Yellow Wallpaper

Sistering by Jennifer Quist The humor in this book is fairly dark, but if you're ready for it, you'll have a great time reading it. The characters are all memorable, and each of the five sisters had a unique voice; the switching viewpoints felt natural instead of gimicky, like it does in too many other books I've read. The plot also kept me guessing (and cringing a little), and the ending was perfect. This is another unique and wonderful book by Quist and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg I loved Duhigg's book on habits and learned a lot of great things from it, so I was looking forward to this book. It had some useful information, but some parts of it felt a little too simplistic and redundant. A month after reading it, I don't remember much of it.  Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen It's been a number of years since I re-read this...

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston This book is not particularly groundbreaking in its plot, but I really liked the characters and the fact that it realistically portrayed how difficult the healing process can be. I also appreciate books that demonstrate the importance of strong support networks in the lives of teens--sometimes teen books make it seem like kids just exist in isolation, but good books like this recognize the complex relationships they have with family, friends, and their communities. This would be a great book for older teens. Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead I kept waiting for the characters in this book to mature or grow in some way, and they really never did. I also think likeability is overrated, but some sort of sympathy for the characters needs to be created by the author, and I never quite felt that from this book. Even as I got to the end, I still didn't care much for the main character and did not feel very invested in the ending.  In Other ...

Eleanor and the Iron King by Julie Daines This book surprised me because I expected it to be more cheesy than it was. It's a bit of a mishmash of a romance and supernatural thriller, but the medieval setting makes that work somehow. The main character got on my nerves sometimes because she really took a long time to stop being dumb and start trusting the right people, but the supporting characters were all great and I also loved the setting. The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia by David Stuart MacLean This was our book club choice for this month and I think that most of us would give it about three stars out of five. Some parts of it were very interesting and engaging, especially the first half of the book and the interludes about the science of malaria and anti-malarial medication. The second half of the book began to feel repetitive and loses momentum--in a memoir it can be hard to fully shape the story and give it the right amount of tension, and this book...

I've been a bit obsessed with Hamilton for the past month and I think I have most of the lyrics memorized. Don't be surprised if you see more posts with lyrics for titles--maybe someday I'll even write about my feelings and why I love the show so much. Mr. Fob's mom died three weeks ago. When people ask if it was expected or not, I'm never quite sure what to say. Everyone thought she'd be around much longer, since her mother just died five years ago and was in her nineties, and her grandmother lived to be a hundred. With that kind of longevity in the family, seventy-three feels kind of young. But, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer and the fact that she made it nearly a year after diagnosis is quite remarkable, especially without undergoing any treatment. She had also been fairly stable until about a month or so before she died, and then the decline was swift. I feel a little bad because I haven't been very involved during the last year-...

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll This book was a bit of a mess and I probably should not have finished reading it; the ending seemed to promise some kind of shocking twist, and yet I re-read it a few times before realizing that the author's idea of a 'surprise' and mine were quite different. Also, the first half seems to be making fun of a particular lifestyle that I know nothing about, and the author didn't do much to convince me as a reader that I should. If you are going to poke fun at something, you can't assume that your audience will always care about it in the same way you do. Also, all the characters in the book were annoying stereotypes and the plot had some major holes. Sometimes I can forgive that if the book is still fun, but this one certainly wasn't. A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz I thoroughly enjoyed this book, although this shouldn't be a surprise since I already shared Deresiewicz's opinion that Austen is a br...

In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib A month after reading this book I can hardly remember anything about it. The author did a fine job describing the difficulty of being a Muslim immigrant family in the United States, as well as conveying the shattering aftermath of a tragedy that affects that entire family. However, the book didn't do as good a job with the characterization or with creating a well-paced plot with enough tension to sustain it. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman This is a long, dense book that took about a month to read in little chunks interspersed with other chunks. There is so much interesting information in this book that it's hard to absorb and hard to read in larger quantities. I've been sharing bits of my insights from it with many of my friends over the last few months, and I think I need to buy my own copy so I can go back and find the parts I really liked it so I can reread them. In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward This book s...

I really can't let leap day pass by without writing a post about it, since it only happens every four years. I'm curious to see what my life will be like four years from now--hopefully I'll still have a blog, and even if I don't I'll be able to go back and read this and reflect. In four years I'll have kids that are 16, 13, and 10! That feels old to me. I wrote a post in 2008 that reflected on what my life had been like in 2004, and in some ways it wasn't all that different four years later. We were still in school, still didn't have a lot of money, and probably spent too much time waiting for 'real life' to happen (well, I know I did). Really, 2008 was mostly a good year and a lot of nice things happened.  I did write again in 2012 , but it wasn't consciously a leap day post. In fact, it was more processing a lot of feelings about the divorce. I feel a little weird going back and reading it now, but it had only been about six months out a...

