Let's Bust a Recap : Dear Emmie Blue

Okay, so on Monday we talked about A Man Called Ove which was my book club's book of the month for August. Today, we're talking about Dear Emmie Blue which was my book club's book of the month for last August. Oy vey. We're getting caught up around here, but it's a process.

Dear Emmie Blue by UK author Lia Louis was published just a couple summers ago in 2020. It was generally well-received, but for some reason it didn't quite hit the mark for me.

At the outset, we meet Emmie who is meeting up with her best friend Lucas because he has something important to ask her. Emmie, who has been secretly in love with Lucas for six years, thinks he's finally going to admit he has feelings for her as well and ask her out. The bombshell: he's proposed to his ex-girlfriend and wants Emmie to be his "best woman" at their wedding. Obvious devastation ensues. Of course, Emmie says yes—she can never say no to Lucas—but that means a lot of painful involvement in getting her unrequited love ready to walk down the aisle to share his life with another woman. It also means she has to spend quite a bit of time with Eliot, Lucas' older brother, with whom she had a serious falling out eleven years prior over a devastating betrayal of trust. All of this comes together in a sweet package of what it means to navigate relationships—not just romantic ones!—in a healthy way in life.

All the elements were there to make for a great book, but they somehow didn't add up for me. I liked Louis' ability to seamlessly tease Emmie's past circumstances in a way that felt slightly mysterious and kept you reading while still moving the story forward. I thought her writing style was funny and easy to read. And her insertion of text conversations and mixed CD playlists served the story well instead of being clunky as they sometimes have a tendency to be in other things I've read.

But, the actual development of relationships was sorely lacking. Hurtful choices made my different characters—particularly Lucas—seemed to just magically work themselves out with no real consequences or communication. While I could go with Louis' setup of different conflicts throughout the novel, very few were resolved realistically. I was left at the end of the book with a lot more questions than answers. 

On top of that, Emmie's friend Rosie, who is most certainly written for a bit of comic relief, was over-the-top crass which was the final nail in the coffin for keeping me from recommending this book. 

Overall, I enjoyed reading Dear Emmie Blue and it's staying on my shelf for now, but it ultimately fell flat for me and I wouldn't recommend it. 

Let's Bust a Recap : A Man Called Ove

This charming novel celebrated its 10th birthday over the weekend! And even though I'm probably one of the last reading people in the world to pick it up, we're going to celebrate it here anyway. 

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman was originally published in Swedish on August 27, 2012. After being inspired by an article about a man named Ove having a fit while buying tickets at an art museum, Backman began writing blog posts under the heading "I am a Man Called Ove" wherein he detailed his own pet peeves and annoyances. At some point (I think in response to fan encouragement), Backman realized the potential to develop his posts into a full novel. It was a hit. The English translation by Henning Koch was published a couple years later in 2014 and went on to spend a whopping forty-two weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.

If you like books, you could not possibly have avoided seeing this one, and I picked up a copy at The Book Shelter the summer of 2018. I even put it on my 2019 book list, but for one reason or another, I didn't get around to it. It was on my shortlist of books to read last year, but once again, I didn't ever pick it up. I pulled it off the shelf again this year, but it didn't make the cut. Then, just a few days after I published my 2022 list, my bookish comrade Sheree over at Keeping Up With The Penguins published a list of books with significant birthdays happening this year and wouldn't you know, Ove would be turning 10! So I unofficially slated it for August and when book club time came around, I leaned on my friend Amy to choose it (since August was her month) and she did. 

And we're all grateful. 

Because A Man Called Ove is now on my list of All-Time Favorites and will very probably hold as my favorite book of 2022. 

But what makes the book so great? Good question. On the surface, A Man Called Ove is just about a cantankerous old soul who, after losing his wife and being pushed out of his job into early retirement, has decided there's nothing left to live for so he's going to end it all. But each time he attempts to end his life, people just keep getting in the way.

Doesn't sound like the ingredients for one of my new All-Time Favs, does it? But Backman somehow manages to infuse this pretty heavy material with so much humor and heart that you can't help but fall in love with Ove and the colorful cast Backman creates. I was literally shouting with laughter from the very start, and by page forty I was actually crying my eyes out. And so the rest of the book went: alternately laughing and sobbing the whole way through. 

This is a book I would recommend to nearly anybody. While there is a bit of less-than-polite language sprinkled throughout, and I wouldn't personally endorse some of the life choices made by different characters—Ove included—overall this was a fantastic book; and much like you can disagree with someone while still loving them, I found myself thoroughly loving Ove and his neighborhood even while not agreeing with all their choices. Ultimately, this book is a brilliant snapshot of the human need for connection. God said from the very beginning that it's not good for man to be alone, and A Man Called Ove conveys the truth of that in such a funny, heartwarming, real way I'm so glad I didn't miss out on. 

