2014 Reading Recap

I can't believe I read 96 books this year. By about November, I realized how close I was getting and really wanted to get to 100 (which has seemed like this mythical number that I've never been able to cross over the last few years), but it turned out that moving mid-December and traveling for Christmas proved too much for me and I just could not do anything more. So I will be proud of my 96 books for this year and realize that I probably will not read more than that for a very long time.

Without further ado, here are some of my favorite books from this year. I can't narrow it down any more than this and some of the categories overlap, but I don't have to worry about that because this is my own blog.

Best Quick Reads: On the Fence, Blackmoore, Virtuosity

Best Fiction: Dear Mr. Knightley, Crossing to Safety, Eleanor and Park, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Best History: Mornings on Horseback, One Summer: America, 1927

Best Nonfiction: 168 Hours

Best Mystery: In the Woods

Best Memoirs: Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Truth and Beauty

I have been putting off this annual review of my books for a while now (I am writing this on January 6, although posting it so that it will still show up in December 2014). For some reason, I haven't been looking forward to it like I usually do, and I think it is because I didn't love love many books I read this year. There were plenty that I enjoyed, but I think that I didn't give myself time to savor them (trying to reach 100!) and that I read a lot of books that weren't necessarily very noteworthy (particularly towards the end of the year). I want to change this for myself for 2015. I want to read books that I really love and to not rush through them in order to check them off a list. My reading goal for 2015 is the opposite of last year's--I'd like to focus on reading a few GOOD BOOKS in hopes that I love them and find some new favorites.

This is my classic book list (all of which I haven't yet read) that I'm hoping to tackle in 2015:

• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Waverley by Walter Scott
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

There are only 14 on here because I know I'm going to find many other books I want to read throughout the year too. But if I can read these I will feel like I've accomplished something this year, and I know I'll enjoy it and get something deep out of reading these.

Book #96: Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

I loved Gaudy Night enough that I checked out four more Sayers novels at the library--all of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels that involved Harriet Vane, who was the main character in Gaudy Night. I liked Harriet's and Peter's relationship in Gaudy Night and was interested in reading about how they met and how their relationship developed over the series of novels. Strong Poison is a lot more of a standard mystery novel than Gaudy Night though--Harriet is accused of poisoning and murdering her lover, and Peter believes that she didn't do it so he is determined to prove her innocent, so he has to figure out who would have done it besides her. He makes some great connections and figures out who the actual murderer was (not Harriet!) with the help of this group of assistants he hires. (It felt like they did the majority of the grunt work instead of him doing much of anything except for figuring stuff out, which I feel like is almost cheating.)

I was kind of hoping for some more illumination into the Peter-Harriet relationship and didn't really get it in this book. The thing I loved about Gaudy Night was how complicated and difficult they were together--Peter keeps asking Harriet to marry him and she's always refusing. I also liked how that book was inside of Harriet's head, so there was so much more explanation behind why things happened that way. But in this book, he basically just starts proposing to her for no reason at all--he falls in love with her with NO reason, which I feel like is a little bit of a cop-out on Sayers' part. He sees her on the witness stand in court, decides she's innocent, and then goes in and proposes to her in jail. What? I did not understand the attraction there and I didn't feel like Sayers did a good job making them seem real. I think I will still read another book of hers, but I wish she would write more from the perspective of Peter or Harriet and not just about them--that was the part I really liked about Gaudy Night.

Book #95: Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

I'd avoided reading this book for a while because I felt like the cover made it look like a quick-read romance novel, which I just don't feel like I'm in the mood for this month. But for some reason I still checked it out from the library and had it hanging around the house--and once it became overdue I decided to just power through it and read it. It WAS a quick read, so I finished it quickly (and now still have yet to return it to the library--oops), but it was not a romance novel (which, theoretically, I knew, but the pink cover was still misleading!). Glitter and Glue is really a memoir about Corrigan's relationship with her mother, and her beginning to understand who her mother is, once she's moved away and left her family behind for a yearlong trip around the world. She begins working as a nanny for a few months for a family in Australia, and as she begins to act as a mother for some recently motherless children, she begins to hear her own mother's voice in her head and to feel closer to her mother than she ever has. This experience of nannying was a turning point in her relationship with her mother--and the later experiences of being married and having kids of her own.

I really liked how Corrigan wrote about her experiences living in Australia with the Tanner family, and how she described her experience of basically becoming more of an adult. She gets that realization that all young adults have to go through of figuring out that their parents aren't crazy or ridiculous but just humans trying to do what they think is best--and it's pretty natural that that realization comes when she's first forced to think about other people first (these kids she's nannying). I really liked how she showed how much her mom's words came to her mind, and how she began to relate her mom's life history to that of the mom and family she was living with. All in all, this was a great book about the parent-child relationship and how that relationship changes with the seasons and years.

Book #94: Things a Little Bird Told Me by Biz Stone

This book reminded me in a lot of ways of Creativity, Inc.--a tech company-related memoir-type book with a lot of musings about creativity and the impacts people and companies can have. Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, basically tells us about his professional life and how he went from living in his mom's basement with his girlfriend to now a high-tech mogul in the Bay Area. He worked at Google for a few years (with Blogger), then worked on a podcast-related startup, then started Twitter with one of his co-workers. And along with stories about how he made all of these moves, he shares a lot of thoughts about how creativity can happen, how we can accidentally quell creativity, how companies create their own personalities and what he was trying to do with Twitter, and how the goal of doing good in the world has affected him and Twitter (and his startups after Twitter). Honestly, it was a pretty interesting read to learn about how Twitter came about, but I didn't feel that engaged with the book. Stone is an engaging writer and he has really great ideals that he shares (and it was interesting to hear about how he was in debt basically until he cashed in on some of his Twitter shares after it was already huge), but I think I've maybe read too many of these business-y memoirs to be all that into it. Note to self: I don't need to read too many more of these for a while.

Book #93: In the Woods by Tana French

I read French's Broken Harbor a while ago, and it always stuck in my head that I loved it. I remember different creepy aspects of that mystery quite often--some of it was just so off-putting, just in the way that people are confused and insane--and I know I stayed up a good part of the night reading it because I couldn't put it down. But for some reason, it never occurred to me to check if she'd written other books--and turns out that Broken Harbor was her fourth mystery, and her others are also reviewed and rated very highly. So I've meant to get around to reading more of her forever, and finally the stars aligned and I started reading this book a few days ago and then spent all evening powering through it yesterday. I cannot think of a worse week for me to spend time reading--we also closed on our house yesterday, so we have a FEW things to do (cough, cough)--but once I started this one, I couldn't put it down and had to figure it out. Just like Broken Harbor.

