Let's Bust a Recap : Pollyanna

Well, despite the fact that I have no less than nine recaps sitting in drafts—some still from last year—I've spent this week blogging about my three most recently finished books. And none from my 2025 book list, to boot! C'est la vie. 

I've loved the 1960 film adaptation of Pollyanna since I was a little kid, and while I thought it would probably be lovely to read the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that inspired this classic, I've never come across a copy or made it a point to seek one out. 

But when my thirteen year old niece got her assigned reading list for school this year and Pollyanna was on it, I ordered a copy immediately and told her I'd happily read it with her.

And what a joy.

If you're unfamiliar with Pollyanna, that extraordinary child, well, don't feel bad because as it turns out, none of my nieces have yet seen the film. I know. It is a situation I will rectify as soon as possible. Pollyanna is the story of an eleven year old orphan sent to live with her dutiful Aunt Polly Harrington. After getting a pair of crutches instead of the hoped-for doll in a missionary barrel, Pollyanna's father makes a game out of finding something to be glad for in every situation. After Pollyanna's father dies and she's sent to live with Aunt Polly, she immediately begins a personal campaign to convert the inhabitants of Beldingsville to her glad way of life—except Aunt Polly who won't tolerate any mention of Pollyanna's father. And so our titular character became a byword for every eternal optimist. (Although calling someone a "Pollyanna" seems to be fading out of the vernacular to my everlasting chagrin.)

For the first eleven or twelve chapters, my beloved movie adaptation starring the perfectly cast Hayley Mills as sunshine-y—but not saccharine—Pollyanna seemed to follow the book to the letter, and I truly wondered if I would get much out of the reading experience. But as is almost unfailingly the case, the book had so much more to offer. One of the biggest changes was making young John Pendleton from Porter's beloved book into a much older man in the film adaptation. In the book, it's more of a mystery who Aunt Polly's scorned lover is and Mr. Pendleton is a strong contender. In my opinion, Porter's original story makes the adoption of Jimmy Bean so much more meaningful. The other big change is the nature of Pollyanna's horrible accident and subsequent care she received from her aunt and the town. The book proves so much better, but I'll always love Walt Disney for bringing this one to life on the screen. 

In case you couldn't already tell, I absolutely loved Pollyanna. It had all the hallmarks of an All-Time Favorite: it made me laugh and cry, I couldn't put it down but was sad when it ended, and it's a book I'm sure I'll reach for again. Yes, read the book; and yes, watch Hayley Mills bring Pollyanna to life. 

So there you go: a short and sweet review for this short and sweet book. What things make you glad?  

Let's Bust a Recap : Julie Andrews

Okay, every time I recap a memoir, I feel like I'm always saying how I'm not really a "memoir girl". And I stand by that, I do. But they have been sneaking into the reading rotation more and more in recent years and I feel the need to say, right at the outset: Julie Andrews' memoirs are the first I've picked up and read for the pure fandom. Mary Poppins was my first ever favorite movie. My mom can attest to the fact that I wore out a VHS watching it on repeat. And as you know, I paid good American money a couple weeks ago to go and see The Sound of Music in the cinema, even though I own it on DVD and just watched it earlier this year. Ever since I was a teeny-bopping middle schooler, Julie Andrews has been my number one choice of the person I'd love to sing a duet with if I could choose anyone in the whole world. When Princess Diaries 2 came out and Raven-Symoné got to sing with Queen Clarisse Renaldi at Mia's bachelorette party, I died a little inside. That could have been me, y'all. And listen, if these references are lost on you, don't sweat it, but maybe go to your local library and check out these movies. You're in for a great time. 

When these memoirs first came on my radar a few years ago, they immediately went on my wishlist because Julie Andrews, duh. And by the time I came across two pristine copies at my local Friends of the Library bookstore a few months ago (for a mere $2 apiece, I might add), I already had my ticket to the 60th anniversary screening of The Sound of Music in theaters. And even though these books were obviously not on my list for 2025, I can't turn up my nose at these serendipitous events of circumstance that life sometimes throws us. So shortly after finishing The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Trapp, I picked up Home, the first of Julie Andrews' two memoirs, published in 2008. 

This book is a memoir of Andrews' early years, starting with a bit of her own family history. Throughout the course of her narrative, Andrews takes us along as she remembers what it was like living in and around London during World War II, her parents' sad divorce that consequently split her and her brother Johnny up between her mother and father, and then beginning voice lessons and touring with her mother and stepfather's vaudeville act. Then getting her big break to star as Eliza Doolittle on Broadway, a role she originated there (oh, to have seen that!). She details more of her stage career leading up to Walt Disney himself contacting her and asking her to be his Mary Poppins. 

