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.