The Color Purple by Alice Walker

This book had a lot of heart in it. I loved a lot of it. I thought Celie's growth as a character was the best part of the book. It was amazing what she went through and that she could still have love in her heart for people after it. 

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I didn't love this one, but it did go pretty quickly. I liked a lot of the stories, even though they were all about a world I have no knowledge of or interest in. I liked the short story format, because I felt like I was able to get invested in each character really deeply for that time. 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Listening to this, I realized that I basically know absolutely nothing about the Dominican Republic and its culture or history. I had no idea about their past with dictators and uprisings (although I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since it's the Caribbean...) and I knew nothing about what Dominican people are like. Even though I have a brother who served his two year mission there, and loved it! So it was a real eye-opener to listen to this book and to learn about Dominican culture and experience it. I loved how this book covered several generations and stories--it almost felt like each chapter was its own short story at the beginning. I felt so bad for Oscar and his dreams of being in love, and I liked how the narrator was revealed about halfway through the book as being a real character and someone who knew Oscar and who had his own perspective and personality. Basically, it was a really fun read. I didn't love all the swearing and talking about sex, but that was part of the story and part of the narrator being who he was. I'd wanted to read this one for forever, so I'm glad I finally did.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I have an eventual goal to try and read all the Pulitzer winners, and although I've been focused way more on the Newberys the last two years, I still want to try and get through these. Less was the 2018 Pulitzer winner, and I honestly finally got to it because it was available on audiobook when I was looking for something to listen to. I actually had it on e-book as well, and I ended up switching back and forth between the two when either one was better for me at that moment, and I actually liked it way, way better on audiobook. I feel like the comedy of the story really came out with the audio--maybe it was that I was reading too fast to really savor the funny elements of it when I wasn't forced to slow down with the audiobook pace. In any case, I did really like how this story was funny but still heartfelt, how Arthur Less had real feelings and real issues, even while he had many of the same problems happening to him over and over again. I was annoyed with how he kept sleeping with random people and how that was his solution to everything over the years, though--I really don't love that kind of lifestyle or books about it (straight or gay, doesn't matter). But many of the adventures Less gets caught up in in this book were written about so well that I could imagine them--riding on camels, getting injured in India, etc. I was torn and couldn't decide how much I actually liked this book at the end--if I just liked the narration or the book itself--but I'm glad I read it. 

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I read this in college--I'm not sure if it was for a class or just because I was wanting to read Pulitzers more then too--and remember loving it. But then I am pretty sure I lost my copy or someone took it and never gave it back, and I re-bought it several times until I had three copies this weekend, haha! I gave two of them away at my two book club Christmas parties this week, and finished my own copy tonight. It was just as good as I remember. It's a collection of short stories by an Indian-American author and each one is about both of those countries and people navigating between them. Several are set fully in India and not involving any Americans (but I felt like those were my least favorite), but I loved the ones where Indians have moved to America and are adjusting to their new lives in America and the new culture here. I love how Lahiri really helped me feel like I was one of them and like I understood what it was like to move to America from India and to lose all my family and to have everything change so drastically. It says on the back of the book that "Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner," and that's exactly how I felt. My favorite story might have been "The Third and Final Continent" about a man who moves to America for the first time, and how he comes to know his wife after their brief arranged marriage, and also "Interpreter of Maladies," which I remembered from reading the last time. I really loved this book--it rekindled my love of short stories.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I read this book for a class in college and I remember loving it, but I didn't remember anything about it. (It's sad how many books I've read that are like that--that I can literally not remember a single thing from the plot or the characters or anything. I wonder how many times I need to read something for it to actually sink in and for me to internalize it.) I've been meaning to re-read this one for a while, and I suggested it for my book club and am leading the discussion on it tomorrow. I am glad to have been forced to read it again, because I would definitely not have made it a priority to read it right now (this week and next are so, so busy!). But it was so, so good and had so many great moments.