 I started this post a few weeks ago when I had a pretty crappy day. I got in an argument on Facebook, which I almost never do. I usually avoid commenting on anything controversial, but this time I jumped right in and fired off something without really thinking about it. It was the kind of issue where knee-jerk reactions are common, but it's complex enough that it probably shouldn't be a subject for Facebook discussion. I immediately felt bad about that, and then some other crappy things happened that day that I can't even remember. The next day, however, was great. Then a few days later I had another crappy day--I didn't sleep well the night before and there was heavy snow when I left for work, making my commute twice as long and much more stressful.The rest of the day didn't go so well either. That's pretty much how things have been for the month since my last post--some days are good, some not so good. My baby step goal of writing a little in a journal e...

Kisses in the Rain by Krista Lynne Jensen The part of this book I enjoyed the most was the setting. It takes place on an island in Washington and the characters both work in the kitchen of a restaurant. I had a major craving to take a vacation to Puget Sound after reading this. It was an enjoyable little romance, but like too many LDS fiction books I read, it felt a bit thin and superficial to me. I wanted deeper conversations between the characters, more time spent developing and resolving the conflicts, and richer language. This book touched on some great themes, but it just didn't quite do enough with them for me. Rising Strong by Brene Brown I have really loved Brown's other books, so it's not a surprise that this was a hit for me. It's meant as a follow-up to Daring Greatly , so you should read that one first in order for this one to make more sense. I particularly liked her emphasis on narrative and how we see ourselves. I just need to buy a copy so I can ...

The middle of winter is actually not a great time for starting a new year. It's too cold and dark for me to feel like I have energy to do anything new. On the other hand, we've just passed the solstice and the days are starting to get a bit longer. Plus we just had Christmas and all its decadence, so perhaps the time is right for change after all. We're two weeks into January and I'm not sure yet if I want to make any resolutions. I'm a bit behind, as evidenced by my recent attempts to catch up on book reviews.  Christmas was quite lovely this year. My parents came to town and we had a nice dinner on Christmas Eve with my brother and his family. I woke up the next morning to fluffy white snow everywhere, and a quiet house filled with sleeping children. Unfortunately I also woke up with a sore throat and headache that only got worse as the day went on. The kids had a great morning and loved their new presents. I was actually grateful that Mr. Fob came to pick them ...

(Previous years: 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , 2011 , 2010 , 2009 , 2008 , 2007 )  I read at total of 84 books this year; this is ten more than last year, but right around my average for the last few years.  I didn't read Whitney finalists this year for a number of reasons, but I'm considering it this year. I also set a small goal to read more older, 'classic' books, so I consciously chose about one a month to read or re-read. I think I will do that again this coming year. I tend to gravitate toward fluffier books lately, and while they are fun, I really do enjoy better-written stuff and need to remind myself of this fact when I'm tempted to escape with something mediocre. I read 67 fiction books and 17 nonfiction books, which seems to be about average for most years for me. I like nonfiction, and think that next year I will try to read even more. I also think I might spend the next few months focusing on nonfiction about the history of England to prepare for my upco...

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley I enjoyed the last book I read by Kearsley and thought I'd try another one. This one didn't work as well for me. Once again, I felt like the historical parts of the book were the most interesting and the most well-written. The contemporary romance included a male love interest who was pretty much perfect and spent half the book convincing the whiny woman to trust herself. And of course they fell in love, which was obvious from the beginning of the book. I think this may be a sequel to another book, or at least include some of the same characters, so I might track down that one just to see if I could get a different perspective on the female protagonist because I thought she was really one-dimensional. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison This book has been listed on a number of "best nonfiction" lists, and after reading it I can understand why. Some of them are better than others, but I found myself re-reading and writing down qu...

The Lake House by Kate Morton I had been anticipating the new Kate Morton book's publication for several months, and thankfully I was not disappointed by my high expectations. The plot for this book is similar to all of Morton's books--there are family secrets to be uncovered through a narrative that moves back and forth between contemporary characters and those in the past. Although there are a number of twists along the way, eventually everything is figured out in a satisfactory way. Morton has a tendency to sometimes be a little melodramatic and to stretch the suspension of disbelief too much--and some of her books are much better than others--but I thought this was one of her better efforts. The ending requires a particularly large leap of trust, but by the time we got there I had enjoyed the book so much that I was willing to play along and just enjoy it.  Uprooted by Naomi Novik I had mixed feelings about this book, which I'm sure were due in part to my having ...