were hiding from each other, and I loved the climax at the end and how they dropped everything to help and save each other. And I loved the resolution at the end, how they ended up closer together. This was a fun, and really enjoyable read.

I Miss You When I Blink: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott

I didn't know before I started reading this that this was Philpott's description of basically how she got out of a depressive cycle in her life, where she wanted to escape from her (perfect) life and couldn't figure out why she was depressed. Some of the essays have nothing to do with that--they are just funny stories about her life. But as a whole, the overarching narrative of this collection of essays is about how she came through this realization that she didn't love her life, and how she could fix that.

These essays were beautifully written, and I felt like I could relate to Philpott on a lot of levels. I related to her perfectionism and overachiever status, and she seemed like such a normal person that I wanted to get to know her.

I feel like I could have read this book 10 times slower and gotten a lot more out of it. As it was, I read it pretty fast, and enjoyed it and giggled at times and felt feelings at other times, but I think I missed some of the deep stuff that Philpott was writing about. I wish I'd kept better mental notes about which essays I liked and which ones stood out to me, but I don't ever do that very well when I can't fold a page over (this was an e-book). So there were definitely really good moments in this book that I wish I could reference, but overall, it was a good read.

The Austen Escape by Katherine Reay

Years and years ago, I read several of Katherine Reay's books, and absolutely loved them. They were easy, sweet, fun reads, but didn't feel stupid. They were obviously not Literature, but more than just basic chick lit. And I liked that they were related to Jane Austen and using themes from her books, but not just straight rewrites of Austen's plots. But I've never checked out any more of her books since then, although I've been meaning to. I finally read this one the other day, and didn't love it as much as her previous ones I remember, but it was still definitely a fun read.

Mary, a nerdy engineer at a start-up in Austin, gets taken to a Jane Austen retreat in Bath, England, with her old friend from her childhood who kind of twists her arm and makes her come with her. This friend, Isabel, is kind of manipulative and not super nice, but once they get there, she has a kind of mental breakdown and starts to act like she really thinks she is living in Jane Austen's time and it's really the Regency period, so Mary has to take care of her and also learns a lot about herself. There's obviously also a romance, which is relatively cute.

My favorite part about this book was the oh-so-real relationship between Mary and Isabel, and seeing how Isabel keeps Mary in her place and how Mary feels stuck and not able to stop what she knows is a not-great relationship. Little cutting remarks that Mary feels like she can't respond to, but which make her doubt herself. It seemed so fresh and real, because I've had friendships EXACTLY like that. I also liked Nathan, Mary's love interest, who seemed more like Tommy than almost any male character I've ever read about in a book. However, I felt like it really stretched my ability to believe when Nathan flew over to England and willingly dressed up in Regency-era clothing to help Mary with no warning and with no reason to think she wanted him to come. After a year of them liking each other and not doing anything about it. Really? And also, these people were adults--how could they sit around and long for each other for a year and neither one of them ever do the very obvious thing of just asking the other one out for dinner? I did not buy that at all. It seemed very immature.

But I did love all the Austen that was woven throughout this book. It made me think I need to re-read Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park--I've read the others plenty of times, but I think I've only read those two once.

Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey

I liked a lot of this book. It's about Annie, a girl who wants her life to be a romantic comedy, and how she won't settle for anyone who's any less romantic than Tom Hanks is in her favorite movies. I have to say that I did love all the references to rom-coms throughout this book. But the whole romance in this book kind of fell flat. It wasn't believable at all to me. A rom-com, exactly like those Annie is obsessed with, is starting to get filmed minutes away from her house, and she gets to work on the set because her uncle knows the director--of course! And then the main actor in it turns out to be the love of her life, even though she is convinced he's a jerk even though it's totally obvious that he's nice even though she's determined to take things the wrong way--of course! And he just falls in love with her at first sight, even though there's not much evidence as to why someone would do that. It all felt very contrived, especially the ending. My favorite part of this book was the scenes between Chloe and Nick, Annie's best friend and her boss at the coffee shop where they work. I would actually read the sequel, which is supposedly coming out next year, because it's about Chloe and Nick, and I want to see their relationship get resolved.

Although I just bashed on this book a bit, it was still a fun, mindless way to spend an evening. I didn't mind it too much while I was in the middle of it, it was just once I finished.