Happy Birthday to A Man Called Ove! I'm excited for more of Backman's work. I've already got Britt-Marie Was Here and My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry sitting on my shelf. Which should I read next?

Let's Bust a Recap : Maisie Dobbs

Today's recap is actually a double feature of the next two books in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I read the first Maisie Dobbs book during the global COVID-19 lockdown in April of 2020. My mom had borrowed it earlier that year, and she and my dad both loved it so naturally, I had to read it, too. That Christmas, I ended up getting my parents the next five books in the series, and my dad proceeded to read all five of them before my mom and I even got home from our Christmas trip to Germany. Since then, both my parents have acquired and read all seventeen Maisie Dobbs books, the most recent one having just come out earlier this year, and now my Gramma is ten or eleven books in as well. I'm obviously chugging along at a much slower pace, opting to read one each year. But at least now I know I have access to all seventeen whenever I get around to reading the next one because they are all sitting proudly numbered on my parents' shelf. 

Birds of a Feather, the second book in the series, was my Maisie Dobbs novel for 2021, and I managed to squeeze it in right at the tail end of the year. Literally. I ignored my family for most of the day on New Year's Eve finishing it up. This second installment was published in 2004, one year after Winspear's debut of the character in 2003, and in this one it's the spring of 1930 and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the young woman's friends turn up dead, Maisie finds herself in a race to find the murderer before it's too late. 

I plucked this copy out of a Little Free Library in 2020 before I bought the books for my parents for Christmas that year, and subsequently used it to fill that slot on The Unread Shelf's book bingo card last year. The conclusion of this one broke my heart as Maisie discovers that the answers to the mystery are tied up in the unforgettable agony of the Great War, but it ultimately ended on a slightly lighter note by introducing a couple of potential love interests for our savvy protagonist that I was keen to watch develop in the coming books. 

Pardonable Lies was published in 2005, and in this complex novel, we see Maisie tackling three cases at once. A 13 year old girl has been accused of murder, but Maisie isn't so sure she's guilty. A deathbed plea from his wife leads Sir Cecil Lawton, KC to seek the aid of our intrepid investigator in confirming the death of his son. And Maisie's friend Priscilla also begs Maisie to find out what happened to her brother Peter during the Great War. But that's not all. Someone is trying to kill Maisie, too. Who would want her dead? 

While the first book of the series is still probably my favorite, this third installment was fantastic. The way Winspear intricately wove Maisie's investigation of these three separate cases together and also continued to bring us along on Maisie's journey of grief over the loss of her own mother at such a young age and all the trauma she endured during the war was really masterful and absorbing. From the very beginning, I've really enjoyed Winspear's pacing in these books, and the quality has remained high through these first three novels. I wasn't planning to read Pardonable Lies so early in the year, but I found myself up at my parents' house one day without my current book in progress and I ended up picking up their copy of the next Maisie Dobbs book and was soon caught up in the mystery.

Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, and Pardonable Lies have all raked in several awards and nominations, and I would unreservedly recommend any of them. Each can stand on its own, so you don't necessarily have to read the whole series or read the books in publication order to be able to enjoy them. Although my personal recommendation would be to start at the beginning and go in order, if you're just looking for a good mystery to cozy up with, any one will do. Next up for me is Messenger of Truth, and I'm looking forward to it.

Have you read any Maisie Dobbs? Do you like mysteries? Who is your favorite fictional sleuth?

Let's Bust a Recap : President Without a Party

And we march on through the United States presidents. John Tyler was our nation's tenth president (so we've finally hit the double digits—yay!) and the first vice president to assume the presidency after the death of the elected president, in this case William Henry Harrison who served as president a mere thirty-one days after his inauguration before succumbing to illness.

So, let's get into it, shall we? Despite being considered by most historians as a largely ineffectual president, I found Tyler fascinating and enjoyed learning more about him. 

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on the blog or not, but before choosing what presidential biographies to read, I always consult Stephen Floyd's excellent blog in which he has chronicled his own (much more intensive) venture of reading through the American presidents. If you have even the smallest interest in reading a presidential biography of any of our nation's presidents, I cannot recommend his site enough in helping you choose what to read. And in the case of John Tyler, Stephen says Christopher J. Leahy's 2020 offering stands alone so Leahy's book is what I read.   

John Tyler was born in 1790 into one of the prominent First Families of Virginia and grew up under a father who was heavily involved in state politics. Owing in large part to the early death of his mother who died when he was only seven years old, he was profoundly influenced by his father and followed in his footsteps to become a lawyer and enter politics at a very young age. 

