2020 books: Easy reading for a hard year

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the year of 2020 sucked. 

That's why my 2020 reading year was all about escapism. I did not challenge myself. I didn't learn anything new. I didn't "make the most of my free time" by tackling all 950 books on my TBR (to be read) list. (I did, however, finally get to a lot of the TV shows I've been meaning to watch for years, so at least I can say I accomplished something worthwhile.) 

This year I simply needed to be entertained. Distracted. Which for me meant a lot of chick lit, a lot of fantasy, and a lot of re-reads. 2020 was a blacked-out Bingo card of Bad Things, but at least the books were good.

Let's get to it.

Goal: 52

Books read: 87

Pages read: 38,765 (446 pages per book, 81 pages per day)

This stat really surprised me. Last year was my banner book year at 101 books read, but this year I surpassed last year's page count by a couple thousand. All year I thought the pandemic hadn't affected my reading volume that much, when in reality I read more pages than I've ever read in a single year. See the next stat.

Longest book: The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (1,443 pages)

But Brandon Sanderson's Rhythm of War deserves a shoutout too. It's "only" 1,232 pages, but I'm pretty sure the word count is higher. 

18 of the books I read this year were over 500 pages. Length does not intimidate me. 

Shortest book: Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler (192 pages)

Weirdly, this book shares a similarity with the two books above: slow plot progression. It was a quick read, just not heavy on plot. 

First reads: 68

Rereads: 19

Books not finished: 14

Another pandemic effect on my reading was that for months I had a reeeeeally hard time focusing, especially during the summer. So if a book didn't grab me right away or required too much concentration, I tossed it.*

Really surprised I only abandoned 14 books. It felt like much more than that.

*I only count the books I finished as "read" for the year. So these 14 books aren't included in any of my stats except this one.

Ratings

I wasn't as willing to settle for mediocre or difficult books this year, so naturally my ratings are higher than usual.

Fiction vs. nonfiction

Not a lot of nonfiction this year. Reality isn't an escapist destination of mine.

Speaking of destinations, this year I tracked the settings of the books I read (when the setting was relevant). This isn't a bad overview of places I turn to when I want to get away from reality.

This graphic is hard to read so here are the highlights: US (54%), UK (17%), Hogwarts (8%), other/unnamed fantasy world (8%), the Middle East (3%), Sweden/Russia/Panem/Mexico/Middle Earth/Switzerland/France/Roshar (1%).

Male vs. female

I think 2020 was the most female-heavy year I've had since I started doing these yearly recaps. Probably because of all the chick lit I read. (I don't love the term "chick lit," but for simplicity's sake I'm going to use it anyway. Just know that I don't consider chick lit a mere guilty pleasure but rather a genre that has produced some really great writing and stories.)   

Where all these books came from

Another area where the pandemic effect comes through. With libraries being closed for a couple months and then having to wait much longer for holds to become available, I turned to my wallet quite a bit more for my book needs. 

Plus I was trying to keep independent bookstores in business by myself. I'm proud to say that none of the books I read this year were purchased from Amazon.

A quick plug on book subscriptions: they are my favorite gifts to give myself. If you're looking for ways to bump up your reading, the Book of the Month Club usually has some great selections (two of my top fiction picks came from this subscription). Peace and Pages is a fun one if you want the book to be a surprise—you also get some other goodies with it!

Favorite book, fiction

You're getting three books this year. Each checked all the boxes for a perfect-for-me book:

• Great writing
• Complex and interesting characters
• Relatable in an unexpected way, made me see the world in a new way, or made me feel things deep inside my soul
• Satisfying ending (which doesn't necessarily mean a happy one)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Literature is full of doors acting as portals to other worlds. That concept is beautifully explored in this novel.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

This book is marketed as a bank robbery that goes comically wrong, but it's really about adults who are failing at adulting in some way. This year, more than any other, I often felt like I wasn't measuring up. Backman captures the fears and anxieties—big or small—that may lie dormant at times but never leave you. Every few pages I found myself thinking, "This book gets me," or "Oh, good. I'm not the only one."