First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen by Charlie Lovett

I have been reading all the short, easy, quick and fun reads that are on my Goodreads to-read list lately, and this was one of them. Any book about Jane Austen is going to catch my attention (obviously) and I thought this one was an interesting one. Half of the book was a fictionalized story about Jane herself, set in the late 1700s, about the time she was first writing Pride and Prejudice. The other half of the book (in alternating chapters) was about a girl in today's times, who's trying to solve a mystery of how her bookish uncle died and what reason someone could have had to try and kill him, and then later, trying to solve a mystery about whether Jane Austen really wasn't the first author of Pride and Prejudice or if she'd plagiarized it. It was a fun story, but I have to say that the plot was very, very obvious to anyone except the main character. I knew from the first second that the bad guy was the bad guy, and the good guy was the good guy--it was incredibly obvious. And the ending was RIDICULOUSLY abrupt and disappointing--I was seriously four pages from the end and the girl was stuck in a burning house in the middle of the climactic scene. There was no denouement whatsoever, which kind of ruined it for me. But the rest of it was still enjoyable and not a terrible way to spend a couple of hours.

A Court of Thorns and Roses, A Court of Mist and Fury, and A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

This trilogy (I don't have the energy to write about these three books separately) is about a human entering into a faerie world (not fairies, not those little Tinkerbells you're imagining, but immortal gods and goddesses that have magic and could kill you on sight) and falling in love with one and trying to save him and the whole faerie world. Not to give too many spoilers, in case anyone wants to read these, but Feyre falls in love with several different faeries and becomes one herself, and then has to save the world several times against the powers of supreme evil that are trying to wipe everyone out. Basically.

The overall story was interesting and I definitely got sucked in to finding out what was going to happen. I read all three books quickly and couldn't put them down. I got invested in the characters and wanted to know what was going to happen. It was worth reading all three of them to find out what was going to happen. BUT I had some major gripes, and I don't know if I would recommend these books to anyone.

First of all, there was way more sex in them than what I normally read. It was way more detailed too, and so overwritten... Every time Feyre had sex it was the most passionate moment of her life, and Maas had to use the most dramatic metaphors to describe her reactions to the sex every single time. She never wasn't turned on, she never got tired of it, and she felt totally comfortable doing all sorts of things in front of all sorts of people. The men were always "growling with approval" and... it just felt so unbelievable and annoying after a while. I was skipping pages left and right whenever she started getting going, which was way more often than you'd think in a book that's ostensibly not a romance novel.

Second, Feyre, the main character, was a totally annoying character. You never have any idea what she looks like (although everyone says she's gorgeous and she says she's not, of course) and her main characteristic is calling the men around her "pricks" when she wants to sound tough. (Her conversations were very annoying at times.) She is brave to the point of foolhardiness, like

getting mad about not being allowed to explore the faerie lands when she is clearly a human about to be eaten by every last faerie around the house where she's staying in the first book, and then her main issues in the second and third book are that she CANNOT handle anyone trying to help her in any way because it reminds her of being controlled by her ex-lover after they escape the dungeon where they were kept as prisoners at the end of the third book. She gets super mad when anyone says they want to protect her or serve her or act like maybe she doesn't need to be involved in something. It just got so old and I was so annoyed by her after a while. Okay, we get it, you're super powerful and don't need anyone to care about you or protect you. How dare they care about you and not want you to die. Wow. I did like some of the supporting characters a lot, like her main love interest.

Third, it seemed like the author kept building up to these climaxes that were always less interesting than they seemed like they would be. In the final book in the final battle, Feyre literally says, "We all knew we were going to die." And then it turned out, not a single one of their friends died. They all miraculously somehow survived the battle. Even the ones who purposely sacrificed themselves were resurrected and it all ended up like a nice family reunion at the end. It just seemed like there was never any conflict that wasn't magically resolved perfectly, and it got old after a while. She also kept building up several love stories for the supporting characters that never ended up happening or getting any traction. There was no resolution for them in the end. Come on.

All in all, they were a perfect read to distract me while I was so sick and miserable--I needed something that didn't involved any thinking. But I don't feel like I would read them again and I would feel awkward recommending them to anyone, mostly because of the sex.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I read this with Graham after our reading lessons over the last few months. It took a long time to get through it because I have NOT been reading to the kids as much while I've been feeling so sick. (One more thing that has fallen by the wayside.) But I love, love these books, and I love seeing my kids listening to them too. There is so much interesting information in here about how people used to live, and I think that is so valuable for kids to imagine what it was like before cars. Before grocery stores. Before electricity and refrigerators. I love seeing the kids think about that and be amazed.

These are NOT girl books. These are excellent books for boys too. Laura is such a tomboy and such a fun character that I think everyone enjoys these.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller

I have been writing on this blog for almost eight years. And I have been very, very consistent about it for the last eight years. I have never read a book and not written about it--at least in a cursory way--on here. Until now. I am pregnant with my fourth baby, very sick, and our ward's brand new Young Women's president. And guess what has had to go? Everything that is not having to do with staying alive, keeping my children alive, and doing the basics in surviving my calling. That means uploading and organizing my photos--something I used to do religiously--has gone out the window. Making and preparing food--no way. Anything that has to do with my own personal development and interests--nope. I haven't had the energy to do anything. Anything. Other than lying in the fetal position in bed and watch four and a half seasons of The Office over a couple of weeks.

