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.