This murder mystery is narrated by Robert Ryan, a murder squad detective in Dublin. He and his partner, Cassie Maddox, are assigned to a case of a murdered twelve-year-old girl--which unfortunately happened in the same exact place where Ryan himself grew up and suffered a traumatizing experience as a twelve-year-old. When he was twelve, he and his two best friends were playing in the wood near their house, and they disappeared. When Ryan was found, his shoes were filled with blood and he couldn't remember anything--and his two friends were never found. He feels sure that the two mysteries are linked, and that his participation in solving this one will help him to remember and figure out what happened to him and his two friends. The book is really about Ryan's involvement in solving the mystery and how it's affecting him, how he begins to remember things but can't force his mind to take the leap to what really happened that day. It's also about Ryan's relationship with Cassie Maddox, his best friend and partner on the squad, and how their relationship changes over the course of this mystery. They eventually figure out who murdered the little girl who was found, and they uncover a lot of other stuff in the process.

Cassie is the narrator of the second Dublin Murder Squad novels, which is set after this one ends, and I'm actually really excited to read that one. I will check it out after I've worked my way through the enormous stack of books that I have already checked out from the libraries, and after we've finally moved and settled in and I've finished grading all my students' stuff. (Things are a LITTLE hectic this week--again, why I shouldn't have spent the evening reading last night! Ahh! But I couldn't help it!)

Book #92: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

This may expose my naïveté and lack of familiarity with other parts of the world, but I'll say it anyways: every time I read books about young girls in romantic situations in England, it makes me think of Pride and Prejudice. I Capture the Castle is completely different than P&P, of course. It's set in the English countryside, but it's more than 100 years later, and nobody in the book is trying to get married off (okay, the sister of the heroine is). So there's really no reason to make any comparisons to Austen (the characters in the book even do talk about Jane a few times), but it seems inevitable, even as they are driving around the countryside in cars and doing unthinkable things like kissing their beaus (shocking!). This book is about Cassandra Mortmain, as a kind of coming-of-age story about how she falls in love for the first time. But honestly, the romance wasn't even my favorite part of this story--it just seemed very one-sided (as in, Cassandra longing after the man her sister was engaged to and him being in love with her sister) and I never really saw why she fell in love with the man in the first place. But I did love how this book was ostensibly Cassandra's journal, where she recorded her thoughts and impressions about her family and people around her, and how all those impressions and stories were so clear and filled with her own personality and thoughts. I also loved the circumstance of the family in which she was writing--she and her family lived in "genteel poverty" in an old castle, one that was almost in ruins, and without hardly any furniture or food or any sort of income (because everything had been sold eventually to buy the necessary parts of life). It seemed so interesting how they all lived lives that seemed relatively unencumbered, even though they really didn't have any money. Her father had once been a famous writer but had not written anything in years, so they had no income. I loved Cassandra's portraits of her family, and her own recognitions of her limitations as a writer and her abilities to "capture" anyone or anything, other than herself. And in the end, she has to grow up and decide what she really wants out of life, while dodging romance from undesirable sources and figuring out who she really is in love with. It was a great story with some great people and characters that I really enjoyed reading. I didn't love, love it--I would probably need to love, love the romance for that to happen--but it was definitely worth my while.

Book #91: Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers

After reading Gaudy Night I was interested in reading some more Dorothy Sayers books, and I had actually checked this one out from the library at the same time. It actually turned out to be completely different from Gaudy Night, but still very enjoyable. Whose Body? is the first Sayers mystery novel with Lord Peter Wimsey, her Sherlock Holmes character, and Gaudy Night is maybe her tenth, so it's obvious that there was a change in her style by then. In this book, Sayers introduces Wimsey to us with a bang--a random, unidentified body found in a bathtub of a friend of Wimsey's, who takes it upon himself to investigate. Wimsey and a detective friend of his make the connection between this case and the strange disappearance of a wealthy finance man, and eventually, very excitingly, find the killer of the body. There really isn't much more to say about a mystery without giving away too much of the story.

Gaudy Night was very thoughtful and thought-provoking; the philosophical discussions about the place of women and the role of education were almost equal in importance to the plot and pace of the mystery. But Whose Body? seemed to be much more of a traditional mystery, focused on the plot and the one singular detective and his attempts to uncover the villain. I felt like this story focused more heavily than I am used to on the false starts that Wimsey followed up on which turned out to be nothing, which was kind of fun and misleading for both the detective and the reader. All in all, this was just a fun read with a very satisfying reveal of "whodunit" at the end of the book.

Book #90: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

I am a sucker for a good mystery, although I don't read all that many of them unless they are Agatha Christie, Maisie Dobbs, or came recommended to me by someone. I would never just go to the mystery section and pick one out off the shelf--there are too many and I am only interested in reading the good ones! But I felt like Sayers has popped up (very positively) in several book blogs and Facebook posts that I've noticed lately, particularly Gaudy Night, and I decided I wanted to check her out. It's the tenth novel featuring Sayers' pet detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, and although obviously I haven't read any other books by her, I was able to understand the characters and what was going on without too much trouble.

Wimsey is not the main character or narrator in this book, however; that honor goes to Harriet Vane, his love interest who hasn't reciprocated towards him yet. Vane is a detective novelist with a shady past (she and Peter met while he helped her get out of a wrongful accusation of having murdered her live-in boyfriend), and she goes to revisit her college days at Shrewsbury College at Oxford for a college reunion (called a Gaudy, for some reason). While there, she gets wrapped up in a rather mysterious situation with evil, anonymous notes being sent to professors and students all over the campus, and she agrees to stay and help investigate all of the violence and damage being done to the school. In the end, Wimsey comes to help figure out what's going on, and they find the culprit after an exciting attack (as usual). Wimsey's and Vane's relationship is also developed over the course of the novel and comes to a romantic conclusion at the end.

I don't know if you could compare this novel to an Agatha Christie. Christie is dead focused on the plot of the mystery--every single detail and character and event is calculated and meant to forward the story along or to provide some sort of clue that will be referenced later. This book was obviously much, much more rounded out and focused on a lot more of the character development and the themes of women's education and the roles of women in a changing world (the book was published in the mid-1930s). Harriet and the female professors and administrators of the college have plenty of conversations and discussions about the right of women's education, the role of single vs. married women, etc., and a lot of the conversation and discussions even went over my head because it was so complex. The perpetrator of the crimes was actually motivated in large part against women working and being education, specifically these women. But I actually kind of liked that element to it--I felt like it was more than just a "murder mystery"--not that I think that I'm above that sort of thing, but it was a different genre than I'm used to encountering and I liked that. I was just looking this book up and reading a little about it and saw that it's been called the first "feminist mystery novel"--which definitely seems justified.

All in all, this was much more complex than I was expecting to get, but it was so very enjoyable. I am hoping to find more of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels and get through them soon.

Book #89: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

I read a bit of Wilde back in the day before college, even, but I really haven't revisited him much since. (Except for going to see his grave in Paris! Picture below.) But I have always meant to get around to reading more than just The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, both of which I really enjoyed in the past. In reading An Ideal Husband, I was surprised by how funny and sarcastic and yet how deep this play was. The play is about Robert Chiltern, a supposedly perfect man to everyone--with a perfect record in politics and a wife who almost worships him--who has a secret from the past come back to bite him in the form of blackmail. He gets help from his friend, the resolute dandy Lord Goring, who helps him to figure out what to do and how to save his reputation and his marriage. (I absolutely loved the character of Lord Goring--he's totally cut from the cloth of Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, the secretly intelligent and philosophical man who acts like he's only interested in fashion and shallow things.) And through this story, you get bombarded with hilarious quotes about how silly and shallow people are, and then also with these serious, deep quotes about how love truly works and how important charity and forgiveness are to relationships and love.

