The Biblio Files: 2020

It's that magical time of year when I post all the books that I read during the last fifty-two weeks. The theme for our two-person book club was Classics I Should Have Read But Haven't and included Jane Eyre and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Occasionally we would pick a book that one of us had read but the other hadn't, so not all of them were new, but it was good to revisit. And a big change from last year: I actually read books with my eyes and not just my ears! Starting in October I began using my Kindle Paperwhite a lot more and I really enjoyed having a mixture of audiobooks and print books.

The book club picks (for both book clubs) are italicized, the excellent reads that stuck with me and were profound are underlined, and the books that I read on my Kindle are starred. This list only contains the books I finished, there were several I started and returned to the library without completing. They don't get a place of honor on the list.

January:

1. How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims
2. A Place to Belong edited by Hollie Rhees Fluhman and Camille Fronk Olsen
3. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
4. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
5. The More of Less by Joshua Becker
6. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
8. Spin by Neil Fishman and Harvey Edelman
9. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

February:

1. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
2. The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
3. Sunny by Jason Reynolds
4. Patina by Jason Reynolds
5. Golden Answers by John Bytheway
6. How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age by Dale Carnegie and Brent Cole
7. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

March:

1. Saints Volume 1
2. Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly
3. Saints Volume 2
4. I Saw the Lord: Joseph's First Vision Combined from Nine Accounts by Kerry Muhlestein
5. The Book of Mormon is the Word of God by Ezra Taft Benson

April:

1. Doctrine and Covenants
2. Book of Mormon
3. Funny, You Don't Look Autistic by Michael McCreary
4. Food by Jim Gaffigan
5. Lu by Jason Reynolds
6. Because of the Christ on Calvary by Brad Wilcox
7. Grace Where You Are by Emily Belle Freeman
8. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
9. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
10. Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan
11. Middlemarch by George Elliot

May:

1. The Enchantress Returns by Christ Colfer
2. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
3. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
4. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
5. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen
6. Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
7. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
8. No Time Like Now by Troy Dunn

June:

1. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
2. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
3. Argo by Tony Mendez and Matt Baglio
4. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
5. The Alchemyst by Michael Scott
6. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
7. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
8. The Three Musketeers (abridged) by Alexander Dumas
9. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

July:

1. Austenland by Shannon Hale
2. They Can't Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery
3. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
4. Even This by Emily Belle Freeman
5. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
6. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
7. The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
8. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

August:

1. How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
2. Spirit by David Butler
3. Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
4. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan
5. Without the Mask by Charlie Bird
6. The Condemnation of Blackness Khalil Gibran Muhammad
7. Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad

September:

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. 1984 by George Orwell
5. The Power of Stillness by Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson, Ty Mansfield
6. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

October:

1. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
2. To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
3. P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han*
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
5. Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
6. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
7. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
8. Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han*
9. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
10. Healing from Hidden Abuse by Shannon Thomas

November:

1. Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George*
2. Fathers of the Prophets by Susan Arrington Madsen, Rebecca Madsen Thornton, and Emily Madsen Jones
3. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George*
4. Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George*
5. Covenant Motherhood by Stephanie Dibb Sorensen
6. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
7. Princess of the Silver Woods by Jessica Day George*
8. Born This Happy Morning by John Bytheway
9. Wednesdays in the Tower by Jessica Day George*
10. A Return to Christmas by Chris Heimerdinger

December:

1. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
2. Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl
3. Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
4. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
5. The Mansion by Henry Van Dyke
6. The Book of Mormon
7. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
8. Rising Strong by Brene Bown
9. October 2020 General Conference
10. The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson

Hello, 2021

For the first time ever, we let Sophie stay up until midnight for New Year's Eve. We even let Topher stay up until 9, two hours past his 7 o'clock bedtime. That means we had a bunch of very tired people at our house today and everyone was tucked in early tonight.

To say goodbye to 2020 we ate finger foods

and tamales.

Bryan found these cute cookies that the kids had fun painting before eating. I think this activity filled our gingerbread house quota for this holiday season.

And we ended the night watching the new Pixar movie Soul. It's wonderful and so beautifully done. It prompted many discussions last night and today about big existential questions which Bryan tied back into the scriptures. I don't want to spoil the movie, so I won't say more than that.

We watched the ball drop into a sparsely populated Times Square and chased the kids to bed.

We're really glad it's 2021.

Goal Check

To close out 2020 I decided to look back at the goals I had set for this year to see how I did. 