While I found this first of her memoirs to have a lot of interesting information, it was a bit slow-going at times. The memories of her early childhood are a bit disjointed (as I imagine most everyone's are), and the details of the different performers and managers she worked with in vaudeville and the stage throughout England were largely unfamiliar to me, making the reading a bit of a slog. 

Her second memoir, Home Work published in 2019, picks up where Home left off, with Julie and her first husband and baby daughter traveling to Hollywood to work on Mary Poppins. This is the book about her Hollywood years—from Mary Poppins to Victor/Victoria—and the flow of this memoir was a lot better, in my opinion. The names cropping up in Home Work were also a lot more familiar to me so naturally it made the reading a bit more interesting. The introduction in Home Work serves as a very serviceable review of Home so unless you are also a diehard fan, I would recommend skipping Home and just reading Home Work. The disappointing thing about her second memoir is that it ends before the infamous throat surgery that ruined her singing voice. While I imagine it wouldn't be pleasant to relive that time in her life for any reason, I was sort of hoping for Andrews' own perspective on the aftermath of that surgery and the impact it had on her life. 

Julie Andrews has always been class personified, and that shines through in her books. Everything in her life, even the difficult things, she writes about with a sort of rose-colored tint to it all—with a spoonful of sugar, if you will. It didn't feel very personal at all, more like she was just relating all the events of her life from almost an outsider's perspective. It was interesting. As much as I enjoyed reading her memoirs, I don't feel as if I really know her any better for it. 

Ultimately, I walked away from these books with a profound gratitude for my own mother. Julie Andrews' mum seemed like a real piece of work, and Julie herself seemed so swept up in her career, her second marriage to a substance-abusing husband, her ideal of living in Switzerland, that she never seemed to prioritize being a stabilizing force in her own children's lives. Her daughter and stepchildren were shuffled back and forth between parents, and the two little girls she adopted from Vietnam were raised by nannies. My own mother is an incredibly talented woman with a remarkable work ethic, and I'm not being glib when I say she could have done or been anything she wanted to be. But she chose to be fully present in the lives of her four children. She gave us the foundation to be anything we wanted to be. And I've watched her be my dad's rock my whole life. We would all fall apart without her, and I'm thankful she didn't leave my upbringing to chance or someone else. 

While I still wouldn't classify myself as a big memoir reader, I appreciate the compassion for others and the gratitude for my own life that reading these books brings up in me. And I guess that's a compelling enough reason to pick one up every once in a while. 

What memoir would you read based solely on your personal fandom of the writer? What person do you wish would write one?

Let's Bust a Recap : Desiring God

In 2003, the third edition of John Piper's seminal work, Desiring God, was published. It was big that year with one of the circles in my church's youth group so, naturally, being the bookworm that I am, I expressed an interest in reading it and my Dad got me a copy for Christmas. Well, I tried to start it a couple different times but never got much farther than the introduction. It's just not very easy to read. And it took me a while to get into it this time around as well. But your girl's not a quitter so I muscled my way through it and now I have a lot of thoughts about it that feel very disjointed so this recap is turning out to be a real struggle. 

Let me begin by saying: overall, I agree with pretty much everything Piper says in this book. It's Biblically sound and doctrinally I align with him.

But let me follow that up immediately with: I fundamentally disagree with the term "Christian hedonist" and as this entire 400 page book is a defense of this label, it was tough sledding at times. Piper himself is quick to admit that his pet phrase is shocking and that many respected theologians he is friends with don't appreciate it either. And he gives his reader permission to dismiss the vocabulary, if not the actual concept. So I have. You will never catch me calling myself a "Christian hedonist" and here's why. Words have meaning. And when you say certain words to people who don't have the time to read a whole book about why that word should mean something different than what they think, you're liable to give them the completely wrong idea about what you're saying. 

Piper quotes Saint Augustine early in the book:

If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, "For the sake of happiness."