But I think I am slowly starting to come out of it. I did throw up today, but I felt like a normal human yesterday. I think it's getting better. So maybe I can start being a person again and start making food again and maybe even catch up on this blog. I have loved keeping this blog up for the last few years, and I don't want to let it die. But I'm guessing my posts are going to keep getting shorter (there has definitely been a trend of much shorter reviews in the last few months) and maybe eventually it'll just be a few sentences or I'll just have to resort to using Goodreads to track my reading. But for now, I think I'm back.

All of that is to lead into me saying that I read this book a while ago, and really enjoyed it, but don't remember much about it now. It was at least a month ago that I read it. Miller makes a really interesting point about what he learned while working with screenwriters while trying to turn his own book, a memoir about his life, into a movie. It was a weird process, trying to see himself as a character in a movie, and he realized that his own real life was really boring and not inspiring at all--not at all the sort of person you would want to watch in a movie. When you don't have a purpose or any action or direction or conflict in your life, then what are you doing? What is the point? He realized these things and decided to consciously change his own story by adding those things to it and making it more of a story that he'd like to read.

I loved his thoughts and how they were interspersed with his own memoir of how he deliberately worked to change his story. He tried hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, he fell in love and then out of love, he started cycling for charity. He started adding new and interesting conflicts to his story.

I marked some pages with interesting quotes that I'll just copy here:

"You get a feeling when you look back on life that that's all God really wants from us, to live in aside a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with us through the experience."

"Nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That's what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. Those polar charges, those happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world... Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller."

"If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation... If story is derived from real life, if story is just a condensed version of life, then life itself may be designed to change us, so that we evolve from one kind of person to another."

"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories. If it won't work in a story, it won't work in life."

"As I've said before, the main way we learn story is not through movies or books; it's through each other. You become like the people you interact with. And if your friends are living boring stories, you probably will too. We teach our children good or bad stories, what is worth living for and what is worth dying for, what is worth pursuing, and the dignity with which a character engages his own narrative."

It definitely made me start thinking about what is the story I want to be living. Of course, after reading it, I have been in a practical coma of self-absorption and exhaustion. But my best self, my usual self, has lots of ideas about what I want to be like and what I want my story to be. And I'll get there soon enough, once I'm out of the morning-sickness-induced funk that we've been in around here.

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

I've heard about Marisa de los Santos's books for years, and always meant to check them out. But our library didn't have an audiobook version of this one, and I for some reason really never got around to actually reading it. But now was finally the right time for this one, and I'm glad I finally did it. It was very, very good. De los Santos is a poet, and you can tell it in her writing--she is very precise in the words she choose and the images she evokes, and I love reading this sort of writing. It's not fancy, but it's beautiful. This book feels like chick lit, because it's fundamentally a love story, but there is a lot more to it--it's about heartbreak and a girl who Cornelia ends up having to rescue, and it is written so beautifully that it feels even bigger too. I love this sort of book, and I loved the characters in this story as well: Cornelia, Clare, and Teo all were so fundamentally good. The only complaint that I really have is a minor one, compared to how much I enjoyed it, and because I wasn't really thinking it while I read it: it just feels kind of unlikely that Cornelia would basically adopt this girl after literally just meeting her, and that they would get along so well, and that then her father would just conveniently die so she doesn't have to resolve that issue, etc. It feels all unlikely after finishing it and looking back, but while I was reading it, I didn't worry about it and enjoyed the story. It was definitely worth a read and such a fun story with a sweet, happy ending.

Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson

I read this years ago, but I've been feeling like I wanted to read it again--every time I've seen it on my shelves lately I've been leaning towards it. After reading Harry Potter, I needed something really engaging to come out of my Harry Potter hangover. This was a perfect read--a really well-done Regency romance. This story is so cute, if not totally 100% believable (part of me wants to say that the misunderstandings in this story could have been cleared up pretty easily, but I enjoy the story enough that that's okay). Very cute, easy to read story.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I loved this book so much when I listened to it as an audiobook earlier this year, and I wanted to read it again. I chose it for our book club and I wasn't sure if I was going to get to read it again, but I absolutely loved it. It was so, so good. We had such a good book club discussion as well--but I don't have the energy to write about it all right now. Just know--this is one of my very favorite books I have ever read. I absolutely love it.

