2021 Yearly Recap

This is my tenth yearly recap of my reading on this blog. Amazing! I have lost a lot of steam with blogging over the last year or two, and I haven't done a great job of staying up-to-date with my reading blog. But I love, love, love having this record of the books I've read and I don't want to lose it in any way. So I definitely plan to keep it up and to be better at it in 2022. 

I read significantly less this year than I did in 2020. Probably because I wasn't trying to escape my life and the stress of the pandemic as much? I still read over 120 books (not sure exactly how many--I had 112 blog posts for this year but several of them represented 2-3 books), so it was definitely still a respectable number. I read some really, really good books this year. And some not so good books too. 

Best of the year: The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice

Best fiction: Sparks Like Stars, A Deadly Education, Americanah, Malibu Rising

Best memoir: Crying in HMart, Dancing at the Pity Party

Best romances: Better than the Movies, Love at First, The Countess Conspiracy

Best mystery: The Madness of Crowds

Best read-alouds: By the Great Horn Spoon! and all the Harry Potters

Least favorite: One Hundred Years of Solitude

The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan

After reading The Countess Conspiracy, I immediately wanted to read the rest of the books in this series. So I blazed through this book in the next day and thoroughly enjoyed it as well. I did feel like so many scenes in these books are so unrecognizable from books of that time period (like the couple is always starting to kiss in a public place, when every book I've read from that time period is so concerned with appearances), but I just ignore that nagging part of my brain so that I can enjoy the story for what it is. I fully enjoyed this one about Jane and Oliver.

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan

I heard about this book specifically, and the rest of the series, on Modern Mrs. Darcy's podcast What Should I Read Next? The person used this as an example of her favorite romance and one she goes back to again and again. I was feeling like I wanted some fun and delightful reads and since our library had this entire series on e-book, I checked this one out to start with. It's the third book in the series, but they can be read in any order. And I loved this one so much. It was an adorable romance about two friends, where the woman realizes that she actually loves the man after years of avoiding this truth and dealing with her trauma and abuse in her past marriage. I loved how understanding and kind Sebastian was with Violet and how female-centric the whole relationship was (it seemed a little unrealistic for the time, in my mind, but really wonderful to see anyway). I loved how Violet was such an avid scientist and was not defined by her position in society or by her relationships in any way. The romance was a little more open-door than I am used to reading, but I still liked it a lot. 

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

I loved this book so much. My friend described it to me as "Harry Potter and the Hunger Games combined" and I instantly checked it out from the library to listen to. And it was fantastic! The story is set in a school for magic where there are monsters who eat the students so they are constantly dying. I was really creeped out by the story at first because it seemed so awful, but then once I understood the parameters of the story I got super invested in it and really loved it. I loved El, the main character, and her snarky and grouchy attitude towards everyone, and how she eventually learns to care for other people throughout the book. I thought the magic in this book was so cool and it all makes so much more sense than Harry Potter (like so much more detail on what they're learning and how they actually can do magic) and it was amazing. I instantly jumped right into the second book of this series. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I started reading this book in 2011. 2011! A decade ago! I started reading it after I read Love in the Time of Cholera, also by Marquez, and I loved it so much. (I don't remember anything about it, so I should probably re-read it... but I do remember that I loved it so much I cried at some point.) So I wanted to read this one too... but I got a few pages into it and just couldn't get past it. And I tried again multiple times over the years. So I finally decided to see if I could do it on audiobook--and guess what, that did the trick. The only way I was able to get through this was on audio, on double speed--because I did not like this at all. I don't have enough time right now to describe my issues with this book, but I'll just say this. 

1. Incest everywhere. 

2. Everyone's names were the same. Literally every character was named after the other characters so there was no way to tell them apart. 

3. What was even happening?

I read about Marquez's dream reality, where things are supposed to appear dream-like and to not make much sense... and that definitely was happening. I think this was a book I could have gotten more out of if I were reading it for a class and given some introduction to the theory behind it and the movement and what the point of it was--but as it was, listening to it on my own, I just gave up trying to understand and just listened to the story. It was really wild and crazy and not really my cup of tea. But everyone says it's a Very Important Work of Literature so it must be... so I'm glad I finished it and I'm glad I'll never read this again. (The one thing that I was interested in was the fact that the banana plantations coming in and taking over the towns actually happened in Central American countries, so I want to read more about the history of that.)

