A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos

This was a fictional diary account of a girl in Massachusetts in 1830. That's basically all you need to know to imagine what this book was like--there were no major twists or turns or unexpected events, but I really loved books like this when I was younger and I still enjoy them now. (I always love diaries and epistolary novels and books made up of fake emails to each other and whatnot.) So I really enjoyed this one and thought it was a fun read. 

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

I have literally been dreaming of reading Harry Potter out loud to my children since before they existed. I have been saving HP until I KNEW my boys would enjoy it, because I didn't want to waste it on them until they were ready and would love, love, love it. And, they did. We blazed through this first book in less than two weeks--which is incredibly fast for us for a read-aloud--and Dane was begging non-stop to read it whenever we had a chance. I loved seeing the book anew through their eyes and remembering how exciting and scary and amazing it is when you read it the first time. I just loved it SO MUCH. I was literally getting emotional and choked up reading the last few pages with them because I was just so happy that they loved it so much and that we were experiencing it together. Dane immediately took the book and started reading it by himself again. And we are going to read the second one now!

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

I have wanted to read this book ever since I read the premise years ago, but our library didn't have a copy, so I figured I'd forget about it--but every time I came across it I wanted to read it again. Finally I used Interlibrary Loan to get a copy, and I had a great time reading it. It basically asks the question--what would happen if the Queen of England became obsessed with reading? It gave the queen such a funny personality and it showed her developing new thought processes and ideas and feelings due to her reading habits. It's a novella so it ended up being super short, but I really liked it and liked the ideas it raised about the value of reading and writing and sharing things, and the question of why some people are anti-reading. 

A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers by Nancy Willard

I just read this because it was a Newbery winner, and since it was a book of about sixteen poems, it went super fast--and I don't know that I got enough out of it. It is kind of a book of tribute poems to William Blake and written in his style, but since I haven't read much of William Blake's poetry since graduating from college, I don't remember much about what and how he wrote. The poems were sweet and fantastical and fun to read, with absolutely beautiful illustrations (the book won the Newbery award and a Caldecott Honor), but I kind of felt like I usually do with poetry--that I probably missed something and didn't understand it very well. 

Followers by Megan Angelo

I really, really, really liked this audiobook. It was way better than what I'd expected. I feel like the cover is not fully representative of what the book was about--it seems like it might be a cheesy, light romance or something, but it was actually much heftier than I expected, in a good way. It tells two alternate storylines, one set in 2015-2016, and one set in 2051. The 2051 storyline is about Marlowe, a woman who lives in a celebrity town where everyone, everywhere is living in a reality TV show where everything is always being filmed. Everyone has millions of followers who are always watching them. The 2015-2016 storyline is about Orla, a Buzzfeed type blogger who makes her roommate famous by blogging about what she did to make her seem important--and about how that ends up blowing up in their faces--and then how the Internet implodes on itself and changes everything. Both stories were fascinating, and the author did a good job keeping my interest by not letting us know exactly what was coming, just by dropping hints and waiting to fully explain what happened down the road. It really made me think about the what ifs--what if this actually happened? And what if the world was like this today? Basically, my one complaint about this book was that it could have been condensed and edited down, because it did feel like it was pretty long and the Orla/Floss storyline could have not gone on so long. But it was so enjoyable and so fun to get through that I really didn't complain much about that while reading it. 

Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

Like I've said before, I'm not a dog person, and many of the Newbery winners seems to be about dogs. (What is that about?) I kind of put off reading Ginger Pye after I got it and saw the cover and saw, yep, it's a dog book. It had been sitting on my bedside stand for forever. But I finally plowed through it, and it was actually much cuter than I expected it to be. It had the episodic, small-town, old-timey, feel-good feel of the books my grandma would have had at her house when I was a kid, and it was really a sweet story about a family who gets a puppy and falls in love with him, until he gets stolen and they can't find him. They spend at least half of the book looking for Ginger and missing him before he's miraculously found again. This is one I probably would have loved a lot more when I was younger, but it was sweet enough that I didn't hate it reading it now as an adult. 

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

I'd heard all about Matthew McConaughey's memoir/book he wrote, and I'm always here for a celebrity book narrated by the author him- or herself, so I waited for this one from the library for FOREVER and finally got it. I think the best part of this book was McConaughey's voice as he was retelling all of the stories from his life; he has such a great and distinctive voice that it really was so much better hearing him narrate everything. He tells stories from his life, but then he also incorporates his own thoughts and theories about life and wisdom he's discovered, sprinkled throughout in their own sections. Those were less interesting--not bad, but not as fun as the stories from his childhood and his rise to fame. He told about how he spent one summer sneaking out of his house all night and stealing lumber from a lumberyard, and building a 13-story treehouse in this enormous tree where he stayed all summer long. I thought he did a great job describing what it was like becoming famous, and how he struggled with it, and it was really interesting to imagine and hear how he lived his life over the years. He spent years living in a camper van traveling around the US, several years living in the fanciest hotel in LA, then now in Austin on a ranch he bought there with his wife and three kids. I actually teared up when he described how he felt about his daughter when she was born. He is a really great writer--you can tell he knows what he's doing and that he's a deep thinker. This was a great celebrity memoir, for sure. 

