Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

This is the sequel to Sleeping Giants, and I loved this one just as much as the first. This one had much more action to it than the first. In Sleeping Giants, they have discovered parts to a giant robot that they are trying to figure out how to use. But in this one, set ten years after the first, multiple giant alien robots come to earth and begin wiping out the population. So Dr. Rose Franklin and her team have to figure out a way to stop the robots from killing everyone, with their limited knowledge and their one robot. The action was very fast-paced in this book, and things went very quickly, which was fun for this audiobook. The story was seriously scary, with how many people were wiped out by these alien civilizations, and I actually was dreaming about it last night. The conclusion was seriously exciting, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen until the very end of the book--literally, just a few minutes till the end. I still love the recorded interview style of this book, and really am happy to be listening to these as audiobooks. (Unfortunately, the third book in the series is only available from our library as an e-book, so I have to decide if I want to read it or just not get it at all.)

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

I have been meaning to read this book for over a decade, ever since I read Gilead for the first time in college in... 2007? Wow, that was a long time ago. I loved Gilead and thought I should read something else written by Robinson, but it has taken me this long to actually get around to it. And guess what? After all that time and planning... I really didn't like it. I don't know what it was, exactly. I think that part of it was that the story was kind of sad and depressing to me, although it wasn't necessarily meant to be. It was the story of two girls, Ruthie and Lucille, and their scattered upbringing with their grandmother, then two great-aunts, and then their aunt, and it just made me sad how they lacked everything that kids need to survive and thrive. Ruthie was the narrator, and none of the story seemed all that sad, even though it was, because her voice was so detached and unemotional. But I couldn't stop thinking about how depressing it all was, and how much this upbringing would be damaging to any child, to have their mother abandon them and commit suicide, and to lose their grandmother after a few years (even though she wasn't the most warm and caring caretaker), and to be taken care of by a very transient, unattached aunt who they were never sure was going to stick around. Lucille reacts to all this by wanting so badly to be normal and have normal routines and to look normal, and she eventually runs away to move in with a teacher. But Ruthie becomes almost like a ghost--you never get a sense that she talks, almost at all, and she just lets herself morph into another version of her aunt, becoming impermanent and unattached to anyone and anything. They eventually run away and leave their town and become drifters.

Something that stands out about Gilead is Robinson's beautiful prose and slow, meditative style. That applies here too, but I felt like it dragged considerably, and did not work as well as it did in Gilead. (I'm sure that was just me, though... since plenty of other people love this book.) There were some parts when I was just dying to get through it, and it felt so, so slow. (Like the day when Sylvie and Ruthie go to the mountains and are searching for imaginary children, and then get stuck on the boat overnight... I just did not understand what was going on or why it was so slow.) But there were some parts that were just beautiful, particularly the many parts about memory and transience and how things change over time. There was so much about loneliness and how people can see into houses in the dark when the lights are on, and how people outside feel alone. All of these parts were beautifully written and worth pondering, and all struck a chord with me.

"I do not think Sylvie was merely reticent. It is, as she said, difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows." (page 53)

"Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, 'Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it.' Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire." (page 154)

"It was difficult work, but I have often noticed that it is almost intolerable to be looked at, to be watched, when one is idle. When one is idle and alone, the embarrassments of loneliness are almost endlessly compounded." (page 158)

"Sylvie did not want to lose me. She did not wish me to grow gigantic and multiple, sot hat I seemed to fill the whole house, and she did not wish me to turn subtle and miscible, so that I could pass through the membranes that separate dream and dream. . . . She could forget I was in the room. She could speak to herself, or to someone in her thoughts, with pleasure and animation, even while I sat beside her--this was the measure of our intimacy, that she gave almost no thought to me at all. But if she lost me, I would become extraordinary by my vanishing." (page 195)

All in all, I think this book was worth reading for all of these parts and all of these thoughts that Robinson does such a beautiful job of expressing and describing. I think she is an amazing writer and thinker. I just couldn't get into this story, and I felt like there were parts of the book that I wanted to be over much more quickly, but all in all, I'm glad to have read it and to have gotten out of it what I did. Maybe if I read it again in a different stage of life, I will be able to appreciate it more and get more out of it.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