My goals for 2020:

• Publish a blog post every weekday
• I met this goal. Many of those posts were picture heavy, but with so many cute subjects, that can't really be helped.
• Read at least 52 books
• I intentionally read fewer books than last year, but at the end of November I realized I had read 89 books. And being so close to 100 books was too hard to ignore, so I pushed and read 100 books. I'm actually only 25 minutes away from the end of book 101, but with 26 minutes left in the year, I'm going to prioritize writing this post over finishing my book. I guess it'll be my first book done in 2021.
• Deepen my scripture study and preparation to teach the Come, Follow Me lessons at home and at church
• I really did deepen my study, but it's because in March I became the head teacher for church at home. I'm not sure what this goal would have looked like if I was preparing to teach people other than my children.
• Exercise at least three times per week
• This did not happen. I wish it had, but given the nature of this year, some things had to go. I did exercise a decent amount during the summer, but once school started the workout time dried up.
• Sleep more than I did in 2019 (In theory this one should be easy since I didn't sleep much last year, but sleep is never easy at our house.)
• Hahahahahaha! Nope. 
• Practice the piano at least three times per week
• I aced this one all the way up until quarantine started, then it flipped and became a total fail. But, as with exercise, some things had to go this year. I want to find a way to add this back in, I haven't figured out how yet though.

My big goal for 2021? Keep everyone at my house alive and basically sane. 

Christmas Morning

Christmas Dinner Highlights

When the kids found out what our planned Christmas dinner was, some of them commented that it was very similar to Thanksgiving dinner. Bryan and I agreed, but we like all those foods and we didn't want to take them off the menu. We did try to add some variation though.

Bryan made a melt-in-your-mouth standing rib roast. It was amazing.

Using the drippings of the roast, Bryan made a Yorkshire Pudding. It was delicious and Topher's favorite part of the meal.

We used fancy disposable dishes that upped the class of the meal.

I threw together this spinach salad. I think I ate most of it myself, but it tasted good, so that's okay.

Finally, instead of our usual pumpkin pie, Bryan made an English Trifle. We all loved it.

Christmas Sunday Best

 

Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful

During the last nine months my calling at church as choir director has been essentially on hold. Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, I was asked to put together a virtual choir number. This would be a large undertaking and I knew it depended more on Bryan's willingness to edit it together than on mine to gather in the submissions. He said yes and the music chair and I got to work contacting people in our congregation who had sung with the choir in the past to see if they would be interested in participating. Not everyone said yes, but to those that did we sent an email with an instructional video, an accompaniment video of me directing, and a list of specific instructions. We counted up all those that had said yes and estimated we would have between twenty-one and thirty-two participants. We set a deadline for the videos to be sent in to give Bryan enough time to put it together.

The weekend of the deadline brought texts, phone calls, and emails explaining that people were either too busy, too anxious, or too stressed learning their part. We found a few fixes and extended the deadline. Then we extended it again. The song would be shown on Sunday December 20 and by the evening of December 17 we had, not including our family, eight submissions.

I panicked and sent one more email asking people to help, letting them know that we needed their voices.

We didn't receive any more videos.

On the morning of Saturday December 19 we asked Phoebe and Sophie to put on church dresses and let us record them singing the soprano part, then Bryan recorded himself singing both the tenor and the bass parts. We already had recordings of me singing the soprano and the alto lines. That brought us up to fourteen vocal parts and twelve videos, since we wouldn't be using anyone's face twice.

Bryan spent nearly the entire day and most of the night editing the sound and video. The first time he layered the audio parts on top of each other and played it for me I cried because it was awful. I had faith in his abilities, but the voices and the timing were all so different I didn't know how he would make it work. After several hours of tinkering and tweaking and calling me down to the basement to listen and give feedback, he had a final version. As he played it for me I cried again, but this time because it was so beautiful. Is it perfect? No, but it is certainly more than the sum of its parts. He is a wizard. Seriously.

With the permission of the participants, I share our virtual ward choir's rendition of Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful. The accompaniment comes straight from churchofjesuschrist.org, we have permission to use it.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Jammies

 Merry Christmas from all of us! Also, the first picture feels accurate for this year.

Far Away Family

One tender mercy of the pandemic has been getting to connect with far away family using digital means. This Sunday we were able to participate in the family Christmas party for Bryan's mom's side. We loved it so much! It was wonderful to spend time with them, even though we weren't together in person. Bryan snapped this picture of his grandma, aunt, and uncle, with lots of other family members in little pictures up on top.

Whatchya' Readin'?