When Life Gives You Pears: The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan

I have liked Jim Gaffigan for years, and we went to his live show in the fall. And I've liked him even more as I've gotten to know about his wife and how the two of them are a writing team and how they do everything together, and how they canceled their successful TV show after realizing they couldn't both be doing that and be available to raise their kids. I think they both just seem like stand-up people (haha, get it?). In his show in the fall, Jim talked about his wife's brain tumor, and made a few jokes about it, and I'd read about it in the news back when it was happening as well. But this is a memoir that she wrote about her experience finding out that she had a massive, pear-shaped brain tumor in her brainstem, and then having to spend weeks and months recuperating after contracting pneumonia in the hospital. It was a fascinating story, and Jeannie is just as funny as her husband--she did a great job writing about her experiences without coming across as too depressing or sad, and being honest about it while still making you laugh. I thought it was a really fun book to listen to, and I came out of it liking her even more than her husband.

Also, this was the first audiobook I've listened to in months because with nursing, all of a sudden it's harder for me to read and I need something to be able to listen to while sitting there. This was a great book to get back into it.

The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson

This is the second book in the Truly Devious series, and I blew through it just as quickly as I did the first one. Stevie is continuing her investigation of the Ellingham murders, but another student has disappeared and she has to figure out what happened to her as well. It all sounds so mysterious, and almost too coincidental, when you describe it that way, but when you read the story, it all makes total sense and works great. I was surprised at the end of the first book that there were no answers to the mystery in that one, that this book just continued Stevie's investigation, but I loved all of her discoveries and all the information you get from the author as you go. Johnson does an amazing job of dropping little pieces of data and documents from the past into her story, to give you, as the reader, more and more puzzle pieces as you figure things out along with Stevie. My main complaints about this book were minor--I still hated her love interest, and didn't get why she felt any responsibility or interest in him at all, and I really didn't like how she referred to one of the characters as "them." I feel like so many YA novels have to have a gay best friend (see Tweet Cute as well), which is great, but this is the first one I've seen with a character that is non-binary and uses a "them" pronoun, which is TERRIBLE to read. This character "wrapped themselves around" someone else, and "locked their eyes" on something, and I was so confused every time I read it and it took so long to make sense of what was being written. I understand wanting to be diverse, but I hate reading things that are so imprecise and difficult to read. I am not a fan of that grammatical change at all. So yes, a very minor quibble, but one that definitely stuck with me.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

I really, really enjoyed this YA murder mystery. I had no idea what it was about, but a friend had recommended it to me several times, and I decided to check it out while we were in the hospital with our baby girl. I couldn't put it down and blew through it and the sequel in just a day each--and then I found out I have to wait for FOUR WEEKS for the final book in the trilogy from the library, without finding out the solution! Ahhh! I wish I'd requested that one sooner; I had no idea this book was going to suck me in like it did.

The book is about Stevie, a girl starting at Ellingham Academy, this school for super smart and super quirky kids that all have their own interests and pursuits. It's secluded on a mountain in Vermont, and is really well-known for a pair of unsolved murders during the first year it was founded in the 1930s. Stevie's passion is solving mysteries and researching crime, and she is determined to solve the Ellingham murders and to find out what really happened while she is at the school. And then--there's another murder at the school, and Stevie begins to try and solve that one too, and all sorts of things start to happen...

I really liked how readable this book was. It was fast and quick and there were all sorts of quips and references to things that weren't explained or drawn out--it was clearly written for YA, and fits in for that audience perfectly. I thought the characters were really fun and believable... I liked Stevie and her quirks, and I loved her friends Janelle and super-grumpy Nate. The one character I really disliked was her eventual love interest, who I could not at all understand and who seems like a terrible person. I hate when characters like people who suck. But the story itself was so well done, and I loved how Johnson incorporated both the older, 1930s mystery, and the contemporary murder, and had Stevie working to solve them both at the same time. She did a great job putting them both together and giving out a little bit of information at a time to keep you interested as you went. I really loved this book.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

I thought the premise of this book sounded adorable, and I wanted to read it while recuperating after having the baby--but I didn't end up wanting to wait until the baby was born to read it. This book is about Pepper, whose parents run a burger restaurant-turned international chain, and Jack, whose parents run a deli on the East Side of New York City--and they also go to the same school in New York City. They both end up being put in charge of their respective restaurants' Twitter accounts and get into a Twitter war with each other (without knowing it)--and their relationship progresses from there. I thought this was a very well done YA romance; it was exciting, fun, easy to read, not overly dramatic, and pretty believable. I loved the two main characters of Pepper and Jack, and I thought their hang-ups about each other and the conflicts they experienced were believable enough. I was kind of surprised by a twist at the ending, which was fun. I blew through this book in just this afternoon and evening because I didn't want to stop reading--it was the perfect distracting book to read while I wait for this baby to come.