This is an interesting book. It's definitely high on character development/the voice of the main narrator and low on plot. The book is formatted as a long letter, a journal of sorts, written by John Ames, an old preacher, to his young (very young) son, who he knows he will not see grow up. It's filled with his deep thoughts about things, including his calling as a preacher, certain doctrines, his relationships with his father and grandfather. The main drama in the story comes when his best friend's wayward son Jack (named after the narrator) comes home to visit and creates all sorts of upheaval in John Ames's life and in his soul. He recognizes all sorts of resentment he's built with his relationship with Jack, and shares all of these deep thoughts with his son.

I think the real beauty of this book is in the quiet, thoughtful wording of these beautiful thoughts. There are so, so many spots that I underlined and want to remember. I absolutely loved the sweetness of Ames's love for his son, his much longed-for son who was born when he was already in his late sixties. He spent 45 years wishing and waiting for a family after his died, and his love for his young wife and son is written about so simply and beautifully. Here were some of my favorite quotes about his son:
"I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you" (52).
"I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not" (73).
"Harm to you is not harm to me in the strict sense, and that is a great part of the problem. He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me" (190).
"I can tell you this, that if I'd married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, I'd leave them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother's face" (237).
"I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful" (247).

There are so many other beautiful passages, some of them so beautiful they made me want to cry. I feel like I am getting better at appreciating really beautiful writing on an emotional level--I may not be able to express what I'm thinking and why I love it, but I can tell what I love. And I love so much of the writing in this book. It is very slow-moving--although there are parts with more narrative structure that move more quickly--but it is very worth it. It was so uplifting and hopeful. I would love to read the next two that are companion books to this one. I am going to request them next week when we get back.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

After reading several of Elizabeth Strout's other works, I'm so glad I finally got around to Olive Kitteridge. It's almost exactly the same as Anything is Possible, with thirteen short stories that are mostly distinct except that they all mention (or are about) the character of Olive Kitteridge, and they all go so deep into the characters in that you feel like you know them and their deepest thoughts, fears, and secrets. It seems like most of the stories are about old married couples and the anxieties and fears and realities of growing old, and the anxieties and fears and realities of just being human.

Olive Kitteridge, the supposed main character, is not a typical sympathetic character. She is prickly and grumpy and mean, but not in a stereotypical way--just in the way that she doesn't understand a lot of other people and sometimes she is afraid. She is human. She has done a lot of things she regrets, like how she raised her son, but she loves him to death and can't understand where they've gone wrong. She loves her husband but takes him for granted. She loses her temper and gets angry without knowing why. It's so real. You can't help liking her even when she's being irrational and terrible. One of the most poignant scenes in the book is when Olive encounters a girl who is almost dying of anorexia. Olive sits down and cries with her, stroking her hair and helping her figuring out a way out of this. Olive shows more humanity and sympathy and love for someone--this girl who is totally unconnected to her--than she often does to her husband and son. And isn't that like all of us sometimes?

I really love Strout's writing. But it's kind of depressing to see so much into a person (even a fictional person) and to see how much sadness and fear and angst there is, even behind a normal facade. It's also a little scary to see how hard it is to get old. So I love it but it's also kind of depressing. But it's worth reading all the same.

On a related note, I'm going to start trying to read all the Pulitzer and Newbery award winners. It will literally take me years to do this, so it's not like it's a huge goal that I'm going to do to the expense of all my other reading, but I'm going to try to do one a month or something. This is the first Pulitzer I've read since deciding on doing this goal.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

I have been reading this book for over a month now and only just finished it. I will say that this book was very good and well done, but it definitely did not live up to my goal of reading books that made me happy this year. I was reading it for my book club, and I was the one who suggested it, so I really should have enjoyed it. But given the subject matter--a slave escaping from slavery--it was really heavy and sometimes dark reading that didn't lend itself to being loved. I think this was a good book, an important book, a worthwhile book, but not one of my favorites that I would pick up again for fun.