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Addie Larue makes an ill-advised deal with the devil that grants her immortality, but with a price: no one will remember her. Schwab doesn't hold back on exploring the heartbreak of this kind of life, but Addie finds a freedom in it, too. Of all the superpowers I've considered for my hypothetical superhero life, invisibility has the strongest pull for me. When you're invisible, you don't have to act the way society expects you to act. You can go where you're not supposed to go. Find safety from social anxieties and real-life demons. Try things you would never have the guts to do with someone's eyes on you. This book really made me think about what makes life worth living and the sacrifices you have to make to keep what's most important. 

Favorite book, nonfiction: Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl

If you don't count my road trip to the Grand Canyon, I ate inside a restaurant just 2-3 times this year. Reading this book during dine-in and travel restrictions only made me yearn to travel more, but it also helped fill the void. Reichl's food descriptions are so good you can taste the food along with her, and the disguises/personas she created whenever she went out to eat were fun as well. A very well written, entertaining, comforting read. 

Favorite reread: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This book has all the qualities my top fiction picks have. I picked it up again because I remembered being fascinated that each flower has a meaning, but I got much more than that the second time. This is a story about a young girl who triumphs, despite everything in her past working against her. It's a difficult book at times, but a hopeful one.

Book recommendations for every pandemic mood

The books I read this year directly correlated with whatever pandemic mood I was experiencing at the time. Here are some of the highlights.

Let's all make bread: Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan

Not to brag or anything, but I've been making bread for years. So when it became everyone's favorite hobby this spring it was super irritating because I couldn't buy yeast for two months. But, I get it. Everything about bread-making is comforting: the labor, the taste, the smell, the trial-and-error learning process. The Little Beach Street Bakery series is about a woman who loses everything—her job, her house and car, her boyfriend—and moves to a tiny Cornish town by the sea to open her own bakery. Through her I got to live my fantasy of leaving the corporate world forever for a simpler, more charming one, and it helped me get through the worst month of my life. 

Novice gardening: The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

While I was making bread before it was cool, I did jump on the gardening bandwagon this year. My backyard is about the size of a sandbox, so I haven't done anything with it except let the weeds take over.

Summer 2019

So I joined the throng of people flooding Home Depot's website to do something about my weed patch. Armed with long sleeves, gloves, and allergy medication, I waged battle on those weeds and won. It was a lot more work than I anticipated and it took my back weeks to recover (which was less time than it took my back to mostly recover from sitting on a bad chair during that first month of working from home, go figure). But in the end I had an obviously-not-professionally-done woodchip "backyard" to enjoy while I read outside on those glorious summer nights. 

Summer 2020

Around this time I also read a book about a character who joins a gardening club as a way to help her work through the grief of losing her husband a few years earlier. Manual labor is a gift in situations like these, whether you're mourning the loss of a loved one or the loss of normal life. It puts you to work, keeps your hands busy and your mind engaged on a simple task. It certainly helped me get through part of a really rough summer.

(If you are bookishly nerdy at all, I highly recommend Abbi Waxman's next book, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. It's funny and relatable in the most delightful ways. And it confirms my theory that introverts are the funniest people.)

A yearning to travel: The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

Garlic and Sapphires is the obvious pick for this category, but since I already talked about it here's another book that made me want to travel (to Scotland, specifically). It's a book about a writer. She stays in a cottage in Scotland and writes, and when she's not writing she's meeting handsome Scottish men. I cannot tell you how deeply I envied her non-traditional work life. Most of us have to sell our souls to the 9-to-5 corporate life to acquire and sustain independence—a steep price that's worth the cost, however much it sucks at times. Traveling temporarily frees you from whatever keeps you tied down, and this book make me yearn for that freedom.

I am under house arrest: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I've spent most of my year alone. I live alone, work from home, and don't have many social opportunities these days. I'd still say quarantining alone is 1,000 times better than quarantining with roommates—even quarantining with family would be difficult—but it's had its challenges. Too much time with my own thoughts, going a little crazy, time passing differently, that kind of thing. Piranesi is about a guy trapped in a strange house all by himself, and even though this wasn't written to be a quarantine novel, the novel captures the essence of what it's like to be trapped inside a familiar space while the world outside rages with uncertainty. Really strange but cool book.