Harry Potter books 4-7 by J. K. Rowling

I really wanted to write about each of these individually, but I didn't feel like it when I was reading them. I just wanted to get through them as quickly as possible. I definitely felt like I had a huge Harry Potter hangover after finishing these again, and wanted to watch all of the movies to keep it going (although I'm just going to watch the 7th and 8th movies--I don't have time for all of them). There's not much more to add about them. I love them and will always read these again and again.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tommy and I are going to see Macbeth performed tomorrow (there's a Shakespeare in the Park theater group here, which I'm so excited to go see), and I had planned to read this before going, but thought I'd left it too late and missed my chance. Well, it turned out that I borrowed the audiobook from the library, and it was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long, and I was able to listen and read along today during naptime and after the kids went to bed. I read this in high school, and maybe even in college as well, and actually re-read my original high school copy today, but I didn't remember much and had confused much of the storyline of Hamlet and Macbeth in my heads. Basically all I remembered about this story was Lady Macbeth and "Out, out, damned spot!" But I am so pleased with these re-readings of Shakespeare's plays, because they are so much better than I realized they were when I read them in high school. This time, reading Macbeth, (and listening to it), the emotions and the horror and the creepiness of the whole story was so apparent. The witches, and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking/insanity, and Banquo's ghost appearing--it was a perfect October read (I love reading slightly creepy things in October!). Lady Macbeth was just as creepy as I remember--she needed only the slightest hint to start urging Macbeth to kill the king, and was so determined to do it and wouldn't listen to any of his protests... until she was so overcome with remorse that she started to go insane and eventually killed herself. Macbeth was remorseful before doing it, and wavered as to whether they should go through with their plans, but once he was committed, was determined to go down fighting and didn't recognize Lady Macbeth's remorse as valid at all.

There were so many well-written lines and amazing parts in this play, but I didn't mark any of them down. The best one was Macbeth's famous last soliloquy, which just resonates so well that I'll copy it here:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

I read HP 1 a few months ago and kept meaning to read them all before we went to the Harry Potter Studios in England, but didn't end up having time. And I just didn't want to read number 2 for some reason, so I skipped to this one. I love this book--I feel like this is where the series really starts to get good (although I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the first book and think it is amazing too). I think the ending of this book with Buckbeak, Sirius, and the Time-Turner is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. It totally blew my mind as a kid and I still really like it now (even if there are plenty of issues with why that couldn't work). I'm definitely going on to read number 4 next.

Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis

Another perfect read-aloud with the boys! I am so happy to be reading these Chronicles of Narnia books with the boys. This one was actually kind of surprising to notice how little action actually happens--it was a lot of storytelling and not a lot of action, but the kids didn't mind. I never minded that either when I read it as a kid. This one is not as good as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I'm betting none of them are, so I can't hold that against it. I am so proud of the boys and their ability to follow this complex story. Graham definitely gets lost a lot, but he gets a lot more than I thought he was, even when he's sitting on the ground flipping through picture books while I read. And Dane understands every bit, even when I think there's no way he'll get what's going on. I'm so excited to read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with them because I know they are going to LOVE it.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

I have never been that interested in Alexander Hamilton as a founding father before (like the rest of the nation, until the musical Hamilton became a thing), but I got this as an audiobook from the library and started listening to it. It's only 36 hours long (ha!), so it took me months to get through (because it got returned to the library, etc.). I wanted to listen to it before we went to England and saw Hamilton while we were there, but I didn't finish it until today. It took so long partly because it is so long, and partly because I dragged my feet finishing it because I knew that it had a sad ending and I didn't want to get into Hamilton's affair being exposed and his son's death in a duel and his own death in a duel.

I was so impressed by Chernow's writing and how he made Hamilton, and so many other founding fathers and mothers, come alive. He really gave them all personalities and gave examples of their personalities through their writing--great examples of uses of evidence, as the composition teacher in me wants to say. Hamilton was so brash and so forthright and opinionated, in comparison with so many of the other founding fathers he worked with and clashed with. Chernow really helped me to distinguish between everyone and their accomplishments. He also gave a totally different perspective than the burnished, perfect viewpoint we sometimes get on so many of the founding fathers, like of Thomas Jefferson being the opposite of Hamilton and very circumspect and reserved and sneaky, and John Adams being so touchy and flighty. I felt like I learned so much about the whole American Revolution and the world in that time from reading this book, and I was really impressed by the amount of research Chernow had to have done to write this all-encompassing biography. Eliza Hamilton was one of my favorite people in the whole book--she was definitely the unsung hero of Hamilton's life (although Chernow definitely tries to correct that problem by singing those praises).