This book is about Cora, a slave who escapes from her plantation in Georgia with another slave named Caesar. The plot seems like straight historical fiction until Cora and Caesar are helped into the Underground Railroad--and in Colson Whitehead's version of history, it's a real underground railroad with trains and tracks barreling along underground. And in each state that Cora travels to in her journey to freedom, she encounters different and not-actually-historically-accurate circumstances for black people. For example, in South Carolina, black people are given quite a lot of freedom and help, or so they think--until she learns that the doctors that are helping them are actually doing tests on them and trying to sterilize the people they deem undesirable. In North Carolina, they've exterminated and expelled all black slaves from their state and brought in white poor workers to take their place. In Indiana, she lives on a sort of commune farm owned by a black man who has taken in all sorts of runaways and people who need help. But all along the way Cora is being chased by Ridgeway, the slave hunter who was never able to find her mother who ran away long ago when Cora was a child, and who has sworn to not let Cora do the same thing to him.

I have a lot of confused, half-baked thoughts about this book, but mostly, I liked how it made me think. Obviously Whitehead is making some serious points about the history of relations between blacks and whites in America through this time-traveling journey through American history--it's like Cora visited the Tuskegee Institute in South Carolina in the 50s just after escaping from her plantation in Georgia, for example. I think I need to watch or listen to some interviews with Whitehead to get a little more out of it. So the historical information was pretty interesting. However, it was hard to get that invested in Cora or in the story, because you never really got to know her. She was very closed off, even from the reader, so you never knew much about her other than what she did on the outside. Same with all the other more minor characters who drop in and out of the story, and it's hard to tell what they are all about. Obviously it was also pretty difficult to read about the terrible things that slave owners did to their slaves, but even more difficult to remember that those things really happened and were not just a part of a fictional story. I felt guilty reading the scene where an escaped-then-recovered slave was hung and tortured and burned in front of a garden party of other rich white planters who came for the "entertainment"--it made me wonder, what kind of depraved people were these people? And would I have been that terribly unconcerned about slaves and torture if I had been born in that time and place? (I think these thoughts are healthy in a humbling way, and a good reminder that we all are predisposed to racism if we don't actively try to work against it. Don't you?)

In the end, I'm glad to have read this, but I don't know that I'll recommend it to most people as a pleasure read--definitely more of a thought-provoking one.

Book #88: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I was shocked to find that I'd never reviewed this book on Goodreads--or on here, I think. That means I haven't read it in the last five (5!!!) years, and that's pretty unfathomable. I am pretty sure I've read it at least ten times, and I don't think I can overstate my feelings about this book: I absolutely, deeply, truly LOVE it. Everything about it. I love Scout's naive, childish voice we get the story through and her incomplete perspective and her feisty, troublemaking personality and her total lack of embarrassment about her life. I love Atticus's determination to raise his kids the way he thinks they ought to be raised, and to teach them these very difficult but important life lessons. I love Jem and how Scout looks up to him and how we watch him start to grow up through her eyes. I love how much we learn about the town and the street where they live, and how well Lee creates the sense of place that allows us to envision their childhood and their entire empty summers roaming their street. I love how hard Atticus fought for justice in Tom Robinson's case, and how Lee didn't let him win, even though he should have, and how Scout and Jem learned about real life and how things were in their old sleepy Southern town. I love their childhood obsession with Boo Radley and how he turns out to be their hero in the end. I kid you not, I. love. this. book. It had been so long since I read it that I wasn't sure if I would still love it as much, and I forced myself to go slow and read every word and not skim to get ahead to the story like I sometimes catch myself doing. And I was reading with a smile on my face almost the whole time (except for the sections where I wanted to cry).

Whenever people would ask me what my favorite book was, years ago, I'd always say this one. And I'd let it fall into the background and forgotten about it, kind of. I also think I started to feel like it was too cliche to say this was my favorite book, because it's so many people's favorite.

But seriously. I think this just may be my favorite of all time.

Note: I read this again because I'm going to read Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, next, for book club next week. I am a little nervous because people have said they didn't love it and that it changes the perspective of what happens in this book. But I won't let it. It's a totally separate entity to me. So here we go with that one.

