Better than the Movies by Lynn Painter

I loved this book so much I read it twice in a row. I blazed through it in one day/night, and then read it again the next day. It was a super adorable YA romance with all the right cute and tender moments, about a high school senior who falls in love with her next door neighbor who has always been there, but who she's always thought was a goofball kind of jerk. It was sweet, cute, clean, and fun. Definitely one I would re-read and possibly even buy for myself. 

What We Talk about When We Talk about Books: The History and Future of Reading by Leah Price

I moderately enjoyed this one when I read it, but I'm going to be honest: I don't remember anything from it now that I'm writing this review three months later. So, maybe not my favorite book ever. 

Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

I realized that Graham had never heard the Ramona books before, so I started reading these to him and Lucy. They absolutely love them. They are always begging me to read one more chapter to them. The thing I love about Ramona is how real her emotions are and how relatable. I think she and Graham are really similar in their personalities so I love him being able to listen to her story. These are some of my favorite read-alouds. 

The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide by Jenna Fischer

I love The Office. Also, I have been listening to the Office Ladies podcast for a year or more now, and I love listening to Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey talk about their experiences on The Office. And they mentioned that Jenna wrote a book about being an actor, and even though I have literally less than zero desire to act ever, in any place, at all, I thought it would be fun to read this book to hear more about what it's like to be an actor and to hear more about Jenna's personal experiences going from being a nobody to being relatively famous from being on The Office. I love a good celebrity memoir! And this isn't really a memoir, but it was close. And I did find it fascinating to learn about a lot of different things that actors have to go through to work in that field. I had no idea how much time and energy they put into auditioning and how little time the average actor actually spends acting in comparison. And I had no idea how little the average actor makes. It was interesting, but not necessarily something I maybe should have bothered reading. Kind of a waste of time for me, but it would be an awesome wealth of knowledge for someone who actually cares. 

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by the Arbinger Institute

When we were visiting our friends the Busbys in Arizona, Devin told us that he used the ideas in this book all the time in his parenting and it helped him so much. So I immediately decided I should check it out, and our library had an audiobook version of it. I honestly think a hard copy instead of an audio copy would have been more helpful, but I still feel like I got some of the major ideas out of it and I liked the main points made in the book. The book felt kind of annoying in its format, however--it was a fictionalized story about a fictional guy trying to illustrate the points of resolving conflict that the Arbinger Institute is trying to teach about, so it felt kind of weird and fake. I did really appreciate the main points being made and I still think those points are valid, even if they were made in fake ways. (Why not try to tell real stories from real people to illustrate these points? I'm not sure why they needed to go this way.) The main point I remember (since it is much later that I am writing this review) is that we need to view people as people and not as objects. I found a lot of ways that I do that to my children--treating them as objects--and ways that I put myself in a box and act like I can't get out of it. I think this would be a really helpful thing to internalize and do better at in all areas of my life. So 5 stars for information, 2 stars for delivery in this book.