Some of my favorite quotes, both silly and serious:

"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. . . . All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon." (Act II)
"Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself." (Act III)
"What is unfashionable is what other people wear. . . . Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people." (Act III)
"Like all stout women, she looks the very picture of happiness." (Act II)
"All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next." (Act II)

Things work out in the end for Robert Chilton and his wife, and they understand each other much better and how to love each other better in the end. In the end, everyone understands better about what it really means to be an "ideal" husband--and that it's more desirable to be "real." So all's well that ends well in this story. I found the Rupert Everett version of it is available for streaming on Netflix, so I may watch that tonight while Tommy works. And I want to look for more of his works at the library to read!

And in closing, a picture of Oscar Wilde's tomb with its hundreds of lipstick kisses all over it. I can't believe I've actually been there. (And I just looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently we were some of the last people to see it like this--it said in 2011 (the year we went) they cleaned off his tomb and put a glass wall around it to keep people from defacing it. Awesome.)

Book #88: Lizzy and Jane by Katherine Reay

After reading Dear Mr. Knightley by Reay a few months ago, I knew I wanted to read her most recent novel, Lizzy and Jane. I loved how Dear Mr. Knightley incorporated tons of classical lit references and how much the Austen books really influenced the characters, but how the book wasn't an Austen fan fiction or rewrite but its own story all completely original. Lizzy and Jane promised the same charms--an obvious, direct reference to P&P in the title, but about a different set of sisters, set in contemporary times and dealing with a whole different set of challenges than the Bennet Lizzy and Jane. Instead of worrying about getting married to rich men, the modern Lizzy and Jane are dealing with Jane's cancer diagnosis and their own decades-long estrangement since their own mother's death from cancer. Lizzy is struggling with keeping her fancy NYC restaurant open with her recent lack of creativity as a chef, and decides to take a few weeks to visit her home and her sister to see if she can do anything to help while Jane undergoes chemotherapy, despite the fact that they've hardly talked for years and whenever they have their conversations have been filled with anger and blame about how they've each let each other down in the past. The weeks that Lizzy spends with Jane are life-changing and go a long way to mending their relationship--with a lot of Austen thrown in to make the transition smoother. And don't forget there's some romance too--but it definitely felt secondary to the family relationships (which I liked).

I really liked how this book was so honest and realistic about the difficulty of repairing those broken relationships even when both sides are willing and hoping to. Lizzy and Jane are both wary of opening up to each other, and uncomfortable being with each other at the beginning, but even after they have a few really good talks, it's not like they're all of a sudden perfect with each other. There are a lot of fallbacks and hurdles that they have to overcome together. But I think the best small part of this story was about how Lizzy used her specific talents--those of a chef--to serve her sister and some of the other chemotherapy patients at the hospital with her. She worked and tweaked and developed recipes that would tempt her sister's sick stomach and really tried to show her love through the work she put into her cooking. It was fascinating to read about her thought process through cooking and how she came up with ideas for foods. And I loved, loved how she came up with inspiration for foods from the books she read and loved--Regency foods from Austen, like shepherd's pie, or plain roast chicken from Hemingway. I loved how she focused so much on the food references in these books, ones that I can't remember or even notice.

Book #87: How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

I feel like I've officially reached boring adulthood when I willingly read parenting books and find them interesting. Soon I'll be going to sleep at 9 and ranting about junk food in the house! (Wait... already kind of doing those things . . .) My sister-in-law Lindsay sent me this book early this year after she read it for her kids and really enjoyed it. I finally got around to reading it, because I figured that Dane is a TALKER and it can't hurt to learn about good habits to get into with him.

I feel like this book really is an excellent resource. Although it really is aimed at parenting older children, ones who you can really argue with and need to help work through problems with, I definitely can see how useful it will be even for me. Each chapter is focused on a different aspect of communication with your child, from acknowledging their feelings to avoiding punishments to encouraging independence in your child. And each chapter has specific steps you can/should take while communicating with your kids--so it is much more doable and possible than just reading general vague ideas or theories. There are short comics that exemplify the lessons discussed, to make it easy to visualize how it will work. And honestly, all of the suggestions seem really, really useful. Most of them seemed aimed towards preventing fights and blow-ups between kids and parents, and allowing both sides to recognize and express their feelings and still keep things civil. I already have caught myself doing some of the "bad" things, like denying Dane's feelings (like if he says he's sad, I might say, "No you're not!"), so it's good to keep these in mind. I don't imagine I will implement these very easily, but I'm glad I have the book to keep around as a resource, because I am sure I will want to revisit it often as Dane and other kids get older.

A quick example: in the chapter on helping kids deal with their feelings, the steps listed are:
1. Listen quietly and attentively.
2. Acknowledge their feelings with a word. (Like "Oh . . . I see . . .")
3. Give the feeling a name. ("That sounds frustrating!")
4. Give the child his wishes in fantasy. ("I wish we could do that right now!")

According to the many, many examples and role-plays in the book, this is a great way to get your kid to talk our his or her feelings instead of for you to try and "fix" what is going on immediately and make them frustrated, etc. This was a great chapter. Also, I really liked the ideas on how to get your kid to cooperate with you and avoiding punishment--those are also really, really useful and I am sure we will need them one day (they're still a little advanced for the stage we are currently in).

Book #86: Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

I have had this book on my to-read list for forever, because I read one good review of it a long time ago. I have had it checked out from the library for a while, and finally got around to reading it. The book is set in 1987, right in the middle of the AIDS crisis in the U.S., with fourteen-year-old June Elbus dealing with the aftermath of her uncle's death from AIDS. Her uncle Finn was an amazing artist, and his last wish on earth was to paint a portrait of her and her sister Greta. June thinks that the painting is the only place where she and Greta can be together these days; although they used to be best friends, Greta has turned mean and worldly and doesn't seem to care about June any more. After Finn dies, June feels like she's lost the only person in her life who understands her, until his partner, Toby, reaches out to her.

June is one the most interesting and relatable characters I've read recently. She is only fourteen but she has spent a lot of time with her uncle and is fascinated by medieval times and wants to be a falconer, mainly because she is uncomfortable around other people, particularly kids her own age. You can't help but feel for her and be interested in what she's doing. She doesn't have any friends, unlike Greta, who is two years older, beautiful, popular, and an amazing singer. Greta and June were best friends for years, but I love how the story probes into how their relationship has fallen apart and where they lost their ability to communicate with each other. The book seems to be a lot about difficult and unrepaired relationships (June's mom and Finn, sister and brother, had a similar "falling-out" and the breach was never really repaired), and about the dangers of loving someone too much and losing grip on what was truly best for that person and for your relationship. The book also does a great job of creating the scene of what it was like for people at that time, not knowing really how AIDS was spread and being truly afraid of this scary, unknown disease. It sounds a little like the Ebola scare in the U.S. but a whole lot more widespread and long-lasting (since the Ebola talk has already died down a ton since a month ago). That was a really interesting part of the book.