Throughout the course of his career, Tyler served in the Virginia legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the governorship of Virginia (like his father), the office of vice president (briefly), and finally as president of the United States. Between posts he practiced law, and after his term as president ended he settled down on his plantation and took his role as planter very seriously. During the War of 1812, he organized a militia company which he commanded with the rank of captain, but they never saw any action and he dissolved the company after two months. For the rest of his career, his political enemies mockingly called him "Captain Tyler" any time they wanted to insult him. 

Because Harrison was the first president to die in office and because the Constitution was maddeningly vague on the point of presidential succession, Tyler set pretty much all the precedents for assuming the presidency after the death of the elected president, and he did it decisively and aggressively. His precedent was finally confirmed in the form of the 25th Amendment in 1967—over 100 years after Tyler's death! I found this bit of history endlessly fascinating so indulge me for a moment while I hash it out with you guys. Tyler was kindof a throwaway choice by the Whig party to fill the slot as vice president on William Henry Harrison's ticket. While "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" is probably the most popular and memorable campaign slogan in history, no one expected Tyler to do anything as vice president or to go any further in politics after Harrison's time as president ended. From what I can tell, Tyler himself had no grand aspirations to become president. He didn't have the support to win that office on his own. Why the Whigs chose him is really a mystery to me, especially given the fact that Harrison was the oldest man elected president at a time when personal health and longevity weren't great given what was known in medicine. I have to wonder if Henry Clay didn't think he could somehow get himself into the role of president if William Henry Harrison died in office. 

Obviously, it didn't work out for Henry Clay, and because of Tyler's somewhat tenuous connection to the Whig party in the first place, his ascension to the presidency immediately after Harrison's death was pretty much the worst-case scenario for all involved. And because Harrison died so shortly after being sworn in himself, Tyler practically served an entire presidential term. Unfortunately, just about everything at the federal level turned into a political gridlock as Clay and Tyler duked it out in an epic power struggle for nearly all of Tyler's presidency, resulting in Tyler being formally read out of the Whig party a mere five months into his presidency. So Tyler ended up with the double ignominy of being an "accidental president" and being the only president without a party. Crazy, right?

But let's not end it there. He's actually a triple threat in infamy as he was also the only "traitor president"—the only man who served in our nation's highest office to actually renounce the Union at the onset of the Civil War. 

Despite all this, I kinda liked John Tyler. He was a strong states' rights advocate and a man of principle, and he stuck to his guns no matter what. The reason he got kicked out of the Whig party is because, ultimately, he wouldn't let Clay and the rest of the Whigs bully him into signing their pet proposals into law. He was a friend to the executive prerogative of veto, and you know what? I'm here for him. He considered the annexation of Texas the crowning achievement of his presidency, even though he signed it into law mere days before Polk took office. And let's just give it to him, because he worked on it for years, okay? 

On the personal front, buckle up because he was also our nation's most fertile president fathering fifteen children. He and his first wife Letitia had eight (possibly nine) children together, and seven of their children grew to adulthood. Letitia died while he was serving as president, and he got married only two years later—while still serving as president—to the beautiful young Julia Gardiner, thirty years his junior and, age-wise, smack dab in the middle of the lineup of his own children. Which is a little gross if you ask me, but they really seemed to love each other. They wasted no time and had seven children together. Tragically, in the midst of his second fatherhood, he lost three of his adult daughters in a pretty short span of time, two dying due to complications in childbirth and the third from an infection. While he was a devoted father, he was largely absent in all of his children's lives: the first time around owing to his political career; the second time because of his death. At the time of his death, Julia's oldest child was only fifteen and her youngest, not even two. 

One other fun fact about Tyler that I just have to include because hello! this whole blog is about books and reading is that in the middle of his presidency in 1842, he hosted a massive party at the White House to honor two famous guests: celebrated American author Washington Irving, and none other than Charles Dickens himself. What?! 

As for the biography itself, President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler by Christopher J. Leahy is well-written and (I think) extremely interesting. While at times I did feel like Leahy got a little long-winded and could've been a little more concise, overall I thought he did an exceptional job. I appreciated how he took the time to sum up large sections of his writing with a simple question to boil down the topic he covered to his main point. It's not the best presidential biography I've read to date, but it's a long way from the worst. I would definitely recommend it if you have any interest in the life of John Tyler. 

I've still got two more presidential biographies on my list for 2022, and while it may be a bit of a stretch at this point in the year, I'm still hopeful of getting through them both before the year is through. If you had to choose one president to read a biography about, who would it be?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Lady's Mine

Finally. A new release from one of my all-time favorite authors. Francine Rivers is an auto-buy author for me. And if we're being honest, the only other author that has that honor is Robin Jones Gunn. It's an exclusive club. And when one of these two women announces a new release, it's preordered in two shakes and then there's a lot of impatience on the part of yours truly until Release Day. Thankfully, between finding out about The Lady's Mine and when it actually arrived in my mailbox, I had my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, a blizzard, and a full-time job to occupy my time. So we survived. But y'all. It has been four solid years since Rivers' last book The Masterpiece was published, and the fatalist in me always believes that the last book Francine Rivers or Robin Jones Gunn wrote will be the last book they ever will write again so I had all but given up hope that I'd ever get a new novel from Rivers. 

