Yellow Wallpaper

(Previous years: 2013 , 2012 , 2011 , 2010 , 2009 , 2008 , 2007 )  I read at total of 74 books this year; this is 14 less than I read in in 2013. I actually feel good about the number going down a bit--I work full-time and I'm in school so I don't have as much free time any more. I still should be doing other things besides reading, but finding balance in my life is still a work in progress. I did read the Whitney finalists for all the adult fiction categories this year, which accounts for 20 of the fiction books (there were 25 finalists, but I had already read some of the books in 2013). I read 61 fiction books and 13 nonfiction books, which seems to be about average for most years for me. I like nonfiction, but that usually means reading books that are dense and need more than a few hours to read. 60 of the books I read were written by women and 14 were written by men; this ratio has gone up and down for me over the years, but generally has been dominated by women. I don...

Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante This was our book club for November, and I thought some parts of it were better than others. I'm not a huge fan of Little Women and I don't know a lot about Louisa May Alcott. I thought the book was most interesting when it discussed Alcott's mother, Abigail, and her life as a woman in early America. The parts about Louisa's life didn't feel as focused to me and if often seemed that the author was making assumptions about what the readers already knew about Alcott. Also, Bronson Alcott mostly seems like a horrible, selfish person in this book, so it might be good to read a biography of him some time to get a little more balance. Painting Kisses by Melanie Jacobson I've loved everything I've read so far by Jacobson, but this was not as good as some of her other books. One of the things I like about her writing is that she writes about contemporary LDS single adults in a way that is very insightful and realistic. This...

Today didn't feel very much like New Year's Eve to me. I had to go to work--this year they changed the paid holidays to the 1st and 2nd to give everyone a four-day weekend. There weren't very many people at work and not a lot to do and I ended up leaving early in order to go to the grocery store and check out some movies at the public library before it closed. We got back from our vacation on Monday night and my brain is still adjusting after being gone for a week, especially since the weather here turned bitterly cold and snowy while we were away.  According to many articles I've seen around the internet, 2014 was kind of a crappy year. Outrage on the internet, Ebola, crazy weather, unrest and protests all over the world, airplane disasters, and so on. I get it--I don't feel like 2014 was my best year either. It feels like the year flew by before I had a chance to even catch my breath and get my feet under me. I spent a lot of time doing homework and not much els...