Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Summary: "Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time."

Review: So... this one was DIFFERENT. I mean, I had expectations from this book. Plot-wise. And this was... unexpected.

The distinction I keep seeing in reviews of this book is that this book is a love story, not a romance. Which is true. But I feel like it's also a book that just happens to have a love story in it. It's more of a meditation on life and death, and on what makes a life worth living.

I really liked how gradually the love story played out. I've been reading a lot of shorter books lately, and short books don't have a lot of time to develop a relationship. So people meet and pretty much fall in love right away. But because this book is longer, it was able to take its time with that and be subtle, so I as the reader was able to catch on to how Lou and Will felt about each other before they did.

Goodreads Shelves: addictive, be-proactive, bechdel-test, funny, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman, thought-provoking

Rating: 

Super Six Sunday: Six Authors on my Auto-Buy List

So this is my first week participating in Super Six Sunday, and I actually can't come up with six items for my list! I'm pretty picky with authors, and there aren't many whose books I'll buy before reading them (especially not at full price...!). But here are four that I'll pretty much pick up whatever they're selling.

1. Lois McMaster Bujold

Although I wouldn't describe my reading taste as heavily sci-fi, my favorite author is a scifi/fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold. I have read everything she's ever written, and I will continue to do so. Until my dying day.

2. Cassandra Clare

I'm not entirely sure where this comes from, I'm not gonna lie. I don't read Cassandra Clare's stuff and think, "Wow, this is the best written book ever!" But I can always count on her stuff to get me out of a reading slump, and I LOVE her wit. So I'll go with that. I'm a sucker for witty repartee.

3. Jill Mansell

Speaking of getting out of a reading slump, Jill Mansell is my go-to for that. Normally I would criticize someone severely for this, but I LOVE that her books are pretty much all the same. Always a spunky main character, hunky main man, supportive best friend who has a side romance of her own, and a parent-age couple who finds love late in life, one of whom is usually famous. I LOVE THEM. I actively try not to read too many all at once, because I want to savor them. True story.

4. Sheila A. Nielson

I know her!! Back when I used to work at a library, I was friends with a children's librarian who kept getting asked about mermaid books. She found that there just weren't enough, so she wrote one! Sheila, when is your next book coming out?? I WILL buy it.

Just to make it to six, I'll throw out a couple of bonus authors:

Bonus 1: Jane Austen

I've read them all. (Well, all six that are "cannon," as it were. I'm not a true fanatic until I've read the lesser-known works, such as Lady Susan and Sanditon. I know this. Let's move on.) You can get me to read or watch pretty much anything if you throw in that it's based on Jane Austen novel. 

Bonus 2: Stephenie Meyer

I enjoy hating her books. I enjoy it a lot. So much so that I ALMOST even enjoy the books themselves. Almost. Anyway, if she's written it, I'll probably give it a shot.


Edited to add:

Oh, I just thought of two more!! I don't buy all their books, but I HAVE read them all.

5. Michelle Jaffe

Have you read Bad Kitty? Why not? It's HILARIOUS. It's the funniest book I can think of. I don't usually laugh out loud when I'm reading books, but I laughed out loud at this one. Many, many times.

6. E. Lockhart

Frankie Landau-Banks is my hero, and if I thought my husband would let me get away with it, I would name my next daughter Ruby after Ruby Oliver.

Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton

Summary: "Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story...Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a sizable estate--if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage. What begins as a fairy tale becomes a mystery--and a ghost story--in an improbably cozy setting, as Aunt Dimity's indomitable spirit leads Lori on an otherworldly quest to discover how, in this life, true love can conquer all."

Review: So I finally got around to giving these a try. I've gotta say, I liked it. I like Lori and how she's not afraid to be prickly with people. She's going through a big loss, and she needs time to recover from it.

I like that the mystery isn't a murder mystery; my friend who likes these books likes them for that reason. Even though it's a mystery that you're trying to solve, it's not terribly scary or nightmare-inducing.

I think I'm gonna try to keep reading this series.

Goodreads Shelves: addictive, bechdel-test, fluffy, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman

Rating: 

Dancing with Fireflies by Denise Hunter

Summary: "Jade returns home to Chapel Springs after years of protecting her fragile heart. Then along comes Daniel, making her long to dance again.

Creative and complicated, Jade McKinley felt like a weed in a rose garden growing up in Chapel Springs. When she left, she thought she’d never look back. But now, pregnant, alone, and broke, she has no other choice but to return.

The mayor of Chapel Springs, Daniel Dawson, has been an honorary member of the McKinley family for years. While his own home life was almost non-existent, Daniel fit right into the boisterous McKinley family. He’s loved Jade for years, but she always saw him as a big brother. Now that she’s back, his feelings are stronger than ever.

