I've made it a goal to read 31 books in my 31st year.
How is that going you ask?
I'm 40% finished with my 7th book: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. I've decided that I'm going at a pretty good rate - if I continue to read 5-6 books every 2 months, I will definitely have my goal met by the end of 2015. I of course have a few more books that I am working through too, but I will get to them at another time!
It was recommended to me by what has become somewhat of an obsession, the blog of Modern Mrs. Darcy. Following her blog was going so well, so long as I just visited on occasion. I would make a list of books that she would write about, then purchase a few (5 or more usually). Then I got the bright idea of following her on Facebook, and now I am even more enmeshed in her literary thumbs up.
I am reading it on my other new obsession, the Oyster app. It is the Netflix for book lovers. You pay around 10 dollars a month (the first month is free) and get unlimited usage of book reading. Now, not every book that has ever been published can be found on the app, but a good amount of them can. Since I probably spend 50 dollars or more a month on my Kindle books, anywhere that I can get a free one is appreciated.
On to the book. I am really enjoying it. It is about a book owner, A.J. Fikry, who is a Scrooge of sorts at the beginning of the book. Through some unlikely events (probably some of witch I am just beginning to get a taste of), life starts brightening for him. I love any book that mentions other books that are worth reading, so I am filling up my Amazon cart with books that I want to check out.
The other 6 books I have read so far:
6. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
I've wanted to read this for some time. It was peculiar, and enjoyable. Plus, what can I say, I like books that have cuss words once in a while!
5. To All the Boys I've Loved Before
So this was pretty adolescent as far as the choice of characters go. Amazon recommends it for 7th graders and up. High school students and an elementary aged child. But it was still a cute read, and I'm a sucker for cute reads. There is a sequel coming out later this Spring, P.S. I Still Love You, which I am sure I will end up reading as well. This was the February Book of the Month for Lauren Conrad, so I decided to try it out.
4. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.
After seeing what I read for #4, it is hopefully easy to see why books 5 and 6 have been such light reads. This book is good, don't get me wrong. But did you know that you can read over 100 pages (maybe I'm exaggerating, but I may not be. I'm not going back to look, that's the reality of this) of what happened to a few men stuck at sea for over a month? 100 pages of descriptions of about 40 days of the same stuff...day after day after day. I'm in no way trying to dishonor the story....but man. The intense and lengthy descriptions sure got me.
On another note though, this book made me angry at America. Going through school, the only thing that I felt I was truly ever taught about World War II was the fight against Germany. So much so, that I thought that is what this book was going to be about. Germany was just a blimp on the radar of this story. Japan. Why wasn't I taught about Japan in school, other than Pearl Harbor? The horrible, awful things that were done to people by the Japanese at that time, makes me livid that I was so ignorant to all of this.
3. Living Well, Spending Less
I really enjoyed this book. Although some of the stuff was stuff that I was already doing, some of it was nice to read again, and some of the ideas were new to me. It made me feel like such an adult reading it! Plus, I liked knowing that the author hadn't always been a "penny pincher" but was a shopping addict.
2. Single Moms Raising Sons
This book. Well....there were a few good ideas. A lot of it seemed to be very stereotyped. Very repetitive. And I think I had some beef with the author. She seemed to either think that she was overly important, thus had to explain EVERY time she talked about her job what she did for an occupation, or just thought that her readers weren't intelligent enough to recall what she did for a living. Either way, it bothered me.
One good take away was that she talked about honoring her sons on Father's Day (because their dad wasn't around) by giving them a gift that they'd someday appreciate as a father (grilling stuff, tools, etc.) and talk to them about things that they could do as fathers someday.
1. Nowhere But Home
This was a quirky read that I got for cheap on my Kindle one day. This came after a long, thick book right at the end of 2014, so I needed another light book. I loved that this book was set in Texas, and it made me easy to imagine. The characters were real, the issues were authentic and small town, just like I know them to be! It was a fun read that I really enjoyed.