I really, really liked this audiobook. It was such a fun surprise. Sometimes I get stuck in ruts when it comes to what I'm listening to, and I get tired of everything and I don't know why I bother--and then I get something really great to listen to and get all excited about audiobooks again. I absolutely loved this one, although the premise just sounds so weird and confusing I kept putting off listening to it. But it was definitely worth it! The idea was that there were giant alien-created robot body parts buried deep under the earth, and once one is discovered, scientists begin finding the rest of them and trying to find out what it is for. It's all about how they're assembling a team and stumbling around in the dark, trying to find out whatever they can about this robot that was apparently created six thousand years ago, so it has to have been created by aliens. The reasoning behind it sounded plausible to me (as a total non-scientist) and I thought it was just the right amount of science fiction to be still realistic. The plot was super interesting and although the ending was a little over-dramatic (to me), it definitely didn't take away from my enjoyment of the whole book. I loved each of the characters, and I absolutely loved listening to this one as an audiobook because of the fantastic narrators voicing each person. I think this is one that would have been much less entertaining to read than to listen to, and I felt like each of the narrators did a great job giving a personality to each of the characters. I immediately finished this and jumped right into the sequel, but I am bugged because our library only has a e-book of the third book in this series instead of an audiobook, which is really going to cramp my style. I'll see what I can do, though.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

I of course remember this book from when I was a kid, but I also didn't read it over and over again like I did with many books that I loved--I think because it was too sad. I don't love things that are super sad. So reading it again was almost like a brand new experience to me, except that I knew something super tragic and sad happens (and I think I was confusing this book with Tuck Everlasting, another book I liked from this time period). I loved how Paterson created the character of Jess Aarons, and how she let us get to know him through his running and his attempts to be the best runner in his grade. The first few chapters of him running and being in school on the first day were so real and bright that I could picture being there with him. Once Leslie comes into the picture, I loved seeing how she brings her magic to Jesse's life and shows him how to aspire to things and to be better than he is, even just through his imagination. I thought that was the "message" at the end, although it wasn't at all preachy--it was just Jesse realizing that the way for him to remember Leslie would be to continue doing for his sister what Leslie had done for him, to continue Leslie's magic in the world. Of all the parts in the book, that's where I choked up, at the very end, when Jess is bringing May Belle into Terabithia and giving her this gift of his time and imagination, and lifting her up to be the queen in their imaginary world. Isn't that what every lonely child wants and needs? It was so sweet and beautiful, and that was the most beautiful part of the book to me. Definitely a really, really good book.

Missing May by Cynthia Rylant

I had never read this (very short) Newbery award winner, and I thought it was very well done. The story is about a girl, Summer, who has been living with her great-aunt and uncle May and Ob in West Virginia, and her life is turned upside down when May dies. She and Ob don't know how to go on without her, and she worries that Ob's going to give up and die too and leave her alone. I loved the depiction of how kind and loving May and Ob were, and how they took in this poor girl and loved her to pieces. I loved how the story was very calm and slow, and kind of anticlimactic, about how she and Ob began to grieve and mourn for May but to also figure out how to live again. But I kind of wanted it to be more like Walk Two Moons with more of an adventure in the journey that Summer, Ob, and Cletus went on. It felt like their trip should have been bigger and more extended, and they could have learned more from it. But I enjoyed what there was, and how real it all felt. I don't know that this was my favorite middle-grade novel out there, but it was still good.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

I didn't really love this book! I've never seen the movie and really had no idea what the story was about, but I've heard the title name so often that it seemed familiar to me. I picked it up and thumbed through it, and saw how wide the spacing and the margins were, and I figured it would take me about an hour to read, so I sped through it. And I did, no problem, but it felt like a chore the whole time. Obviously, that's partly because I am definitely not in the target audience for this book, but I have to wonder how many kids would love this too. I thought the dungeons were creepy and I thought the story about Miggery Sow was super depressing. It didn't feel like enough of a happy story. I did like DiCamillo's funny style of always addressing the Reader directly, and including the reader in the characters' decisions, and I think that would appeal to kids.  I was thinking beforehand that this might be a fun book to read aloud to the kids, but I don't think I will bother with this one after all, when there are so many great options out there.