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

After enjoying Clap When You Land and since I already loved The Poet X, I thought I should check out another one of Elizabeth Acevedo's books. This one had an interesting perspective of a teen mom who wants to be a chef, but first has to graduate high school. I loved the diversity of this perspective because it was so different from the stereotypical narrative we get about teen mothers. I thought Emoni was such a great character and the story was fun. I don't have time to get into more details, but it was definitely a fun read. I loved the cooking aspect of it. 

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

I don't have time to do this book justice, but I really enjoyed it. It was about two sisters who don't know about each other--their dad kept two families secretly, one in the US and one in the DR. But one day when their dad was flying to visit the DR, his plane crashed and everyone died, and they found out about each other. The book was told in alternating perspectives from both sisters, and I really liked both of them. I loved the DR storyline and how interesting that was to see that country and culture, and I was happy with the ending. It was a great, quick book--also basically written in poetry. 

Love Poems for Married People by John Kenney

I feel like this is cheating, because I just somehow happened upon this book as an e-book on my phone, and since it's poetry, it only took me like 20 minutes to read the whole thing. But this short collection of poetry about what it's like being married was hilarious and fun and really true in so many ways. It was a lot of acknowledging the not-romantic truths about being married to someone, and although I feel lucky that I don't relate to many of the stereotypes, many are still true. Haha!

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

I loved, LOVED The Thursday Murder Club when it came out a year ago, and I was so excited to listen to the sequel, and it did not disappoint. Honestly, how could this go wrong? Four octogenarians solving murder mysteries? This murder mystery was so fun and enjoyable, with all of the same lovable characters and funny hijinks. I still love Bogdan so much and love how he and Elizabeth get along so well. I think half of the reason I love this book so much though is because of the INCREDIBLE narrator. Major points to her because it is so well-done. 

Night by Elie Wiesel

I've never gotten around to reading this, even though I've always heard about it as a Holocaust story and a classic that everyone should read. I have had it on my shelves for years, and it's so short that I really should have done it a long time ago. In the end, I started and finished it on the same night, so it went really fast. But it was so sad--I think that's part of the reason why I never read it--and so horrifying to read what Wiesel went through in the concentration camps during WWII. It was crazy to read about how his family was living their normal lives and how slowly things changed and got worse and worse, but they still thought they were going to be okay--until all of a sudden, they were killed. It was just a gradual change and they were so used to being orderly and obedient--just like us. It really makes you question, what if this happened here? This happened there, and they were just normal people just like us. Wiesel really wanted people to think about what how people saw them and knew what was happening, but didn't do anything about it. We need to not be like that.

As a side note, this was my 1000th book that I've read on Goodreads. Not too shabby! I was super pleased to hit that milestone!

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into with this one, and it was different from what I expected, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was about a robot, an "Artificial Friend," who is adopted by a girl and taken home to be her companion. The robot has to learn how to help and befriend this young girl and understand the moods and variations of being a human, and it's fun to see that from a robot's eyes. The book is narrated by the robot herself, and there are some things that she has decided or gleaned that aren't correct. The main incorrect belief she has is that the Sun is basically a god who gives power and healing to people--which is true for an AF because she is solar powered, but not to humans. But she has this all-powerful faith in the power of the sun as a good, loving god, and I thought that was the most interesting part of this book. I read a few negative reviews criticizing this book not for doing more interesting or innovative things with the artificial intelligence part of this story, but I didn't think that was really the point of this book. I thought it was more about how we have faith in things we can't see and don't understand, and sometimes our faith is misguided and sometimes it's true, and sometimes things work out the way we hope they will and sometimes they don't. I loved the depiction of Klara and her faith, and how she didn't give up even when nobody else believed in her. The story was gripping and definitely fun to read. 

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

This book sounds so weird and not interesting at all, but I'd heard several good reviews from readers I trust. And when Austin said he loved it, I moved it to the top of my list and checked it out from the library immediately to read it. Saunders takes seven different Russian short stories and includes them in the book, then basically dissects them and discusses how they wrote what they did and why they wrote them in the way they did and how we can learn how to write and read better from their writing. It was basically like taking a writing class from him (and he said in the introduction that this book does stem from a class he teachers on the Russian writers). And I loved it. I feel like if I ever do want to write something, I will have to go back and re-read this, because it was so insightful and well-done on all of the things that these four Russian writers managed to do in their short stories. While I didn't feel as moved or as delighted by all of the short stories themselves as Saunders is, I did really enjoy the whole experience of reading the stories with his commentary and discussion. (This is why I loved literature classes in college--I get so much more out of reading stories and books with outside help and intentional reading! I need more of this!)

