Book #21: Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I loved, loved, loved reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was younger--and still do. I asked for Pioneer Girl for Christmas from my parents, without really even knowing what it was. Turns out it's Laura Ingalls Wilder's official autobiography that she wrote, which she tried to get published before she ever got into writing the novels in the Little House series. She used the stories and life history from Pioneer Girl to shape the children's books that she wrote. But, unlike what I thought before, the children's stories in Little House are not perfectly true to what really happened--they're fiction based on fact, not fact themselves. Wilder did a lot of reshaping and representing as she wrote the novels in order to make them work for her young audience, to make the chronology work appropriately, to make her characters sympathetic, and to give the entire series an overall feeling and plot of the family always moving westward and progressing to bigger and better things. This, Pioneer Girl, is the unedited and true-to-life autobiography that Laura Ingalls Wilder originally wrote. And it's accompanied by pages and pages of annotations explaining and expounding on the stories and people that Wilder mentions throughout her narrative. Almost all of it is already familiar to anyone who's read the Little House books, but the fascinating part of it all is reading where and how things were the same or different from what really happened to the novels, and to read about these characters that Laura meets and describes in the books and what happens to them in their real lives. I really enjoyed reading the annotations, even more than Wilder's autobiography itself--so much so that I think I am going to look up a biography of her to read. And I had so much fun re-reading the story that I'm going to revisit the Little House books now--I recently read the first two, so I already started On the Banks of Plum Creek. This was definitely worth a read and I felt like I got to know Laura herself better through reading it--although it is a HUGE book (not in number of pages, but in the size of the pages themselves) and kind of cumbersome and awkward to read.

Book #20: Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin

I wasn't really planning on reading this one of Rubin's books (especially since I read another book on habits last year), but I saw enough positive reviews about it that I decided to just go for it. The book was, of course, fantastically interesting. Rubin theorizes that the habits that make up our daily lives are essential to determining our happiness level. Once something is truly a habit, and not something we have to decide to do every day, it helps us to maintain our self-control and use it for other ventures we want to accomplish. If we can decide on and stick to establishing positive habits in our lives, we can really improve our health and standard of living.

Rubin writes about different motivations and ways that we can try to establish (or break) habits that we want to develop. She doesn't try to recommend specific habits, because she recognizes that different habits work for different people--and, more importantly, different methods of establishing habits work for different people as well. She developed a framework of four different personality types divided by how people respond to expectations--Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, and Rebel. Upholders respond well to internal and external expectations, Obligers only to external, Questioners only to internal, and Rebels to neither. (I'm pretty sure I'm an Obliger--I put priorities that affect other people first (like work for my class, even when I'd rather do something else) and don't always follow through on resolutions or goals that only affect or influence me (like healthy eating).) Depending on what your Tendency is, you'll be motivated in different ways to stick to habits that you set. These motivations might include monitoring (keeping track of what you're doing, like counting steps or budgeting), scheduling (putting things on the calendar), or several other options.

I like Rubin's writing style in some ways and not in others. I like how she kind of lays out her thought process and makes the whole thing open to you--she tells you where she comes up with ideas and conversations that spark thoughts for her. However, I was kind of annoyed by how know-it-all-ish she comes across in the book. She's constantly telling her friends and family about how they should improve their lives and which habits they should implement. Seriously, I am so glad I don't actually know her in real life. She seems WAY Type-A personality. But overall, this book was super motivating and made me want to try again at some of those never-ending resolutions of eating healthier, exercising better, and managing my time better.

Book #19: Design Mom by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

I've read Gabrielle Blair's blog for several years now. She's LDS, a mom of six, and a designer. She posts about really interesting things and always shares beautiful pictures of people's homes and ideas for designing/decorating your home with kids and the family in mind. I didn't really plan on reading her book, but I requested that the library buy a copy (my favorite new tactic! Don't buy books, ask the library to buy them!) and they did. The book goes room by room throughout your house with 15-20 design tips per room for how to make your life smoother with kids by designing the room appropriately for them (and you). I honestly don't think that much about designing things consciously or deliberately--I usually just let things happen and leave them the way they are just because they're already that way. So it was eye-opening to read and to think about how we could reorganize things to get rid of clutter or to make things go smoother for us all. (Like our problem with the mail. We bring in the mail and it's always just everywhere, never in one place.)