But I was wrong! Hooray!

The Lady's Mine is Francine Rivers' self-described "pandemic book" and for that reason, it is intentionally a lot lighter than the rest of her body of work. Set in the late 1800s, this book chronicles the adventures of Kathryn Walsh as she is disinherited from her posh Bostonian family for being a troublemaking suffragette and sent West to claim a paltry inheritance left her by her recently deceased uncle. She shows up in Calvada, a border mining town in the middle of Nowhere, USA determined to make her own way in the world. 

Now, let's not kid ourselves: Francine Rivers is a romance writer and the majority of her books do center around a romantic relationship of one type or another. And don't get me wrong: I'm here for a good love story. But in The Lady's Mine she really leaned into the romance. In most of her other books, there is a Main Issue the plot deals with that the romance is written to serve. However in this newest offering, it definitely felt like we were reading a Romance with a side of women's rights thrown in. And it was good. But it wasn't my favorite book by her for that reason. You could definitely tell that Rivers had fun writing it, and I did appreciate how light it was in comparison with her other books. Like, when I usually sit down with a Francine Rivers novel, I don't move again until I've finished it because I'm literally holding my breath till the end. With The Lady's Mine, I could breathe, you know? According to Goodreads, I took a whole week to read it. That's not to say we never dealt with any tough circumstances or tense situations, but in contrast with the rest of her work, this one was just fun. Rivers has described it as The Taming of the Shrew meets Oklahoma! and it was a rip-roaring good time. 

All in all, my favorite author once again delivered a novel I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'd definitely recommend The Lady's Mine if you're looking for a fun romantic romp. But if you've never read anything else by Francine Rivers, for the love of silver start with The Atonement Child or the Mark of the Lion trilogy. 

Do you have any auto-buy authors?

A Word for Wednesday

 "Other evils there are that may come; 

for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. 

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, 

but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, 

uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, 

so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. 

What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

~from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien~

Let's Bust a Recap : The Optimist's Daughter

This was my first book by Eudora Welty and it's going to be a hard one to recap. There's a quote about Eudora Welty on the front flap of the dust jacket of this book:

"It is easy to praise Eudora Welty, but it is not so easy to analyze the elements in her work that make it so easy—and such a deep pleasure—to praise. To say that may, indeed, be the highest praise, for it implies that the work, at its best, is so fully created, so deeply realized, and formed with such apparent innocence that it offers only itself, in shining unity."

Robert Penn Warren said that, and his book, All the King's Men, has been sitting on my shelf unread for years. It's one of those in the canon of Southern literature that I feel compelled to read, but just haven't gotten to. Which puts him in the same category as Eudora Welty for me. I've been collecting Welty's work over the years for her place in that canon. She sits up there with Faulkner and Twain, and that's why her books are on my LIFE LIST. She was a brilliant woman who lived from 1909 to 2001, and she won about every award in the book. The Optimist's Daughter was her Pulitzer Prize winning short novel, and it was wonderful.

But why was it wonderful? That's where Robert Penn Warren's quote comes in. It's hard to analyze that. Originally published in 1969 as a long story in The New Yorker, Welty then revised it and published it as a book in 1972. On the surface, it's a story about a woman named Laurel Hand who comes home from Chicago to help her ailing father through the surgery and recovery of his eye. But after his surgery, which takes place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, he continues to decline ultimately succumbing to death, and Laurel and her father's young second wife Fay have to take him home to Mount Salus, Mississippi to lay him to rest. 

But beneath the surface, Welty creates a rich sense of place in this short novel, and paints the reader a portrait of Southern life, of coming home to your people after a long absence. Being taken care of and loved. Coming to grips with your memories and identity. Dealing with grief and loss. All her characters jump off the page and right into the real world. Welty creates a beautiful melancholy in The Optimist's Daughter that must be experienced, not described. I can't say anything more than that it felt so authentic and real and lived. Welty truly does have a gift, and I'm looking forward to reading more of her work. 

Have you read any of Eudora Welty's work? Do you collect books from a specific genre that is important to you?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Unhoneymooners

I don't know if you can tell, but 2022 is officially the year I became a library user again. (Even though I still don't have my own library card.) Because I am now in a bona fide book club and my insistent appeals gentle requests to choose books from my unread shelf have gone unheeded by my book club friends, I have gotten very familiar with the online system of placing a book from the library on hold so that the nice library people (otherwise referred to by civilized human beings as "librarians") can find the book for me and have it ready at the counter to pick up when I go in. I'm sure you all have known this for years but it's a great system. I recommend libraries. 