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother by Lucy Mack Smith

My family is discussing this book for our quasi family book club for the next week, as we are trying to read more about the Restoration before General Conference (as President Nelson advised). I had never read this one before, and enjoyed reading Lucy Mack Smith's account of the Restoration. It really wasn't super focused on Joseph himself--it was more of a memoir of Lucy's memories and experiences, and I kind of liked that it wasn't intending to be a full treatment of church history. It mentioned some things and not others, and it was thorough in some places and then jumped whole years without talking about other things. I liked some of the stories, like when Lucy was traveling with the Saints on a boat to get to Kirtland, and she had the faith the say they would be able to get through the ice. Most of it was not new, though... there was very little I hadn't learned before in Church History class at BYU or through reading The Work and the Glory books back in the day (which I also want to re-read!). I thought it was just overwhelming to think about all that Lucy went through in her life--their family struggled so much and she lost five of her six grown sons by 1844, not to mention who knows how many grandkids, and they never had enough money and had so many reversals of fortune. It really helped to humanize her and make her seem real, and to see how hard it would have been for her and the rest of the family. She was a pretty awesome lady, and I am proud my daughter is named Lucy too.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

I loved a few of Rainbow Rowell's books a few years ago, but haven't ever read any of them since. This one was available as an audiobook from my library, and I was in between audiobooks and searching for something to listen to. This book is about Georgie, who works as a comedy writer for TV, and who is finally getting her big break for her own TV show. But she doesn't realize the toll it is taking on her marriage and family... until maybe it's too late to go back? But she manages to find a way to go back in time, just a little bit, to learn more about herself and her marriage and where it went wrong.

I thought the storyline was cute, and liked the flashbacks about the history of the relationship between Georgie and Neal. I just felt like it was sooooo slowwwwww. There wasn't a lot of (or any) action, just a lot of Georgie waiting around to talk to Neal and wondering why he's not answering his phone, and blah blah blah. Rainbow Rowell is a super talented writer, though, and I really enjoyed it as I listened, and really got to know each of the characters. It just maybe could have used a little less agonizing and angstiness from Georgie.

How to Raise a Reader by Pamela Paul and Maria Russo

This book definitely had a great amount of information, and it would be super helpful to someone who had never had kids before... but it felt basically like there was no new information for me. I did like the booklists with ideas for books (although I can't ever get everything out of a booklist just by reading a short paragraph about the book). Overall, a great book that wasn't super interesting to me.

The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon

This is me with my thing for books about books, and this is one that I was excited about. It is basically a great motivator to get people to read to their children (and even other adults), because of the great benefits of it. Similar to The Read-Aloud Family, but that book is at least half a long booklist, and this was purely research and discussion about how great reading aloud is to your family and kids. The thing that I really liked about it was the high-quality writing style. You can tell that Gurdon is a professional writer, with amazing word choice and a really great way of putting her thoughts across. Every thought is well-developed and she provides a lot of evidence for everything she claims. If I weren't already a believer in reading aloud, I would be after reading this book. But I was also a little intimidated by Gurdon's definition of read-aloud time--she read aloud to her FIVE children EVERY NIGHT for an HOUR, even while she was a working mom! (Enter shocked face emojis here...) I feel like I struggle to find time to read that much to my three kids even while I stay at home with them. I read plenty of picture books to my little kids, but I don't read every night from chapter books to my bigger kids--it's gotten harder as they've gotten older and more busy and have things going on in the evenings (or I do).

But I really liked a few of the things Gurdon said about reading aloud. While talking about how hard it is to read in this time of business and cyber-distractions, she said, "Making the time to read together is almost an obstinate act of love. The mutual effort--the sacrifice of time--becomes part of the reward." I LOVED that about it being an obstinate act of love.

I also loved what she said about how important reading aloud is to teaching children about the past and about our values and our history and our beliefs. She said, "No child is an island, to paraphrase John Donne. Children come from families. They are the newest braids in that cord of humanity, and it is right and beautiful that they should know something of what their parents and grandparents value, while at the same time having access to the classic works of human imagination that we all own in common." Reading aloud the stories from Little House on the Prairie to my kids gives them this entry into what I love, and into what is part of our common culture and what we've loved.

I really appreciated this book, and I felt so motivated to read aloud more after reading this. It's no coincidence that I also finished two other read-aloud books this week while reading this book, two read-alouds we've been working on for months. I believe in the power of reading with my kids, and I love doing it, so I want to keep it up, even as it gets harder.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Graham absolutely LOVES these Little House books, and it makes me so happy that he loves them. He was constantly begging me to read another chapter. I finally started using Audible so that I could buy the audiobook versions of the Little House books, and I am so glad that I did! We were able to listen to quite a lot of this book while driving around--every day while we go pick up Dane we were listening to a chapter, and we got through four or five chapters last night while stuck in traffic coming back from the boys' choir. But I HAD to read the chapter where Mr. Edwards meets Santa Claus to them myself, because that is one of my favorite chapters in the whole series. Graham is a huge fan, and we are going to read On the Banks of Plum Creek next. (I love Farmer Boy, but I don't want to lose the momentum of the Ingalls' story, so we'll come back there when we want to.)