Although I really liked the characters and themes, a lot of the time I was reading, I felt uncomfortable with the assumptions and actions that the characters were making. The whole storyline of June kind of being in love with her uncle, and then in love with Toby, just felt wrong and uncomfortable to me. (There was never anything inappropriate between them, but the age difference and relationships just made it feel really awkward to me.) It just felt weird to have June skipping school and going into New York City secretly without anyone knowing to go visit her uncle's old boyfriend, even if they weren't doing anything bad. I felt like I wanted to skip past all of that and just get to more about June and Greta and their relationship, and how they eventually ended up overcoming that.

Book #85: Mary Poppins Comes Back by P. L. Travers

I feel a little like I am cheating, reviewing this one, because I didn't actually finish it--I was about 80% done with it when I returned it to the library. But since it would have taken me less than a half-hour to finish it and I only didn't because I didn't want to, I figured I would count it. This book was equally as adorable and fun as the first Mary Poppins book--equally being the key word. Most of the stories (each chapter being a different story) start to feel redundant after a while and start to get a lot less interesting. I think as a child, I loved that sort of repetition, but now as an adult, it made me a lot less likely to want to read it. (For example, in the first MP, Mary takes the Banks kids to see one of her relatives for tea, and while they're there, they magically float up to the ceiling the whole time. In the second MP, they go visit another relative and spend the whole time upside down. It's the exact same story, just a different character.) I just didn't feel like I needed to keep reading to get the gist of this book, since it was so similar to the first one--but you guess that's why the charm of Mary Poppins was so strong, because the adventures were so sweet and charming and somewhat predictable through their magic.

Book #84: Yes Please by Amy Poehler

I've read Bossypants by Tina Fey, and I read Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, and when I heard that Amy Poehler was coming out with a book, I definitely wanted to read it too. It's like the holy trinity of female comedians in TV these days. I got on the list at the library and got one of the first copies (the book just barely got published!) and read it yesterday.

On one hand, I really liked this book. I love Amy Poehler (I watched all of Parks and Rec earlier this year) and this book is filled with half-memoir-ish stuff and half life advice, and it all seems pretty solid. I liked the chapters about her childhood and growing-up years, and about her beginnings with working in comedy in Boston, Chicago, and New York, with some really interesting and funny anecdotes about her time in her comedy groups and SNL (although it all sounds completely exhausting and I honestly do not understand how they survive that sort of thing). I love that she had a good childhood and supportive parents and still has a good relationship with her family. And I thought her advice was solid and came from a good place of well-meaningness and happiness. She says good things about the working mom vs. stay-at-home mom debate (that it's stupid and meaningless and everyone can be happy doing what they want) and about body image and being happy with who you are.

On the other hand, I didn't love this book. The whole introduction was about how terrible the whole process has been of writing a book, and how awful she is at writing and how much this has been like pulling teeth. Not just a few paragraphs about it--like 20 pages about it. I was BORED by that by the end, and yet she kept coming back to it throughout the book. I'm sure it was just a tactic to lower our expectations for the rest of the fantastic book, but it was overkill to me. I also thought it was a little odd how much she talked about all the drugs she's taken over the years, considering that they are illegal and that she has young kids who she says she doesn't want to do drugs. The other thing I didn't love about the book was personal and probably based on my own feelings I was having that day. I really and truly cannot believe how much she does and how many projects she has going on and what she has done in her life. The inside flap of the jacket goes on and on about all of Amy's projects and then ends with "So even if you could meet Amy, she probably wouldn't have time for a movie night or girl's night out." Okay, so you are soooo busy and much more important than the rest of us normal people. And I was just feeling so blah about my life and my job (had a bad day yesterday, we'll just say that) that I felt more depressed about my life than uplifted by her stories and advice.

Book #83: The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

I picked up this book because I'd read a summary of it somewhere and Mormons are one of the rising cultural groups that Chua and Rubenfeld describe in their analysis. Naturally, anything that says relatively positive things about Mormons (by a relatively well-known non-Mormon, especially) is interesting to me, so I requested it at the library. The goal of this book is to define what traits are common to groups who are currently experiencing above-average levels of success in America, to possibly explain why these groups are doing better than the rest of the country. Chua and Rubenfeld focus on some seven or eight groups, like Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, Jews, Iranian Americans, Mormons, and a couple of other ones I don't remember. And according to the authors' thesis, all of these groups have the "triple package" of these three traits of success:

-Superiority complex: Every group has a deep belief in its own exceptionality.
-Insecurity (or, as I think of it, inferiority complex): Each group has the need to prove itself and its place in America, due to fear or scorn or the need to live up to impossible expectations.
-Impulse Control: Every group has the ability to resist temptation and exercise self-discipline, which creates a strong work ethic and ability to move past failures.

Looking at the one group that I belong to, I thought that these three traits apply perfectly to Mormons. Superiority complex: We believe that we are the true church and children of God. Inferiority complex: We talk about the "extermination order" and the persecution against the Church, and want desperately to be accepted as "normal" members of society (in the world, not of the world?). Impulse control: Chua and Rubenfeld devote quite a lot of time talking about LDS missions and the Word of Wisdom--we are probably the group that best exemplifies the impulse control idea. And according to the authors, these three traits are the reason behind the recent spate of Mormon successes in the business world (how many super-rich CEOs and business leaders are LDS out there?). Most of their discussion about Mormons seemed positive, although they of course took a few pages to describe how women in the Church are not at an equal level to men, providing men in the Church with an extra superiority complex.

Although the whole idea behind this book seems a little problematic (looking at entire racial and religious groups, which seems like it could rely heavily on stereotypes), Chua and Rubenfeld do give a disclaimer for what they're trying to do at the beginning, explaining that there truly ARE differences between how groups are succeeding and how they behave, even though we don't like to acknowledge them and even though these generalizations don't apply to everyone within the group. They rely heavily on social scientific research and studies, and provide a lot of evidence to back up their claims about any sort of group that they make (except Mormons, interestingly, which seem to rely a lot on memoir-type accounts written by LDS members, including Joanna Brooks' book). I thought that their whole thesis is interesting and definitely makes a lot of sense, and as a whole, I enjoyed reading their book.

Book #82: Emily's Quest by L. M. Montgomery

This was the third and final Emily book, and you guessed it--I finished it the same day I finished the second. I couldn't wait to find out what happened to Emily, I guess. But this book ended up being my least favorite of the three, possibly because it was mostly focused on Emily's love life and it was really very unsatisfying. The best things about the other books--her relationships with her friends and her escapades and adventures--really didn't show up in this book. In this book, Emily's friends all move on to other places and go to further schooling (like in Montreal) and she's left as the only one in their town of Blair Water, where she's chosen to stay and write from her home instead of taking an amazing job offer in New York. She doesn't regret that decision, but she does miss her friends and feel left out. Montgomery shows Emily and her friends moving apart, in a world where the only form of communication is letters, and they can't come home to visit for years at a time, and I kind of hated how they grew apart and distant, because I really loved their little group in the first book. Emily does become really successful with her writing (which is, I suppose, the Quest in the title) and publishes her first book throughout the story (and by the very end has published more), and makes her own substantial living from writing, but honestly, her writing seems kind of secondary to the romances of the story.