It makes you wonder what Hamilton would have become if he had lived for another 30 years. Would he have become crotchety and made a bunch of other ridiculous mistakes like he did with some of his pamphlets? Or would he have made other positive changes for our country? I was trying to explain to the boys today what he did, and it's hard for kids to grasp the Federalist Papers or the Constitution (I explained it as the "rules of our country," haha), but Chernow definitely makes it clear that without Hamilton, our country would not have been born as we know it today. Thank goodness for great people like him who got our country where it started.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

This was one of my very favorite books when I was growing up, and I still have a deep and abiding love for it. I read it so many times growing up, but I haven't read it since before I started this blog (seems like that's a recurring theme for many of the classics I've been re-reading lately!). It was a total pleasure to revisit this and enjoy the stories about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and their sweet family. I love the four distinct personalities that the sisters have, and the scrapes and disagreements that they get into. Like most people, I love and identify with the impulsive and tempestuous Jo best. But I especially love the strong, solid family that they are, and the good advice and love that comes from Marmee to each of the girls. Some of it is very old-fashioned (like Marmee saying that a husband is the best thing that can happen to a girl, etc.), but I think a lot of it holds up--the virtues of self-denial and the goals of self-improvement, recognizing our faults and the things we need to work on, are strong in the March family, and I think are a good example of good qualities that we could all work on. They try to focus on their best qualities and work hard to conquer their weaknesses, and these are things we can all work on.

No matter how I try, though, I can never be totally okay with Jo and Laurie not ending up together. I believe Marmee's argument that they would not suit, and would fight and not get along together, but I kind of hate that she ends up with old Professor Bhaer--if only he weren't old! Couldn't he be kind and good and young? And I feel like Alcott could have left Jo a little of her old spunk and fiestiness at the end, instead of calling her "Mother Bhaer" and making her seem like she's an old lady at 30 years old and the leader of her school. But all in all, just such a beautiful walk down memory lane, and I want to buy all the rest of Alcott's books that I loved when I was young too.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

I'd read reviews of this book for the last few years and kept meaning to get around to it, but I never did until I had to finish it for book club tomorrow, where I'm leading the discussion (ha). But it was totally, totally worth squeezing it into this already busy week.

I really enjoyed this and had many things to discuss about it at our book club meeting, but I just don't have time to write about it right now. Definitely thought-provoking, definitely worth a read, super glad I read it.

Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy

I have definitely felt a lot of joy about reading and re-reading all my favorite children's and middle-grade novels lately, especially reading them aloud with my kids. I have spent countless hours so far in my parenting life reading picture books to our kids, and I've read 44 chapter books aloud with Dane so far (and maybe about half of them with Graham too). I really, really love reading books that I loved with them. I get a LOT of joy out of doing this.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel a ton of joy reading Handy's literary criticism of his chosen selection of children's literature. I did really like learning about each of the authors he selected--Margaret Wise Brown was fascinating!--and I liked learning about his analysis of each book. It was definitely worth a read for anyone who reads a lot of kids' books, because he chose a famous genre or author to write about in each chapter and clearly did a lot of research on it.

Some of it dragged, though, and I was very annoyed by his reflex reactions to Little Women and Anne of Green Gables: he didn't like the former and didn't even get through 30 pages of the latter. Of course, he's a grown adult man, which means he's not at all in the target audience for those books, but deciding to read (for the first time ever) these towering classics of children's literature as research for writing a book about children's literature completely misses the point of those books. Of course you won't like them in the way that a young girl would, or an adult re-reading them after loving them as a child. I think the nostalgia factor is huge in my pure joy that I get out of reading children's literature. It's not the only reason I love them--because I have had books that I don't love very much when I revisit them as adults--but I don't think I would love them as much now if I hadn't encountered them a long time ago. I feel like Handy misses the point by discussing their authors' backgrounds and breaking them down (although I did really like learning about them)--those aren't the reasons these books bring us joy. So that made the subtitle of his book a little misleading to me.

But maybe I'm just still offended by how much he hated Anne of Green Gables. How dare he.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

I absolutely, 100% love the Narnia books. I read them dozens of times as a kid, all seven of them. So I am shocked to realize that I've never read them in all the time I've been writing on this blog or keeping track of my reading on Goodreads. I'd never rated them on Goodreads! I keep being surprised by the books I've overlooked on there.

I had the BEST time this month reading the Narnia books with the boys. There is nothing more magical than the first chapter of this book, where Lucy opens the wardrobe door and finds the magical land of Narnia in the back of the wardrobe. I realize now that this story was foundational in much of my imaginary worlds that I would write about and build as a kid--my heroes were always finding secret hiding places in closets or in the woods (that story comes from the Boxcar Children). The very idea of a whole world being hidden somewhere so simple as a wardrobe is so fantastic and wonderful and amazing that it has to be something that every child dreams about and half-hopes for, even after they really know that it won't happen.