I want to read through the book and make a list of small changes we can make to make our lives easier, based on her ideas. I just don't want to spend tons of money like she seems to suggest, haha!

Book #18: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

I randomly picked this book up at the library where I teach because I vaguely remembered hearing about it a while ago. This book tells the story of the 1936 American Olympic rowing team and their origins at the University of Washington, particularly the story of one "boy in the boat," Joe Rantz, and his difficult childhood and upbringing and how rowing and the crew team saved him. The book and story reminded me of Seabiscuit and Unbroken, probably mainly because of the time period in which it was set, and also because it was a very well-written historical book. Both of Hillenbrand's books have really interesting chapters where she describes side issues like planes in WWII or the requirements of being a jockey in the 1930s, and this book had a lot of interesting information (but not too much to be overwhelming) about rowing/crew, which I'd never honestly thought much about before. It was fascinating learning about the development of the program and the rivalry between UW and UC Berkeley, and how the team trained and developed their skills. I also really liked reading about Joe's story and how he overcame these difficult, demoralizing obstacles without becoming bitter or hateful towards those who treated him badly. It was a really great sports story about a sport that I didn't know anything about, and it was a very good read.

I kind of just wish that Brown had had the idea about this story ten or fifteen years beforehand, so that he could have interviewed more of the original crew before they passed away. Joe Rantz's story was really fascinating, and I think it would have been really interesting to hear more about the other members of the team since Brown told his story so well. It felt a little misleading for the book to be named The Boys in the Boat when it was really just about one boy in the boat, but I guess it was inevitable because Rantz was one of only two surviving members by the time he started writing this book.

Book #17: The Bishop's Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison

This book tells the story of Linda Wallheim, the bishop's wife in her Draper, UT LDS ward, over the course of a few months. She is a somewhat typical stay-at-home mom who's almost finished raising her five sons (only one still at home) and who spends most of her time helping her husband serve the members of their ward. When a woman in their ward supposedly leaves her husband and daughter, Linda thinks there's more behind the surface and does more than she probably should to try and figure out the truth behind what has happened. She ends up trying to solve this whodunit mystery and contributes in a very real way to solving the crime--at some danger to herself and going far beyond the normal parameters of the duties of a bishop's wife.

This is not a typical LDS fiction book. Usually, most LDS fiction I've read is written for an LDS audience, and doesn't delve into complicated issues of history or culture. This book is written for a non-LDS audience and therefore spends a lot of time explaining LDS terms and cultural concepts, through the perspective of Linda. I really liked how even though Linda seems stereotypical from the outside, she actually has a lot of semi-radical views (aka liberal) that are probably not super common in Draper, UT, even if she doesn't talk about them with members of her ward. We get to see things from her perspective, which is pretty realistic and straightforward--she balances her faith and belief in God and the gospel with a skepticism of confusing doctrinal issues and Utah LDS culture. She is totally active in the gospel, but has things she doesn't understand or comprehend, and even things she doubts and major things she struggles with (like losing her daughter who was stillborn twenty or thirty years ago, and not knowing whether she's really a part of their family or not). I really liked how Linda felt very REAL--she shared her innermost doubts and struggles with us, and the things she really believes in. That made me really like this book and the nuanced view it gives of the LDS church and LDS people.

The thing I didn't like about this book was that it kind of felt like Harrison was trying on purpose to reference every single controversial thing about the church. Homosexuality and gay marriage? Polygamy? Blacks and the priesthood? Priesthood being used to control and abuse women? All of the above were mentioned at least. It seemed like every single man in the story had a somewhat controlling view of women--and many of them were downright insane (like the murderer in the end, of course), but Harrison made it seem like they got their insane and dangerous ideas from the doctrines on the priesthood in the Church, which I am sure is not unlikely but which I HATE. Even the good men, like her husband, seem like they're still semi-controlling of the women in their lives, or at least like they don't really understand them, and I don't feel like that's a fair representation of all LDS men either. I know that Tommy, and most of the LDS men that I know very well in my generation, are not like that. But overall, I really enjoyed this story and I thought it was a pretty well-balanced and interesting perspective on Mormonism that I bet non-Mormons would enjoy as well, for the chance to peek in on Utah from an insider view.