This sums up Piper's thesis quite nicely and for the entirety of Desiring God, Piper quotes other thinkers and writers to great effect. So much so that I almost appreciated his quotations more than his original writing. And I'm not mad at that. The idea that as a Christian I should strive to find and do find all my happiness in God and that I cannot be truly happy apart from God is one I wholeheartedly agree with. He works out this concept for the reader in nine different areas of the Christian life including conversion, prayer, money, marriage, suffering, etc. And like I said at the beginning, I agree with his conclusions. The thing that makes this book so difficult to read is his writing. I would start a chapter and within the first quarter of the chapter, I would grasp exactly what he was trying to convey. And then the chapter went on unnecessarily for another three quarters. He would muddy up his clearly stated premise, and then at the end of each chapter offer another clear summary of his belief. Ultimately, I think this book could have accomplished his mission with about half the word count. 

This came as a bit of a curveball for me as the only other Piper I've read (This Momentary Marriage which I read in 2020) I praised as being so clear and straightforward (if a bit repetitive). But given that Desiring God was the third book Piper ever wrote and it came over twenty years—and over forty books!—before This Momentary Marriage, perhaps that makes sense. 

The greatest value for me in reading Desiring God was the reminder, the argument that being a Christian is supposed to be a joyful, happy thing. Piper rightly states in his book that so often in Christendom, the command to deny ourselves is misinterpreted to mean that if we're coming to Christ in a desire for our happiness, our motives are selfish and therefore, invalid. It can feel exhausting at times to be obedient to God and so we like to make that exhaustion in and of itself a virtue. But how better can we glorify God—our chief aim in life—than by being exuberantly, abundantly happy in Him? 

Would I recommend Desiring God? Not to everyone. If you're having a difficult time reconciling how to come to God seeking your own happiness while simultaneously giving Him all the glory, this is your book. If you're feeling cynical and hopelessly weighted down in your Christian walk, give this book a try. I'm definitely glad I read it, though it's not one I would necessarily pick up again. I am looking forward to reading The Pleasures of God which is the next book in Piper's unofficial Desiring God trilogy which concludes with his book Future Grace. The Pleasures of God is my husband's favorite book by Piper and he recommended Desiring God for my book list this year mainly so I could get to The Pleasures of God next.  

The TL;DR version: good, not great; glad I read it, probably wouldn't read again.

What do you think of when you hear the term "Christian hedonist"?

Let's Bust a Recap : Tea with Elephants

Believe it or not, I am still trying to catch up on recaps for books I read last year, and today we're going to cover one of them. Despite this book being by one of my all-time favorite authors with a title that sounds tailor-made for me, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth so I've just been putting off writing this recap even though I've pretty much known exactly what I want to say since finishing this one shortly after it was published last October. 

I mean, "Tea with Elephants"?! Come on. Do y'all remember when I wrote an entire blog post about a tea cup my sister-in-law sent me that was shaped like an elephant? I would have bought this book based on the title alone no matter who the author was, but the fact that Robin Jones Gunn wrote it meant I pre-ordered it immediately after it was announced and opened it up to read as soon as it arrived in the mail. This should have been an easy homerun, and for the most part I really enjoyed it but you guys, ugh. It just didn't do it for me. 

In this brand new series that Robin Jones Gunn is calling "Suitcase Sisters" (which is funny because this book fits solidly into her Sisterchicks format so why the new series?), best friends Fern and Lily end up on the trip of a lifetime to Kenya together, but both arrive carrying some heavy emotional baggage—recent job loss, a strained marital relationship, death of a close family member—and throughout their time together, they do what girlfriends do best: help each other process and heal. 

Like I said, it was mostly a solid offering from an author I love. The descriptions of the lush Kenyan landscape, the exotic animals, and the warm and welcoming people were right on the money. The entitled young influencer Lily and Fern encountered was instantly recognizable. The little Katie Weldon Easter egg for longtime readers was fun. 

But somewhere about halfway through this novel, Lily starts bringing up the fact that Fern has never had a baby and pushing the idea on her even though at no point did Fern bring this up on her own or ask for Lily's opinion. This was not part of the aforementioned baggage that either woman brought with them on the trip. And Fern has a stepson with her husband that she mothered and helped raise. By the end of their trip together, Fern has not only decided she now wants a baby, but when she gets home and informs her husband of this, they immediately get pregnant. This rubbed me so wrong. Now, full disclosure: I am the same age as Fern and Lily in this book, and I also have never experienced pregnancy or childbirth. Whether Robin Jones Gunn intended it or not, the underlying message that your worth as a woman can not be fully realized unless you have brought new life into this world through your body is so damaging. Especially to the countless women who so badly want children and for whatever reason, haven't had any. When I married my husband, I wanted a big family. I wanted to adopt, I wanted to be pregnant, I wanted a house full of kids, and my husband was on board. Over thirteen years later and God did not make us parents. And that's okay. It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows and smiles, but can I just stand up on this soapbox for a minute and say this loudly for the people in the back: you can be a woman and have a joy-filled, God-glorifying, fully satisfying life without ever pushing a baby out of your body. You really can. 

