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.