Book #16: Divine by Nichole Van

Divine is the sequel to Intertwine, featuring James's sister Georgiana, her longtime friend Sebastian, and a lot more time travel. Georgiana traveled to the 21st century in Intertwine because she was dying of consumption, and was cured by the magic of modern medicine. She stayed in the 21st century and was mostly happy there until she found an old love letter, written in 1813--by herself. She knows she has to go back to the past to investigate this letter and find out who she loves so deeply. At the same time, her childhood friend Sebastian, who's always been in love with her, is looking for her to convince her to marry him--but nobody seems to know where she's gone. Georgiana returns to 1813 and finds Sebastian, gets mixed up in a mystery, and all sorts of romantic and time-travel hijinks happen. (Spoiler alert: she ends up in love with Sebastian at the end. Unbelievable, right?)

My only complaints with this book are similar to Intertwine--mainly, the characters (particularly the 1813 characters coming to 2013) seem to transition far too easily from the past to the present without too much culture shock or surprise at how things have changed in two centuries. I feel like it should be way more of a big deal to go forward 200 years. (But I guess she wants to focus more on the romance than on the time travel deal, so I get it, kind of.) For only having lived in the present for one year, it is kind of unbelievable how much Georgiana has transitioned to being a "modern" woman, being all concerned about going back to the nineteenth century where women aren't equal. It also always annoys me when there's a boy in love with a girl and the girl somehow fails to notice it for YEARS and years. It really seems unlikely that a girl would be completely oblivious to the fact that someone is in love with her. But Georgiana eventually figures it out, and figures out her feelings about Sebastian (which, according to her thoughts, are a lot related to the fact that he's a very good-looking manly man, more than anything else), and they work things out in the end. Despite these issues, I really liked this book too and rushed through it really fast to figure out how they would resolve it.

Book #15: Intertwine by Nichole Van

Emme is a normal twenty-first-century woman, working on her PhD in history and in love with the Regency period. She's also not very normal--she finds a nineteenth-century locket with a picture of a man inside, and insists that she feels a strong connection to him and that they are meant to be together. She spends years obsessing about this man in the locket and ends up going to England to research more about him and see if she can finally find out who he is so that she can get him out of her head. While there, she falls into a magic time portal and ends up in 1812, where she meets James and ends up falling in love and needing to decide what to do--should she give up her life in 2012 or give up James?

Honestly, a lot of the premises of this book are a little bit of a stretch. Or, a LOT of a stretch. I found the beginning of the book, where Emme is just obsessing about the locket and this mystery, 200-year-old man, really weird. No matter how normal Emme may seem later on, that really goes beyond my scope of imagination. Also, the whole time travel thing--not that it's SUPPOSED to be believable, but it seems way too convenient for the storyline. However, I really like that the time travel aspect allows Emme to be a modern woman living in a historical period, because a lot of the historical romance novels you read have these heroines who are far too spunky, independent, and outspoken to be believable for the Regency period. Time traveling really helps to negate that problem. Another issue I had was that Emme had amnesia after she got to 1812 and couldn't remember anything about herself, allowing her and James to fall in love without the complication of knowing she was from the 21st century--and again, seeming a little too convenient. But lastly, I felt like the clashing of these two eras happened a little too neatly. Once Emme regained her memory, she just told James she was from the future, showed him her tablet, let him play Angry Birds, and he had no problems understanding or fathoming or imagining what she was saying. It really seems like it should have been a lot more unbelievable for him to hear that his love interest was from 200 years in the future, and that all the technology and advances she showed him or described to him should have been a lot more intimidating and difficult for him to understand.

And even after all of those complaints with this book--I REALLY liked it. I thought the characters were fantastic--Emme and James were well-rounded and I like how they complemented each other well. The book was full of all their thoughts and their longings for each other, which works for the romance (although Van seems very fond of talking about how "her fingers were searing through his gloves", etc.--a little over the top). But it was a perfectly clean romance and a pretty satisfying ending with how they wrapped up the issue of which-century-should-we-live-in and staying together. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it!