Know Brother Joseph: New Perspectives on Joseph Smith's Life and Character by Various Authors

I heard about this book on the Follow Him podcast and since we are reading the Doctrine and Covenants this year for Come, Follow Me, I wanted to check this out. It was a super interesting book, made up of maybe 50 short essays about Joseph Smith by a number of different Church history scholars. I thought the amount of research and information all of these people have done and have read about Joseph Smith was amazing; they've read all of his papers (from the Joseph Smith Papers project) and they shared many insights they'd gained by studying his writing and history in a scholarly way. I felt like they shared a lot of many interesting and wonderful insights into who Joseph Smith was as a person--and they didn't sugarcoat his personality. They shared many of his flaws and problems, but also all of his very human and positive traits as well. I felt like I learned a lot about him and like I got to know Joseph a little bit more by reading this book. 

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling

The boys and I finally finished reading The Goblet of Fire and of course loved it. I was worried about reading this one to them and had planned on not reading it until we'd taken a little bit of a break, because it's a lot more intense than the other three, especially the graveyard scene at the end. I knew that Dane would take it hard when Cedric was killed, especially. But they begged so much and so hard to get started that I finally caved--although I said no way on watching the movie yet since it is PG-13. And I'm glad we did--gotta get our HP fix in now while they're young and still like reading aloud together. It was so fun and they were immediately ready to jump into number 5. 

Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian

I loved this historical fiction turned thriller about a Puritan woman trapped in an abusive relationship and how she managed to get herself out of it. I thought Mary Deerfield was a really believable character--she was a woman of her time, with the time's prejudices and beliefs, but she was also able to see where she was not to blame and to be strong enough to get herself out of danger (as much as possible). I felt like this was a women's power story, with Mary as the heroine and the witches as the supporting cast who swoop in and save the day at the end. It is so creepy to imagine being stuck in a world like that, but (spoiler alert!) so relieving to see her escape at the end. I really enjoyed this audiobook and kept coming back to it and listening while doing other things because I was dying to figure out what was going to happen. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I was very invested in this story about Evelyn Hugo. Taylor Jenkins Reid does such a great job of making you feel like you're a part of the glamour of the very rich and famous (fake) people she writes about--I feel like that is part of the reason why everyone loves her books: because we all secretly want to live a life like that, but since we can't, we can read about people who are. I thought the secret twist about Evelyn Hugo being bisexual was great, and it made her whole life story make so much more sense. I thought the whole framing story of having the reporter write her story was really fun and gave it a lot more life as well. It was a fun read for sure. 

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane

I loved this romance with a fake-relationship-turned-real-feelings story. (How often can this story be told?) It's not quite up to the To All the Boys I've Loved Before caliber, but that's a high bar. This was a cute story about Laurie, whose boyfriend of 18 years dumps her for another woman--but they are coworkers at the same law office so her life really takes a turn. So when she somehow gets the cute new guy in the office to pretend to be her boyfriend, she takes it. It was very cute and maybe not quite the most believable story, but when are they ever? I liked Laurie and Jamie together a lot, and it was definitely worth the short amount of time it took to read. 

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Another fun romance read (listen). I really liked Poppy and Alex in this book--it was very clear from the get-go what was going to happen, and I was rooting for it all the way. They were best friends from college but have fallen apart over the last few years, and Poppy wants them to get back into each other's lives. But their lives are distinctly dependent on them living in different places: Poppy is a travel writer based in New York, and Alex is determined to stay near his family in the town where they grew up in Ohio. But they get together every year for a summer trip--and this year, Poppy wants them to take another one. It was super fun--I loved both of the characters, loved their terrible trip they went on, loved hearing their backstory slowly throughout the book. And I was very happy with the ending and how everything got resolved. 

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

I loved Love at First by Kate Clayborn, and I wanted to love this one as much, but it just was slightly less fun for me. Still a good romantic read, but the storyline leaned too heavily on the main character's job as a hand-letterer and made it seem like way more than it actually is for me. She designs and makes hand lettered items, which seems super fun, but there was this whole storyline about how she hides messages in her designs and it can make things come true or not, kind of? And she spent a lot of time looking for hidden signs in actual signs around the city and getting inspiration from signs she sees around New York (always New York), but it just felt wayyyyy too artsy-fartsy for me. I liked the romance a lot--I thought the love interest was a cute nerdy guy and they seemed good for each other. But the way they met and the girl's weird kind-of-magical hand lettering talent just was too over-the-top for me. Still a great read though!

