Week 46: Captain Underpants

This week's books:
The Captain Underpants series
By Dav Pilkey

These last few weeks, our house has been filled with discussions of Captain Underpants. Our almost six year old has discovered a love for all things related to this young reader series. Everytime he gets dressed, our little man has to run around in only his underwear yelling “tralala I’m Captain Underpants!” There are twelve books in the series and I'm pretty sure we're already on the sixth book. We have already watched the movie adaptation twice on Netflix.
When our son's passion for this skivvy clad superhero started, I wanted to feed this reading love of books.

His kindergarten year was not great. Between the teacher he had and how shy he was/is, our little guy wasn't advancing how he should in his reading skills. Well, once we started reading this series, I wanted to make sure we kept having him wanting to read and hear the stories. So started my mad dash of going everywhere I could think to pick these books up. All book stores and libraries were searched. I ended up ordering a lot of them from eBay.

If you don't know this series, it's definitely a kids book for early elementary school kids, but it is cute. The stories are about these two little fourth graders that are trouble makers and how they draw these comic books. Their favorite story to draw is Captain Underpants, and somehow they hypnotize their mean principal into thinking he is Captain Underpants. A lot of the jokes consist of potty humor, but the author does throw in some humor for the parents that are either reading the book or helping their child read the book.

If you have a young reader I would definitely recommend it. At my book group, a couple of the other people at group agreed that their grandchildren liked the series as well.

Week 45: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

This week's book:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
By Lisa See

Oh my God, did I have a hard time with this week's book. It took me FOREVER to read a book that was only 253 pages. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I can normally get through a book that length ridiculously fast; not this time. This post is four days late because I had such a hard time reading the book. Both of my kids are home for the summer and one of my best friends has been living with us for a while, so I don't really have extra time to read a book I wasn't enjoying.

This week's book is for my book group. Like almost every book this past year for the book group, it was suuuuper depressing. The book is the life story of Lily, a woman in China in the 1800’s. We learn about her life from the age of six until her early eighties. She has her feet bound and has an arranged marriage. The main plot point is that she is sorta coupled up with another girl who is her same age and all of the “stars have aligned” that they will be best friends forever. We learn all about all of the ridiculously depressing things that happen in their lives. Their loved ones keep dying in super depressing ways. The whole story keeps coming back to how women are just useful for having sons. The main character and her friend are just pooped on over and over.

If you are into asian culture and Chinese history then this might be the book for you. I personally haven't ever been obsessed with all things Chinese, so I wasn't crazy about the book. I learned a lot and that was nice, but as suggesting it I say...meh?

Week 44: Dad is Fat

This week's book:
Dad is Fat
By Jim Gaffigan

Since this weekend is father's day, I thought I would discuss a book I bought my husband a while ago so we could read it together. Jim Gaffigan is so flipping funny and my cousin recommended the book. Jim Gaffigan happens to be the father of five children and this book is one of those books that makes parents laugh.

Before children, I never understood how parents could complain or think other people talking about being a parent could be all that funny. Well, now that I am the parent of two awesome but tiring children, I get the humor. But there are always two kinds of parents talking about their kids in a funny way, there are the "my kids drive be crazy but I love them" types, and then there are the "I kinda hate my kids because they are monsters" types. I have never liked the hating on my children type of humor, my kids might be one of the only cool things I do in my life so let's not be too mean. But Gaffigan is down right hilarious in this book and you can tell all of his jokes are out of love.

The book is set up as most stand up comedian books are written, with short chapters that consist of different routines they may have done in the past. This type of book is great for short snippets of reading before bed, and aren't meant to be read for long periods of time.

If you like books written by comedians, you like Jim Gaffigan, you are a parent of young children, or you have a pulse really, read the book. I loved it!

Week 43: Murder on the Orient Express

This week's book:
Murder on the Orient Express
By Agatha Christie

Okay, I know I'm way overdue for this week's book. It has been a ridiculous week. One of my best friends since birth has moved back from California and is living with my hubby and I while he looks for job here in Indiana. My other bestie had her long awaited baby boy this week as well. It has been a long road to finally have her become a Mama and I was an emotional mess of happiness all of Friday. Along with big changes in my two friend’s lives, my little man is adjusting to being home for the summer and having to listen to his mother, AKA I'm constantly either having to raise my voice or reason with a tiny version of myself and feel like I'm going insane. I know I was a poop when I was little, but Lord give me strength.

Anyway, I read an Agatha Christie classic because the last few books have had to read for different reasons have been such heavy topics, I thought a good mystery would be great. Well I always kinda forget how much I don't understand or enjoy mysteries as much as I think I am going to. I mean it's always about lying and I can't stand people that don't tell the truth. Murder on the Orient Express is a classic and I'm glad I read it, but there are a lot of characters and they keep changing their names, which is confusing. Apparently, there is a new film version that has come out recently which I might check out, I'm better with faces than names if I'm going to be honest, which might help me out with the plot.

All in all, if you like mysteries then you have likely already read this, so I'm not going to recommend it. If you haven't already done so do it now. Just because it's not my cup of tea doesn't mean it's not going to be yours.

Week 42: Just Mercy

This week's book:
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
By Bryan Stevenson

This week's book was for book group. We have read a lot of depressing as hell books this year and this week's book was no different. I am going to be honest here, it took me a couple of weeks to finish the book. It's only about three hundred pages, but every time I picked it up I would put it down after a few pages.

The book was written by one of the most influential lawyers in the United States of the last thirty or so years. He has worked on getting people off of death row who were either wrongly charged or received too much prison time for the crimes they commited. The book definitely had one major case he was working on but it was filled with all of these other little vignettes of all of these people who were wrongly charged for crimes that they either didn't commit or were one of many people involved with the crime. There were also many cases of children with ages as young as thirteen being sent to adult prisons for life for nonviolent crimes.

A fellow book group member and I agreed that the book depressed us greatly. The couple that lead discussion (and brought the snacks as well) spoke about how the book didn't make them sad, it angered them. It spoke about how young African American males have such a higher rate of being incarcerated than anyone else. The book also discussed that through the 1990’s until the early 2000’s, prisons were for profit, so more and more people were being sent to prison for smaller crimes for longer periods of time.

The lawyer has worked very long and got a lot of people off of death row. He along with his team has gotten some laws changed so minors can't be put on to death row for nonviolent crimes. Also minors shouldn't have life in prison for small crimes. But one of the biggest changes he was able to do was that he made it so different states can't execute minors or a mentally ill person.

During our discussion, our book group was discussing how we need to make a difference about how people in prison are treated in and after they have served their time. In theory it sound like a great idea but I wouldn't even know where to start. Our church has started a program were we have started helping people on parole, which is great, but I'm not sure what else can we do. I would love if people would start making better choices or no one would ever be in a situations where nothing negative happened, but that isn't the state of the world. I was left after finally finishing the book feeling devastated that the world is crap. I finished the book in bed last Friday night. I was alone that night with the kids because my husband was having a fun night with his two older brothers. I was taking a break from the book to check out Facebook (kinda mentally check out) and all these reports were coming in about the school shooting. It was all too much.

Perhaps if I was in a better head space when I was trying to read this book I could have enjoyed it more, or had a drive to help. I have had a hard time recently and I just don't have enough energy to join a cause that I fear isn't ever going to change. The book was very well written and I would recommend it if you need a new cause to dive into. If you are a stay at home mom trying to make it through having a sick baby and a little guy having a hard time with his kindergarten teacher, then I would not recommend it.