Just for funsies after finishing this book, I did a Google search for books—novels specifically—about women who have dealt with infertility. I found a lengthy list of popular ones on Goodreads. After reading reviews of the top fifteen or twenty in which every single woman or couple dealing with infertility ended up with a healthy child by the end of the book: I gave up. I'm not one to complain about representation in media (I mean, hello, I'm a straight white American-born woman, what do I really have to complain about?), but if any of y'all are sitting on a really great novel in which the female protagonist starts out wanting a big family, for literally any reason discovers that is not going to be her reality, and then she embraces that reality by the end: please pass that title along, thanks.

I know this recap got a little rant-y, and we even entered some spoiler-y territory as well, but I felt blindsided as I read Tea with Elephants and I obviously had some Big Feelings about it. So would I recommend it? I mean, if you want to read Robin Jones Gunn, this isn't the book I'd press into your hands. But if you don't have any underlying trauma surrounding infertility or growing your family, this might be a great option for you. 

Did you ever get blindsided by a book you expected to really love?

Let's Bust a Recap : The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

I have been meaning to read the true story of Fräulein Maria and the von Trapp family since at least college when I went to Austria on a short study tour. The Sound of Music has been one of my favorite movies (and, I would argue, one of the greatest movies of all time) since I was a small child. I can sing every song from the iconic soundtrack—and often do—a power achieved not only from watching the film countless times, but from hearing my mother play the songs on the piano throughout my childhood and learning to play many of them myself. I always knew The Sound of Music was based on a true story, but I didn't realize that Maria herself had written it—years before the film came to be—until much later in my life. I've had my eyes peeled for a copy for years, but never came across one in the myriad bookstores I've visited. After rewatching the film for the gazillionth time earlier this year, I decided enough was enough: it was time to order a copy and finally read it. So in the middle of the night, while my husband was sound asleep (he didn't even make it through the first quarter of the movie), I opened my laptop, found a used copy on AbeBooks, and purchased it for $6.16. Before the book even arrived in my mailbox, I discovered that not only is the movie turning sixty this year, it's being re-released in theaters nationwide for the anniversary, and I'd have the opportunity to see it on the big screen about midway through September. So when the book did arrive, instead of reading it right away, I stuck it on my trusty book cart with the rest of my 2025 TBR and determined to read it right before going to watch the film at my local cinema. 

And come last week, on September 1st, I sure enough picked up The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp and started to read it. 

And it is my favorite book of the year (so far). I laughed, I cried: it was the best of times. 

Originally published in 1949, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers starts where The Sound of Music starts, with mischievous Maria living as a novitiate at Nonnberg. The book is divided into two parts with the first part covering what we see in the film, and the second, much larger part covering the family's story after escaping from Nazi-occupied Austria. While I think The Sound of Music actually does a lovely job with Maria's story, after reading the book I've realized the film gives just a teeny tiny glimpse of a teeny tiny slice of the von Trapp family's life. There was so much I didn't know about the Trapp Family Singers. Like the fact that before Germany annexed Austria, the Trapp family traveled all over Europe singing for monarchs and even the pope. And that to escape Austria, they actually signed a contract for a concert tour in America and moved to the United States where they eventually became citizens and started their own Trapp Family Music Camp. Not to mention the relief work they did after the conclusion of the war to help Austria recover. The von Trapp Family Lodge and Resort is a travel destination in Vermont to this day...and has been added to my personal bucket list of places to go as soon as possible. 

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I picked up this book, but I loved Maria's simple, straightforward writing style, her no-nonsense, honest approach to telling her story, and especially how her deep faith was woven throughout every inch of this von Trapp family history. It was absolutely beautiful to read. And not only that: Maria was funny. Her story of being in the hospital after a surgery to have kidney stones removed and convincing her gullible nurse that the pet turtle Georg brought to keep her company is an animal that feeds on newborn babies' toes had me howling with laughter. I will add that Maria, like all of us, was very much a product of her own time and place in history, and at times it was jarring to see terms pop up in her writing for people of color, including black, Asian, and Native American people, that are no longer acceptable today. There was obviously no malice behind these monickers which made them seem even more out of place in this otherwise charming book. 