Here's the gist of that: Emily has basically always been in love with her neighbor Teddy Kent, but she has always been too proud to say anything and never will give him any sign that she likes him. So basically, this whole book is years of Emily pining away for Teddy and then these chance encounters that they have where they are both too proud to say what they're really thinking and afraid to confess their love for each other. So they both eventually get engaged to other people, then eventually break them off (blah blah blah), and then years (and years) pass and Emily and Teddy finally get together three pages before the end of the book. I felt like so much of this nonsense could have been prevented if one of them would have been a little more straightforward and grown-up about this, and although I wanted them to end up together they were both so stupid about it. Teddy is basically a non-character in the story--we hardly know anything about him except that he is a good artist--but you still like him enough because Emily does.

Overall, I had to read this because I had to know what happens to Emily, but I was more frustrated over this book than I was over the other two, probably because I just wanted Emily to be happy and stop keeping her love at arm's length.

Book #81: Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery

After reading Emily of New Moon, I ended up starting (and almost finishing) the second book in the trilogy that same night. I was really interested to learn about what was going to happen for Emily! In this second book, similar to Anne's progression to Queens Academy, Emily goes to Shrewsbery High School and continues her writing. She moves in with another severe older aunt, who is even worse than the original ones she was living with, and has clashes with her and gets into scrapes with her friends. She has romantic intrigues and boys proposing to her, but she remains aloof and secretly in love with her childhood friend Teddy Kent (which doesn't really become that much of a plot point until the next book).

This book reminded me a lot of Anne of Avonlea or whatever the third book is in the Anne series. It's a very similar coming-of-age series, so that connection has to keep coming up. Montgomery's style is so effusive and focused on the joys of nature and the beauty of life, coming from both Anne and Emily, that I can't help imagining that Prince Edward Island to be the most beautiful, amazing place on earth. I really and truly would love to go there--we WILL go there someday, maybe for an anniversary trip or something. But reading this book made me a little bit sad that we live in such an ugly, ugly place, and that I didn't grow up in or live in a place with a lot of nature. I don't even know if such idyllic, romantic places like Montgomery describes even exist any more, but I know they aren't here in Frisco. Anywhere. I was feeling very nature-deprived today so I took Dane to the nature preserve/museum this morning to get us outside (and it was so hot we were tired of it after about an hour).

SO, after that tangent, I did love this book and Emily's development and self-realizations throughout it. I love how she decided in the first book that she was going to become a famous author, and she just set herself to work, ALWAYS, always writing and practicing and developing, and then in this book she actually starts to do it. She begins working at the local newspaper, she writes a lot for school stuff, she begins sending her poems and stories off to magazines for publication (and gets lots of rejections but then the acceptances come). I don't necessarily think that this sort of path would be so easily followed today (or maybe it would be? In a world of blogs and internet magazines and journals?) but Emily set her goal and then worked really hard to achieve it, and I loved that.

Book #80: Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery

I loved, loved, loved Anne of Green Gables growing up, and I still do. But for some reason, I was never introduced to Emily of New Moon, and when I was later in life, I never was interested enough in starting a new Anne series to pick it up. I finally was convinced to do it, and I really can't believe I never have read them before. The story is so similar to Anne, at least in how it starts out--Emily is orphaned and taken in by conservative, older relatives--but she seems deeper and darker than the light-hearted Anne, in some ways. The little stories that happen are very similar--Emily cuts her own hair and regrets it, like Anne when she dyes it; schoolyard teasing and problems with the teacher, etc.--but Emily seems to have a sadder soul, possibly because her father died when she was eleven and she has the ache of missing him instead of never knowing her parents, like Anne. Like Anne, Emily is able to win people over with her winsome and outspoken ways, and she makes some "bosom friends" (without using that term) who are adorable and fun. I feel like we get more of Emily's internal commentary, and she is much more insolent in her thoughts than I remember Anne being, and it's very fun to get to know her, and I can't wait to read the other two books (hopefully starting tomorrow!).

I loved this book from the second chapter, when Emily meets all of her mother's older relatives, who are coming to pick her up after her father's funeral to take her home with them. The way that Emily looks at all of them, and the picture of this gathering of eight old/older people sitting around staring at her, and how each of them are described, and how Emily thinks about each of them in turn--it was exactly the sort of character-based story-beginner that sucks me in. But throughout the book, I loved Emily's development and growth from a queer, quiet child to a more confident tween. I thought the ending seemed rather contrived (and reminded me of something from on of the Anne books, as well, although I can't think of what)--when Emily solved a decades-long mystery by "second sight" while she's deliriously ill one night and changes her unhappy neighbors' lives. Come on.

Book #79: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

This is a book someone recommended to me back at the beginning of the year when I asked for recommendations on Facebook. I've had it on my "to-read" list on Goodreads ever since then and just got around to it. I got the impression that it was a Hunger Games/Divergent type book, the first of a trilogy, in a post-apocalyptic universe, and I thought it sounded semi-interesting. Let's do a quick summary before I delve into my reactions to the book: the book is set on the Empyrean, a massive self-sustaining spaceship which is traveling to "New Earth," some eighty years away from the old, destroyed earth. The kids on the ship have lived there their entire lives. Waverly and Kieran are two of the oldest kids (16 years old) on the ship, and they have been dating for almost a year and get engaged to each other (because fertility and having babies is super important to everyone on the ship, so you're supposed to start that stuff early). But all of a sudden, their ship gets attacked by their sister ship, and all of the kids get separated and all the adults are either killed or taken hostage. The rest of the book goes between Waverly and Kieran's perspectives from their locations and their attempts to get back together and save all the kids.

I think this is a pretty interesting premise, really. It's definitely intriguing to imagine what it would be like to be born on a ship like that, to never have been anywhere else, and to live with a mission like "repopulate the entire population of the earth" and how that would affect you and your life. So I like that idea. And when it's compared to Hunger Games I feel like I can predict exactly what it's going to be like, but it'll probably be pretty enjoyable and easy to read, right? But turns out, I was so annoyed by basically everything that happened in this book.