The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary

Okay, I loved The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary a few years ago, and when I saw another book by her, I immediately wanted to read it. But this one got so weird and felt like such a stretch that I did not feel the same interest in the characters or wishing for them to get together. The story is about two exes who get into a car accident with each other on the way to a mutual wedding that they were invited to, and then they end up having to carpool with each other (and a few other friends) to the wedding for eight hours. I thought it was going to be lighthearted and funny, but it honestly wasn't. I loved the story of how they originally got together, at an Italian villa where she was the manager and he was a guest, but I felt like the whole story of how their relationship went sour and why they broke up and what problems they had really felt too depressing and wrong. There was so much bad treatment of the girl by the boy and his friends and it really made me not want her to get back into that relationship, even if he had "changed." So I wasn't really excited to see how they got to the wedding and what happened, but I felt like I had to finish it at that point. Oh, and there was a stalker in the story too, which seemed like it was supposed to be funny but it was also kind of creepy and weird. So basically not my favorite audiobook or romance of the year. 

Love at First by Kate Clayborn

I have seen Kate Clayborn's books recommended a few times and finally found the time to download her books as e-books to my phone and just power through them. They were so fun and really enjoyable. I really liked this one about a doctor wanting to Airbnb his new apartment that he inherited from an uncle and his upstairs neighbor who is determined to stop him from ruining their apartment complex's good vibes. I thought it was an excellent way to set up the enemies-to-lovers trope--it felt very believable and I thought some of the hijinks they got up to while arguing and fighting with each other were hilarious. I just really enjoyed this one and immediately wanted to get into her next one. 

Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith

I don't have much to say about this except that it had been on my Goodreads To-Read list for years and years, and I decided to finally check it off by reading it on my phone. But it really didn't deserve to be saved on my To-Read list that long--I don't know where I heard about it from, I've never heard it recommended again, and it was definitely nothing to write home about. It was a story about a girl who buys a lottery ticket for her best friend on his 18th birthday and he actually wins the lottery and becomes a millionaire, and all of the changes that brings in his life and in their relationship. Basically, not all that different from what you'd expect. Nothing terrible, but nothing super interesting or life-changing in it either. It was a cute story but I've already forgotten the characters' names. Oh, and the ending is totally not believable to me (the lottery winner decides to use his money to fund little acts of charity by random people for forever? It seems completely un-doable and not realistic at all). 

Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary D. Schmidt

I've loved both of the Gary D. Schmidt books I've read (The Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now) and I have intended to read his newer books for a while. I loved how he took Shakespeare and made it applicable and interesting and fun in The Wednesday Wars and I loved how he did the same thing with the paintings of James John Audubon in Okay for Now. I had no idea what Pay Attention, Carter Jones was going to be about, but I did not expect for it to be about the game of cricket. I thought it was so fun to see this boy's "coming of age," of a sort, and how he became more confident in himself and more connected to his friends and schoolmates through the game of cricket. I also loved the whole weirdness of having a butler in America and how this butler was determined to be a butler even though it was a completely unheard-of thing here. It was very fun to read--although I still have no idea how cricket is played. 

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I'm always seeing book recommendations for books by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and I really loved her one other book I've listened to (Daisy Jones and the Six). So I was excited to listen to another one of her audiobooks. This one was a story about a family in the 60s-80s in Los Angeles, and while they were definitely a dysfunctional family, I loved how the brothers and sisters all loved and supported each other. Their good feelings and good relationship really carried how I felt about this book. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit Riva all were really well-established characters, and I loved each one in their own way. But I especially loved the story of how their parents, June and Mick, met and fell in and out of love and all of the problems they had along the way. I also really loved the atmosphere and the setting and everything about the Malibu background. It's so fun to picture Malibu being this sleepy old little beach town, when it's so expensive and fancy today. I thought it was fun how the sand and saltwater dirtiness mixed with the glamour of the rich famous surfer life of the Rivas, and I thought the ending was really satisfying. 

