Book #41: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

This was definitely one of my favorite books when I was young. I have read it so many times there's no point in trying to count it. But it's been a long time since I've revisited it, and after re-reading all the Harry Potter books a few weeks ago I wanted to read something equally relaxing to my mind. It was fun to read this book this time because I have read more fantasy books in the last year (thank you, Brandon Sanderson), and thought more about the genre of fantasy, so it was interesting to see how this one added up. I think Levine does a great job of creating the expectations of the world that Ella lives in. There are all sorts of magical creatures, and magical rules, and she doesn't overdo it in trying to tell you what those rules are. It falls together very naturally. The beginning of the book, when Ella's mother dies of a preventable fever, has always been heart-wrenching to me, but the romance is very sweet. It still holds up for me, even though this is a middle-grade novel and not obviously as sophisticated of a plot as even a YA novel really would be. I still like Prince Char and Ella together, and I never feel like the language or conversation is stilted (like bugs me in so many other YA romances). But maybe that's just because of my over-familiarity with this story, so I can't be a totally unbiased reader!

Anyways, this was a perfect book to read this week. It took longer to get through (seriously should only take a few hours) because I was so, so busy this week, with planning/teaching my class, planning/teaching Joy School, and getting ready for Dane's birthday. I have some other books checked out from the library that I am excited to read soon too though. I want to get back into reading more now that I think I'm about to start feeling better!

Books #34-40: The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Okay, I know this is kind of cheating to include these books AGAIN in my book list. I have read them maybe three or four times just in the four or five years I've been writing on this blog. (But of course, this blog is purely for my own benefit and I do love looking back to see what I've read and when.) I don't know how many times it's been before that--but I do know that I read the first one MAYBE 100 times in my pre-teen and teenage years. I got the urge to read through the series again after reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (surprise, surprise), which was fun to read and all but not quite the same investment and satisfaction as the full novels. And since it wasn't written by J.K. it really isn't the same thing at all. I haven't had the energy to do much serious thinking lately--I'm deep into the first trimester of pregnancy and throwing up regularly and all I've wanted to do is lie down and not move--so these books were the perfect escape for this month. And for that same reason I'm not going to go to all the work of writing a separate review for each book.

I am always blown away by how Rowling successfully builds her world. My favorite chapter in all the series is, I think, when Harry goes to Diagon Alley for the first time and sees what being a wizard is all about. The details that Rowling includes--like the ingredients in the Potions shop and the name of the ice cream shop and Harry's ride to his vault in Gringotts bank--completely suck you in and make you feel like you are walking along with Harry seeing all these mind-blowing things with him. And the great thing is that Rowling does this again and again throughout the series whenever Harry encounters a new element of the wizarding world: going to Hogwarts for the first time, visiting the Burrow, at the Quidditch World Cup, at the Ministry of Magic and the wizarding hospital. Every one of those chapters isn't essential to the plot of the story--she could suffice with some basic description and skate along to some more action. But it's so important that we can wander along with Harry, wide-eyed and amazed, and feel like we're experiencing it with him. I think that is some of the real magic of Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling.

It's amazing to read these again and again and to notice new things about the series and how it develops. The first three books, for instance, are clearly of a different caliber than the last four. You can tell that Rowling is a younger, different writer, and that the overall plot hasn't been developed as fully at that point. It's really in the fourth book where the full story of the series comes to fruition, where you can see where things are going, where Rowling clearly has developed a backstory to Harry's young life and Voldemort's goals. I can see why some people (like my brothers) never made it past the first two books and didn't care to finish--the last four are much more interconnected (although I do LOVE LOVE the ending of the third book with the Time-Turner--it's AMAZING every time). I am going to try and convince my brothers to read them again and to get past the first few books--although now that the semester has started for them, it's probably futile until next summer. I truly think that you are missing out if you haven't read these. It's such a good action story, but it's so, so much bigger than that as well. Like a true fantasy story, it's about good versus evil and how one person can make choices to do good. It's emotional and it's moral and it has an satisfying climax to the series, and somehow Rowling managed to answer every question she raised in the series before she finished it. I love many, many, many books, but these are some of the ones that I can always come back to and never be disappointed by (like Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables). Thank you for helping tide me over the throes of morning sickness this time around, Harry. I'm sure I'll be back soon enough!

Book #33: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have read the other three books that have come out from the Austen Project--modern retellings of all of Jane Austen's books--and this, of course, was my most highly anticipated. Can anyone really retell Pride and Prejudice in a way that will be satisfying to anyone? (I mean, I read plenty of Jane Austen fan fiction, but it's a high bar.) And yet, I totally loved this book. Once I started it this afternoon, it was hard to put it down. (Obviously, since I finished it this evening and it's 500 (short) pages.) I think my favorite part of it was how Sittenfeld (Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, surprisingly) updated the Bennet family for the 21st century, how the three youngest Bennets are boomerang kids who went to college and moved back home and never got jobs, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have spent all their money and are bankrupt, and how Jane and Liz live in New York and rarely come home to visit their family in Cincinnati. And Bingley! Was a contestant on the "Bachelor" (or "Eligible" as it is called in the book)! I loved that twist, and how they incorporated it into the end. I think some purists would not appreciate all of the twists and things in this book, but I didn't mind them and it was pretty fun to pick out the events of the original book happening in today's world. The thing that I REALLY didn't like at the beginning was Liz's relationship with Wickham and how he was a sleazy married man--someone she had spent 15 years of her life pining after? That does NOT sound like the Lizzy that we know and love, and it really irritated me. And I also didn't love Jane's whole artificial insemination situation either--it seemed a bit contrived. But everything else was fun and definitely worth a read. I do love me some Jane Austen though. It never gets old.