But why am I babbling on about my fairly recent rediscovery of how great libraries are instead of getting on to the recap? Well, to be honest, The Unhoneymooners is holding on to my personal Worst Book of 2022 so far and I have very few positive things to say about it. Now that you know where I'm coming from, I guess we can get to it.

The Unhoneymooners written by the popular American duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings was published in 2019 which means it was one of the books I saw all over Instagram for the very short amount of time that I had an Instagram account. So when my book club chose it for April, I recognized it immediately. I was not aware, however, that "Christina Lauren" was actually two people, and I am very curious how their writing process works. According to wikipedia—the source of all knowledge on the internet—the pair met in 2009 while writing fanfiction online and became coauthors in 2010. They've written a whole scad of books together, a bunch of which have made it onto the New York Times Bestsellers list, The Unhoneymooners in particular spending fourteen weeks there. 

So the premise is that Olive—who is perpetually unlucky—ends up taking her identical twin sister's dream, all-expenses-paid honeymoon to Hawaii after the entire wedding gets violent food poisoning at the reception. The only catch is, she has to take it with her bitter nemesis—the groom's brother Ethan. The two of them somehow manage to avoid the intense illness because of allergies and a general disdain for open buffets. 

And you see where this is going, right? Classic enemies-to-lovers trope. Except the reason Olive and Ethan were "enemies" in the first place is laughably flimsy at best. Like, when they met, she was eating cheese curds and he had a weird facial expression. Really?

So anyways, they have to go on this romantic vacation together and pretend to be married because of strict rules which state the trip is absolutely non-transferable and blah blah blah. (Because Olive's perpetually lucky twin Amy won the trip in a contest.) This doesn't present a problem for Olive and Ethan...until they run into Olive's new boss. And then Ethan's ex-girlfriend. 

The premise was fun and the book had a pretty promising start (minus the weak Olive/Ethan enemy scenario we're given), but it fell apart quite rapidly for me. Olive gives it up way too quickly so any romantic build was practically non-existent, and the writing went from funny to banal before we even made it a third of the way through. Every male character turned out to be a total scumbag, and my entire book club agreed that the ending was just plain awful. 

On top of that, the way sex and marriage were treated so casually and the pervasive crass language were absolute dealbreakers for me. This one was a definite miss. I'll give it one point for Olive's large Mexican-American family dynamic, but I cannot and would not recommend The Unhoneymooners to anyone, and I won't be checking out any more books by Christina Lauren. 

Have you read anything by Christina Lauren? Do you have a favorite romance trope? I'll admit: I'm a sucker for the fake dating trope. 

A Word for Wednesday

"Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world 

have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart 

than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave 

that cannot be returned."

~from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien~

Let's Bust a Recap : The Lunar Chronicles

I finished this series shortly before Cody and I finished The Lord of the Rings, and let me tell you: between the two, I came away with a serious book hangover. I've watched a lot more TV recently than I normally do because it's been hard to jump into something else.

If you had told me a couple months ago that I'd love a book about cyborgs and androids and a war between the Earth and the moon, I'd have laughed in your face. But here we are.

My BFF Christina got to select our book club's book for June, and she chose Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I was aware that this was the first in a series called the Lunar Chronicles, but I was under the impression that because these were fairytale retellings, each book in the series could stand alone. So I checked Cinder out from the library thinking it would be a one-and-done for me and came home in my blissful ignorance. 

My BFF Christina failed to mention that I would need Scarlet near at hand immediately upon finishing Cinder. And so on and so forth with Cress and Winter, the other two books in this series. Ergo, I found myself in great distress on a Friday night as I came to the end of Cinder and the library was closed. And then was equally distressed when I was able to check out Scarlet and Winter the next day, but had to wait for Cress to come in from another library in the interstate system. Because what if it didn't come in time??

We survived, obviously, but what I'm saying is: this series is seriously unputdownable, and if you are contemplating starting it, have all of them ready to go, for the love. And don't y'all even try to let Christina off the hook for this. This was not her first rodeo with The Lunar Chronicles. She knew. 

The Lunar Chronicles is a Young Adult dystopian series by Marissa Meyer which, if I had to sum them up in a few words, are like fairytales meeting Star Wars. 

And I'm here for them in a big way.

Cinder is the first book in the series and was originally published in 2012. The loose fairytale retelling is of Cinderella, but in Cinder our protagonist is a teenage cyborg mechanic living in the Eastern Commonwealth in the Third Era. A plague has been wreaking havoc on the Earth, and the prince-turned-emperor is having to make some tough decisions about forming a marriage alliance with the evil lunar Queen Levana. 

I mean, does it sound laughable? Yes. 