The Curse of the Mummy: Uncovering Tutankhamun's Tomb by Candace Fleming

Dane bought this at his school book fair with his birthday money and was raving about it and begged me to read it. I planned on just skimming through it to appease him but I actually enjoyed it enough to read the whole thing. It looks like it's trying to be a scary mummy story, but it was actually a really interesting history of the discovery and digging out of King Tutankhamun's tomb, and went into detail about archaeology and the history of the time period. I learned a lot (even though it was written for kids Dane's age) and I thought it was super interesting. It was amazing to learn about how much stuff they found in the tomb and what a years-long process it was to study and label and get everything out. 

Shen of the Sea: Chinese Stories for Children by Arthur Chrisman Bowie

I couldn't think of anything else other than "cultural appropriation" the whole time I was reading this. It feels like a book that would never in a million years be published today: fake "folktales" about a culture that the author does not belong to. Many of them were just perpetuating false stereotypes about Chinese people. Several of the stories were cute, but it was just not a great read. It's easy to see how much the Newbery Award (and our own culture) has evolved since this time. 

It's Like This, Cat by Emily Cheney Neville

I wasn't super excited to read this book, at all, but it's one of the Newbery winners so I thought I'd chug through it. And it turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. It really didn't seem like anything earthshaking, but I really enjoyed the story and the many adventures that our main character, Davey, got into with his Cat. I liked how much freedom Davey had and how he just roamed around New York City and got to know all sorts of people. It was very easy to read and quick to get through, which made it very enjoyable, and there was a great cast of characters, like Aunt Kate, the crazy cat lady, Mary, the girl that Davey meets who he can talk to not just like a girl, and Tom, the college dropout who gets into trouble and needs help from Davey and his dad. 

Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

I have no idea where I got the recommendation for this book, but I can tell you that I had no idea what this was about, since I started listening to it and totally expected it to be a self-help, memoir type book. Turned out that was not true at all; it was a YA romance set in an LA high school--a complete opposite of what I was expecting. But I really enjoyed this once I got started--it felt very realistic and believable, and it had a lot of serious themes. The main character, Jessie, lost her mom a few years ago and moved to a new state and has to adjust to a whole new life, and it felt like a very real story about a very real life issue. I did have to suspend disbelief about the whole "anonymous emailer" thing because I feel like that would never actually happen, but once I accepted it for the point of the story, I enjoyed it. Also, I can't believe Jessie didn't guess who SN was because I figured it out about 30 minutes into the book. But overall, a really fun book. 

Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark

This is a Newbery winner from the 1930s--it beat out Charlotte's Web for the Newbery Medal, which is still hotly contested to this day. And I can see why--after reading it, I think it's pretty obvious that Charlotte's Web is better. This was a nice story set in Peru, which setting I actually really liked since it was original and different (and I'm guessing that's why it won the Newbery). But it was definitely slow-moving, plus by today's standards it seemed super culturally insensitive (the boy referred to himself and his caretaker as Indians throughout the whole book, which is completely inaccurate these days). I was surprised by the big reveal of a treasure at the end of the book--I guess that was the "secret of the Andes" from the title, although I clearly didn't see it coming. I kind of felt like there was a lot that wasn't clear or wasn't explained as the story went on, so I was kind of confused a lot of the time. This definitely wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't super terrible either. 

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho

I really enjoyed this audiobook by Emmanuel Acho. It's exactly what it sounds like--he answers questions from white people from his perspective as a Black man. He started with a youtube series or videos and then got this book out of it. I definitely enjoyed listening to it more than I might have reading it, because his voice was very dynamic and he really gave a lot of personality to his writing with his inflections. But I really liked his points he made and I thought it was a really accessible book about race and racism in America.

God Will Prevail: Ancient Covenants, Modern Blessings, and the Gathering of Israel by Kerry Muhlstein

I heard about this book when the author went on the Follow Him podcast with John Bytheway, and the idea of it sounded really fantastic. The Abrahamic covenant is not something that I've ever really understood, and I've felt really lame that I haven't put the time or energy into understanding the covenant that is a huge part of our doctrine, not to mention that President Nelson specifically told us to study it. I figured reading this book would be a great start in studying and learning about it. It was a very well-written, very well organized book, with a TON of great, scholarly information. I felt like I learned a lot about the Abrahamic covenant and what it really entails and focuses on--it is really about helping us to create a relationship with God as our Father and as our God, and helping us to become like Him. I underlined a ton of parts in this book and don't have time to type them all out here, but I do feel like I learned a lot from this book and that I would definitely use it as a reference again to look through. (It was kind of dry and hard to get through, but once I got going, there were so many golden nuggets in there.)

