Get ready for a post with many, many book reviews!

April and May were both pretty solid months of reading. I read 14 books and several of them were outside my typical genres, as part of some reading challenges I'm doing this year.

With exception of a handful of books, most of these were excellent (4-5 stars on Goodreads).

April Books

American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
This read like a fictional crime procedural, and I mean that in a good way. The plot was so engaging that even though you know right away in the book who is lighting the fires, the story is captivating because the entire time police and fire officials are running into dead ends trying to catch the arsonists. I spent the whole time wondering when they were going to get their big break and then how things would play out in the trial. Highly recommend.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling
I read this after watching the movie so it was easier to for me to picture the scenes in my head, but I sort of wish I had done it in the reverse. I think I actually enjoyed reading it more than I enjoyed the movie because I thought the movie was only so-so.

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by T. Christian Miller, Ken Armstrong
This book made me feel a lot of things: scared, angry, sad, furious, angry, angry and more angry. It's hard to say a book about a serial rapist (and the botched police work that led to this situation) is a "good" book, but this book was extremely well-researched and well-reported. I have a lot of thoughts about this book that I can't really articulate well in a short review, but I'd say this book is certainly worth reading, and I would not recommend reading it at night when you are home alone.

Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier
Is it wrong for me to give a YA sci-fi novel five stars on Goodreads? I devoured this book and the other two in the series in a couple of days. I picked this up as part of the book challenge that I'm doing (the category was the first book in a new-to-you YA series) and I'm so glad I did. The story was fast and fun and followed an ordinary girl as she learned that she had inherited a very recessive family gene that allows her to time travel. Of course there's a set of good time travelers and bad-guy time travelers and the teenager in this book has to figure out which is which. The first book ends in a cliff hanger so I immediately got books two and three from the library so I could finish the full story. These books were so different than what I normally read, and I enjoyed them immensely.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
I've been thinking a lot about some of my more creative projects lately -- my blog, other writing projects, etc. Someone recommended this book as a good way of opening up thinking about creative work. I thought it was an OK read. There were parts I liked and parts I didn't. I didn't love it like some, but still found one or two interesting takeaways.

Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani
Riot's Read Harder Challenge, and there were a lot of graphic novel categories. This book knocked out all of them so it was a winner in my book. The book itself was the sweet story of an Indian teenager living in America who dreams of learning more about her mom's home country. When she finds a magical pashmina, she's whisked away to India in her dreams. The illustrations in the book were gorgeous and made it fun to page through and follow the girl's journey.

May Books

The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder
This book was full of characters that all sort of sucked. The title made it sound fun, but siblings Alice and Paul were both so whiny and dysfunctional that I almost couldn't buy it. I ended up liking their half-sister Eloise the best and she was supposed to be a horrible, pretentious snob. Parts of the book were amusing, but overall I felt kind of meh about it.

Bloodstains with Bronte by Katherine Bolger Hyde
This was a good ol' fashioned whodunit mystery. A guest at a murder mystery dinner turns up dead and all the suspects had to have been in the house that night. Lots of people have motive, but obviously only one of them committed the crime. While I thought the ending was a bit predictable, I enjoyed following the fast-moving twists and turns of the plot.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
This book took me forever to get through and at parts I thought it was extremely confusing. It was a book club book, and if it hadn't been I'm not sure that I would have finished it. I liked the concept -- the main character gets reincarnated again and again and you see how crucial decisions impact different phases of her life. But while I thought it was promising, it was a slow moving book.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
This book had a slow build, but man then it really sucked me in. Kristin Hannah has quickly become one of my favorite authors. This story about how a family tries to band together after the patriarch's death worked so well because of the way Hannah creates this in-depth very real characters that you empathize deeply with. This isn't necessarily a fast read, but it's a really good read.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
I'm pretty sure about 3/4 of the time I was reading this book, I couldn't believe that a fraction of the stuff Westover lived through was actually true. Every time she wrote about how her brother abused her, breaking her wrist or shoving her head in the toilet, and how her parents didn't believe her and did nothing to stop it, I was appalled. The fact that this girl, who grew up in an abusive, survivalist family, somehow managed to break free and build a place for herself in the "regular" world, while earning her PhD along the way, is honestly pretty incredible. Definitely go read this book.

The Night She Won Miss America by Michael Callahan
I picked this up on a whim from the library, and I'm really glad I did. I will say, the takes a turn for the very odd about 3/4 of the way through, but the first part, which focuses on the 1950 Miss America pageant and the contestants involved is a really fun read. This story is very, very loosely based on the story of the 1937 Miss America pageant winner that fled right after she won to be with her new boyfriend and tried to give up her title. Obviously this book takes a lot of liberties with that story and imagines a much more involved disappearance. It's a fun, fast read. Highly recommend if you're looking for something a bit different.

Since our trip to Amsterdam was so short, we wanted to make sure we got a good taste of the modern city, but also got to experience some of the smaller villages in the Netherlands countryside. So we booked ourselves a day trip that took us to see a clog-making shop, a cheese factory and of course, windmills.



Organized tours can be pretty hit or miss, but our morning tour guides were hilarious and amazing. The bus driver kept a keyboard on the bus and would play music and sing while people were boarding. The tour guide had a ukulele that he would serenade us with in between stops.

We laughed the whole time.

Our first stop of the day was in the town of Marken. We visit a clog shop and got to see the owner make a brand new pair of clogs.



Back in the day the work was all done by hand, but now machines can whittle a pair of clogs in about five minutes.







