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.