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

I absolutely loved the first half of this book. I loved, loved the setting of Kentucky and the idea of the traveling librarians riding horseback around the rural mountains, delivering books to people who wanted them and helping to increase literacy throughout the state. I loved the bond the female librarians developed with each other, even though they all started from really different places and lives. I really felt for Alice, who had moved to America thinking she was going to an exciting new life and ending up in this tiny little rural hamlet with a husband who wasn't what she thought he was. It really started off so well and I was completely engrossed in the audiobook. But I got really annoyed by the end with how over-the-top dramatic some of the scenes and relationships were, and how all of the main (good) characters seemed like they were plucked out of 2020 and plopped down in the middle of this 1930s storyline. They were all extremely feminist and anti-racist and environmentalist and anti-corporation, but as they kept emphasizing how much they were of each of those things, I could not believe that there would happen to just be so many men and women in this tiny rural Kentucky town who were appalled by racism! Appalled by men hitting women! Appalled by people judging a woman who didn't want to marry her long-time lover even though she was pregnant! Come on. Let's be real here. I felt like I was rolling my eyes so hard at the ending wrapping everything up so neatly with a bow, and it felt like a shame since I really loved it for much of the book. Also, I never quite believed the romance.

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson

I grabbed this one off my stack of Newbery winners that I have by my bedside stand because it was the shortest and looked like the quickest--and it was incredibly quick; it only took me about one and a half hours to get through. But I actually really enjoyed it as well. This is one that I feel like I would buy to keep on our shelves because it was so cute and sweet. The story is about a community of small animals that live on a hill with a vacant house, and they learn that a family of humans is moving into the house, and they're worried that they are going to be humans who use traps or guns or dogs to get them. All of the animals have such distinctive personalities and funny ways of talking, and it's just a really cute story about all the things the animals hope the humans will be like, and how they end up exceeding all of their wildest dreams. The illustrations were really well done as well, and the ending was very sweet. Definitely a fun one and I'm glad I found it.

Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer

I almost really liked this one. I feel like this had the feel of many children's books I loved back when I was a kid--kind of Betsy-Tacy ish, Five Little Peppers, etc. The book follows Lucinda, who has been left behind while her parents travel in Europe for a year for her mother's health, and who lives in New York City with her teacher for a year. She goes everywhere on her roller skates, which represent her freedom and her ability to go fast like she wants, and she has this year filled with great experiences getting to know people everywhere around the city, and doing things she was never allowed to do when she was stuck with her governess and her parents. The one part that was shocking and weird was this random murder scene that Lucinda stumbled across and which she was never allowed to talk about because it might be dangerous for her--definitely too dark and creepy and should have been cut from the book, haha. But the rest was perfectly sweet, and made New York City in the 1890s sound like a perfect playground filled with perfectly safe and kind people just waiting to adore this little girl. (Now that I think of it, it was basically like a rose-colored glasses version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, where the little girl is rich and has whatever she wants.)

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

I actually really liked this audiobook. I had seen this book cover around for years and just ignored it because I thought it seemed like it would be a lot like Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, which I actually really liked, but which I felt like was too trendy and flash-in-the-pan-ish. And I don't know what really gave me that impression other than the covers were slightly similar. But I heard someone mention really liking this book, and I was looking for an audiobook to read, and I checked this one out and immediately fell in love with it. I loved getting to know Eleanor as she slowly let us know what her life was like, I loved her snide asides and her thoughts about her coworkers and the people around her, and I loved how the story progressed and she developed as a person. I like how she didn't immediately transform into someone completely capable and unrecognizable once she began to "fix" herself, but she slowly put in the work to understand why she was so solitary and lonely and unable to connect with anyone. I really loved all of the characters in this book and I loved that it didn't turn out to be a romance in the end--she didn't need to fall in love with someone to be happy and to love herself. I thought it was a really great book and I'm really happy I listened to it. 

Joyful Noise and I Am Phoenix: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman

These are two different collections of poetry, written for two voices. Joyful Noise was the Newbery winner in 1989, but the library had both of these put together in one audio collection, and TOTAL they were 32 minutes of listening--so of course I listened to them both. This definitely was a collection to listen to on audio--I feel like the meaning of it would have been lost by just reading them without hearing them performed, as they were meant to be. Similar to Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, which was also a poetry collection written to be performed. Joyful Noise was poems about insects, and I Am Phoenix was poems about different types of birds. I loved several of the poems, particularly the one about the bumblebees. They were really cute, fun to listen to, and definitely worth half an hour of my time. I don't have anything else deep to add to it, since I was listening and not reading and didn't take any notes... but I thought they were both sweet collections.

Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

I am having a hard time figuring out how much I liked this book. On the one hand, it was kind of depressing and hard to read, and I didn't exactly want to seek it out to spend more time reading it. I wasn't rushing back to get to it. But on the other hand, the emotions and the feelings in this book felt so real and hard and strong. This book is about Sara Louise, who is eaten up with jealousy of her twin sister Caroline, and feels like she isn't loved or cared about as much as her. I felt like Caroline was easy to hate if she would have been your peer like she was Sara Louise's. I would have been just as upset as she was. Sara Louise was not an easy-to-love narrator herself, though--she was grumpy and unfriendly and filled with anger a lot of the time, which only pushed people more and more towards Caroline. But I thought those emotions and Sara Louise's over-the-top reactions made this book the gripping story that it was. When Sara Louise threw her bottle of lotion at the wall because Caroline was using it without asking her, and when she refused her parents' offer of paying for her boarding school because she was so upset that Caroline was getting to go to a nicer school in Baltimore--those are exactly the irrational, unrealistic things that an upset teenager might do. So although it was not the most fun book to read, I really felt Sara Louise's feelings of disappointment and anger over and over again. (I also really liked the setting and the imagery of the island and the crabbing and everything they did there as well. And the ending with Sara Louise all grown up as a midwife in the mountains--that was unexpected and I loved that.)