Escape to a simpler time: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I'm not an Austenite, but I do have an academic appreciation for her work. This year I pulled out my Austen anthology because I wanted to go to a simpler world with simpler problems. And I actually enjoyed it for its entertainment value, rather than just as a literary classic! Jane Austen is a clever, funny lady.

Understanding the darker side of humanity: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

Books on racism and social issues surged this year, but I wasn't one of the many people seeking those books out. The civil unrest I saw in the news every day maxed me out. This book was the exception. Gladwell makes some fascinating points about how bad we are at judging people based on first impressions, which leads to some disturbing situations. This is the book that opened my eyes to the prejudices I have that I didn't realize I had. Highly recommended.

I wish time would go by faster: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I don't read a lot of thrillers and crime novels, but I went through a "just give me lots of action" phase this summer. The way time dragged in 2020 probably had something to do with it. I couldn't force this horrible year to skip to the end, but I could distract myself with books where lots of stuff happens. Most of the thrillers I attempted I abandoned, but I really enjoyed revisiting The Da Vinci Code. English major snobs like me don't have a lot of love for Dan Brown, but I'm not ashamed to admit I like this book. The symbology stuff is fascinating.

Just take me to a whole new world: The Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty (City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper, and Empire of Gold)

Technically these books didn't take me off of planet Earth. They take place in the Middle East, but inside hidden cities only magical beings know about. So it counts. This is one of the best new fantasies I've found in a long time. It takes a little effort to learn the world (at least, it does when your pandemic brain doesn't want to focus), but it ends up being a unique, fun, and diverting reading experience.

All the 2020 books (my favorites are bolded):

1. The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
2. Terror in Paris, Dave Admire
3. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
4. Black Tide, Brett Diffley
5. Black Dawn, Brett Diffley
6. Abigail Adams, Woody Holton
7. Until the Iris Bloom, Tina Olton
8. A Noble Story, David Drayer
9. Something Fierce, David Drayer
10. The Shortest Way Home, Elaine Reidy
11. Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
12. Pearl Tail, M.A. Burk
13. Someday, Someday, Maybe, Lauren Graham
14. Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
15. Tuesday's Child, Carolyn Gibbs
16. Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
17. The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon
18. Writers and Lovers, Lily King
19. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
20. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
21. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
23. The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
24. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
25. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
26. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
27. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
28. In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
29. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know, Malcolm Gladwell
30. Beach Read, Emily Henry
31. The Night the Lights Went Out, Karen White
32. I Miss You When I Blink: Dispatches from a Relatively Ordinary Life, Mary Laura Philpott
33. The Dream Daughter, Diane Chamberlain
34. The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson
35. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
36. A Million Junes, Emily Henry
37. I'd Give Anything, Marisa de los Santos
38. Redhead by the Side of the Road, Anne Tyler
39. A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Diana Gabaldon
40. The Last Flight, Julie Clark
41. The Perfect Couple, Elin Hilderbrand
42. The Infinite Atonement, Tad R. Callister
43. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson
44. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins
45. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Ruth Reichl
46. Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen
47. The Last to See Me, M Dressler
48. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman
49. The Garden of Small Beginnings, Abbi Waxman
50. The House in the Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune
51. The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty
52. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
53. Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer
54. Summers at Castle Auburn, Sharon Shinn
55. Princess Academy, Shannon Hale
56. Palace of Stone, Shannon Hale
57. The Forgotten Sisters, Shannon Hale
58. Why We Sleep: Unblocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker
59. Storm Front, Jim Butcher
60. Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
61. Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
62. The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh
63. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
64. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
65. Kind of a Big Deal, Shannon Hale
66. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
67. One to Watch, Kate Stayman-London
68. Solutions and Other Problems, Allie Brosh
69. 28 Summers, Elin Hilderbrand
70. Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, Nathaniel Philbrick
71. No Unhallowed Hand: 1846-1893, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
72. A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik
73. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
74. The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty
75. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
76. The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
77. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
78. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
79. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Charlotte Bronte
80. Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
81. In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren
82. Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand
83. Winter Stroll by Elin Hilderbrand
84. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
85. Winter Storms by Elin Hilderbrand
86. This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens
87. Intertwine by Nichole Van

Previous years:

2019
2018
2017

2016
2015
2014
2013
2012

A silent summer

 Hello darkness, my old friend.