Drown by Junot Diaz

I enjoyed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and the audiobook was combined with Diaz's short story collection--like, it literally began as soon as the novel was finished. So I figured I would just keep listening and read his short story collection. It had a really similar feel to the novel, but felt a little more depressing and hopeless. Every story was sad and heart-wrenching in some way. I thought it was kind of more of the same as Oscar Wao, but I didn't enjoy it as much. I hate the way all of the women are viewed and treated throughout both books. 

Beyond the Mapped Stars by Rosalyn Eves

Rosalyn was my boss and professor when I was in Writing Fellows at BYU, which is why I was aware of this book, but I would have picked it up not knowing her anyways because she wrote it about a Mormon girl in the 1870s trying to become an astronomer. I loved the wrestle between her dreams and her expectations and I really enjoyed the story. This is what I wrote on Goodreads (I rarely review books there but more reviews helps her book to become more visible): 

Sometimes it feels like all of the books that are out there are set in New York City or London. So it's a huge treat to read a book in a completely new setting that I've never considered before. That was one thing I loved about Rosalyn Eves' first book set in Hungary. This book is set in 1870s rural Utah, with a young female Mormon protagonist, and I have never come across a story in this setting or with this cast of characters before. I really loved how distinctive this was, and even if the rest of the book hadn't been good, that would still have made it worth reading. Eves did a fantastic job representing the Mormon religion at the time, with all of its positive and negative aspects, in a very real and believable way. I really loved how Elizabeth Bertelsen, the main character, traveled this journey of struggling between her desires for achievement and learning and her desire to fulfill her family's wishes for her, at a time and in a place where there weren't many opportunities for her. Her dreams of becoming an astronomer and her dreams for a family and her religion felt very applicable to women today. I really loved how Elizabeth was able to validate both desires, instead of giving up one part of herself entirely. It felt much more nuanced than many YA coming-of-age novels in that way. I am a Mormon, and I personally have ancestors who lived similar lives to Elizabeth Bertelsen's, so that was a personally compelling reason for me to enjoy this book. I also personally identify with many of the issues and conclusions that Elizabeth is wrestling with throughout the book. But I think this could be a book that anyone would enjoy, especially anyone who belongs to any faith and grapples with the demands of their faith.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Listening to this, I realized that I basically know absolutely nothing about the Dominican Republic and its culture or history. I had no idea about their past with dictators and uprisings (although I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since it's the Caribbean...) and I knew nothing about what Dominican people are like. Even though I have a brother who served his two year mission there, and loved it! So it was a real eye-opener to listen to this book and to learn about Dominican culture and experience it. I loved how this book covered several generations and stories--it almost felt like each chapter was its own short story at the beginning. I felt so bad for Oscar and his dreams of being in love, and I liked how the narrator was revealed about halfway through the book as being a real character and someone who knew Oscar and who had his own perspective and personality. Basically, it was a really fun read. I didn't love all the swearing and talking about sex, but that was part of the story and part of the narrator being who he was. I'd wanted to read this one for forever, so I'm glad I finally did.

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

I read this out loud with Lucy and loved it so much. It was really wonderful to read this out loud. She loved Betsy and Tacy and all of their adventures. 

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney

This was a cute, super fast, easy and fun YA read. Quinn is a list-maker and one day her book of lists goes missing.. and chaos ensues. Someone steals her book with hundreds of lists and starts blackmailing her on Instagram until she completes all of the things on her "to do before I graduate" list. She enlists the help of some of her new friends to get these things done, and does a lot of growing and changing and facing her fears and herself as she does them. I loved how this book honestly addressed the issues of race and stereotypes from the perspective of different Black characters, and how racism appeared in different forms throughout the book. I loved the way Quinn started off not really knowing what her values were and eventually realizing what made her uncomfortable or not as she tackled her fears throughout the book. I thought the story was a little unrealistic but super fun and worth the read.

 

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

I will always read whatever Armand Gamache book Louise Penny comes out with. As soon as I heard this one was out, I requested it at the library. I got it as an ebook and read it on my phone, because there was supposedly a 8-week wait for the audiobook, but I was disappointed that the audiobook actually came out quicker because I would have loved listening to this one even more than reading it. I enjoyed reading it, but there's something about the atmosphere of listening to Gamache books that makes them more special. This book was an interesting story which just feels so dang pertinent to our time--how does Louise Penny do it?--about people getting caught up in total insanity and madness and bad science, plus it was written in the time "after the pandemic," when everyone was fully vaccinated and safe again. I wanted to cry a little reading about the world we almost had if everyone would have gotten vaccinated. But the story was awesome and I always love revisiting Three Pines. 

