Archives of Our Lives

I loved to read as a child/teenager/young adult, but once I became a full-time college student and majored in English Literature my daily reading load was so full I stopped reading anything extra (plus I enjoyed much of what I was reading so it was kind of like I was reading for fun anyway [the one great benefit of majoring in something that actually interests you]).

After I graduated and started working full time, I found my leisure hours even more taxed, and I ended up spending them on more mindless pursuits like laying in bed staring blankly at my iPhone until it was time to fall asleep. I was just too exhausted after work and housework to use my brain anymore. (That’s also why this blog fell to the wayside so majorly.)

And now. Now I have a baby and I’m staying at home to tend him. I am busier than ever before but it’s finally starting to occur to me that if I waste all my free hours vegging out then my mind is going to turn to mush. Not only will that make me a less-than-ideal parent, but also it just sounds lame. I don’t want to be a mush-for-brain. I want to be interesting and well-read.

So I set a goal to read more in 2014. Specifically, to read at least two books per month: one fiction, one non-fiction. Here’s what I read in January.

Well, I enjoyed my reignited reading so much in January that I upped my volume in February. I ended up reading three fiction and two non-fiction. But since five books seems like too many to review in one blog post, I’ll split it into two parts: fiction and non.

FICTION:

Time and Eternity by E. M. Tippetts

I hesitate to say mean things about books because someday I hope to be an author myself and I don’t want people to say mean things about my books; but I cannot lie. This book was bad.

It was pure fluff. It was a sappy Mormon romance novel, full stop. I knew that before I started it, but I was looking for something of a palette cleanser after the tenseness of Elizabeth Smart’s book, and this one was sitting in my bookcase on loan from a cousin so I decided to have at it.

I used to devour these kinds of books by the shelf full, but either the genre has gotten dumber or I have gotten smarter because this book was an epic waste of my time. The writing felt contrived, the characters’ conversations were awkward, and it was only a page-turner in the sense that I wanted to hurry and be done reading it.

Final Score: 1/10 (I gave it one point because hey, at least it was published which is more than I can say for any of my books.)

•••••••

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

This book was just okay. It was another one I’ve been meaning to read for a few years at the recommendation (and loan) of my sister. I hoped to like it quite a lot because it combined two of my great passions: historical feminism and art history.

However, in the end it didn’t really do much for me. I felt like the story was just a bit too thin…I can’t really explain it other than it needed thickening up. The main character was unrelatable and kind of annoying.

Final Score: 3/10

•••••••

The Book Thief by Markus Zusask

Back when this book was published in 2007 I heard nothing but good things about it. I was intrigued by the idea of Death as the narrator, so I borrowed a copy and started reading it.

I couldn’t get past the first two pages (which is quite uncommon for me; I usually give books at least 50 pages before I give up, and even then it has to be really bad for me to give up because I still want to find out how they end).

I don’t know if I was just distracted or if I wasn’t in the right mindset, but seven years later I picked it up again (partly compelled by the trailer that came out for the movie based on this book, and partly just because it annoyed me that everyone else loved it when I did not), and I could not put it down.

I loved almost everything about it. I loved how it was laid out, how Death added snarky little asides every so often. I loved the chapter headings that kept me guessing, like “Three Acts of Stupidity by Rudy Steiner.” I loved how it said right from the start what the story was about: an attempt to prove that humanity can be good even despite all the horrible things we do to each other. I loved how even though I knew from page one it wasn’t going to end happily, Zusak still managed to keep me hoping for the best. Spoiler: the best didn’t happen.

But I don’t need a happy ending to love a book; I need to be moved, and The Book Thief was nothing if not moving. I felt like I was reading a poem on every page, and though in high school I professed to hate poetry of every kind (except limericks), in these my later years I have come to appreciate it (poetry) for the simple standalone beauty that it is, or at least can be. I have learned that I don’t need to understand what a poem “means” to appreciate it. I just need to understand how it makes me feel.

And this poem made me feel sad. But sadness is okay.

Just an example of my favourite bits:

A statue of the book thief stood in the courtyard….
It’s very rare, don’t you think, for a statue to appear
before its subject has become famous.

He could have just said that Liesel stood frozen like a statue in the courtyard, but he didn’t—he said it so much better!

I also liked that it reminded me of my poor grasp on world history. Obviously I learned the basics of World War II in school, but either I ignored or forgot many details of Hitler’s rise to power, which frustrated me while reading this book because I should have known (but couldn’t quite recall) several events mentioned throughout it. My gap in knowledge sent me down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia once I finished the book just to reconcile my spotty knowledge with what I’d just read. Once I finished re-educating myself I felt a lot better.

Final Score: 8/10 (Minus one point for finding a typo, and another because it wasn’t totally life-changing; I just really liked reading it.)