We had a lot of really good conversations about Native Americans vs. Indians and why the white settlers were taking the Native Americans' land, and why that wasn't fair, and all sorts of things while reading this book. Although it's a little hard to read some of the less appealing stuff that Wilder wrote about the Native Americans in today's day and age, I would never have had these conversations with my kids without reading this. I think all in all it was positive, so I was able to tell them about how people have treated Native Americans since white settlers first came to America, and how we don't think that's right any more. That was something Meghan Cox Gurdon talked about in her book The Enchanted Hour, and I couldn't agree more.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

I just adore the Chronicles of Narnia so much. And I adore reading them aloud to the boys. I don't know why it's taking us so long to get through them. I think part of the problem is that I am having a hard time reading to them at night, because we are getting so busy, but also because I wasn't feeling good for so long, so I got out of the habit. The boys both loved this story about all of the adventures Lucy, Eustace, and Edmund get into on the Dawn Treader with Caspian. They absolutely love Reepicheep, and they really got a lot of the humor about his boldness and over-the-top bravery. I totally loved revisiting this, and kept waiting for certain parts, like the part where Lucy sees the shepherd mermaid girl in the water, and where they meet the wizard with the Monopods. I am debating about whether to read the next Narnia book next, but I think we will.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

I've meant to read this book for forever--I feel like I've seen the cover so many times being recommended by so many people over and over again. But especially since I first listened to A Gentleman in Moscow last year, and loved it so so so much, I wanted to read the other book written by Amor Towles. This book sadly did not live up to the amazingness of A Gentleman in Moscow for me--although it would be hard for most books to do, since that was one of my favorite books I've read ever. But that's not to say that it wasn't a great book--it was still filled with Towles's really beautiful writing, and lots of beautiful thoughts, and the story was pretty engrossing. The story is about Katey Kontent, a girl living in New York City in 1938, and it seemed kind of like a "coming-of-age" story, although she wasn't really coming of age. She was just learning about herself and having lots of experiences that changed her life from being a poorly paid stenographer to being an editor at a fancy magazine, and getting involved in circles with people that were much more rich and fancy and famous than she was. And she falls for a few different men along the way. I liked how Katey always seemed in control of herself, and never seemed like she totally got lost in someone else or their story. She was always able to turn somebody down, any men that were trying to hit on her or people that wanted things for her. All in all, a very engrossing read that was definitely worth it.

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois

I really liked this book. I don't know if I'd ever read it before, but I found this on the shelves at my parents' house as well and enjoyed reading through it. The story is about a Professor William Waterford Sherman, who goes off on what he thinks is going to be a year spent in a hot air balloon, before he gets balloon-wrecked on what he thinks is an uninhabited island and finds an unknown group of people living there with the biggest supply of diamonds in the world. I thought this book was wacky and fun and super random. There would be quite a lot of physics and interesting pseudo-science to figure out in here for a young kid reading it, and I thought the adventure part of the story was so fun. I loved how Professor Sherman just got bored with his life and decided to build and go off on a hot-air balloon voyage. That's something that I think everyone can relate to, or at least imagine. This was much more fun than I imagined it would be before reading it.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

I found this on the shelf at my parents' house and thought I would read it while I was there. I definitely had read it before, because it came back to me as I read it, but I didn't have any memory of it. I just didn't love it. The story is told in short free verse poems, which made it a quick read, and it was really very descriptive about how hard life was during the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. The imagery of the dust storms and how dust covered and choked everything was really amazingly done in the poems. It was really well done and beautiful. But I think the crisis of the story is just absolutely too devastating and horrible to really enjoy it for me. I can see why it won the Newbery Award, because it is a fantastic depiction of the time and place, and because Billie Jo is a pretty tough and determined heroine. It definitely has its place.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

I remember reading this book in fifth grade for school, and I liked it then, but didn't remember anything about it. I absolutely loved reading it this time around. I thought the writing was clear and precise and easy to read, and Speare did such a great job creating the world of this Puritan group. I thought Kat coming in as an outsider, from a totally different place, was such a great way to show what life was like back then and why it would be so different to what we are used to today. Kat was also such a great character--she wasn't spoiled or annoying, but free-spirited and strong and trying to do her best and be kind in a hard situation. I definitely enjoyed this and would read it again.