Book #6: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

I feel SO PROUD of myself for finally having read this. I bought this at the BYU bookstore when I was there--that's how long I've intended to read it. For some reason, it never made it to a priority on my book list, and the only reason I actually got around to it and focused on it this time was because we are reading it for book club this month, and I knew it was now or never.

This book is just what you think it is--it's about one man, Wang Lung, and his family living in pre-Revolutionary China (I'm guessing the late 1800s). He starts out at the beginning as a poor young farmer, and the beginning of the book starts with his wedding day, emphasizing again and again how humble and poor he is, as he goes to the richest family in town (the House of Hwang) to take the slave that he was betrothed to as his wife. The book follows him over the course of his life, as he increases his stature and his earnings and the land that he owns until he becomes the wealthiest man in town. There are some very poor times, especially one year of famine where his family all nearly starves to death and they move south to beg for their living, but they eventually make it back to their land and eventually own hundreds and hundreds of acres of land. When Wang Lung dies, he is the "old master" of the richest home in town and has tons of money--having succeeded in every way, as it seems.

It was a little sad to read this book--as I am sure is intended by Buck. Wang Lung begins so humbly and has so many good qualities: very, very industrious, meticulously honest, frugal, unconcerned about what other people thought or said. All of these good qualities pay off, and he begins to earn his way up in the world and to make more money. They even survive the horrible famine that sweeps through their area and come out better than before, and he begins to buy out land and truly becomes rich. However, it's amazing to see how quickly prosperity begins to wear away at his good qualities and make him make mistakes that anyone can see will eventually be his downfall, and how he doesn't notice the irony or the changes he has made from his prior character and beliefs. He becomes idle and stops working on his land as much once he can hire servants; he takes another woman as a second wife to satisfy his lust for her; he doesn't try to teach his sons to work or to value the same things that brought him his prosperity to begin with. You can see him following the footsteps of the House of Hwang and their mistakes that led to their downfall: they spent all their money on opium and fine silks, their sons didn't learn the land and were spoiled and spent all their money, the men just wanted to sleep with every slave they could. There are so many overt comparisons to the House of Hwang--Wang Lung and his family even move into their old house eventually, and people are always saying, "He is just like the old master!"--that you would think Wang would sometime notice that he is doing a lot of the same things that they did, the things that he knew were wrong back when he was a young farmer coming to buy his wife from them. He seemed like he was much happier and in a much more peaceful place in his life when he was poor and young with a young family, but working hard and living on the land, than he did later in life with his spoiled rich children pestering him for money, and his concubines always asking for more. This totally reminded me of the Book of Mormon pride cycle and how when people make good choices and are hardworking and righteous they are blessed, but then they become prosperous and become wicked and are punished. So totally obvious in this book.

Wealth brought a detachment from the land that Wang loved so much. There are so many references to how much he loved the land--the land he owned and worked and sweat over--and descriptions of the soil itself and the feeling Wang got from working on it and sleeping in it, throughout the whole book. But as he got older he got too rich to go work and moved into town and rarely saw his land, the place that he loved so much and that gave him so much connection. When he was about to die, he wanted to move back to the land and into his country farm house that he began with, and tried to reconnect with his land. The book ends with his sons talking about selling the land, and the father trying in his old age to teach them why the land is so important, but they "smile over his head" and ignore him.

The last thing that really stood out to me about this book was the treatment of women. Girl babies were just referred to as "slaves"--they were only useful as servants in the family before they were married off and then sold out of the family in arranged marriages. The wife of the household was responsible for running everything and was never thanked. O-lan, Wang Lung's wife, is crazy amazing at how hard she works when they are first married. She has baby after baby and works constantly through the whole thing. She literally walked back to the fields to finish working hours after giving birth to their second child. And yet O-lan is detested and despised throughout the whole novel because she is ugly and because her feet are unbound--which ironically is what helped her to be such a help to him in the first place, because if her feet had been bound she would have never been able to help him in the fields. She ends up basically working herself to death, after watching Wang Lung bring a second wife (a prostitute) to the house and being placed above her. Babies that are boys are celebrated and worshipped, and girl babies are completely despised. Wang sees the birth of his first daughter as a bad omen for what is coming next (the famine that they all almost starve through). This is not unexpected or all that surprising, but it was stark and sad.