Did I love it? Also Yes. 

The second book, Scarlet, was published in 2013, and roughly parallels the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. In it, we are switching back and forth between Scarlet's quest to find her grandmother, and Cinder's escape from prison and subsequent fugitive life on the run from pretty much everyone in the universe. 

Oops. Did I forget to issue a spoiler warning? Consider this your notice for the rest of the post. I mean, I'm not giving up any of the big plot twists, but if you like to go into a series completely blind like I do, then it's high time you got out of here.

Eventually, Cinder and Scarlet end up on the same team together which leads us to the third novel...

...Cress. Published in 2014 and the novel mirroring the Rapunzel fairytale. We learn that a character we met back in Cinder has actually been trapped in a satellite doing hacking and spying for the evil Queen Levana, but she's more than ready and willing to join the side of justice and help Cinder if she can. This novel was just as fantastic as the other three but took me the longest to get through because we are switching back and forth between a lot of different perspectives which just slowed it down for me until they finally all ended up together. 

The series concludes in the epic 827 page Winter which was published in 2015 and parallels the Snow White fairytale. Winter is the winsome stepdaughter of evil Queen Levana, and she has slowly been going insane from the effort of refusing to use her Lunar gift of bioelectric manipulation. (I can't even get into it with y'all. You'll just have to read them to understand that.) When Cinder and her band of misfits dramatically show up on Luna to prevent the royal wedding between Queen Levana and Emperor Kai, Winter immediately and unquestioningly decides to help them in any way she can.

Oh. My. I can't even begin to tell y'all how much I got sucked into these books. I immediately added them to my amazon wishlist, and I guarantee these are ones I'll read again. The overarching story is excellent. The way Meyer brings these fairytales and characters together is flawless. The action and drama and romance are all on point. I couldn't get enough. It was very fun looking for the fairytale connections in each of the books, and I thought Meyer's parallels were strongest in Cress and Winter. Her writing is clever and funny, and I even texted my book club asking about another possible fairytale correlation that I was picking up on. (Iko as Pinocchio? Anyone? Anyone?!) My only bone to pick with Meyer is that I would have liked a couple more chapters in Winter to resolve Winter's personal storyline. I felt that in the culmination of everything, a few things I wanted to see happen with Winter (and her love interest, hey-o) were not settled in a satisfying way. Meyer has also published a collection of short stories entitled Stars Above about these characters, but as mush as I loved this series, I don't have very much interest in the short stories. I read one that was included in the copy of Cinder I got from the library, and it didn't do much for me.

Overall, would highly recommend these for a fun, slump-busting, escapist read. Once again, blessing all the stars that saved me from discovering these before they were all published and out in the world for me to zoom through as fast as I could, because if I was waiting a year in between for each new installment: Heaven help.

Have you read The Lunar Chronicles? Who's your favorite character from the series? Favorite couple? I'm here for the fandom. Let's talk all about it. What book surprised you with how much you enjoyed it?

North Carolina

Hello again! Three posts in one week, can you even believe it? You know, when I started this blog, posting three times a week was the norm. Ha! That didn't last. But I'm very determined to get caught up this year and end 2022 with all the books I've read neatly recapped and logged here so we can start 2023 fresh. 

But today we're not talking about books: I'm chronicling our trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina which was the special thing we did to check this state off in our endeavor to #SeeAll50. If you're not sure what this #SeeAll50 is about: my husband and I have a goal of visiting all 50 of these United States and doing something unique to each state when we visit (so driving through a state doesn't count towards the goal). We had done a bit of traveling together to visit family and what not, but we didn't officially start working toward this goal until November of 2016 when we drove down to the Keys to check Florida off the list to kickstart this venture. After we visit a state, I record it here on the blog, and I also create a spread in my scrapbook. North Carolina is our 15th state which puts us 30% of the way toward our goal. What with the global pandemic and all, this whole thing has been on hold since our last state trip to Maryland and Delaware in October of 2019, but since moving to NC last year, it was the natural next state to check off our list!

2015

We're obviously no strangers to the Tar Heel State. We've visited North Carolina together nearly every year of our marriage, and now we even live here. Prior to moving here, I thought we might visit the Biltmore Estate while the tulips are in bloom as our special North Carolina thing. But now the Biltmore is practically in our backyard and I even delivered there while I was working for Amazon so that kindof took the bloom out of that idea. It would have been like going to Disney World as our Florida thing. So instead, we decided to drive eight hours out to the Outer Banks and explore the Wright Brothers National Memorial.

We made the drive out early on May 20th, and rolled into Nags Head right at lunchtime where we went to Tortuga's Lie for lunch and the most delicious key lime pie we had all weekend. We then headed over to the memorial and spent the rest of the afternoon taking in all the exhibits, walking the distance of Orville and Wilbur's first four historic flights, and climbing the hill up to where the monument is erected.