I love the rest of the story as well, and the four Pevensie children and their qualities, and I loved seeing the boys get into this story. They loved the first chapter, then felt like it was a little slow in the middle, but once Santa Claus came up and gave them their presents, and the battle with the Witch started to heat up, they were TOTALLY into it and made me read the last three chapters all in one night to finish it off, and begged for me to read the next Narnia book for our next chapter book together. I am of course happy to oblige. There are some books and series that I can't help but want to share with our kids, and this is one of them... I would be so sad if they didn't fall in love with these stories the way I did. On to Prince Caspian next!

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

I started out thinking this would be a cute, quick, fun audiobook to listen to--an easy YA romance. It ended up having every single stupid romance trope that I hate all combined into one book. The main character had no personality (even at the end, she was talking about everyone's personality traits and said she couldn't think of what she had to contribute, but she'd figure it out). Her best friend had sex once and got pregnant (WORST STORYLINE EVER) from it. The friend refused to even consider other options but was determined to keep the baby without thinking about how it was going to change her life (nobody seemed too concerned about what she was going to do about childcare despite the fact that she was only 16 years old?). She also goes into labor AT PROM. The main character falls in love with a typical bad boy guy who also has no personality and is clearly a jerk, but she is convinced he loves her. The main character's mom is apparently a professional therapist for parents of teenagers, but is shocked when her own teenager stops telling her everything and starts arguing with her, like she has no idea how to handle it despite it being HER PROFESSIONAL FIELD.

I just hated this by the end, but I had to finish it, thinking there might be some redeeming twist. There was not. I don't know if I'll ever read another Sarah Dessen, although I really enjoyed the one of hers I listened to last year. But man, I don't know if she can come back from this one.

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl

I really enjoyed this memoir of Ruth Reichl's. I've seen people talk about her writing many, many times, but I don't think I've ever read anything by her. This is her memoir of the time she spent as the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine before it got shut down in 2008, and it was a fascinating look into the world of magazines and the foodie world of New York in the 2000s. It sounds very glamorous and fancy, but Reichl's down-to-earth style comes through and saves the book from being annoying or snooty. She clearly was at odds with the elitist style of the magazine when she came in, and she brought it out of that world while she was the editor. Reichl's chops as a food writer come through in this book as well, in her occasional descriptions of cakes and chocolates and the very specific words she uses to describe foods. I thought it was beautiful how she could write about them and how much joy food brought her.

I really enjoyed this, and I think I will read another one of her memoirs sometime soon. I don't know that it will be a huge priority--I have so many other books on my nightstand right now--but someday!

Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan by Sonia Kamal

I read every Jane Austen fan fiction rewrite that I come across, and many times am disappointed. This is one of those. I guess it lives up to its subtitle; this book was an exact attempt at a copy of P&P in a different setting. When people include every single small plot point from P&P in a rewrite, it starts to lose its enjoyment for me. The main thing that I liked about this book was the setting in Pakistan, and I did like seeing the similarities between Jane Austen's culture in Regency England and modern-day Pakistan (according to this one book and this one author). I thought some of the settings and descriptions were really beautiful, and it made me want to go visit Pakistan sometime. However, much of this writing wasn't very good. The conversations were really painful to read and didn't feel realistic at all. And the main character, Alys, was one of those kind of obnoxious overly strong female characters that does things just to be fierce instead of because they make sense. This was less enjoyable than I hoped.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

I wish I had more mental power or energy or time to analyze and write about all these Shakespeare plays I've been reading (all three of them, haha)--it feels cheap to review them with a number of stars and a one-paragraph summary of what I thought about them. All I can say for now is that I really liked reading this. It definitely raised a lot of thoughts about men and women and romance, with all these misconceptions about who Viola was and who was falling in love with whom, and I'm sure I could have written a huge essay about this years ago in college. But for now, I'll just say that I didn't realize the quote "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them" came from this play, and that it is read in a comic situation and has an ironic twist being read by Malvolio. It gives a whole different meaning to the quote, haha.

The Accidental Beauty Queen by Teri Wilson

I checked this out hoping for a quick, easy read for my trip, and I thought the premise sounded cute: one twin is forced to step in for her sister in a beauty pageant when the other gets a terrible allergic reaction. It was definitely a quick and easy read, but I'm going to sound snobby here--it was just not that good. It was about as cute good-feeling as you could get about a beauty pageant--all the contestants are sweet and nice to each other, and the unwilling twin ends up having all these nice fuzzy feelings about the true meaning behind beauty pageants--which just seemed a touch unrealistic to me. And I absolutely did not believe the romance even one bit. I am willing to suspend my disbelief to a certain limit, but this girl wore a nerdy t-shirt and the guy quoted Harry Potter to her and she immediately swooned for him, and actually used "steely blue eyes" five hundred times until I was just way sick of it. The beauty pageant part was much more enjoyable than the romance, so overall not exactly worth the read.