After the demo, our bus driver insisted on taking our picture with a cow statue wearing clogs. But he wouldn't just let us stand next to it, he told us we had to milk the cow. So here are the hilarious pictures of me and Meghan milking a cow statue.





After our adventures watching clogs get made, we set off via ferry boat to Volendam, where we visited a cheese making factory and got to sample all kinds of delicious cheese.

I lost track of all the many different varieties we tried, but I know we tried a cheddar that had been aged three years and a bunch of different Gouda cheeses. My favorite were the smoked goat and cow cheeses. Nom, nom.



After stuffing our faces with cheese we walked around the little waterfront village. It was unfortunately a pretty cloudy day, so our beach pictures weren't the best. But it was nice to be able to walk around after all that eating.





Our last stop of the morning was probably the one Meghan and I were most looking forward to: The windmills!





The mill that we visited was in working order and is still used to make peanut oil. The miller gave us a demonstration of how the process works. But we learned unsurprisingly that making peanut oil with a windmill is a long and slow process compared to how quickly it can be done in a factory. That's why so many of the Netherlands' windmills are no longer used and have been sold off.

The windmills in this little countryside village were really pretty though. We got to climb to the top of the one we were in and spend some time exploring the little town.

I found this giant clog.



Our first stop on the afternoon portion of our tour was at the Delft Royal Factory where we got to see the famous Delft pieces being made.





We watched an artist hand-painting a vase and quickly learned how we could not afford to buy one of the beautiful Christmas bells (because they were like $200+).



We spent some time exploring the town of Delft, and Meghan and I stopped to get a piece of the famous apple pie. Here's my hot take: America does apple pie way better.



On our way back to Amsterdam, we drove through The Hague, stopping to see the Peace Palace.



We collapsed into bed that night pretty exhausted after our long day, but hoped to get up early to do one last run around the city before flying home.

Our first stop on our run in the morning was at the famous I amsterdam letters. These things are crawling with people during the day, but in the early morning, we only had to contend with a handful of other people.







The only downside was the lighting was not the best, but we made do.

We continued our run along the canals, looping up through the Jordaan neighborhood before heading back to our hotel. In total we covered just over three miles.

After a quick shower and a final stroll through the flower market, we grabbed our bags and headed to the airport to come home.

Sunday Fitbit stats: 18,224 steps, 7.71 miles
Monday Fitbit stats: 16,432 steps, 7.54 miles

This past weekend, my friend Meghan and I took a quick trip to Amsterdam. We left Thursday night after work and got home Monday evening, so we truly just popped in for a long weekend.

Amsterdam and the Netherlands had been on our list of places we wanted to visit for a long time now, and when Icelandair had one of their silly cheap sales, we couldn't pass up the opportunity.

With our $380 plane tickets in hand, we jetted across the pond to eat delicious food and explore the gorgeous city of Amsterdam.

We landed later on Friday than planned after experiencing a few delays because of the weather, but we really easily made our way from the airport to our hotel and then set off for an evening walk around the city.

Pretty much right away we were captivated by all the beautiful canals.



We also learned pretty quickly that we had to double and triple check for bicycles before crossing the street. It was kind of cool to see so many people getting around by bike. But also slightly terrifying as a pedestrian because bikers seemed to come out of nowhere.

Our first meal in the city was a giant waffle smothered in Nutella and strawberries. It was amazing.



The highlight of our Friday evening was probably exploring the floating flower market. Tulips are my favorite flowers, and the ones at the market were gorgeous. I really wanted to bring some bulbs home. Some vendors sell bulbs you can safely bring through U.S. Customs, but unfortunately when we were there, there were none available.

We started off our Saturday morning wandering through the quaint Jordaan neighbor on our way to the Anne Frank house.

We passed lots of house boats and of course enjoyed more of the views from the bridges over the canals.



The Anne Frank House was a really moving museum. To see the place in real life that I remember reading about as a child was interesting. As a kid, I think I pictured the rooms where the Frank family stayed to be much smaller than that actually were. That's not to say that the rooms were actually big in real life, but they were bigger than what my little-kid self imagined.



We also indulged in a fun canal boat cruise on Saturday to see the city from the waterways.



We followed up our busy morning with a delicious lunch of Amsterdam's famous fries.



As you can see, I ate extremely healthy food on this trip.

That afternoon we spent more time walking around the city eventually making our way to the Red Light District. It was a trip (not because I took drugs). Taking pictures of any of the workers is a big no, no, so I will leave you with this picture of a sculpture we saw on the ground. It's definitely exactly what you think it is.



The other cool thing we stopped to do in the Red Light District is visit the museum of Our Lord in the Attic Church. Back in the day, Catholicism wasn't really allowed to be practiced openly in the Netherlands, so people used to build secret churches in the back of their houses.



This was a pretty cool tour through one such house church. One minute you're just walking through a kitchen and then next thing you know, you go up a set of steps and boom you're in a pretty sizeable church that no one could see from the outside.

After exploring the holy and the unholy in the Red Light District, we decided it was time for more of Amsterdam's tasty treats.

Enter the stroopwaffle.



We wrapped up our first full day in Amsterdam with a stroll through Vondelpark. It's basically Amsterdam's version of Central Park.



Then we walked a few blocks to the Van Gogh museum. They happened to have a special exhibit on Van Gogh's Japanese inspiration, and since I was just in Japan, I found it pretty cool.



After dinner at the Heinken pub, we collapsed into bed.

Fitbit stats for Saturday:
20,768 steps
8.79 miles