Crying in HMart by Michelle Zauner

I loved this audiobook memoir. Michelle Zauner writes about her relationship with her mother, watching her mother die from cancer, growing up half-Asian in a small Oregon town, and her relationship with Korean culture and food and how that has evolved over her lifetime. The book has some flashbacks about her childhood, but mostly focuses on her mother's battle against cancer and Zauner's attempt to help and then grieve. She wrote in the most tantalizing way about Korean food, which made me want to go out right now and learn what all of those things are and to learn how to make them. And I found it so interesting that at the end, she became famous and achieved fame through her music, which she was giving up throughout the process of the book. I had no idea that was coming. I loved the whole arc of this story and the writing was brutally honest and really well done. Such an interesting memoir. 

To All the Boys I've Loved Before trilogy by Jenny Han

I read all three of these books over the last few days, and it was so amazingly fun and good. I just love these books (and now that there are three movies as well, I can't wait to rewatch them all!) and I love the characters and the story and the sweetness that are there. Lara Jean is just perfectly sweet and her romantic heart is just so tender and easy to love. I don't have any great things to add here, just that it felt so good to get sucked into a book series after a real drought in my reading life the last few months. I've been so busy and so mentally overloaded that I've been trying to be productive constantly instead of sitting down to read and enjoy myself. It felt really good to throw all of that away and to revisit a series I love a lot, for no other reason than that I love it. 

Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary

Another successful read-aloud of Ramona with Graham and Lucy. They both love it and were so excited to go on to the next one together. It's interesting how some of the things in this book feel so dated--like how her dad is a smoker (I don't know that anyone would have a dad who smokes in a children's book any more) and it is crazy and kind of sad that her dad finally gets a job as a checker at the grocery store and it's the best news that they've gotten all year. Nowadays that would not be enough to support his family. 

I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

I heard these ladies talk on a podcast a few years ago and then somehow stumbled over this book on the library app while I was trying to find an audiobook to listen to this week. It was short and easy to listen to, and read by the authors, and I really enjoyed it. It really made me think about what I need to do to develop my own personal political opinions and to understand my "whys" and my values so that I can really know what those political opinions are. And it made me really start to think that you can have political discussions with people without everyone getting mad. But I feel like in order for that to work, both sides have to agree to abide by the rules/ideals set out by this book. I definitely want to listen to more of their work, and I've started to listen to their podcast a little bit to hear more about what their stance is. I like that one of them is liberal and one of them is conservative, so that everything is truly more nuanced and not ridiculously extreme like everything else political that's out there. I applaud Sarah and Beth for what they're doing and I really appreciate their ideas and information. 

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

This book was an interesting idea. It was a murder mystery within a murder mystery--the book was about an editor for a murder mystery who reads one of the books she's about to edit and discovers that the ending was missing. And then immediately the author of the book is murdered. And then things start happening and she begins to poke around and try to find out if she can figure out what happened to the missing pages of the manuscript, and what really happened to the author of the book and why he was murdered. I liked both stories (the "book within the book" and then the outside story as well) and I was surprised by the ending. (I'm not that good at guessing who the murderer is in any murder mystery though, so that doesn't mean much.) Overall, I liked this one a lot, although it did feel a bit long.

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

This may be one of my favorite HP books. Reading it with the boys was such a treat. We listened to quite a lot of it on audio in the car as we drove around Utah and to Texas this summer, and then we finished the last few chapters all at once together at home. Every time we reached the end of a chapter Dane would go ballistic. "NOOO! DON'T STOP! KEEP GOING!" It actually got pretty tiring--but I'm so glad he's loving it. I didn't want to keep going and read #4 yet, but I'm thinking I might actually do it soon so they don't sneak it by themselves or something like that. They love it so much. I think this was a good one for me to read aloud to them because I'm pretty sure they would have been confused and missed what actually was happening if they read it on their own. 

Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi

I had literally zero idea what this book was about, but my friend Amanda recommended it to me so I checked it out and started listening to it without reading any sort of summaries or anything. And oh, my goodness... I loved it. I wonder if I loved it more because I didn't have any expectations or idea of what was coming. It's about a girl from Afghanistan who lives through a revolution there in the 1970s, and her whole family is killed before her eyes. She ends up being taken in by an American diplomat living in Kabul at the time, and then they eventually escape and she is adopted by the diplomat. Then the rest of her life is spent trying to escape from her past but also reconcile her current life with it, until she realizes that she needs to find closure and find her family if she can. I feel like this summary doesn't really encapsulate the beauty of the story or the beauty of the country and the culture that Hashimi described so well. It was such a poignant story, but it was paced well and just felt very real. I loved this book so, so much. I was so happy at the ending as well. It's been really awful reading about everything that's been happening in Afghanistan for the last two weeks after I felt a kind of connection to it after listening to this book. The people there are in such danger, just like after what happened in this book--and I just wish there was anything anyone could do to help them. 

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

I've heard about this book for years and have always meant to read it. I got it on audiobook from Audible and I listened to it while we drove from Utah to California this summer. I thought it was super interesting learning about Obama's background and family and his desire to connect his roots and his story with the different branches of his family tree. I really respect Obama and the type of person he is, and how he tried to be true to himself and to his family who raised him. (I next want to get to his presidential memoir, but it is super, super long, and this one was way shorter, so who knows when I'll get to that one.)

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

This book is about a woman who is in a coma in the hospital and can't remember what has happened to her. The book alternates between the present-day story, where Amber is in the coma and trying to piece together what happened based on what she can hear from the people around her talking, and flashbacks to Amber's childhood through diary entries from several decades ago. You can tell that something super creepy and traumatizing happened at some point, and that something is super wrong. Plus, the very first thing you learn is that she's probably lying to us in her retelling of what happened. The book has a huge twist that affects everything you know about the characters, and then the ending was super surprising to me as well. This was a totally creepy, suspenseful read (listen) and it was a great one to listen to while driving across the country for our long road trip. 

The River by Peter Heller

I kept seeing this referenced and recommended on Modern Mrs. Darcy so when we flew to Philadelphia in May I thought I'd finally read it. I read 2/3 of it on the plane on the way there, but then I could just tell that bad things were coming and I lost momentum. It sat on my bedside stand for the next two months until I could finally work up the nerve to skim the last few chapters to find out what happened. I didn't even want to read the end fully because I knew something bad was coming. And I just wasn't in the mood for super sad and bad stuff. For a quick summary: the story is about two best friends from college who are spending several weeks paddling up a river in northern Canada and roughing it on the land, and the things that happen to them while they're out there. I wish I'd just finished it when I started it, but I didn't. It was spectacularly written--so beautiful, such amazing descriptions, and the setting was fantastic. I just didn't have the heart to rip off that band-aid to finish it. 

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

This book is kind of set in a modern-day Harry Potter world, where some people are magic and most people aren't, and the magic people go to school to learn magic and all the other things they need to know. At one of these magical schools, there's a grisly murder in the school library, and the principal hires a non-magical private investigator to find out whodunit. This investigator is the twin sister of a magical teacher at the school, although they haven't talked in years--so there are all sorts of layers about family and belonging and being left out that are a part of this story. I really liked the magic in this book--it seemed more "real" and believable than the magic in Harry Potter--and I liked how the murder mystery got resolved in the end. 

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

I've read this so many times and this time I was finally reading it out loud to my boys. And they loved it just like I knew they would. This one is actually my least favorite of the Harry Potter books, but it was so much more fun reading it with them. The chapter in the Chamber of Secrets was so dramatic and they were barely breathing waiting to find out what happened next. I loved it. 

Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder

I absolutely loved everything about this book. It was such an interesting idea--a graphic novel about how the author lost her mom to cancer while she was in college. I loved how she wanted to honor her mom by writing about grief and about her story with her mom and her family and how hard it was, and how she used this graphic novel format to make it really accessible. The pictures and the words were impossible to take apart--I think it would have been a way less interesting story without the pictures to illustrate what she was writing. I loved this and am so glad I read it. 

Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews Edwards

I basically wanted to listen to this because Julie Andrews read it aloud herself, and it feels like a treat to just hear Julie Andrews's voice for hours. But it was also fascinating listening to her stories about acting in the 50s and 60s and what it was like in Hollywood back then. She knew so many famous people and was a part of so many really important plays, and it was really neat to learn about. It was a little sad hearing about how she and her children were moving around so much and were split up so much being raised by nannies--I wonder if she regrets that now. But she did do such fascinating things and I loved learning about what it was like for her doing all of her amazing work, and in her marriage with Blake Edwards.