I can't recommend The Story of the Trapp Family Singers highly enough. Before I was even halfway done with the book, I texted my mother and told her she needs to read it immediately and I talked to my sister and told her she needs to read it, too. My mother and I, along with my sister-in-law and one of her friends, will be going to see the film based on this amazing story tomorrow night, and I'm excited to watch it once again, this time with a much fuller understanding of what this incredible family went through. 

What's the last book that absolutely delighted you? And do you plan to go see The Sound of Music this weekend on the big screen?

A Word for Wednesday

 "Many a one has lost his faith in God because he first lost his faith in man; 

and again, many a one has found his faith in God again 

because he met a good man who took the bitterness out of his heart."

~Michael von Faulhauber~

Let's Bust a Recap : The Summer I Turned Pretty

Oh hey there! I let another two months slip by without blogging a single thing so I'd say it's high time to revive my little corner of the internet...at least for the time being. I'm hopelessly behind on recaps but I've been too busy having a fabulous summer to worry about keeping up with the blog. My best friend Amy came to visit me twice in July and we decided to read The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy together. I'm pretty sure she finished all three books before I even made it through the first one, but I finally finished them and I'm ready to talk about it.

A few years ago, our fledgling—now defunct—book club read Jenny Han's To All the Boys trilogy, and we all loved it. According to the internet, Han is actually best known for The Summer I Turned Pretty books which she wrote first so after reading and loving To All the Boys, I thought to myself, "Maybe someday I'll pick up The Summer I Turned Pretty." 

I also thought to myself, "The Summer I Turned Pretty could not possibly be as good as To All the Boys, so maybe I'll leave it alone." And I went back and forth like this every time I happened to think about it. So goes the typical internal struggle of your average bookworm. Or at least this bookworm. And then one day as I was scrolling Goodreads, I saw that one of my friends was starting To All the Boys and had previously given The Summer I Turned Pretty five stars. I immediately tapped out a comment detailing my dilemma, and she expressed the similar problem of having read The Summer I Turned Pretty first and loving it so much that she wasn't sure To All the Boys could live up to the hype. Well that did it. I'd read The Summer I Turned Pretty for myself and finally get to the bottom of my conundrum. 

SPOILER: To All the Boys I've Loved Before is far and away the superior trilogy. You just can't beat that killer premise. 

As it happened, I began reading the trilogy the same week the final season premiered on Amazon Prime. It seemed like the whole internet had divided into #TeamConrad or #TeamJeremiah, and even people in my real life were talking about it. At absolutely no point during the vicious cycle of my Jenny Han quandary did I have any intention of watching the show and even more so now that I have read the books I have zero desire to watch it. I am firmly in the camp of if-you-date-two-brothers-you-probably-have-no-business-ending-up-with-either-one-of-them. 

In case you were wondering what this trilogy is even about: I can basically sum it up by saying that over the course of three books, we get a front row seat to our protagonist Belly Conklin's angst over what to do about her lifelong love for Conrad Fisher when his younger brother (her best friend) Jeremiah Fisher confesses his love for her. The first book is completely from Belly's perspective during the summer of her 16th birthday. Every summer of young Belly's life, including the summer she was still in utero, has been spent at Cousins Beach with her mom, brother, and her mom's best friend and her two sons. Belly is the youngest of the four kids and has always felt left out of the boys' club, but this particular summer, she's no longer on the fringe of things. The second book is also mostly from Belly's perspective, but we also get to see behind the curtain into Jeremiah's perspective. And in the final installment of the trilogy, we get a few glimpses into Conrad's perspective. 

It wasn't great, but I will say that by the halfway point of the third book, I was invested and had to know how it would all turn out. Amy and I agreed that the middle book, It's Not Summer Without You, was the strongest of the trilogy, but differed when it came to whether the first or final book came in second: Amy preferred The Summer I Turned Pretty, while I actually really liked the ending Han managed to pull off in We'll Always Have Summer. 

Overall, I don't really understand why these books were such a hit. Belly wasn't a particularly likeable protagonist, and she never really grew up until we were down to the literal last pages. And as for the Fisher boys, I wasn't exactly swooning over either one. But to each their own. As far as my personal recommendation goes, skip The Summer I Turned Pretty but don't miss out on To All the Boys I've Loved Before.

Did you read this trilogy or watch the very popular Prime adaptation? Were you #TeamConrad, #TeamJeremiah, or #TeamGrowUpAndMoveOn?