First off, Ryan does an absolutely terrible job at building her characters and making them into people we might actually care about and be interested in seeing them survive and love each other. The book and the action start at the exact same time; the attack happens and I could honestly care less that Waverly and Kieran are separated because who are these people anyway? Also, Ryan has no subtlety in the few things she does try to tell us about the characters. Waverly is introduced to us and about two pages later she's complaining about how she can't get engaged to Kieran and just be his "passive little wifey." (Actual words from the book.) Oh, okay, I get it--Waverly is MORE than just a little princess wanting to get married first thing. What a brand new original thought, Ryan! Thanks for telling that to me so explicitly because I would never have suspected that from a contemporary dystopian novel with a female main character. She also creates the weakest love triangle I have ever seen, throwing in some random boy named Seth who apparently also likes Waverly, but she gives you about 1.5 pages where Waverly and Seth have a conversation, where it's clear that they haven't talked at all for the last 13 or so years and there's no reason we should be interested in them at all. So who does Waverly really like? I just don't know who she's going to choose and I'm so torn up about it!! (And note: I think the comparison to Hunger Games is weak here. Waverly is soooo much more annoying than Katniss.)

Lastly, and more important thematically, I was really bugged by Ryan's commentary on organized religion throughout this book. The evil sister ship, which kidnaps all the girls at the beginning of the novel, is run by Anne Mather, who is apparently just completely evil and is in charge of the church services run on that ship (which is significantly more religion-centered than the Empyrean, where Waverly grew up). On that ship, the common people are depicted as these clueless, ignorant sheep who just follow Mather because she's their religious leader, while she's secretly doing these terrible things and not telling them. And then when they get back to their original ship, Waverly freaks out and basically breaks up with Kieran because he's started religious services on their ship to help the boys' morale. Waverly equates religion with evil after her experiences with Mather, and I would have appreciated a much more nuanced portrayal of religion and God. I honestly feel like that was a kind of random element to add to the story, which just made me annoyed and just gave Waverly (and Ryan) some group to heap all their hatred on.

So, all in all, I was not a big fan of this book. Like I said, it's the first of a trilogy, but I do not intend to read the other two, because I couldn't wait to get through this one and be done with it. I think this is the first book I've given a one-star rating to on Goodreads, so there you have it. Did not like it. (But my other friends on Goodreads who have read it all gave it four or five stars, so maybe you will like it.)

Book #78: Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

Okay, I decided I wanted to read this back after watching Saving Mr. Banks over Christmas (was that when it came out?), which makes me feel kind of like a cheater to read a book because of a movie. But I felt like I had only just realized that this original movie was based off a book, which I'd never read, so I wanted to check it out. I read it today, while both my boys were napping (and I of course couldn't fall asleep), and it was the weirdest deja vu experience--every image and every sentence reverberated in my mind and sounded so familiar. And I knew I'd read this before. I must have read it when I was in the 10-12 age range, because I read lots of books like this and they have all blended together (I feel like the Shoes books, like Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, were right along this same time), and I honestly had no idea I'd read this before. But I knew every story in this whole book, and I'm remembering even more, so I know I've read some of the sequels as well.

This book is different than the all-familiar movie that we all know and love. First off, Mary Poppins is cranky. All the time. Not this sweet Julie Andrews character (although she's kind of tart in the movie too, but not like this Mary Poppins). Also, the book is like a collection of unrelated short stories, with each chapter as its own self-contained adventure, which gives it a different feeling than the movie--it feels like they last over a longer period of time, to me, and makes you wonder what other adventures they are having in between the ones recorded in the book. And I loved that. But--and it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, so I don't know if this is in contrast to the movie version or not--what stands out to me from the book is how magical the magic of Mary Poppins is, and how miraculous every adventure is to Jane and Michael (and the other kids--I forgot that there were several other Banks kids that they left out of the movie). I thought it was so fun and exciting and darling to read. And I want to look at a few of the sequels now that I've revisited this one too!

Book #77: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

I have meant to read this book for months now. I have checked this one and The Kite Runner out from the library, actually, multiple times, and then always ended up returning it without having gotten around to it because I never could gear myself up to reading it. (Still haven't read Kite Runner--probably will now that I enjoyed this one, though!) But I did get around to it yesterday, and I was surprised by how quickly I got into it and how fast I got through it, because I could hardly put it down.

This book centers around the story of Abdullah and Pari, a big brother and little sister who mean everything to each other. Their parents make the tragic decision to sell Pari to a rich childless couple for adoption, because they are too poor to afford to warm themselves through the winter, and Abdullah spends the rest of his life longing for her and missing her--while Pari was young enough that she completely forgot that she'd had another life than the one she was adopted into. The book is made up of different stories from different perspectives, all from people who have some relationship to Abdullah's and Pari's lives, some only tangential and some very close to them. Each of the stories helps you to learn what has happened to each of them as they grow up, and to create a full picture of all of these relationships and the culture they live in. And each of the stories has something to tell you about remembering and forgetting and loving--how people deal with tragedy and loss, and what the good and bad things are about being able to remember and love things forever.

This book was so, so sad to me. I was just tortured by the parents' decision to give away Pari and how that affected Abdullah. It's just a horrible decision that no parent can imagine having to do--but it's even more horrible to realize that that is real life for some people (and another reminder of how privileged we are). And so sad to see how those decisions affected people throughout their whole lives (for good and for bad). But after so many quick and easy romances lately, it felt really good to read something with some substance and real meaning.

Book #76: Going Vintage by Lindsay Leavitt

I heard about this book when it was one of the Whitney Awards finalists (the awards given for Mormon writers) and thought it sounded cute. And our library here had it, so why not? I got through it very quickly today--it was a cute, fast romance with an interesting twist.

Mallory breaks up with her "tool" boyfriend (I am bugged by that word in normal life, and Mallory seems very fond of calling all men she knows tools) after finding out he's got a second, secret attachment with his online "wife" in his virtual life online. The same day, she finds a list of goals of her grandmother's from when she was 16 and decides that being a teenager back then must have been so much better than it is now. She decides to swear off all technology and live her life like it's 1962, with only things that were available then, and talks a lot about how technology is the main problem with people today. She makes it her goal to achieve her grandma's list, and in the process--guess what?--finds someone else to love!

First, I'll just say--this was a cute story; it really was. I liked Oliver (her new love interest; I'll tell you that because it's obvious from the very first mention of him that he's next in line) and thought he was cute and the romance was intriguing. But oh man, even as I liked the story, I was annoyed by a lot of premises about the book. The whole decision to leave off all technology just seemed ridiculous and never made any sense to me. She even refuses to use the computer to do her homework, like she was morally offended by technology or something, and I just kept rolling my eyes at her. Also, Mallory talks so much about being so hurt and heartbroken after breaking up with her old boyfriend, but there's no actual evidence of her being sad. I don't know; it just didn't seem all that convincing to me. You can't just say "I'm sad" and make us believe you. And then the whole determination to live completely in the 1960s was just annoying too, because yeah, life was pretty lame in the 60s too. Just for different reasons. Come on, Mallory. Luckily, there was a twist with the grandma that showed her that and helped Mallory to stop being all selfish and self-absorbed and obsessed with this randomly chosen era. So, overall, although I did like this book, I was annoyed by it as well.