As Jade attempts to settle in, nothing feels right. God seems far away, she’s hiding secrets from her family, and she’s strangely attracted to the man who’s always called her “squirt." Finding her way home may prove more difficult than she imagined."

Review: So I had written a review that I got really really worked up over, and it was a little more… passionate, as it were… than I wanted to be. So here’s a summary of the problems I had with the book, and just know that I feel fairly strongly about them.

-I think Daniel needs a little more self-respect. Being willing to be with a girl even though she keeps telling you she doesn’t love you is kinda pathetic.

-I think the benefits of therapy get downplayed in books like these. Yes, God can heal you, but He also created things like therapists and depression medications, and those heal you, too. And sometimes the notion that God will heal you “if you just have more faith” can make emotional distress worse, because when you don’t get better, you assume you are the problem and get even worse.

In a nutshell, those were my big issues.

That being said, the book was cute enough.  I liked the big family Jade is part of, and how supportive everyone is of her pregnancy. I liked that the religious aspects of the book are subtle; it's not preachy or anything. If anything, it could have used a little bit more; Jade's loss of spirituality is mentioned, but it's not a big plot point or anything. This book is more about the healing power of love than the healing power of God, for the most part. I like Jade and Daniel, as people. And in general, I like their relationship; it's really natural and sweet, and the sort of relationship I would want for them.

Goodreads Shelves: addictive, bechdel-test, fluffy, is-this-a-kissing-book

Rating: 

**I received a digital ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Dancing with Fireflies comes out on March 11.**

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Use Grammarly for online proofreading because only you can prevent metaphorical forest fires of grammatical ignorance! 

Summary: "• Pride and Prejudice was only half the story •
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them. In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice,the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own."

Review: So my first exposure to this novel came from this, my reaction to which was along the lines of, "haven't we had enough of Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice? Except, apparently, combining them..." followed by a weary sigh. In addition to my amazement that the movie had ALREADY been optioned, despite the fact that the book wasn't finished being written yet...

That being said, it turns out to be a pretty good book. I like seeing the day-to-day operations of the house and understanding the sort of work that goes into keeping a house like that running. It's interesting to see the Bennet family from the servants' point of view, and to understand that even though they consider themselves "poor" as compared to their peers, they're still firmly upper-class as compared to their servants.

The plot is interesting to me; at the time, it's fascinating and engrossing, but looking back at it, it's pretty straightforward and simple. Which is rather Austen-esque, now that I think of it. You get caught up in it, and then look back and realize not much happened.

Goodreads Shelves: bechdel-test, is-or-would-be-a-good-movie, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman, thought-provoking

Rating: 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Summary: "'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view .. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.'

Tomboy Scout Finch comes of age in a small Alabama town during a crisis in 1935. She admires her father Atticus, how he deals with issues of racism, injustice, intolerance and bigotry, his courage and his love."

Review: I can't believe I hadn't read this one until now. Most people read it in school, and I guess my class read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn instead?

I really liked it, though. I like Atticus, and how he's a good solid moral compass, not just for Scout and Jem, and not just for the book itself, but for the reader to look up to and admire. I like that he's human and makes mistakes, especially one like assuming that people are not going to be cowards (spoiler: sometimes people are cowards).

I like Jem's journey, and I feel like the author did a good job capturing "teenage boy". Even when Jem wants to be a good kid and do the right things, he's still a little harsh towards Scout while he figures himself out.

I'll probably be rereading this one from time to time.

Goodreads Shelves: bechdel-test, i-feel-so-smart-now, is-a-movie, my-kind-of-woman, thought-provoking

Rating: 

The Four Doors by Richard Paul Evans

Summary: "Bestselling novelist Richard Paul Evans has met hundreds of thousands of people and heard many of their stories in his travels over the past two decades. Most of the people he meets are hungry for inspiration; they love his novels because his characters are also searching for meaning and understanding.

The Four Doors is Evans’s message to those who seek inspiration in their lives. It began as a talk he gave on the spur of the moment, and over the course of ten years, it has evolved into a message he has shared with successful business people, students, and even addicts and prisoners. It includes stories his readers have told him, stories about great achievers who overcame hardships, and stories about his own struggle growing up in a large family with financial difficulties and a suicidal mother, and about his diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome later in life. These inspiring stories are woven through his identification and careful explanation of the four doors to a more fulfilling life:

BELIEVE THERE’S A REASON YOU WERE BORN

FREE YOURSELF FROM LIMITATION

MAGNIFY YOUR LIFE

DEVELOP A LOVE-CENTERED MAP

Evans believes that we all want to know the meaning of our lives. In The Four Doors, he shows how even the most quiet life can be full of purpose and joy, if we choose to take that first step over the threshold."