The book ends right before Wang Lung dies. There are actually two more books that come after this in a trilogy--but I don't really want to read them because it's pretty clear which direction the family is heading.

Book #1 of 2016: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I can't tell you how many times I've meant to read this book and never did. So this year, I asked for it for Christmas from my parents (they usually give us each a book for Christmas) and I knew I had to get through it now! At first, I didn't really want to read this, because all I really knew about it was that it was a WWII novel about a young girl, and I felt like I'd read a lot of those lately (aka The Book Thief, Kate Morton's books, etc.). But I'd heard such good things about it that I knew it was worth checking out. And it was definitely worth it.

The book follows Marie-Laure, who is blind and lives with her father near the Natural History Museum in Paris, where he works as the principal locksmith. As she gets older, he spends a lot of time working with her to help her become independent and to be able to find her way around without him to guide her. And when the war comes, they escape to St. Malo, a small beach town where her great-uncle lives. The other principal character is Werner, a German boy living in an orphanage, who is interested in the natural world and wants to be able to figure everything out. His life is changed when he finds a radio in the trash and is able to get it to work, and he and his sister are able to listen to broadcasts from around Europe and to get a little bit of information and introduction to the outside world. He is sent to a paramilitary school and as the war gets closer to the end, he's sent out to use his math/engineering skills to track down other radio users. He and Marie end up in the same town, while St. Malo is being bombed by the Americans to get the Germans out, and their radios help their paths to cross.

I loved both of the characters' storylines in this book, but Marie-Laure's more so. She wasn't a typical "super-strong adolescent female character" which is so overplayed and tiring right now, but as she says in the book, she just got up every day and lived her life like she had to. She is very interested in the world around her as she can access it, through sounds and through tactile interaction, and she becomes alive as she goes to the beaches and touches the seashells there. I loved how Doerr writes about the seashells and about the things Marie touches, and I loved how he writes about the radio connections throughout the war. I feel a little silly that I didn't really understand the main focus on the importance of radio throughout the book as I read it--I was trying so hard to get through the story and to see what happens to Marie that I didn't put two and two together. But this morning I listened to this interview with the author and it's clear that was his main focus in writing it--to write about the French radio resistance against the Germans. Werner and Marie's uncle were on opposite sides of the radio fight and it all narrowed down to the end, where Marie is reading over the radio and Werner is listening to her over his receiver. It is almost magical how they end up connected through the radio at the end, and how it helps Werner to save Marie, and it doesn't feel forced at all.

I loved how every word in this book felt particularly chosen and purposeful. The story and the language were both beautiful. Doerr talks about how he had the idea for the book because he was thinking about what a miracle it is that we can talk to people we cannot see just by using little packets of light to send messages spinning through the air over radio waves (today using cell phones, back then using radio). There are so many beautiful points throughout the book and underlying messages. I think I should read it again, now that I know what happens, in order to get all of the little things from it.

Book #23: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

I'd read this before, actually. But the last time was probably eight years ago, so I picked it up again and re-read it this week. It tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. Each chapter is told from the perspective of different generals or officers, from both armies, and how the entire battle was planned and happened.

Growing up, I for some reason thought of Robert E. Lee as the epitome of evil, as the general of the BAD SIDE of the Civil War. But everything I've learned about him shows that he was the most amazing person who was absolutely worshiped by his men. This book reinforces that, but also shows how human he really was--the Battle of Gettysburg was a big mistake and his right-hand general tried to convince him out of it repeatedly, but he kept going and ended up losing the war partly because of it. Honor was the biggest motivator in this book, and Lee had to keep his honor by not retreating.

Also, Shaara really emphasizes how many people had friends and family on both sides of the war. All of the men who were professional soldiers, who'd attended West Point (which was pretty much all of the major officers), had served together in the U.S. Army before it broke up into two opposing sides. The saddest story in the book (to me) is Armistead (a Southern general) and Hancock (a Northern general) who were best friends and had planned to meet up after the battle.