The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth

I wasn't expecting to love this book so much--but I totally did. I started listening to it just a few days before we left on our trip, and I thought I wouldn't finish it. But I listened to the whole 9-hour audiobook in one day--on double speed, but still--I couldn't stop listening. I couldn't wait to figure out what was happening. I loved how this was a murder mystery but also really a story about the relationship between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. You wanted to find out who did the murder, but that came after finding out how the two of them kept misunderstanding each other over years, and how they never really knew each other or saw what the other was trying to do to be kind until the very end. I liked having both perspectives from Lucy (the daughter-in-law) and Diana (the mother-in-law); you can see how Lucy might be seen as skittish and clingy, although when you hear her thoughts she definitely doesn't come across that way; and how Diana is firm and unbending, but you get more information about why. It definitely was a great choice for a book club book, which we are going to be discussing in a few weeks for our ward book club.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

I read this for my book club, and I feel like this book would be a great one to read with the kids. I liked it enough for myself, but I think they would really like it. The story is about Minli, a young girl in China, who goes to find the Old Man in the Moon to ask how she can change her fortune for her poor, struggling family. She has to go on a journey to get to his mountain, and has all sorts of adventures along the way. The message of the book is that she and her family learns to be content and thankful for what they have, and once they have learned that, their fortunes also change for the better.

The story is sprinkled with all sorts of Chinese stories and legends, and Lin's writing is sparse yet beautiful in a way that seems fitting for the style of this story. I really liked how quickly-moving the story was, and how it only took me a few hours to read, but how sweet and simple it was as well. I definitely plan to read this with the kids sometime soon.

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

I loved, loved this book. I've heard about it as a great read-aloud for kids for years, but hadn't ever gotten around to reading it. It was one of my main goals for this summer to read it to the boys, and although it basically took me all summer to get through it (because we didn't read much on our trip), I really enjoyed it. The boys really got into the story too. It's a story of four sisters and the boy they meet on their summer vacation, and each sister has their own distinctive, strong personality, which causes all sorts of mischief, especially when you take into account the snobby and mean Mrs. Tifton they have to deal with. I loved how the story really represented each girl so clearly, and how they each had their own realization and growth that happened over the course of the novel. The blurb on the back of the book compared the Penderwick sisters to the March sisters from Little Women, which comparison definitely works. It was a sweet family story where the sisters rely on each other, and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure if this one would be less interesting for the boys because it's a "girl book" (or at least, one about girls) but once again, they loved it. There are four more books in the series and I am totally interested in reading the rest... at least to myself.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

I am making good progress on my goal to read a few Shakespeare plays this year. I finished this one last week and am just getting around to writing about it. I loved how many memorable, oft-quoted lines were in this play, particularly "The true course of love never did run smooth" and "Though she be but little, she is fierce" (which I always think of with Lucy in mind). And, "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." I thought this play was funny, cute, and really enjoyable to read. I thought the last act was not a great ending to the play, though--it seems like something that actors/playwrights would think was funny but not the audience. I wanted more drama from the forest with the lovers instead.

I feel silly having only about 8 sentences to say about a Shakespeare play and basically concluding "I liked it" and that's it, but I don't have the brainpower or time right now to write much more. So, I liked it!

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

This book was the last in the Graceling series, and it was a really interesting one. Bitterblue is a princess from Graceling, who is now the queen ruling the kingdom of Monsea and trying to help the kingdom recover from the thirty-five years of her father's deceptions and illusions that he used while he was king. She begins to try to sneak out of the castle and to get to know what's really going on in her city, and makes some friends who aren't in the castle--and begins to uncover some major problems that are going on in her city that she wasn't aware of. This book reads a little like a mystery, with Bitterblue trying to find out who's lying to her and who's doing what, as she tries to make better decisions about what her country needs.

I think my favorite thing about this book was how all three of the novels came together, with the characters from Graceling and Fire all coming together at the end. I loved how Cashore was able to link all of them and to show us how Fire and her friends ended up 50 years after their book ended. I also liked Bitterblue's character--she was queenly and determined but not all-knowing or all-powerful like Katsa and Fire, and she made mistakes.

I think this trilogy was great and created in a really interesting world. There were a few things I didn't love about it, but none of those had anything to do with the quality of the writing or of the characters and world-building.

The one funny thing about this audiobook was that this one was done by a different production company than the first, so for some reason Katsa and Po and Raffin and Bann and all of these characters that had been in the first book all had very strong Scottish accents for some reason. I felt like it almost made them comical, which I don't think they are at all... it was just funny how listening to the book made such a difference to my experience of the characters.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

This book was the second in the Graceling series, and I liked it even better than the first. I loved the character of Fire (although I wish she had a better name) and the new world that Fire lived in. Fire is a monster, which means that she is a ridiculously, magically beautiful non-human that can read and control people's minds. She has spent her whole life trying to avoid doing this--until she gets caught up in trying to help the king and his family to put down the rebellions that are happening and destabilizing their world. She has to decide how far she is willing to use her power and what her role is in the world.

