What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff

What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this book week by week with my last pregnancy, and I think it was a waste of precious time and effort I should have spent reading about actual newborn and toddler care. There are very small sections about what's happening to the baby and your body every week. For this, you can get better information from Babycenter or The Bump delivered right to your email each week.

Then following the section on what's happening that week, there's a lot of information on any number of questions a pregnant woman might have that month. This might have been useful once upon a time, but now it makes more sense to Google any symptom you have a concern about, rather than reading about a lot of symptoms you don't have. What would be more helpful is a book that covers the things you actually should watch out for or worry about even if they seem innocuous.

Most importantly, your time is better spent with baby books. When our baby arrived I had trouble breastfeeding, the baby was extremely fussy, and eventually he developed all sorts of sleeping problems. Of course, once he was here, I didn't have much time to read books about all that, and I was constantly exhausted. And unlike with pregnancy symptoms, you can't just Google how to solve your baby's sleep problems.

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Getting Rid of Books! 2013

Well, we've finally started to actually get rid of some of our books. Since getting rid of my dad's books was so hard for me, I started with my own books. Kevin and I have both gone through all the nonfiction books we keep in our living room. We still haven't gone through all the fiction upstairs though, and there's been woefully few dad-books that have left the house. But we've now donated about 23 boxes of books so we're definitely making progress.

Also, even though there haven't been as many reviews as I would like, I have actually started and not-finished countless books that aren't on here, so I'm going to try to wrap some of those up in the near future.

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is pretty well-written for the genre. I first read this when I was in my 20s and the moms were just low-grade villains. But as a mom now, whatever, I want to have this nanny come work for me, and run out of the room whenever my kids get awful. LOL. True though.

The book is still really funny (and anger-inducing) on a reread though.

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Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott

Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This one is the worst of the bunch. It seems mostly occupied with telling you what became of an endless list of characters from the last book, Little Men. They were all children back then and at least had actual personalities. As adults, we just see small snippets of their lives mostly as they meet their significant others. The scenes mostly lack any real depth.

A large portion of the book is about stalking. Tom is obsessed with Nan, and she makes it really clear that she is not interested. He doesn't give up and tries to become a doctor just to please her even though he's worried he might kill patients because he doesn't really care about medicine. Jo is hiding from fans and reporters because apparently back then writers were the Kardashians of the world. Josie stalks an actress, who rewards Josie by offering to train her. Then Tom inexplicably gets engaged to a woman Dora that's primary good quality is that she is not Nan. Is this healthy? I don't think so.

And then Emil, whoever he is, gets shipwrecked. EYE ROLL. More mini-romances follow. And then Alcott's favorite move, the big tragedy.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this last super exciting installation of the Harry Potter series. There are some powerfully courageous parts, wonderfully romantic parts, and devastatingly sad parts in this book.

I was perpetually counting the Horcruxes though, trying to remember what had or hadn't been destroyed. At the time, I was also a little confused by the subplot of the Deathly Hallows (though ultimately it makes sense). And slight spoiler (but it's been over a decade since publication): I was also confused by the fact that technically there wasn't a Gryffindor Horcrux and there were technically 2-3 Slytherin Horcruxes. I also thought Harry Potter jumped to some crazy conclusions sometimes, some that weren't even necessary to further the plot. This last one could have been slightly edited down and the plot could have proceeded a little bit more logically. None of that matters.

I loved it. I loved it just as much on a reread.

P.S. It might be my favorite of the 7 books. Here's my 7 books ranking: 7, 5, 4, 1, 3, 6, 2.

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The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven't read this book in decades and it gave me chills how well this book captured real evil and real love. Well worth rereading as an adult.

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Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian W. Aldiss

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian W. Aldiss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is from my Dad's collection. Before I get to the substance of the book, I think it's worth mentioning that my Dad's copy is from 1960 and it has a cigarette ad insert right in the middle of the book. Wow. Anyway, the novel is about the history of the Earth and our Galaxy in the very distant future. It reminds me a lot of Cloud Atlas, even though it was written so long before Cloud Atlas. I enjoyed it a great deal, and the story felt cohesive though I just noticed when examining the book that many of the chapters were published as short stories before being combined into novel form. Because of this short story format, and because the the story spans millions of years, there isn't a central character, but many small under-developed characters. The story is more central than the characters.

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