A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

I don't know where this book recommendation came from, but I am a sucker for anything with Jane Austen in the title. This is not a rewrite or fan fiction, but the writing of a Jane Austen scholar analyzing what he learned from Jane Austen as he read her books and applied them to his life. I felt like he was appealingly honest about his own flaws and problems, and with how Jane Austen helped him to get over them--whether it was cockiness, loneliness, or indecision about what he should be doing with his life. I liked how he went over each of the books in turn and gave each one its fair due, and I felt like the lessons he gained from each one seemed believable and real. It did feel like it was getting  a little long at times... I could have been totally happy with the book being even half as long. But I always enjoy getting more out of my Jane Austen reading, so I didn't mind it too much (and it wasn't all that long to begin with).

The Work and the Glory 9: All is Well by Gerald N. Lund

This is the LAST book in the Work and the Glory series--I wanted to finish this series before the baby came, and it worked out that I did! I feel like I've learned a lot about Church history, and gained a lot of perspective about our modern-day trials as compared to those of the pioneers. (For example, in this time of the pandemic, it was eye-opening to remember how much sickness and epidemics played a part in their lives at that time, and how so many people died from disease back then before they knew how to treat them. We are spoiled these days compared to them. Dealing with disease is a part of the human experience, one that we have kind of forgotten about thanks to our modern medicine and doctors.)

The defining characteristic of this book was: LONG. It wasn't that much longer than some of the other books, but it was over 700 pages and I felt like some of the storylines could and should have been cut out. Will and Alice traveling on the ship, and Peter and Kathryn with the Donner/Reed party were interesting, but took up SO much more time than was necessary. I mean, I was definitely fascinated by the Donner/Reed party, but how come he tried to fit that all in to this storyline? It was overwhelming to keep track of all the different groups. And the most boring storyline was the main body of the pioneers, where most of the Steeds were. I feel like he should have cut out those extraneous storylines and added in more family drama and character development instead... there was basically nothing interesting happening for any of the individuals in the Steed family. I was disappointed that all of a sudden, because he is now baptized, Joshua is basically a cardboard cutout of Nathan, with no personality and no distinguishing traits. He didn't get mad once in this book, and that was basically his default setting in all of the other books. Just because he got baptized doesn't mean he became a robot. I feel like Lund should have had his baptism happen at the end of this book and plotted the books differently so that he included more in the last book and allowed for Joshua's conversion to happen in this one--that would have been a much more interesting way to end the series. In the end, I felt like this book was just a race to get the Saints across the prairie to the Salt Lake Valley, but I still felt like the story was unfinished by the time the book ended--probably because it was... How are they supposed to survive the winter without houses or enough food? Nobody seemed concerned enough about having enough to eat, either at Winter Quarters or in the Salt Lake Valley, even though we'd just witnessed what can happen with the Donner Party.

Overall, not the most satisfying finish to this gargantuan series, but I feel good about having read these again and I enjoyed the process.

The Work and the Glory 8: So Great a Cause by Gerald N. Lund

This book covers when the Saints left Nauvoo until they made it to Winter Quarters later that year. The main thing that surprised me about this book was how long it took the pioneers to get across the plains. I knew there was a Winter Quarters, of course, but I'd kind of thought it was for smaller groups of people--I had forgotten or never realized that it was for everyone that first winter after they left Nauvoo. I can't believe how annoying that must have been to Brigham Young to take so long to get across the plains. The main Steed family drama in this book was Joshua's conversion to the Church... which I thought was well-thought-out and believable, although I wouldn't have been surprised if it had taken longer, knowing Joshua's history. Every time Joshua had a question and asked Nathan about it, the chapter took the form of a Sunday School lesson about Gospel Principles, which was a little bit boring... and I sometimes think Lund exaggerates the level of doctrinal understanding the Saints back then had, when revelation was coming all the time and everything was new to everyone. I don't think Nathan would have sounded just like a modern-day elder's quorum president.