I call this next sequence "First in Flight: A Progression".

We really enjoyed this little national park. The museum is colorful and engaging, and the way they've set up the grounds, flight markers, and monument is all very interactive and fun. We learned a lot and would recommend a visit. 

After we had our fill of the Wright Brothers National Memorial, we got checked into our hotel where our balcony opened out on this:

Ahhh, my happy place. We unpacked, took naps, got cleaned up, then headed out to a little pizza place called American Pie. Highly recommend. This is maybe the best pizza we've ever had in our lives. And we like our pizza. We weren't super impressed with their ice cream (which they're also famous for), but the pizza was off the chain. That night, we relaxed at our hotel and watched The Amazing Spider-Man. 

The next day we spent reading on the beach, swimming in the hotel pool, going to lunch at The Black Pelican, watching The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and just relaxing together. The Black Pelican was a fun spot. It's a historic building and has lots of fun Wright Brothers memorabilia and great food. 

That night, we wanted ice cream, but all the local places were closed by 7 so we ventured to the lone Dairy Queen and I think every single person in the OBX was there. We got our ice cream though and headed back to the hotel to crash for the night.

Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast, got packed up and checked out, stopped back by the Wright Brothers National Memorial for a few souvenirs, and then headed home. 

It was a quick weekend, but it was the perfect way to celebrate our 10th Anniversary, and we owe a big Thank You to my parents for surprising us with this trip and Cody's mom for sending us spending money for all our meals and souvenirs. We had a wonderful time, and I hope we get to go back. OBX is gorgeous and there are so many more fun things to do there.

North Carolina : done.

Have you ever visited North Carolina? What's one of your big bucket list goals?

A Word for Wednesday

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. 

But that is not for them to decide. 

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

~from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien~

Let's Bust a Recap : The Lord of the Rings

Y'all. I know I wrote a novel-length post on Friday, and today we're diving right back in with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. These are the books I have finished the most recently, but I am ready to talk about them, and I can't promise that this will be a concise post either. So for that, sorry. But also: not sorry. 

Also, we're definitely going into spoiler territory with this one. The Hobbit is 85 years old and The Return of the King is nearly 70, so I don't feel too bad about this, but if you've been holding out on this classic saga to read it for yourself: reader beware.

And while we're issuing warnings, we're going on a deep dive into my history with Lord of the Rings so if you're not interested: I get it. 

Why all the drama for these books, Hannah? Fair question. It goes way back for me, so buckle up.

Way back when I started this blog, I talked about my LIFE LIST OF BOOKS I WANT TO READ BEFORE I DIE. It's a real thing and it's very serious and The Lord of the Rings has had a permanent and prominent spot on it since I was a literal child. I grew up loving C.S. Lewis. My dad read us The Chronicles of Narnia before we could embrace them for ourselves. I wrote papers on Lewis in high school and college. And his books even now show up on every single annual book list I make for myself. He and Tolkien are inseparable in my mind, and I've been equally aware of The Lord of the Rings since I was very young. I've read The Hobbit and loved it. But for whatever reason, The Lord of the Rings has always intimidated me. I'm not sure if it's the sheer length, my history with the film franchise (don't worry, we're getting to that), or the fact that the few times I tried to start reading it, I gave up very quickly. But this trilogy definitely falls in the Big Fish category, and I had a hard time pulling the trigger. (And yes, we mix metaphors around here. I apologize for that, too.) I have literally pulled them off the shelf every single year since I started making my book lists, and every single year, they haven't made the cut and have gone back to their spot on the shelf. 

Every. Single. Year.

But 2022 is the year that all changed. I attribute this in part to the fact that my sister-in-law read them last year, and I had a serious case of FOMO over it. So this year, they were the first books I pulled and they were non-negotiable. I pulled The Hobbit as well, just because I know it and I love it and I figured it would be a good way to ease into Middle-earth before tagging along on Frodo's epic adventure. My husband committed to reading them, too, because he's been in the same boat with me of wanting to read them but putting it off. He even borrowed his sister's copies so we wouldn't have to share. 

Speaking of my husband, let's go ahead and circle back to my experience with the movies. Peter Jackson's blockbuster adaptations of this trilogy were coming out while I was in high school, and at first I couldn't be bothered with them at all. I didn't want to watch them without having read the books. And on top of that, I wasn't dying to watch a bunch of bloody orc wars, and elves and dwarves and other mythical creatures on this quest. So while all my friends and my brothers were wearing these movies out and dying for the next installment, I was just living my life, you know? 

But when The Return of the King came to theaters, the family I was nannying for at the time was beyond excited to see them and convinced me to go with them. So I brilliantly decided to try to marathon the first two before we went to see it. 

