What I Read in 2017

Let me start by saying it wasn't nearly as much as I'd planned to read.

Gosh, somehow, after Friday morning, July 28th (when Atticus got the cancer diagnosis), the year just kind of got away from me. August was that blur of tests and MRIs and scheduling and worrying. It wasn't always easy to concentrate. I do remember finishing Middlemarch while I was staying in the hospital with Atticus. He was asleep one morning, and all was quiet, even the nurses and their ever-present checks on vitals. Then there were blurry days of recovery at home, and difficulty concentrating again, and just as he was getting back to some semblance of normal, the blurriness, the tests, the doctors' appointments were happening with Betsy.

And yet.

Books.

The one constant in our lives.

The list is all I have time to share today, but in the days to come, I hope to blog more about what I loved, what I didn't, and what I want to read in 2018.


The 2017 Book List (including read-alouds with Ramona):

The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron
Anne's House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery
The Spindlers, Lauren Oliver
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Magnolia Story, Chip and Joanna Gaines
Stitches, Anne Lamott
Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham
11-22-63, Stephen King
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Dragonspell, Donita K. Paul
The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill
Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin
Echoes, Maeve Binchy
The Year of Living Danishly, Helen Russell
Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
Black as Night, Regina Doman
The Wheel on the School, Meindert deJong
The Mother Daughter Book Club, Heather Frederick Vogel
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Beauty & the Beast (a Camp NaNo novel by my daughter, Betsy)
A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny
Emma in the Night, Wendy Walker
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
Our Souls at Night, Kent Haruf
Design Your Day, Claire Diaz Ortiz
Untitled (Another NaNo book by Betsy)
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery
Reading People, Anne Bogel
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
Emily's Quest, L.M. Montgomery
The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin
The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher
Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
Dark Matter, Blake Crouch
Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown

~~~~~

What did you read last year?

Recent Reading: The Year of Living Danishly

I did a double take the first time I saw this writer's name. Helen Russell was the name of my theater professor in college and I didn't think my Helen Russell was still around, much less that she'd just spent a year in Denmark testing the happiness waters. I was right: this is not my Helen Russell in any way, shape, or form. This Helen Russell is a British freelance writer who was living in London, and was married to a man who was offered a job at Lego. (It sounds like the beginning of a storybook: Once upon a time, there was a man who went to work at Lego....) 

Lego beckoned (don't Legos always beckon?) and so Helen and Lego Man, as she calls him, moved. Helen, being a journalist and needing to fill the roughly 675 hours a month that it's dark in Denmark in the winter, decided to write about the adventure. She and Lego Man gave themselves a year to decide if they really wanted to make the Land of the Best Pastries on Earth their permanent home or not. She also set out on her own kind of happiness project to discover why Danes are considered the happiest people in the world. (Something to do with the pastries, was my guess.) 

The Year of Living Danishly was delightful, informative, and witty and it had me debating the merits of moving to a Nordic Wonderland. I told Atticus this morning that the whole time I was reading, I found myself nodding, thinking, "Yes, I could do that. I could live there. I wonder if..." and then I'd have to shake it off, return to reality, and remind myself that moving to Denmark is not an option in our lives. This is not a real thing for me. Not now. Not ever. It's just not. But the pastries...And the pace....

(No. We are not moving to Denmark. We're not even contemplating it. Stop acting like it's a conversation you're going to have with Atticus, Karen.) 

I think if there was a place on earth where I could have the lifestyle of Denmark (minus some of its quirks, because, let's face it, it's majorly quirky*), along with their entire nation's stock of candles for proper hygge-ness, and we could throw in their education and healthcare systems, and experience an average daily temperature that approximates San Diego, and I could be promised a few million more hours of sunshine, I might have a real pro and con list to compose.  

But until I find that place, I'll have to content myself with living Midwesternly. It's not quite the same, sigh. Though happily I can say that we at Casa Edmisten are all about the hygge. And books. Witty books like The Year of Living Danishly. 

*Adding a brief caveat: be aware, if you are sensitive to such things, that Russell does explain the generally casual approach many Danes have to certain intimate things, just fyi. 

What a perfectly lovely book

"Reason, beauty, poetry, and excellent conversation were his preferred tools for settling disputes." 

-- The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill 

Bits and Pieces of Our Reading Life

I haven't read much this weekend. I was walloped with Atticus's cold on Friday night, and I've spent the weekend mostly craving naps.

But here's a rundown of 2017-Reading-to-Date:

The Highly Sensitive Person (mentioned in this post) by Elaine Aron.

Anne's House of Dreams, by L.M. Montgomery. Sigh.

The Spindlers, by Lauren Oliver (Ramona had read this one and told me how imaginative she thought it was. I read it, too, so we could talk about it.)

The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin (Read-aloud with Ramona. It's a fun murder mystery for middle-grade/YA. We both enjoyed it.)

The Magnolia Story, by Chip and Joanna Gaines (Ramona and I are listening to the audio book together. Chip and Joanna read, so it's delightful. We've had fun watching Fixer Upper together, too, which we only just discovered last fall. I liked the first season the best, as the clients and the budgets just seemed more real.)

Stitches, by Anne Lamott I'm about halfway through this one. I love Anne Lamott because she's so honest and real.

"What I resist is not the truth, but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I'm going to go hide in the garage.'" 

~~ Anne Lamott