Review: So I've never read anything by Richard Paul Evans, and to be honest, his books always struck me as being kind of cheesy. (Pretty much anything that can be described as "heartwarming" does; it's just a prejudice I have.) I might have to start reading his fiction, though, because I really liked this one.

This is a pretty great book. It's short, which means there isn't much to it, but what IS there is really good stuff. Just a few pieces of advice for ways to make your life what you want it to be, instead of what it is. If you feel like you don't have control over the things in your life and like you don't like where life has brought you, you should give this book a shot. It might be the little nudge you need to get yourself somewhere you'd rather be.

Lately I'm really loving books that motivate me. I've been having motivation problems in my life, so I really like books like this one, that make me want to DO things to make my life (and MYSELF) better.

Goodreads Shelves: be-proactive, i-feel-so-smart-now, thought-provoking

Rating: 

What I'm reading these days

Ugh, I feel stretched these days. I have about a million different books that I'm reading on a million different devices. Paperback, hardback, nook, iPad, computer... they're everywhere! My priorities are leaning towards library books and the ARCs I have from NetGalley, though, so I'm working hard on those.

I'm still in the process of figuring out how to get things done beyond just taking care of the baby. After four and a half months, I'm starting to get it worked out, but it's hard to get motivated! (That's why I liked Drive so much.) So wish me luck to get some books finished!

(Also, does anyone wanna buy me one of those new Nook Glowlight things? Anyone? Bueller...?)

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Summary: "Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people—at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

*Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Drive is bursting with big ideas—the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live."

Review: I'm so proud of myself for actually finishing this book!

I actually started it a couple years ago when the company I was working for started an informal "lunchtime book club" thing... but I left before we had our discussion about this one, and I never went back and finished reading it. Until now.

Fascinating stuff. I've always worried about myself a little, because I have a hard time motivating myself to do things. Some of this I credit to the theory Pink talks about from Dr. Carol Dweck, who says that sometimes smart people don't try hard because instead of seeing problems as opportunities to grow, they see them as tests of smartness. If intelligence is a quality you're born with in a finite amount, then when you see a problem you can't solve, it becomes a sign that you don't have enough intelligence to solve it. However, if intelligence is seen as a quality that can be enhanced through hard work, then tests merely become opportunities to learn.

This book really helps me see myself in a motivation paradigm beyond "if I do this I can have this reward," which is a relief because I've never felt that I respond strongly to that motivational style.

Reading this book is also what helped motivate me to start up my book blog again. As I read, I thought about how I'd kind of abandoned the blog when my life had some big changes, and how I always wished I could go back and start it up again. And now I have! :)

Goodreads Shelves: i-feel-so-smart-now, nook-book, read, thought-provoking

Rating: 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Summary: "Forced to leave her sunny Caribbean home for the bleak Connecticut Colony, Kit Tyler is filled with trepidation. As they sail up the river to Kit's new home, the teasing and moodiness of a young sailor named Nat doesn't help. Still, her unsinkable spirit soon bobs back up. What this spirited teenager doesn't count on, however, is how her aunt and uncle's stern Puritan community will view her. In the colonies of 1687, a girl who swims, wears silk and satin gowns, and talks back to her elders is not only headstrong, she is in grave danger of being regarded as a witch. When Kit befriends an old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, it is more than the ascetics can take: soon Kit is defending her life. Who can she count on as she confronts these angry and suspicious townspeople?"

Review: So it had been a while since I read this one, and I had forgotten a lot of it. And I'd forgotten how much I liked it.

So good! It's a great book about coming of age and kindness for others, and adjusting to the people around you while staying true to who you are.

And sure, there are a couple of stereotypes (for instance, Goodwife Cruff and Mercy don't have too much character development beyond Woman Who Is Mean To A Young Girl For No Apparent Reason and Crippled Saintly Sister, respectively), but there are also characters who overcome their initial stereotypes, like Kit's uncle Matthew, who comes through for Kit despite how much he looks down on her lack of a work ethic early in the story, and Dr. Bulkeley, who insists in treating Mercy's fever, despite strong political differences with Matthew (and also despite being SUPER pompous early in the book).

I also liked all of the romances portrayed; they were all pretty natural and realistic, despite the use of my least favorite plot device: "I LOVE him! I ALWAYS loved him! I just never realized it until now!" Ugh. Gag. (Not to say that it doesn't happen in real life, because it does, but not as often as it does in books and movies.)

Overall, it was great to read this one again.

Goodreads Shelves: addictive, bechdel-test, i-own-it, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman, read, thought-provoking

Rating: