Thursday, July 31, 2014

Review: Lost for Words

Lost for Words
By Edward St. Aubyn
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux May 2014
262 pages
From the library 


Lost for Words


It's time for the prestigious Elysian Prize. Malcolm Craig heads up a committee that includes columnist Jo Cross, professor Vanessa Shaw, aspiring novelist Penny Feathers, and actor Tobias Benedict. This group is tasked with reading through a multitude of novels and deciding which will be on the short list and which one will win the coveted prize. The novelists being considered for the award are a strange bunch as well - Katherine Burns is as concerned with her newest lover as with the success of her novels, Sonny Badanpur considers his Indian heritage to be a crucial part of his story, and debut novelist Sam Black is finding success comes with a major case of writer's block. Things become more complicated when an assistant sends a family cookbook of Sonny's aunt to the committee in place of Katherine's book. What does it mean when a cookbook is a serious contender for a literary prize?

Lost for Words is satire at its height. It is difficult to overlook the parallels between the fictitious Elysian Prize and the real Man Booker Prize, which St. Aubyn didn't win several years ago . The books that make the short list are varied. In addition to the cookbook and Sam Black's thinly veiled autobiographical novel, readers are treated to selections from a book from the point of view of Shakespeare and one written in Scottish vernacular entitled wot u staring at. While this book is consistently funny, it does ask real questions about literary culture. How can we possibly award just one book when there are  hundreds of books published each year in varying styles about so many topics? Can any committee actually pick a winner when each of them have their own literary aspirations and entanglements?

This book is a fun read but ultimately it is difficult to really remember the events or characters after the book is over. This is both the joy and downfall of satire. St. Aubyn is spot on as he points out the follies of every character within these pages. Lost for Words shows us the insanity of writing, of the publishing business, and of our attempt to weigh the value of books, delivered with a knowing wink and a good chuckle. 

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Review: 100 Blessings

100 Blessings
By Barbara Ann Gareis
West Bow Press April 2013
86 pages
From my shelves

100 Blessings

When everything is going wrong, it is easy to forget that God is in control and is blessing our lives. In 100 Blessings, Barbara Ann Gareis tells her story of overcoming tragedy by remembering the good things in her life. She describes times of illness, loss, and financial difficulties alongside verses of encouragement from the Bible. Later in the book, she writes about the men and women of the Bible who went through times of trial - Job, Ruth, Joseph, David, Abigail, and Daniel. This slim book is perfect for a quick bout of encouragement as we are reminded that even when circumstances are against us, God is with us. 

In 100 Blessings, Barbara strikes the perfect balance between digging deep into the Bible and sharing things from her own life and experiences. She uses the story of Job to remind us to thank God for who He is instead of the good or bad things in your life. Ruth's commitment to God and her mother-in-law Naomi shows readers that God can use the broken-hearted for great things. In her own life, Barbara relates how she experienced God's blessings through her children, her friends, and even perfect strangers.

Barbara finds that one way to offset the difficulties of life is to remind herself of the blessings in her life. She begins the practice of keeping a gratitude list. Her list of 100 blessings gives the book its title and contains things as monumental as the servicemen and police who keep her safe all the way to the small joys like cookies fresh out of the oven. There is even a place in the book to list your own blessings.

100 Blessings is a quick and encouraging read for the moments when it seems like your life is falling apart. Each chapter will remind you of a reason to be grateful or a character in the Bible whose life was radically transformed through pain or tragedy. Barbara Gareis reminds us that each of us go through trying times and there is comfort in the everyday blessings. Most importantly, she encourages readers with the knowledge that even in their darkest hours, God never forsakes them.



Note: I know the author and she asked me to write a review. All opinions are my own. 

Sunday, July 27, 2014

It's Monday and life is never boring!


Hi friends! How are things?

This has been a week of preparing around here. David is heading off to soccer camp this week so we went and bought cleats and shin guards. My cousin's wedding is coming up in two weekends. My hubby will be performing the ceremony and I will be singing. And of course we are about to start August and it's just one long sprint until the end of summer! I think it's going to be a good few weeks.


Read This Week:
The Visitors
The Visitors
By Sally Beauman

If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)
If I Stay
By Gayle Forman


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Reviews of Moby-Dick and We Were Liars
Literary Life: How to Read a Literary Behemoth


Reading Now:
The Lost
The Lost 
By Sara Beth Durst


Listening To:
The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line (Veronica Mars, #1)
Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line
By Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham


Up Next:
All the Light We Cannot See
All the Light We Cannot See
By Anthony Doerr


What are you reading this week?

Friday, July 25, 2014

Literary Life: How to Read a Literary Behemoth

Earlier this week, I posted my review for Moby-Dick. That book clocks in at 688 pages. Yup. 688 pages.

So if you are thinking about tackling Anna Karenina or A Game of Thrones this summer, I have some tips for you.


1. Check your motives
Are you reading Great Expectations because you feel like you should or because you really adored Oliver Twist? If you are reading a book out of obligation instead of excitement, you are making it difficult for yourself right off of the bat.

2. It takes two...or three...or a big group
Look for a read-along. It's much easier to keep reading when you know that other people are in the same boat as you. Look online for readalongs, where readers from all over the world read the same book and discuss it (or commiserate about it!). I've seen (or participated in) readalongs on blogs like The Estella SocietyDolce Belezza, As The Crowe Flies and Reads, and Reading Rambo.

If you can't find one online, see if you can recruit your mom, husband, or best friend to read the book at the same time. That way, you will have someone to call and commiserate with when Melville wants to talk about whale anatomy again.

3. Find a buddy
I find that reading a giant book works best when paired with a lot of smaller books. So while I was trudging through Moby-Dick, I also read Frog Music and Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys. This works best when you pick books of wildly different subjects and styles. If you are reading a giant biography, try to read some great shorter novels. If you are working through War and Peace, grab some YA reads that preferably don't take place in Russia.

4. Set a minimum
When you start the book, find out how many pages it take you to really feel as if you are in the world of that story. That is the number of pages you need to try to read each day. When I read Moby-Dick, I tried my hardest to read at least 25 pages each day.

5. Start your day off right
Remember when I said that I read a lot of other books alongside Moby-Dick? I did read all of those books, but I read them later in the day. It's all too easy to get sucked into a story and never pick up your chunkster at all. So if you are a bedtime reader, start with your big read and then read the smaller book if you are still awake. Reading on your lunch break? Take the big book to lunch and read your second book at home that night.

6. Give yourself some grace
So you've read 100 pages of Infinite Jest and it's just not doing it for you. Perhaps Les Miserables is putting you to sleep instead of making you break out into song.

Let it go.

You are not a better reader (or person) because you have read Clarissa. I promise.




What are your tips for reading a crazy long book??

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Review: We Were Liars

We Were Liars
By E. Lockhart
Delacorte Press May 2014
227 pages
From the library 

We Were Liars

Cady Sinclair is living a life of luxury. She is a part of an extremely wealthy family, the kind where you all spend the summer on your own private island with multiple homes and a staff that caters to your every need. But this summer feels different. Cady had an accident two summers ago and everything is strange to her now. Her family seems aloof and they treat Cady with kids gloves. Her grandfather's beloved home has been torn down and replaced with a cold marvel of modern architecture. Worst of all, Cady is crippled by terrible migraines and can't quite remember what happened two summers ago.

Cady spends her time with three of her best friends - her cousins Mirren and Johnny and their friend Gat. While Mirren and Johnny take advantage of the same wealth that Cady does, Gat is an outsider and perhaps the only one who realizes the immense privilege that the Sinclairs enjoy. It is this bravery to speak the truth about all situations that attracts Cady to Gat and they begin a tortured teen romance. Gat has a girlfriend at home and Cady's grandfather decidedly does not approve of him for his beloved granddaughter. But the foursome functions best as a group, as they take part in time-honored teen activities like sleeping in, sunning and swimming, and availing themselves of the family wine collection. These four friends don't see each other during the school year, but the summer belongs to them. 

We Were Liars is poised to be the "it book" of the summer. Like Gone Girl before it, readers are pushing this one into their friend's hands with the warning that the ending will take them totally by surprise. This book is shrouded in some heavy secrecy. With kudos to readers for managing to keep the ending under wraps, I think this is one of those situations where all of the hype is damaging. The twist is indeed a good one. But this story is better if the big reveal is unexpected and hits you square in the stomach instead of you wondering if each chapter will be the one to disclose the big twist.

This story actually has quite a bit to say about privilege and the way that we perceive people. Cady tells the readers over and over again that they are Sinclairs. That means something, both to the members of the family and to the people they encounter. Cady even imagines her family as characters in various fairy tales as she struggles to figure out what has changed in her family and who has done the changing. The Sinclairs have carefully created perfect personas that hide the uglier underside of their lives. Everyone serves at the whims of Cady's grandfather, the family patriarch. His daughters are eager to appease him and inherit the majority of the family fortune, even if that means controlling their children so they appear exactly the way their grandfather would like to see them.

Lockhart's writing style in this book is unique. Cady is a teenager and prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. She explains her recollections and observations in broken prose that sometimes resemble poetry. She is also prone to characterize feelings as though they were events. For example, early in the story, her father leaves their family. She remembers her father getting into his car and then "he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed." It takes the reader a moment to realize that these things didn't actually happen - Cady is conflating her feelings to actual injury.

We Were Liars is a story about breaking away from your family. It's about the moments when you realize your loved ones are not as perfect as you had always thought them to be. This book will make you think about the darker side of privilege and power and what exactly we pass on to our children and grandchildren. And yes, the ending will make you reevaluate everything you thought you knew about Cady and the Sinclairs. After all, she tells us, we were liars.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Review: Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick
By Herman Melville
Penguin Books August 2013, Originally published in 1851
688 pages
From the library 

Moby-Dick: or, The Whale

In one of the most enduring but nerve-inducing pieces of American literature, we are introduced to Ishmael, his determined captain Ahab, and the crew of the whaling ship the Pequod. Ishmael is restless and has decided to take up whaling as his next adventure. But he never imagines the consequences of Captain Ahab's quest for revenge against Moby-Dick, the white whale that took his leg.

Moby-Dick strikes fear into the heart of many a reader because..well, it has something of a reputation. It doesn't help that the book clocks in at nearly 700 pages. And you may hear whispers around bookish circles that this book is "well, really boring." But here's the thing - this is sort of two books for the price of one. The first book concerns Ahab and his unquenchable desire for revenge on the whale who robbed him of his leg and some of his dignity. But intertwined with this quest are Ishmael's scientific observations about whales as well as a not-so-brief explanation of the history and practices of whaling. That first part, the story part, is incredibly gripping as every possible sign indicates that Ahab should give up his quest. But he refuses. Conversely, hundreds of pages of nautical terms can drag a bit.

I have to confess that there is a tiny part of me that wonders if Melville was playing a colossal joke. He had a story - a really good story about fate and revenge - but then he decided to surround this story with endless digressions about different types of whales and the process of removing oil from the whales after they are caught. Would anyone read this book? There is a cynical part of me that thinks Melville is howling with laughter somewhere on the great whaling boat in the sky as he cackles, "Wait, wait. You are telling me that my book is considered a classic?? They make children read this in school?!?!"

But if I think about it, I know that these seeming digressions actually serve to make the story a richer experience. We understand exactly how powerful the whale is as the crew valiantly battles with him. We know each of the steps that the men must take to harvest and store the oil from the whale. We have experienced long months at sea with the crew so we know which days are normal and which ones are omens of something to come.

Moby-Dick will forever be a book that divides readers. Some will find it to be just too much. Melville is doing so many things in this book and he knows so much about history and culture that he is eager to share with his readers. So this just isn't the kind of book that makes you stay up much too late to finish. But it has a lot to offer to the reader who is willing to stick it out. This book will give you great insight into what it is to be human - what it means to depend on other people and the ways in which we can control our fate and are controlled by it. There are also moments of humor to be found in these pages, especially as Ishmael observes some cultural differences between himself and his fellow sailors who hail from different countries. The mates are also good for a few chuckles as they sarcastically wonder at the wisdom of Ahab's orders, all the while following them.

I don't forsee reading this book again and while I was reading it, it felt like a chore at times to open it again and read the next chapter or two. But ultimately, I'm glad I read it. It gives me the opportunity to contribute to the conversation surrounding one of the English language's most (in)famous books. More importantly, I went along for a journey with the vengeful Captain Ahab and the ever-observant Ishmael and it was a trip I don't think I will ever forget. 

Sunday, July 20, 2014

It's Monday and the reading is good!


Hi there bibliophiles! How is everyone? I hope you found some time to relax and read this weekend!

This was a good week for reading - I got through three books. They might have been on the short side, but I am still feeling pretty good about my reading for this week!


Read This Week:
100 Blessings
100 Blessings
By Barbara Ann Gareis

Lost for Words
Lost for Words
By Edward St. Aubyn

The Virtues of Oxygen
The Virtues of Oxygen
By Susan Schoenberger


Posts from this Past Week:
Reviews of The Winter's Tale and The Quick


Reading Now:
The Visitors
The Visitors
By Sally Beauman


Listening To:
The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line (Veronica Mars, #1)
Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line
By Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham


Up Next:
If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)
If I Stay
By Gayle Forman


What are you reading this week? 

Friday, July 18, 2014

Review: The Quick

The Quick 
By Lauren Owen
Random House June 2014
544 pages
Read via Netgalley

The Quick

James Norbury is a quiet writer who moves to London at the end of the nineteenth century. While his estate is in shambles after the death of his father, he manages to secure rooms with a wealthy aristocrat named Christopher Howland. James begins to feel at home in the big city as he finds inspiration for his writing and love in an unexpected place. But as quickly as James arrived in London, he disappears without a trace. His sister Charlotte embarks on a journey to find him. Her discoveries about the darker corners of London and particularly the mysterious Aegolius Club will shock her and change the path of James and Charlotte's lives. 

There is a great deal of mystery around the plot of this story and I will do my best to maintain that. Suffice it to say that there is more than there seems to the characters in The Quick. Ms. Owen does a brilliant job of creating an atmosphere of darkness and fear, where unknown monsters could lurk around any corner on any night. This story is also a study in shades of grey, as we encounter villains who think they are serving noble causes and heroes who wonder how long they can battle evil without losing their humanity.

The main characters are well developed in this story, particularly the pair of siblings. When James disappears, the events that transpire are shocking for the reader and hard to handle because we have come to care so much for James and the people he loves. Charlotte is determined to find her brother regardless of the cost and readers will empathize with her love for her brother and refusal to give up. It's wonderful to read a story where the main bond is the one between siblings instead of a romantic tryst.

This book jumps around quite often in time and perspective. It seems too long in places, especially as the we follow James and Charlotte through their privileged but lonely childhood and again as Ms. Owen wraps up loose ends at the end of the story. While the narrative is often from the point of view of James or Charlotte, there was another narrative that I found jarring and ultimately unnecessary. This character is privy to the secrets of the Aegolius Club and recounts his findings through a journal which is ripped and fragmented. Reading "a page is missing here" or "writing is smudged and illegible" over and over again becomes annoying after a time. Ultimately, I wish we had spent more time with fewer characters.

The Quick is a scary story wrapped in a tale of familial love at the end of 19th century London. This debut novel will pull you in with its pitch perfect atmosphere and keep you turning pages with a fast-paced race through the dark and dangerous streets of London. While it may be a bit too long, it is the perfect read to race through during a summer weekend or to savor with a mug of hot cider on a cool and creepy fall evening. 

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Review: The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale
By William Shakespeare
Simon and Schuster January 2005
352 pages
From the library

The Winter's Tale

King Leontes seems to have it all - his beautiful wife Hermione who is expecting their baby, a son and heir to the throne, and even a best friend in King Polixenes, who rules an adjoining kingdom. But his jealousy ruins everything for him. When Hermione manages to convince Polixenes to extend his visit when Leontes could not, he suspects that they are having an affair. Polixenes hears of his suspicion and flees, but Hermione stands trial for her supposed crime. Soon after the trial, she dies and Leontes orders that their infant be left in the wilderness to die. Sixteen years later, the consequences of Leonte's decisions will come back to haunt him.

The Winter's Tale is somewhat of an anomaly among Shakespeare's plays. While most of them are classified as a tragedy or a comedy, this play is both. The first act is very much a tragedy, akin to Othello. Leontes is consumed by his jealousy and he makes big sweeping decisions without thought for the consequences. The play marks a change in tone with the best and most wonderful of Shakespeare's stage directions. "He exits, pursued by a bear." Yes, we have officially crossed over into comedy territory. It's time for young lovers whose parents don't approve of their match, crafty but delightful crooks, and some bumbling shepherds. 

The characters in The Winter's Tale are an interesting bunch. While we get some very specific types (Leontes as the jealous husband, the young lovers, Autolycus as the clown), Shakespeare introduces us to one of his truly unique characters in Paulina. She is an attendant to Hermione and she is the one who gets to call Leontes out on all of his ridiculousness. It's nice to see a woman who gets to break out of the role of lover. Paulina is married already, so romance is not on her mind. However, justice for the woman she serves and loves is a prime concern of hers. While several characters make jokes at her expense because she does not bend to the authority of the king or her husband, she is well respected in the kingdom as she speaks truth in every situation, regardless of the personal repercussions. 

The Winter's Tale is not Shakespeare's most popular play because it does not fit neatly into a category and it lacks the instantly memorable lines of other plays like Hamlet. However, this story is imbued with a unique sense of magic and possibility. The reader gets to encounter unforgettable characters like the courageous Paulina and the clever clown Autolycus. And hey, this is Shakespeare. The play is, and always will be, the thing. 

Sunday, July 13, 2014

It's Monday and I finished Moby-Dick!!



Friends, I feel like a reading rock star this week. I finally finished reading Moby-Dick after a month and I got through two other books this week. Hooray for summer!


Read This Week:
The Quick
The Quick
By Lauren Owen

Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Moby-Dick
By Herman Melville

We Were Liars
We Were Liars
By E. Lockhart


This week on the blog:
It's Monday
Reviews of Frog Music and Love & Treasure
Literary Life: Favorite Passages


Reading Now:
100 Blessings
100 Blessings
By Barbara Ann Gareis


Up Next:
Lost for Words
Lost for Words
By Edward St. Aubyn


What are you reading this week?

Friday, July 11, 2014

Review: Love and Treasure

Love and Treasure
By Ayelet Waldman
Knopf April 2014
352 pages
From the library 

Love & Treasure

My review of Love and Treasure is up at the Atlantic Highlands Herald. Head on over and see what I thought! 

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Literary Life: Favorite Passages

Book quotes are irresistible, right? You find that perfect sentence or that beautifully written paragraph and you know you have to keep it forever.

My books are a mess. I find myself using the little receipt that they print out for you as a bookmark and then I rip off tiny corners and leave them in certain pages. That way, I can go back, find the passages that really wowed me, and type them up on my computer.

What a mess, right?

I know that I could use those cool little tabs and I have done that in the past. But it turns out that those colorful little tabs are irresistible to a certain little boy and so they are just as likely to end up on a coloring page as stay in my book.

Then there is the group that believes in folding pages. A folded page means that you can always find the favorite part. But of course the downside is that your book will always open up to your favorite part, no matter what.

Last, but not least, we have our underliners and marginalia writers. Personally, this drives me crazy. I picked up a book from a used bookstore and didn't realize that the previous owner had both underlined and written notes. The underlining I can usually handle, especially when I have borrowed a book from someone I know. Then it's like a little insight into what they loved or found particularly important. But when I get a book that has notes written in the margins by a total stranger, it forces my reading in a certain direction.