Book #75: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Funnily enough, I read about this book in another book that I just finished (Dear Mr. Knightley--the narrator mentions it as one she loves), and the title sounded wacky enough that I remembered it and wanted to look it up. I loved it! It was another one that I plowed through in less than a day, because I couldn't put it down. This is (yet another) WWII novel, but it focuses on the German occupation of the Channel Islands (the English islands in the British Channel--specifically Guernsey). It's an epistolary novel--I love those--with letters from and to Juliet Ashton, an upcoming novelist in immediately-post-WWII London who is trying to decide what her next book will be about when she stumbles upon the people of Guernsey and their literary society. She begins writing these people and getting to know them, and goes down there to visit and decides to write her book about them and their stories from the war. I love how the stories told (to and by Juliet) in the letters are so random but sweet--like how this small "literary society" was formed as a cover to keep themselves from getting in trouble with the Germans for being out after curfew--and how there were some random, crazy characters who you can totally imagine living in this quiet island society forever.

I thought this was a cute story with a lovely historical tie-in, and I really did like the epistolary style for this book and the way it focused on Juliet and her personality. I did not love the ending, how abrupt and immediate it was. I was hoping that the romance would have more of a build-up and more reason for the two to get together--there wasn't enough suspense!

Book #74: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

I breezed through this book today during Dane's nap and while Tommy was putting him to bed (it is an almost hard-and-fast rule around here that Daddy does the bed duty, by Dane's preference [and mine, let's be honest] and I love it). I feel like I almost read through it too fast--like I should have soaked it up a little more and focused more on sucking the marrow out of it. I think I missed some of the important stuff from it, I guess. But let me explain: the good part about this book is not about the plot. It really is fairly predictable (once you get into it), and the drama of it all never seems very surprising. Some of it even feels a little manipulative (like Zevin is purposely tugging at your heartstrings with the saddest or cutest things you can imagine). But I felt like I loved the characters, and more, I loved the connections the characters felt to the books that shaped their lives and loves, and the conversations they have about books together (especially between A.J. and his daughter).

This book is about A.J. Fikry, who, when the novel starts, is a cranky young almost-alcoholic widower who owns the one bookstore on Alice Island and who can't imagine anything going worse in his life. However, his one nice/expensive possession gets stolen and he loses his chance at retirement, and his desire to lock his door--which leads to a baby being left in his store while he's out one day. Yep--you guessed it--he adopts the baby, changes his life, becomes happy and learns about how life is still worth living again, and even finds love. So the story is cute and a sweet story about him changing his life and his relationship with his daughter and new life--but you also get to read his recommendations of stories to his daughter and why he loves books and reading, and the book itself is filled with book-ish commentaries and discussions about the importance and purpose of reading and books. And for those of us who covet that bookstore and the life shaped by books--that's a whole motivation for reading in and of itself.

Book #73: Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay

I started this book last night while Tommy was at some random priesthood meeting (ugh) and then couldn't put it down and finished it before falling asleep last night. I feel like this is one of those books I've seen all over the place, on all sorts of blogs, but I wasn't really interested in reading it (possibly because I've been overdosing on Austen-related reads lately?). But I did finally just get around to it and LOVED it. First and foremost--despite the name and the obvious connection to Emma in the title, this is NOT an Austen fan fiction rewrite. I loved, loved how not-related to Austen this was, while still tying Austen into the story.

Samantha Moore, our heroine, has had a rough life--in and out of the foster care system in Chicago with all sorts of abuse--and she's used reading and books to help her escape the challenges she's been up against and the constant disappointments her life has held. She loves her beloved classics--Jane Austen first and foremost--and spends almost all of her time reading them, thinking about them, quoting them, immersed in them. She lets her beloved authoress's words overtake her own even in normal conversation, and avoids connecting with people by spending more time with her books. But she gets offered a grant from a charitable foundation to pay for grad school, and as a part of that grant, she has to write personal letters to the anonymous head of the foundation, who has adopted the pseudonym of "Mr. Knightley." So the book is made up of these letters, which act almost as a diary for the year and a half she is in school, and give you great insight into Sam's character and how she changes and tries to overcome her fears of connecting with people and caring about people. Along the way, she gets a boyfriend, meets and befriends a famous author, and actually builds a network of people who love her and care about her. There is a big twist at the end when she finds out who the mysterious Mr. Knightley is--who she's been writing her heart to all along--and honestly, this was a great, heart-filled story that made you love Sam and root for her to achieve her goals and be happy like she never has been before.

Book #72: Maphead by Ken Jennings

You might recognize Ken Jennings as the famous Mormon Jeopardy! champion from the mid-2000s (although Tommy had no idea who he was; he said, "Isn't he that ABC news guy in Utah?"), and I'll admit, that was probably one of the main reasons this book stood out to me from random summer reading lists I saw. But I also thought that this topic was probably super interesting as well, honestly. I wouldn't say I'm absolutely terrible with geography--I'm not one of those college kids who couldn't point out Chicago on the map (something that Jennings talks a bit about), but I also couldn't for the life of me tell you where Tanzania is or distinguish between the Guinea countries. But there are people out there who love maps--LOVE maps and LOVE geography and everything to do with it--and they know much more than just having memorized the state and country capitals around the world. Geography is so much more than that--it's studying everything ABOUT those countries as well.

Jennings started writing about this topic because he was a map geek as a kid, always interested in looking through atlases and learning about maps. It turns out that Ken Jennings is a really good author with a knack for involving his own voice in somewhat dry material and making it very personalized to him and interesting to us. I thought the idea behind this book--that maps are awesome, basically--was pretty fun, but I wondered how Jennings intended to write an entire book about it. He basically follows the similar format of other non-fiction writers (like in Traffic and American Wasteland) where he has his main topic, and each chapter focuses on a smaller aspect of that topic while he interviews people, goes on field trips, gets really into that one thing, and then moves on. The chapters in Maphead focus on things like geocaching, the National Geography Bee (the less famous cousin of the National Spelling Bee, and admittedly much more impressive-sounding for that the kids learn), antique map sales, fantasy fiction maps and the purposes they serve, and more. Jennings goes to all sorts of interesting places and talks to uber-obsessed geography people (like the subtitle says, "geography wonks"), and I admit, it's a whole world of people that I really have never known anything about. But I am motivated to learn more--at least with nothing else, by buying a map for our house. (Let me tell you--reading this book is totally motivating me to want to buy a huge world map and hang it on our wall! Ikea has a really cool big one, but it's pretty expensive. We'll definitely need to wait until we move into a real house before we buy stuff like that.) I am also pretty interested in reading Jennings' other book, because I imagine it is probably at least as entertaining as this one, so I bet it's pretty good.

Book #71: The Distance Between Us by Kasie West

Okay, I'll admit it--I only just read On the Fence last night and now, less than 18 hours later, I've already finished another Kasie West novel. I was at the library this morning with Dane for storytime and I looked up Kasie West on the library system to see if they had any others of her books there--and they happened to have this one. I got it and read most of it while we were at Barnes and Noble and Dane played on the train table there (one of his favorite things--as a birthday activity for him). The Distance Between Us is actually set in the same town as On the Fence (and actually happens a little before that one--some of same characters appear as cameos in each), which is kind of neat. This novel is about Caymen Meyers, who spends all of her time working on her mom's doll store and worrying about paying their bills. Their clientele are mainly the super-rich of their town, who Caymen's mom is super prejudiced against and is always warning her daughter about getting too close with. But one of their accidental clients, Xander, starts following Caymen around and even though he's super rich, she actually likes him... What to do?

