Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for May, 2015…

Yes Please, by Amy Poehler – All the mavericks in the house put ya hands up!  All the mavericks in the house put ya hands up!  Oops, sorry.  I’ve been re-living my favorite Amy Poehler moments.  Knope We Can!  There I go again.  I’m a big Parks and Recreation fan, and I love Amy Poehler in general, so my mom had the inspired idea to get me Amy’s memoir for Christmas.  And oh, I really enjoyed it.  (Please don’t kill me for saying this, and remember, reading is inherently subjective… but I found Amy’s book to have more substance than Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and to be funnier than Tina Fey’s Bossypants – and I love both Mindy and Tina almost as much as I love Amy, so.)  Amy sprinkles life wisdom in with memories of her childhood and career, and there’s so much gold with the jokes.  (When Amy describes how frighteningly much she loves her sons, I teared up, because it’s exactly how I feel about my kids.)  All in all, Yes Please is pure joy.  If you get a chance to read it, do say “yes, please.”

Best Easy Day Hikes: Buffalo, by Randi Minetor – I picked up this petite hiking guidebook at Wegmans, hoping to pick up a few possibilities for our twelve months hiking project.  There were a few hikes in here of which I wasn’t aware and which I think I’ll check out, but I found myself scratching my head at some of the inclusions and omissions.  For example, Tifft Nature Preserve, Times Beach Nature Preserve, Knox Farm State Park and Sprague Brook Park were all missing.  All of those parks are either in the city of Buffalo (in the case of Tifft and Times Beach) or less than a half hour’s drive from downtown (Knox Farm and Sprague Brook) – so why didn’t they merit inclusion?  Their absence was particularly mystifying given the inclusion of other trails that the author describes as “suburban” or even, in one case, “mangy.”  (Yikes.)  Still a worthwhile read, since it took me all of an hour to read cover to cover and gave me some good ideas for short, easy hikes to bring the kids on this summer.

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, by Ian Droesscher – When I found myself looking for a new book to start on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you!) I knew it had to be this mash-up of Shakespeare and George Lucas.  Oh, my goodness – this was so funny.  (“These are not the droids for which thou search’st.”)  Verily I say unto thee, as a fan of both the Bard and the Jedi, this book was a hoot and a half.  Recommended for bookish “Star Wars” geeks.

Emma: A Modern Retelling (The Austen Project #3), by Alexander McCall Smith – Hmmmmm.  I love the idea of the Austen Project (six authors retelling Jane Austen’s works in a present-day setting); I love the exploration of whether a timeless classic can translate to modern day without losing its essence or charm.  I enjoyed the first installment (Joanna Trollope’s retelling of Sense and Sensibility), but this Emma fell flat for me.  I am a fan of McCall Smith – I love his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series – but I didn’t like his portrayal of Emma.  In this version, Emma herself has all of the egotism, but none of the charm or good-heartedness, of the original.  McCall Smith also writes dialogue in a very distinctive style, and I didn’t think it worked for this story.  It did prompt thoughts about whether all classics, even classics I really enjoy (like Emma) can be called timeless.  Look for a blog post on that.

The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin – I’ve long been meaning to read this yearlong project memoir, and I really enjoyed it.  Rubin approaches her project with an acknowledgement that, while she is in general happy, she could become happier.  She also wants to achieve greater happiness by making small changes, not large-scale changes, in her life.  (She’s happy with her spouse, job and location – no major life adjustments needed.)  I liked her approach and enjoyed reading about her triumphs and setbacks in her yearlong pursuit of enhanced happiness.

Northanger Abbey (The Austen Project #2), by Val McDermid – Yes, I read them “out of order,” so to speak; Emma was due back to the library in seven days so I had to get to that one first, and anyway, it’s not like this is a series that must be read in order.  Anyway, I liked McDermid’s handling of Northanger Abbey.  Catherine Morland is recast as “Cat,” obsessed with Twilight and all things vampire.  McDermid capably updates one of my favorite Austen novels – the story of a young woman away from home for the first time, who embarrasses herself by letting her imagination run away with her.  Fluffy and fun.

The Royal We, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan – Oh, what fun.  What good, good fun.  Cocks and Morgan, the bloggers behind a popular fashion blog, have produced a wildly enjoyable novel based on the romance of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  They don’t even attempt to disguise the fact that this is Will and Kate fan-fiction.  But even though this is essentially “chick lit,” it’s well-written, engaging, and with a cast of background characters who are almost as delightful as “Nick” and “Bex,” the couple at the center of the maelstrom.  (Anyone else just love that terrifying Lady Bollocks?)  I devoured it gleefully (joke inserted for those who’ve already read the book).

Happier at Home, by Gretchen Rubin – I liked The Happiness Project so much that I quickly reserved Rubin’s revisiting of the project (in the form of a school year that she spends focused on making her home a happier place).  While I enjoyed some of her tips, and she is as adept as ever in consolidating her clearly copious research into an engaging text, I did find it slightly repetitive of her first exploration of happiness.  I don’t begrudge her that – hey, if it ain’t broke – but I did skim a bit more.  Still a good read, though.

Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne – Hmmmmm.  I had mixed feelings about this book.  On the one hand, Payne makes some good points about the fruitlessness of cluttering up a child’s environment with too much “stuff” and about the dangers of intruding on children’s consciousness with overly adult messages and plain old TMI.  But he went further, in many instances, than we would ever go in our house.  For instance, MAJOR side-eye to his suggestion that children under eight should have their book collections whittled down to “just one or two favorites.”  Uh, how many languages can you say “H-E-L-L NO” in?  That would so not fly with Peanut.  I’m reading and thinking a lot about simplifying all of our lives these days – more to come on this – and this was an interesting read with plenty of food for thought but, in the end, probably a bit over-the-top for us in certain respects.

Holy nine books, Batman!  I can’t believe I blew through so many pages this month.  The Royal We and Yes Please were the highlights for sure, and I also enjoyed Gretchen Rubin’s meditations on happiness (I think there might be more blog posts to come on the topic – maybe not right away, though; I need to give it more independent thought).  I had a huge library stack to work through – I’m still working on that – but unlike my last library mishap, this one has me feeling more engaged and interested in my on-deck pile than disconnected and exhausted by it.  I’ve been enjoying these books mainly during Nugget’s lap naps, which I’m still loving.  I expect my reading pace will take a hit when I go back to work, but lucky me, I get the summer off before I have to think about that.  I have a pile of books I’m excited to read in June – man, does it ever feel good to be psyched about reading again!