That's how I greeted most mornings during the Covid summer of 2020. It's the opening line of a song everybody but me knew, "The Sound of Silence," until a TV show educated me. It's been reverberating in my brain ever since I heard it on Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist in April. It haunts the silence of my quarantined life.

Working from home full time while living alone was never a lifestyle I wanted. It's the main reason I never seriously pursued a full-time freelance career because that much aloneness, even for someone who is 92% introverted, is not a healthy way to live. But as a society we've decided that the only definition of health that matters right now is being virus free. 

So my life entered a silence I've never experienced before. The pandemic took away most of my reasons to leave the house and all the variety that comes with each excursion. Live TV entertainment went away for a while, unless you were desperate enough to watch corn hole or golf. (I was not.)

Something had to fill that void, and the void was too big for me to fill with hobbies, exercise, and family visits. 

"Fools," said I, "You do now know
Silence, like a cancer grows"

I had a job, my health, my family, and my faith. A solid foundation for a good, happy life. But the quarantine lifestyle hampered my ability to focus, to be content, to find any silver lining. I wanted to create and learn during my quasi house arrest, but that meant facing the nihilistic boredom first. Something I did not have the energy for.

People writing songs that voices never share

Life was about surviving now, not living. 

But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

These are not silent times we live in; we've been shouting at each other for months about masks and Black Lives Matter and the 2020 election. 

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

The silence I'm talking about isn't a simple lack of noise. It's merely the result of exchanging a complete life for a lonely, unfulfilling one. Our weapon against COVID-19 demands that we do something humanity is not evolved to do: stay away from each other. For months. And months and months. 

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone

This kind of silence consumes you, defines your very existence. 

Until one day you start to believe what you've been telling yourself all along: this, too, will end. Nothing on this earth lasts forever. Not happiness, not suffering.

The song that narrated your life will become a memento of your past. Your favorite season will begin and you'll start talking about the hard times in the past tense. You'll finish the blog post you've been writing for weeks.

You'll find that you can, in fact, manage the silence, even if your situation is unchangeable. And, like this flower in my home-office window, reach through the shadows for the life-giving light.

The great creativity drain of 2020

Document what you're going through, they say. Future generations will want eye-witness accounts of these—here comes the overused phrase we all hate now—unprecedented times.

As someone who writes as a way to navigate through life, I want to regale you with worthwhile reading about challenges we're facing in 2020. But my creative ability has been yet another casualty in a year that has been defined by loss.

But wait! they say. Now you have the time to do all the things you always said you'd do! Power through and make the most of it while you still can!

Instead of jumping aboard the productive optimism train, I fill my free time indulging in comforting activities. Watching TV shows like Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist and Schitt's Creek. Baking bread. Gardening. Walking. Reading the books. Sleeping, even.

That's my contribution for prosperity: I got through a pandemic by making the most of the solitary, no-thinking-required activities available to me. Without feeling guilty about it. Because #Selfcare.

Let someone else write the next great American novel. I'll be outside pulling weeds.

How COVID-19 made Harry Potter more relatable

I allow myself the pleasure of revisiting the Harry Potter series for one of two reasons: 1) the strong desire to be transported back into the wizarding world becomes too distracting to ignore, or 2) I need to escape my present circumstances.

For the reread I just finished, it was the latter. Starting a new job during a pandemic hasn't exactly been a picnic; almost as stressful as the brief unemployment stint that preceded it. "Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home," J.K. Rowling says, and I needed home—a familiar home unaffected by personal and world events—in a big way.

But still the coronavirus would not be ignored. Not only had it changed my work life, my home life, and my social life, but it was bleeding into my imaginary life, too. I started seeing Harry Potter/COVID-19 parallels everywhere. 

Book 2, for instance, might as well be a COVID-19 allegory. Hogwarts is threatened by a monster no one understands. Quidditch is canceled. (I feel your pain on a whole new level now, Oliver Wood.) Lockhart is that guy who thinks he understands what's going on better than people with PhDs and decades of experience. Ernie Macmillan echoes what everyone has been preaching lately when he says, "We're all in the same boat."

There are little moments scattered throughout the series that brought me back to reality, again and again. Witches and wizards just trying to get their essential shopping over with so they can return to their homes, away from the boarded up shops and worried shoppers. Dementors making everyone more stressed, worried, depressed. When the trio is camping for months, Harry feels the isolation deeply, even though he knows his isolation is necessary for his safety and, ultimately, the liberation of the wizarding world. Fred and George can't go to work with Death Eaters after them, so they try to run their business via mail order from their aunt's house. 

Art reflects life, and in this case art became an unwelcome prophecy fulfilled. A picture of what life would become when our world was threatened by something so big it would change even the smallest details of our lives. 

But at least in Harry's case, he got a magical education and exciting adventures. We only get the residual effects of a contagious virus, without J.K. Rowling's hilarious asides to lighten the mood. Harry had foes he could go out and fight, while our best defense is to hide, knowing that there will be casualties whatever we do.

But what I envy most about Harry Potter is this: his battles had endings. He left the Dursleys and found friends. Love. He won Quidditch matches, the Triwizard Tournament. He escaped Voldemort several times, and eventually defeated him. He made mistakes and sustained heavy losses along the way, but always, he got an ending.

What we're dealing with right now doesn't feel like a story with an ending. It feels like a new reality that we're just going to have to get used to. People keep talking about "when life goes back to normal," but the normal we remember may be gone for good. 

We're living in unprecedented times. Not the kind of historical moment that captures people's imaginations and inspires novels about time travelers. But the kind that people read about in history books and say, "Boy, I'm glad I wasn't alive for that."

Closing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the last time always leaves me aching. Not to mention reluctant to return to my world. Even more so this time, since the thing I wanted to escape when I dove into these books just over a month ago is still here. Harry's story ended, but ours is still going, frozen in an unending stream of gray days.

Nobody really wants to live during hard times. Harry didn't particularly like living through unprecedented experiences, either. But he survived it. The bullying, the dangers, the pressures, the heartbreak—all of it. And what are stories for if not to remind us of the resiliency of the human spirit? Maybe we don't get an ending just yet. Maybe we have to settle for a simple reminder that we have what it takes to keep going until one day things are better.

It doesn't seem like much. But, as Harry learns, it's "the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew—and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world" (Half-Blood Prince, chapter 23).

I'll leave you with a few more stray thoughts before I resume my Potterless life.

• This reread was unique because I read the UK editions. I figured it was time I experienced the books in their original language. The differences were most prominent in books 1 and 2; by book 4 the only differences I noticed were spelling and punctuation/grammar. For the most part I loved the covers, but I did miss the Mary GrandPré illustrations. Something to look forward to next time.
• My favorites order has been disrupted again. It's now 7, 3, 5, 6, 4, 1, 2. (My last reread left me at 7, 4, 3, 6, 5, 1, 2.) 5-7 were especially good this time.
• My new favorite character is Harry. That boy doesn't get enough love from the fandom. 
• It took me 20 years to get here, but I finally started to develop some sympathy for Percy. Not joining a Percy Weasley fan club any time soon, though.

Why the shallow things matter

"It's just a game."

"I'm not saving lives, just serving coffee."

"Why don't you get a real job?"

It's hard to argue against logic. A person's life is more important than a basketball game. Doctors do save more lives than servers do. There will always be an easier path to making a living than the starving artist route.

It's true that we don't need sports, dine-in restaurants, conferences, entertainment events, and social gatherings to survive. Technically we only need food, water, and shelter, and the money to pay for these things. A network of loved ones helps, too.

But when life becomes about just the essentials, like it has with the spread of the coronavirus, logic doesn't have as much of a leg to stand on.

I was gutted when the NCAA basketball tournament was canceled. My evenings feel empty without Jazz games.

And while the countrywide quarantine is basically an introvert's dream come true—stay home? I was born for this!—I miss having the camaraderie of coworkers. I was already between jobs/working from home for five or six weeks before everything was canceled and was very much looking forward to face-to-face workplace interaction again. Got two days of it, and then was banished back home indefinitely. Since I live alone, I likely won't talk to a human being in real life until Sunday when I go to my parents' house for home-based church.