I'll be honest--I cried the entire last two chapters describing the final attack by the South. (I think it's the hormones.) It's just so pathetic and sad and awful. Especially when Armistead died--that's what did it for me.

Book #21: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I've been wanting to read this book for AGES. I stole it from my parents' house probably three or four years ago and never actually got around to reading it until this week. I can't believe I waited this long!

The main reason I shied away from it for so long was because of its bulk, of course. It's over 1,000 pages. But it took me fewer days to read this one than Connecticut Yankee did, because I was SO much more interested in this one. I started it on Wednesday and have spent a few hours reading each day since then.

First off, I loved it. The story is awesome. I've seen the movie once, and it pretty much includes EVERYTHING from the book. But the background and internal conflict/thoughts you get in the book is SO much more involving than in the movie. I still did not like Scarlett, at all, even after reading the book, but you can't help being fascinated with her and rooting for her, even as you hate her. (Except for the whole Ashley situation--that just MAKES ME SO MAD.) I love how Mitchell really creates the world of the Southerners and helps you to understand where they were coming from, how they felt about the war, and all that stuff. It's all so foreign and old-fashioned to us, but I felt like she did an excellent job of getting the reader into that.

As a part of that, it's so interesting how the book is so not-self-conscious about the racism and sexism in it, since it was written in the 1930s. The freed slaves in Georgia are really seen as a totally different species, almost. And Mitchell definitely portrays the institution of slavery (and the whole Southern culture) as being so romantic and perfect. All the slaveowners love their slaves and treat them like family, which is so counter to usual slavery portrayals you read in books.

I really did get into the whole book. I kept explaining how interesting it all was to Tommy and talking about parts of the book with him all weekend long. I just cannot get over HOW much I hate Scarlett for trying to steal Ashley from Melanie all the time, and how obnoxious it is that Melanie never believes that Scarlett's trying to do it. And there are ALWAYS people telling Scarlett how lame Ashley is or how dissimilar they are, and she just always replies with, "You don't know anything about him! You aren't worth to wipe his shoes!" and it's SO OBVIOUS that she's stupidly wrong. But it's still awful at the end that Rhett leaves her--you want her to be happy with him because that's what HE'S wanted all along. But I'm still glad he leaves--she needs to be taught a lesson. I think in the END they should get back together, though. In a decade or so.

Also, I wonder if they re-made the movie nowadays, how it would be different. What parts of the book would they leave out? Because they didn't leave ANYTHING out of the book for the 1939 movie--the entire plot is in there. They would never do that in Hollywood today. I'm really interested to see what stuff they would leave out and include--but I don't know if they'll ever re-make it, since it's still the most popular movie of all time.

Book #6: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This is the first book that I've read this year that was already on my book list. All the other ones I heard about from other book blogs or other recommendations, but of course, The Grapes of Wrath is a classic and one that I'd always intended to read but never actually done so. After reading East of Eden and Travels with Charley last year, I wanted to get some more Steinbeck so I'd asked for this for Christmas. This was actually the first book I started this year, but it's taken me this whole time to finish it because it's so big and heavy (in multiple ways).

In On Writing, which I read in the middle of this, Stephen King says something like, "Don't feel bad if you can't write anything as good as The Grapes of Wrath your first time around." I laughed when I read that because I was about halfway through with this book and I was struggling with it because of all the breaks in the narrative where he inserts those chapters of generalizations and descriptions of all the migrant people, and I told Tommy that it was just too much for me to want to finish. But I ended up getting back into it as the book wore on-- you can't HELP but feel for the Joads and be horrified by what they're going through. Every time they find another job, they get all hopeful again, and every time they get shot down and run out of money again and are back where they started. And they lose members of their family all along the way. Everything just seems so pointless and hopeless. But the more I think about it, the more hopeful the ending becomes and the more the symbolism of rejuvenation sticks out. And that's what I liked about East of Eden too.

I think I'm going to need to read a few quick books next to balance out this heavy one, but I'm still really glad I read it. It IS a real must-read.