I thought it was pretty amazing how Cashore created this other world that is connected to the old one, and how she connected the story of the villain from Graceling and added him to this story, at a different time period but with the same malevolence. I liked Fire's determination and her abilities, and I liked the romance that developed between her and Brigan and how they slowly got to know each other. My only complaint, once again, was that she was only 15 and having sex with multiple men. And how come they were using this teenager to basically run the country? But the rest of the story was really great and even with those flaws, it was well worth the read and very well done.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

I didn't know much about this book--I'd just written down the name of the second book in this trilogy as a good audiobook to listen to from a recommendation from somewhere, but I had to start at the beginning of the trilogy to listen to it. This was the story of Katsa, a girl graced with the skill of killing anyone with her bare hands or whatever weapon she chooses. She is being used as the weapon of the king, and she feels trapped by his power. Throughout the book, she learns about her own power and her ability to control herself and others through her power.

I thought this book was really good and well-written, and it was set in an interesting world and with a great story. Katsa and Po were both great characters as well. My only real complaint was that Katsa's opinions about relationships and commitment were really obnoxious. It's just so typical of every "strong" female character to refuse to commit to marry someone because then they have to answer to them, to refuse to have babies because they will get in the way of their own passions. I think it's such an immature way to view relationships and children. And I also really don't love stories about 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds having sex with people. I know that it happens, and I know that it's probably normal for many other people, but I don't think it's healthy and I don't think it should be normalized in teen literature.

But the rest of the book was really great, and I loved Katsa as a character other those issues (which, to be fair, I think are probably understandable because of her background with her uncle the king).

Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer

Okay, this is almost cheating, because this was an ABRIDGED audiobook version of this Heyer book! But I didn't really have a choice, because there wasn't an unabridged, and this was the ONLY Heyer audiobook that our library has, and I just wanted to listen to it. It was only four hours long, so it was very quick, and I wonder how much they could have cut out. Maybe they cut out the whole part where the hero and heroine actually fall in love, because that seemed ridiculously short and unlikely in this book. They hated each other, and then love each other, and I know that's how it always happens in a rom-com, but it just seemed extremely unlikely in this specific situation. Also, I couldn't believe that the man would actually even fall in love with her after all of the things she did to him (because she was so mad at him), but I don't know. It was still a cute and funny audiobook to listen to on our super-long drive home.

Stuart Little by E. B. White

We listened to this audiobook in the car while driving back from Bear Lake, and I thought it was really cute. The kids really liked the story of Stuart as well, and especially of Margolo the bird. Their favorite chapter was when Stuart gets picked up by a trash truck and sent out to sea with the trash (is that really what they used to do with the trash??!) and Margolo comes to rescue him. I just thought the ending to this book was super weird--there was no resolution to anything that Stuart was doing; I kept trying to find a sequel that would explain him finding Margolo and marrying the other little person, but apparently there isn't one. But oh well, the rest of the book was cute.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I really, really wanted to read the unabridged version of this this year, but I just couldn't do it. We had a family book club discussion about this book in Newport Beach, and the goal was for everyone in the family to read it together. Only about half of us did. BUT I'm glad that I still got around to reading the abridged version again, because it has been too long--at least seven years. I absolutely love this book, and it's Tommy's favorite book ever, which is something I love about him too. He's read the unabridged 1200 page version two times now, which is definitely an accomplishment.

This time reading it I was struck by the difference in Edmond Dantes' character vs. the Count's character, and how much less we know about him after becoming the Count. When he's in prison, we hear his thoughts and see his feelings, but once he becomes the Count, it's like he goes into costume for us as well. We no longer are privy to his plans or thoughts, which becomes a necessary part of the suspense for the story, but it also makes him a less sympathetic character. I feel like I could write a whole paper about this difference and what it is for, but I won't here. The other thing I was struck by was the emphasis on honor at this time and how much their culture valued it; it was better to commit suicide than to declare bankruptcy, and better to duel to the death than to allow someone to insult you. I think there are good things about their value of honor, but also negative things too--I don't think people should commit suicide just because they've lost their money.

We also watched the movie, and I love thinking about the differences between the movie and the story in the book. I used to prefer the movie ending, where the Count ends up with Mercedes, but I also think it's more realistic that he doesn't end up with her. Too much time has passed and too much has happened to the both of them for them to still be in love. I definitely enjoyed reading this book again.