All of these non-essential things are feeling pretty important right now. When the world is chaos and nothing feels normal, you need an escape from reality more than ever. But the escapes many of us have relied on to complement our normal lives are no longer available to us.

Only time will tell if we overreacted to the coronavirus or we averted a deadly crisis. But right now, the prevention feels like it's hurting more people than it's protecting. I understand the importance of protecting our vulnerable populations and know we should continue to do so, but we're all missing something right now—because of a virus. My heart goes out to those who aren't getting the income they need right now. To those whose dreams have been shattered because of a pandemic no one understands. To those who are extra stressed because there are fewer things to turn to to help manage that stress.

The shallow things matter. They help transform us from living husks to human beings. They bring us together, give us something to share.

So check up on your neighbors with one of the many virtual tools we're blessed with. Stop hoarding toilet paper. Read a Harry Potter book. Stream a forgotten classic on Disney+. Buy a gift card from a local business. And when there are no more restrictions on public gatherings, show some appreciation for those who live off-the-beaten-path lives so we can be entertained. Enjoy the freedom of being able to hang out with people, even if you hate crowds.

Things suck right now. But life will be extra sweet when we get the missing pieces of our lives back.

Hope vs. despair

"Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom."
–Doctrine & Covenants 88:118

It's not a shocking revelation that the scripture above is one of my favorites. Literature exists so we can learn about ourselves. We write things down to document what we've learned.

Which is why I want to start writing about nuggets of wisdom I find in books I read, as a sporadic feature on this blog. It's not like I ever talk about books, anyway.

And since I opened this post with a scripture, I thought I'd kick off this series with a book many consider to be scripture: The Return of the King.

The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy explores hope and despair, but it's illustrated most beautifully in Book V after the Battle of Pelennor Fields. It's the calm before the real battle starts, a battle that makes Pelennor Fields and Helm's Deep look like warm-up games. They know what's coming because the Palantir has shown them what would appear to be their doom.

Denethor takes this information and despairs. He saw what Mordor was about to throw at them and came to the logical conclusion that humanity could not possibly overcome such odds—and gave up. He justifiably assumed that the only choice left to him was when/how he would die. So he died by fire before the bad guys could take him.

Aragorn and Gandalf saw exactly what Denethor did and came to the same conclusion: we can't beat these guys. But instead of succumbing to despair, they chose to have hope that perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps they just weren't seeing the entire picture. So they drew the armies of Mordor out, that massive army they knew they couldn't defeat, for the sliver of hope that it would help Frodo destroy the ring of the enemy and the source of his power.

We all know how it ends. Frodo succeeds, the world is saved. All because of hope.

I've gotten a lot more cynical as I've gotten older. One side effect being that I've started to view hope as a useless emotion. Hoping for the best is not a plan. Saying "hopefully" before the thing you want will not make it happen. The hope you feel about any given situation will not spontaneously change said situation.

Despite Denethor being the Worst Dad Ever™, I sympathize with him more than I ever have. He gave up when he knew he couldn't win—isn't that the smart thing to do? What can man do against such reckless hate, after all?

Movie Aragorn has the answer: Ride out and meet it.

The king is here to remind us that that's the moment hope changes from a useless emotion to an action. Being hopeful about a situation may not change it, but your actions can. Even a fool's hope can change how you react to a challenge or setback—and as we see with Frodo's quest, that makes all the difference. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would have had an ending similar to Denethor's if Aragorn and Gandalf had chosen to act on their despair rather than their hope.

It's much easier to let despair dictate our actions. You're much less likely to be disappointed that way. But the changes that needs to happen in our world will only happen if we allow hope to drive our decisions.

It all started on a farm

There once lived a young boy who lived in a simple log cabin with his family. He worked hard alongside his siblings and parents and was generally considered a good kid.

But like most teenagers, he had questions. One question in particular troubled him, so one day he went into the woods by his house in search of an answer. What he found there would change the world.

If you've ever read a fantasy novel, this story should sound familiar. It's almost always about a youth who lives in a small town who discovers a dragon in the woods and goes on to fulfill a great destiny and save humanity. It's a formula that works—people just want to see the little guy win.