Bad idea. 

I cannot emphasize this enough: if you've never seen these movies, take them slowly. I couldn't stay awake, and finally had my brother give me the Cliffs Notes version right before leaving to see the culmination of Peter Jackson's paramount work in the cinema.

I was so lost. I had no idea what was going on, and I stood up to leave the theater no less than three times because I sincerely thought the movie had ended. I volunteered to do every single bathroom run with the kids and after we left, I wrote the movies off forever. 

Fast forward eight years, and now I am dating my husband. These are his favorite movies. And I'm not saying it would have been a dealbreaker for him if I had refused to watch them, but I'm also not saying it wouldn't have been. Ya feel me? He tells me that I'm going to watch them and not only that, I'm going to watch the extended versions. There are extended versions?! Oh yes. And that's what I was going to watch if I wanted to stay in this relationship. So for one whole week shortly after we started dating, I went to his house every single night and we watched half a movie at a time with his younger siblings. After each part was over, they would all quiz me on what was going on and who the characters were and ask me how I felt about every single aspect of the story.

Y'all. When I say that is one of the all-time best weeks of my entire life, I'm not kidding. I fell in love with the story, the movies, the actors: all of it. I gave them to Cody for his birthday the first year of our marriage, and we watch them at least once a year. And now my husband and I have been happily married for ten years so there's that. 

Hannah, for the love of Frodo, are you ever going to get to the point? That's fair. 

If you're unfamiliar with The Lord of the Rings, it is the tale of a fellowship of men, hobbits, a wizard, a dwarf, and an elf who undertake the mission to destroy the One Ring of power in order to prevent the dark lord Sauron from taking over Middle-earth to rule by his wicked power. It was meant to be a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book entitled The Hobbit, but it grew into something much bigger. In The Hobbit, we get to go with Bilbo Baggins on his adventure to win a share of treasure being hoarded by the dragon Smaug. In The Hobbit, Bilbo acquires the One Ring, and in The Lord of the Rings, he passes it to his cousin Frodo who ultimately ends up destroying it and saving all of Middle-earth in doing so. Tolkien is considered a pioneer and authority on the high fantasy genre, and The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written with over 150 million copies sold. 

And let me tell you: with good reason. 

My husband and I eventually decided to just read them aloud together, and we loved them. I wanted to hit these right out of the gate while my resolve to read them was high, so The Hobbit was the first novel I read this year, and upon finishing it I immediately started The Fellowship. But after the first chapter, I stalled. I wanted something cozy and familiar while the world outside was wrapped in snow, and then I had to read books for book club, and I ended up setting The Fellowship aside. Cody started it as well, and also stalled. Sometime towards the end of February or early March, we decided to join forces and read them aloud, and while that meant going through them more slowly because we had to wait for times that we could be together to read, it was the best decision. It feels like a fitting way to get my introduction to the books reading them with the man who made me fall in love with the story in the first place. And we both now have an even deeper affection for this story. By the time we came to the final chapter last week when Frodo leaves Samwise to go to the Grey Havens, I was sobbing so hard Cody had to take over reading. This story is so beautiful and powerful, and I truly cannot say enough good things about it. I am genuinely sorry I didn't read The Lord of the Rings sooner in life because it's a book I would have already read again. 

As for the movie adaptations, Peter Jackson did a magnificent job with them. I was a little worried that my love for The Lord of the Rings adaptations was misplaced after Cody and I went to see the first two Hobbit movies and hated them. (I was so angry after the second one, I still have never seen the third one.) But he was much more faithful to the books for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the care with which he handled it shines through. We can still enjoy the movies after reading the books which is a relief. And hilariously, after reading The Return of the King, I'm now disappointed at how rushed the ending of the movie is. I'm not sure why Jackson decided to give Aragorn such a struggle with his identity; in the books Aragorn is very sure of himself and his place in life, and he is the undisputed leader of the Fellowship unlike in the films where it seems more like Gandalf holds that role. I wish he would have done better by Faramir and Éowyn, and I'm disappointed that Beregond was not portrayed at all in the films, but overall, a fantastic effort to bring this epic to life. 

It's very hard to choose a favorite character overall from this brilliant tale, but after being immersed in Middle-earth and becoming more intimately involved with every character for the better half of this year: my love and esteem for Master Samwise Gamgee is unmatched and unrivaled. He is the true Hero among heroes, and I will love him till the day I die. (And maybe even after. I think these books have possibly won a spot in Heaven.) I'm so glad I went to Middle-earth this year, and I hope to go back before my life is through. This trilogy gets all the stars and my highest recommendation with the advice to push through The Fellowship (it was a little slow to get started) because it just keeps getting better and better. 

Have you read (or seen) the Lord of the Rings? Who is your favorite character? And what books have you been reading lately?