It had all of the same elements that I really enjoyed from On the Fence, with the fun, outspoken characters, and I really enjoyed the romance between Caymen and Xander. I just don't really understand why Caymen was so ridiculously insecure about the rich/poor conundrum here and always attributing everything Xander did to him being rich and caring about being rich. It really kind of started to wear on me. And just like with On the Fence, I kind of thought there was some unnecessarily dark background here--like with Caymen's dad, who left her and her mom (apparently just because he was rich)--which didn't get resolved satisfactorily by the end of the book. But I liked the dialogue between Caymen and Xander and how their relationship evolved, and I thought it was definitely a fun read.

Book #70: On the Fence by Kasie West

So don't go judging this book by its cover--because the girl on the cover of this book is definitely not Charlie, the main character in this book. Charlie is a Tomboy with a capital "T," having grown up with three older brothers and a neighbor that might as well be her brother and a doting dad, and she would NEVER wear a skimpy dress like that--all she wears are baggy shorts and whatever sports clothes she needs to play football or basketball with her brothers. But she gets a new job at a boutique clothes store at the mall and ends up having to learn more about clothes and make-up and make some girl friends instead of only hanging out with guys--and she learns some things about herself. And gets into an adorable romance in the meantime! Win win!

This book is a completely uncomplicated, adorable YA romance novel, which made it very fun, quick, and easy to read. I thought that the characters were all very believable and fun. I loved Charlie's life with her big brothers all doting on her and teasing her and treating her just like brothers should--it made me jealous to not have any big brothers of my own. I liked how Charlie was outspoken and never seemed embarrassed or worried about what to say with her brothers, and I liked how she was open to trying new things--like wearing the new clothes and putting on the make-up, eventually--and realized that she didn't have to just be a clone of her brothers for them to love her. Their family has a sad story about her mom's death when Charlie was six, however, and the climax of the story is when Charlie figures out what happened to her and why it's been bothering her for years. I honestly felt like that was a little too dramatic and overpowered by the romance for it to feel realistic (within basically the same day of finding out about her mom's backstory, she finally figures things out with the guy she loves and starts dating him, so all she thinks about is that). But overall, I really liked this story and thought it was a very cute romance (and quick--I finished it in under two hours!). And perfectly clean--thank you YA novel!

Book #69: Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

The subtitle of this book is too long for me to bother typing it out in the header of this blog post, but the full title of the book is Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. And like all good subtitles do, that gives you a good sense of what this book is really about. Ed Catmull, the author, is the president of Pixar and Disney Animation, so it seems like he should have an enormous amount of experience with fostering and working with creativity and trying to create a workplace that is friendly to those goals. He says up front that this book is not a memoir--he uses his experiences at Pixar and Lucasfilm and other exciting places to provide examples, but the guiding principle of the book is his ideas about how to foster creativity in the workplace. And I totally get that, and why that is an important book to write. But I was mainly interested in the memoir bits--the stories about his experiences at Pixar, and how they work together to create these movies that we all love--and ended up skimming through all the theoretical talk about how those ideas apply and work, etc. So although he doesn't promise a memoir, I wish he had because those parts were so much more interesting (to me) than his discussions of why creativity is important, and what managers can do to help their employees to be more creative. And honestly, a lot of his suggestions seem pretty common-sense to me--but that's probably a good indication of how important they really are (and probably an indication of my little knowledge of a workplace environment). Overall, I'm not sure why I had to wait for almost two months for this one to become available at the library, except for the superstar author, but it was a reasonably interesting read.

Book #68: Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid

Another Jane Austen read! But this is another one of the Austen Project books--modern rewrites of Austen's stories by contemporary British authors (like the Sense and Sensibility I read a few weeks ago). I absolutely love the idea of this project and I love how these books stay true to the original story--down to the actual conversations that the characters hold--while adapting so flawlessly to modern times. Northanger Abbey is a really fun Austen read, but one that I think about less than all the other ones, so it was fun to read this modern adaptation and to see the guileless Cat and her love interest Henry and how they work in a modern context. I've never read anything else by McDermid, but she's a famous Scottish crime/mystery writer, which fits in well with this book and its Gothic, creepy theme at the abbey. To be honest, I don't know how much "rewriting" or adapting she really did, because it's so dang similar to the original version--other than just throwing in the occasional Facebook reference here and there--but that doesn't really bother me because the original is good enough. I like Henry better, even than in the original, in this version (although what is the age difference between the two of them? She's only 17 and he's a lawyer already? How old is he?), and I love/hate the embarrassment Cat has to go through when she realizes her imagination got her carried away and into doing ridiculous things. But I really, really think that McDermid failed in the great reveal scene where they figure out that they love each other and blah blah blah--that conversation was AWFUL and we get basically nothing out of it. No satisfaction about them as a couple at all! Those few pages were terrible. But overall, this is a great rewrite and definitely a lot of fun to read.

Book #67: One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

I read Jojo Moyes' Me Before You a while ago and really liked it. Moyes' style is super readable and I loved the characters she created in that book. I've seen a number of people talking about this book on different blogs and I've been meaning to get around to it for a while now, because I knew I would enjoy it. And Moyes does a great job, once again, at creating these very believable and likable characters who have real-life struggles and feelings. And in this book they get caught up in this awesome adventure that changes their lives forever.

Jess Thomas has a pretty hard life--she's a single mom raising two kids and working crazy hard at two jobs to make ends meet. Her husband ran out on them and says he can't pay any child support, her stepson is getting beat up every day and her daughter is a math geek who's likely to be heading the same way, since their small town isn't very friendly to people who are different. But her daughter gets offered this amazing scholarship to a private school, and is given the chance to participate in the Math Olympiad in Scotland, so she tries to head up there with her kids on the spur of the moment. They get pulled over after not very long, and suddenly get rescued by Ed, a rich, selfish software tycoon who is surprised by his own desire to help. The rest of the book details their adventure with getting there and how the trip changes all of them (and of course, there's some inevitable romance thrown in there, and as unlikely as the two main characters seem to be paired together at the beginning, I like them a lot together).

Just like in Me Before You, I loved how Jess is not your stereotypical romantic comedy heroine. She's not some high-powered professional working in London, who's kind of strapped for cash but goes out on weekends to bars anyways and meets guys there. She works as a cleaner and at a bar at night in order to make ends meet; she is literally just dollars away from being broke all the time. And she has two older children. But she is still a fun, real person underneath all those challenges. And I liked the juxtaposition of the class relations that Ed and Jess find as they start getting to know each other, and the (very) different money troubles they're both in. But I really loved how Tanzie and Nicky, Jess's kids, really got their own voices (they each serve as narrators occasionally) and weren't just throwaway parts of the story to the romance--their concerns and needs were central to the whole story and to Jess's whole life. I will definitely look at more of Moyes' books in the future.