Book #32: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I hadn't planned to buy this, but I decided to last week and thanks to the real-life magic of Amazon Prime, I had it in two days. I sat down and read it in just a couple of hours--it moved really quickly since it was a play script and not a traditional novel. And that right there is the main difference between this and the other books--the format interferes with your total immersion into the story like you get from the books. But I think it is really important to not let that get in the way of the enjoyment of this--since it is a script and you're not actually getting the real, full experience from seeing it as a play. I have read several places that it is amazing on the stage--or at least better than just reading it. As much as I wish I could see the play sometime, that seems unlikely unless it comes to Dallas, or at least the U.S., so reading the script will have to be all we get.

I didn't really realize that this script/play wasn't actually written by Rowling. It was written by Jack Thorne, the director of the play--although she helped to come up with the story. I feel like some places it does read like fanfiction--like when Severus Snape shows up again, and a few times whenever Albus and Scorpius refer back to specific small events that happened during Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts that seem unlikely that they would have known about (but everyone reading the books knows every one of them). I didn't love how Ron was portrayed as a total joke/jokester, never saying anything serious or being taken seriously--I feel like that was taking his role from the books wayyyy too far and I liked him less for it. I thought it was a little too neat at the end to have Harry and all his pals rushing off into danger again--but it was kind of satisfying. AND I really didn't like all the crazy effects of the time-travel--it didn't seem to jive with the time-travel from the books, where they don't make any changes but just see what already happened from a different perspective. This was totally different from that, and I think that's where it doesn't seem like Rowling wrote it. I did like seeing some human sides to Harry as a grown-up and the real-life things he's struggling with, and I liked seeing the relationship between Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny as grown-ups. And also Malfoy! As a multi-faceted character! With a son who is totally unlike him! I loved that.

Overall, a pretty satisfying read that is pretty much required reading for any Potter fan. Maybe not the best ever, but necessary.

Book #31: The Collapse of Parenting by Leonard Sax

I've heard lots of good reviews about this book and really enjoyed reading it. Sax talks about how parents these days are far too concerned with being their kids' best friend instead of actually trying to teach them how to grow up and the expectations and rules of being members of society. They're afraid to make them follow the rules or speak respectfully because then their kids won't love them any more. Unfortunately, this is really negative for kids, because they don't learn how to make responsible choices or to develop any discipline. Sax is arguing that parents need to re-assert their authority and make sure that their kids aren't taking their screens to bed, that they're sleeping normal hours, that they're eating all types of foods, etc. He also is very anti-medication for ADHD and other psychiatric medications and spends a whole chapter on why those are bad. He says that we really need to teach our kids humility--help them realize they're not more important than everyone else around them--and grit--help them to survive failures and other people not liking them--and to strengthen our individual family relationships so that they want to be with us and don't value peer relationships more than parents. (I thought that point was probably very important, but I just don't know how realistic that really is. I feel like almost every teenager spends years caring more about their peers than their parents. How can you really fight that? I don't know.)

The funny thing is--I basically fully agree with everything he said in this book. I already thought these things were true and I totally think that there is too much psychiatric medication, too many kids with too many screens, too much free rein for kids too young. I am all about strict parenting, etc. But half of this book just kept rubbing me the wrong way. I felt like Sax was very one-sided and completely not sympathetic or interested in what other people believe or feel. Particularly when he was talking about medications, he never once even hinted that there might be cases in which the medication might be necessary. He just kept saying that parents give their kids medication instead of bothering to give them expectations and hold them to it, so the medication is basically a substitute for bad parenting. I felt like it was a little harsh--maybe true, but maybe not, and definitely not in all cases. I felt like that throughout the whole book, and that held me back from wanting to recommend it wholeheartedly to other family members who may have been interested.

Book #30: Happy Times in Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren

This is the sequel to The Children of Noisy Village that I read with Dane a few weeks ago. So we moved on to this one after we finished--I loved that one so much that I bought it and this one on Amazon before we'd even finished it. It's the exact same format--each chapter is just a little vignette of something the kids did together and all of their goings-on. I loved the stories about them building caves in their hay barn and making a "cherry company" to sell their cherries. It makes me feel so reminiscent of the pure joy and "flow" that comes from really good play time when kids are just running around outside and being totally creative and unsupervised. I want so badly to give my kids that experience--although, of course, it will be a few years before they can do that. But I would just love for Dane to be able to run around like these kids do--but I don't know how much that would even be allowed in today's society. Maybe when he's 9 or 10 like these kids are? Hopefully.

The only bad thing about this book (literally--the only thing) is that occasionally the kids call each other "brats" or "stupid" and I don't want Dane hearing those words yet! So I just edit them out as I read and it's worked out fine.

I am so happy to have discovered these books. So much fun.

Book #29: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp

I picked up this book at my aunt and uncle's house while we were there, and since, like everyone in the world, I love The Sound of Music, I thought it would be fun to read, and it was. I don't have a ton to say about this book. It was very interesting to learn more about the real Maria and the family, and I loved reading the story about them in Austria. However, the part covered by the movie is only maybe the first 1/3 of the book, and the rest ends up blending together--all about the years of them touring America giving concerts to make money, and buying their farm up in Vermont and turning it into a music camp for the summers. I did like Maria's writing style and how she would sometimes go off on these artistic tangents (like, "Oh, applause! You could write a book on the different types of applause!" and so on for two paragraphs, in the middle of another story), and honestly, I thought she was a very good writer considering that this wasn't her Thing. It was a fun read, but definitely not something I would feel like I need to re-read someday.

Now I feel the need to re-watch the movie.