Of course, you could just use another book to make your place...
source

And then, what do you do with the quotes? Do we just leave them underlined in our books? Do we lovingly write them into a beautiful notebook or keep a Word document on our computer?


So I want to know what you do. Confess your underlining ways here. Tell us of all of the pages you fold down. Let me know if you are a scrap of paper user too! Where do you keep all of those fantastic literary quotes?

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Review: Frog Music

Frog Music
By Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown, and Company April 2014
403 pages
From the library

Frog Music

San Francisco in 1876 is a difficult place to live. The heat is unbearable and smallpox is rampant. Blanche Beunon is a burlesque dancer from France who lives with her boyfriend and his best friend. She has no friends of her own though, until she meets the fascinating and enigmatic Jenny Bonnet. Jenny makes her living catching frogs and selling them to local restaurants but she is notorious for wearing men's clothing. Jenny and Blanche become close, but their growing friendship is cut short when Jenny is murdered before Blanche's eyes. She sets out to discover who murdered Jenny. Her search will uncover Jenny's true past and determine Blanche's future. 

Frog Music is based on a true case and Jenny and Blanche were both real people. While Donoghue's suppositions about what really happened are fascinating, the true wonder is the way she brings a specific time and place to vivid life. You can practically smell the Chinese food cooking in the area of town where Blanche lives and hear the French songs that she loves to sing. This book covers so much of the darkness of humanity - the way Jenny is persecuted for the way she dresses, the impossibility of escaping a life of prostitution, the terrible living conditions of people crammed into tiny apartments, and the horrendous but all-too-real practice of 'baby farms' where parents paid for their children to be barely kept alive in huge institutions. This book is not easy to read, but it is always engaging. 

Blanche is smart and savvy - she knows which 'clients' to keep on her good side and has even managed to save enough money to buy the building in which she lives. The rent from the other tenants in addition to her work as a dancer/prostitute keep her living comfortably. But Blanche is naive when it comes to people. Her boyfriend Arthur and his best friend Ernst live off of the money that she brings home. It isn't until Jenny starts asking questions about her life that Blanche learns that she cannot always trust the people around her. This makes Blanche a frustrating character at times but she is, after all, only 25 years old. How many of us are content to call our lives good until our eyes are opened to something more?

Emma Donoghue is a powerful writer. Her novel Room catapulted her to literary stardom with its tale of a boy and his mother held captive. In Frog Music, Donoghue can stretch her narrative horizons and introduce a dazzling and dangerous city and characters who can charm you while their dangerous secrets loom over them. This book can be hard to stomach as it chronicles the basest of human instincts to survive at any cost and to conquer the weak, but it makes the reader uncomfortable only because Donoghue reveals them with an unflinching eye for character and story. 


A note: Some other reviewers were taken aback at the explicit nature of some scenes in this book. Blanche does work as a dancer and prostitute and the author describes both her professional and personal sex life. 

Sunday, July 6, 2014

It's Monday and I am reading some Classics!


Did everyone enjoy the long weekend? We slept over at my parent's house and watched some fireworks from my in-law's boat. As you can see, David was rather impressed with the show.



Read This Week:
Love & Treasure
Love and Treasure
By Ayelet Waldman

The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale
By William Shakespeare


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Classics
June Wrap-Up
Review of Now I See You


Reading Now:
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Moby-Dick
By Herman Melville

The Quick
The Quick
By Lauren Owen


Up Next:
We Were Liars
We Were Liars
By E. Lockhart


What are you reading this week?

Friday, July 4, 2014

Review: Now I See You

Now I See You
By Nicole C. Kear
St. Martin's Press June 2014
288 pages
Read via Netgalley

Now I See You: A Memoir

Nicole is 19 years old and poised to make her mark on the world. She is a theatre major at Yale and has a prestigious internship for the summer which will start as soon as she finishes her pre-summer checklist. At a routine eye appointment, her doctor discovers something ominous and Nicole soon learns that she has retinitis pigmentosa. The disease will rob her completely of her sight and there is no cure. 

