Old Soul, Young Heart

I find a lot of books randomly from the magazines I read. I have these subscriptions that came free because of miles I earned from booking on Orbitz. I particularly enjoy my People subscription; it is one of my life's guilty pleasures. (Saturday morning coffee with celeb gossip and a crossword puzzle... what's better in the world?! That's right.  Not much. ) So anyway, most of these magazines have a page dedicated to novels that have been recently released. I always read the descriptions and almost all of them sound intriguing to me, so I make a note of them in my phone and then later add them to my "Favorites" within Heartland's library app. After I save them, I usually forget what they are about, so I'll just randomly pick one every once in a while and that's how I came across The Sea of Tranquility . This book may have been described as a late teen novel when I first found it. I definitely picked up on that fact early on. It's set in a h...

Despite how inviting I find the cover of this book to be, I just couldn't get into this one. I saw it recommended several places, I think originally in People magazine. I believe it was one of Oprah's Book Club picks and I know I saw Reese Witherspoon post it on Instagram. From what I can tell, it included a couple of families, some cheating spouses, and a dad with cancer. It started out at a christening party which seemed to last for multiple chapters. It included a lot of characters with obscure names (which made them hard to remember) and flashbacks between when a kid was young and when a kid was grown (which, for me, made it difficult to know where I was at and when, as well as where the plot was going in general). I gave this one a try for about 75 pages and then moved on. Perhaps you would like it, though? I wonder where the title comes from, but didn't want to stick around to find out.

Well, I did terrible in 2016 with my book reviews. I think I kind of forgot that I was planning on doing that. The last one I wrote was in May, but I promise I read quite a few books in 2016! Let's start 2017 off strong with the book I just finished! It's "The White Princess" by Philippa Gregory. Now don't be put off by the word princess in the book title. That word reminds me of something I would've begged my mom to buy me from the book fair in elementary school. This one is not a fairy tale; in fact, it's based off of true events. Historical fiction is one of my most favoritest book genres and many of Philippa Gregory's books are about English history and the monarchy. This one follows the story of Henry VII (Tudor), who married Elizabeth of York in 1486. Their union joined the two rival families who both had claims to the English throne. Unfortunately, their enire marriage was plagued by "pretenders"--relatives coming forward and...

I thought it would be good to read a book that is kind of a classic. I never was assigned this one in high school or college, but I know a lot of people were required to read it, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I had no idea what to expect going into this. The title is kind of mysterious; I'm not sure if anyone knows what it means prior to reading the book. I didn't know when it was written (1951, if you're curious). I just learned that this book was banned in the 1960s because people believed it was linked to Communism? It was considered to be very controversial during that time. I guess I can see how it could be viewed as a little scandalous, but Communist? Not so sure on that one. Anyway, I really liked this book. It was very entertaining and wasn't at all what I thought a book written in 1951 would be like. It follows the story of a kid who was kicked out of a prep school in Pennsylvania and then sort of wanders around New York City, his hometown. I wa...

I think I heard of this book when I was in grad school and the title caught my attention. I've had it in my queue for awhile and finally got around to reading it. We learned briefly about race identity development in grad school, but this went into more detail. I was kind of concerned with this one that it would be very academic, jargony, and hard to read. I thought I might start and not finish it because it wouldn't hold my attention. It was a surprisingly easy read that did keep me interested. There were a lot of first-hand experiences that made it feel like a personal narrative.  I'm always interested in the life experiences of others, especially those that are very different from me. Some of the stories were pretty eye-opening. To be honest, there were parts in it where I was like, "Really? C'mon." This is a true testament to how much I don't know about the experiences of black people. (And the book taught me it's okay to say "b...

Ken Follett is an author that I discovered while I was in England. My house mum and dad had encouraged me to read a book of his entitled "The Pillars of the Earth" because it was about building cathedrals in England during the 1100s. Once they had heard that I loved cathedrals, they thought I would enjoy the book. They were right! I also read a second book of Follett's while I was in England called "World Without End" which is kind of a follow-up to the first book and includes the same characters in a future generation. I love Follett's writing style, so I wanted to enjoy another book of his. "Whiteout" is about a pharmaceutical company in Scotland that holds samples of dangerous diseases in order to study the effects on animals, as well as potentially find cures. There is a plot by criminals to steal a sample for biological warfare. It's action-packed and would probably make an interesting movie. I enjoyed this book, but was bored at ce...

I first learned of Georgiana from the movie,  The Duchess . I saw the movie in the theater around the time that I started to become obsessed with England. I loved Pride and Prejudice from 2004 and this movie also starred Keira Knightley, was set in England, and was a period piece... so really it was just a perfect mix of everything I love. At the time I didn't know that the movie was based on a real person. I've had this book for awhile and, to be quite honest, read about the first 100 pages and skimmed the rest. It is really dense. I'm pretty sure the author, Amanda Foreman, used this book as her Ph.D. dissertation, so it's very detailed and involved. It is a true biography and would be good to use as a part of a research paper or something. The historical side of what I skimmed was interesting. It fascinates me to learn about the way of life in the past--"proper" ways to be, the culture of the place and time, attitudes about issues, etc. Of cou...

Several times over the course of 2015, I've had a thought and it was this: It sure would be nice if I kept track of all the books I read . I'm curious about how many and what types of books I've read this year and I want to keep track of the ones I started but didn't finish. So a great new year's resolution is in the making! I'm going to write book reviews! It's a good way to track what I read and also give me a recap of what each book is about, since I oftentimes remember the title of a book, but can't remember its plot. This will also give me the opportunity to write because I miss writing. (I haven't blogged since June!) I'm reading a book right now called The Taming of the Queen by Philippa Gregory. She is one of my favorite authors of historical fiction. So my first book review will come soon because I have just a few days left of it! So stay tuned.