The origin story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is similar. Joseph Smith went from a country farm boy to the founder of what would become a worldwide religion. One that has millions of members today and that blesses the world with its message of Jesus Christ and its charity work fueled by tithes and an admonition to serve others.

Whether you believe that prayer is a way to communicate with God or a useless waste of breath, there's no denying that the result of Joseph Smith's prayer regarding which church to join made an immediate and lasting impact on the world.

The Sacred Grove, circa July 2018.

President Russel M. Nelson has urged members to ponder the First Vision story and how it's affected them personally. Trying to figure out where I would be without the founding of the church that is the central focus of my life can be fun to think about; it also makes my brain hurt.

But thinking about who I would be without the gospel isn't as fun of an exercise. It's hard to imagine who you would be without your core foundation. I know many, many wonderful non-members who don't need religion to make them better people and who don't need faith to drive their everyday lives. But as for me, I need these things. And most importantly, I don't know how I would make it through difficult trials without access to all the gifts the Restoration of the gospel provides: prayer, priesthood blessings, knowledge of why we're here and where we're going, even callings. Life is hard enough with the peace and hope the gospel brings. Take that away and life would just be unbearable most of the time.

I visited the Sacred Grove a couple of summers ago with my family. I always find nature peaceful, but this grove of trees took that feeling to a whole new level. Even as I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, I felt the sacredness of that space. We Latter-day Saints love our historical landmarks, but this one is especially worth visiting because of the question that was asked in these trees that shaped the lives of so many: "Which church should I join?"

Joseph got more than he bargained for when he asked that question. I wonder if he ever had a Frodo Baggins moment, wishing the monumental task of restoring the Church of Jesus Christ upon the earth could have fallen on someone else.

"I wish the Ring had never come to me," Frodo said. "I wish none of this had happened."

Gandalf likely expected Frodo to be discouraged and afraid, so he was prepared with a response Frodo wouldn't forget. "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil" (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II).

Joseph knew he had seen God the Father and his Son in that grove. He knew it wouldn't make his path any easier, and that many people would remember him for evil instead of good. But he stayed the course, sealed his mission with his blood, and the gospel he restored lives on today.

Even for little old me, a tiny speck in the universe who doesn't have a grand destiny. The church was restored for everyone, but after pondering how it's blessed my life for 32 years, it feels profoundly personal. No gift could be better.

Good news, indeed.

New year, new things

"How do people do this professionally?!?"

That's the question I asked my brother as I stepped onto the ice at Seven Peaks Arena, clutching his arm as my legs attempted to find firm footing on a surface that's meant to reacquaint you with the consequences of gravity. We were there for my niece's 5th birthday party, and I hadn't ice skated since I was a teenager.

It wasn't just like riding a bike, in case you were wondering. But it was a blast.

Ice skating is a strange sport for the casual skater. All you do is skate around in circles, but it's essentially a free-for-all obstacle course. Everyone starts at level one, where you shuffle your feet along until you gain the confidence to take longer strides. If you can progress that far, you get a variety of new challenges, depending on your preferred speed. Dodging the people who fall down in front of you. Swerving around groups who are going slower than you, now a pro, want to go. Flailing in panic as you try to figure out how to avoid a collision—a common occurrence when the rink is crowded.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of all is taking a not-blurry picture while skating.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I survived almost an hour of this without falling. I was on my last lap, headed to the exit, when it happened. My traitorous shoelace on my right skate got caught on my left skate—one minute I was skating, the next I was airborne. I figured since I was going down anyway I might as well go out flying—literally—so I stretched my arms into a dive formation and sailed through the air. I must have gotten 15 feet of air before I bellyflopped on the ice, landing smoothly in a shower of white stuff.

(My dive probably didn't look as graceful as I imagined it, because a guy who witnessed my epic fall was laughing at me as he skated by.)

It's a fitting metaphor for the new year. Jumping into something new with confidence only to fall flat on your face an hour later. But that fall was the most thrilling part of the afternoon. It was the only moment I wasn't playing it safe and it was the part of the day I talked about the most afterward as we ate our unicorn and rainbow-themed birthday cupcakes.

Try something new this year. Fail at something new this year. It might end up on your 2020 highlight reel in December.

Moments after the fall, miraculously uninjured, aside from a few bruises that showed up the next day.