Nicole decides to get her fill of life while she still can and spends the next few years traveling the world, going to circus school, pursuing her acting career, and meeting lots of handsome men. But something makes Nicole stop in her tracks - she has children. She knows that she will do anything to protect them and that means that she must protect herself, by finally revealing her disease to the people around her.

I started reading this memoir with some apprehension. I have been a part of the eyeglasses club since the age of seven, so I can relate on some level to watching your vision decrease. While Nicole's story is candid and sad, she manages to tell it with a wonderful sense of self-deprecating humor. She decides that she will not be defined by her disease - she is going to go out into the world and have fun. This works until she realizes that she shouldn't drive because she is losing her peripheral vision and that she is stranded at parties because she can't find her way out in the dim light. Her stubborn refusal to ask for help is both frustrating and incredibly human. 

While this book is about sight and its absence and how to deal with that, it is also a book about relationships and family. We witness Nicole growing up as she goes from one night stands to starting a relationship with the man who will become her husband. And then, just like every parent, Nicole's life changes radically when she has children. Her insights into the bond between a child and his mother are poignant and some of the best parts of this story. 

Now I See You is a quick read that will make you thankful for the things you take for granted, like being able to see each day. Nicole's experiences will reaffirm your belief in the goodness of people and the things you can accomplish if you refuse to let your limitations define you.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

June Wrap-Up

Bye, June! I feel like we hardly knew you. This has been a busy month. We saw the end of kindergarten and the beginning of summer break. I feel like we have been moving non-stop but not because of crazy big events. Life has just been full. Hopefully there will be some time to relax in July! 




Books reviewed in June: 10
Pages read: 3,205 
Fiction/Non-fiction: 7/3
Female authors/male authors: 5/5
My books/library books/books for review: 1/4/5
Most-read June review: The Girls at the Kingfisher Club 
Favorite June read: This is tough! June was a great reading month for me. On the fiction front, I really recommend Maggie Shipstead's Astonish Me, Richard Powers' Orfeo, and Geneveive Valentine's The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. Nonfiction readers should check out Chasing God and Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys. 



Books reviewed by David: 2
David's favorite June read: Lego Chima Official Guide 


What was the best book you read in June?

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Classics


This Tuesday, we are writing about our favorite classics and the classic novels that we can't wait to read. Hop over to The Broke and The Bookish to find out about the classics we love!


Favorite Classics that I've read:

Beowulf
Beowulf
Ok, bear with me here. I realize that the English of this book is practically a different language. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing professor who actually sang it to us, as people would have done when it was passed from person to person. But the story itself is great. Find a version you can read and don't miss this tale!

Catch-22
Catch-22
This book is hard to read for a lot of people. People call it funny, but the humor is dark and wry instead of the laugh out loud type. But if you stick with this story, it will give you great insight into the terror of war and the mindset of the people on the front lines.

All of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Work
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Classic Works (Fall River Classics)
F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors. I've read everything he has written; most of them more than once. Fitzgerald can write like nobody's business about broken relationships and failed dreams.

The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath's unforgettable novel is about the darkness that haunts the mind of one brilliant girl.

Flannery O'Connor
The Complete Stories
Short story, meet Flannery. Flannery, own those short stories.




Classics I want to read:

Emma
Emma
I've read several Austen novels. I still have to tackle this one about a meddling matchmaker!

The Moonstone
The Moonstone
A few bloggers had a readalong earlier this year. It seems like they had a blast with this mystery.

A Movable Feast
A Moveable Feast
I've read some things about Hemingway from the view of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's time to hear the other side of the story!

Kindred
Kindred
Dana travels back in time and experiences the horror of slavery first-hand.

The Princess and the Goblin
The Princess and the Goblin
This classic fairy tale will be my first exposure to George MacDonald and I can't wait!


What are your favorite classic novels? Which classics are you looking forward to reading?