1. Share something you are currently reading.
The last time I wrote about reading, I was sharing part 9 of my most recent reads. I was clawing my way out of a slump that Harry Potter put me in. I only got three books into his series before giving up, but then followed up with a few meh books. I hate that I could not love Harry Potter. I want to wear Hermione t-shirts and high five other potterheads, but I got to book 3 and was just so tired of him. I can’t stand how much trouble Harry gets into. He’s like Alvin and the Chipmunks, just ALLLLVIIINNN, knock it off! Stop looking for trouble. Stop trying to solve all the problems. Just go to school, make friends and enjoy wizarding. But no, he has to save the world everyday. So I gave up and this is what I’ve been reading lately (Amazon affiliate links in the titles):
1. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
Synopsis:
Sue Monk Kidd is so good. Handful is an urban slave who was gifted to Sarah Grimke for her birthday. Sarah threw a fit and vowed to one day free Handful, but her family dismissed her as an overly dramatic girl. Since women had very little rights, there wasn’t much Sarah could do to make her promise come to fruition. Or was there?
This is a piece of historical fiction about the first American female advocates of abolition and women’s rights. I had never heard of the Grimke sisters and reading about their plight with a story of sisterhood and friendship and the brutalities of slavery weaved in was quite a journey. I loved it!
My Rating: 5 Stars!
2. Faithful by Alice Hoffman
“Life was beautiful, everyone knew that, but it was also bitter and bleak and unfair as hell and where did that leave a person? On the outs with the rest of the world. Someone who sat alone in the cafeteria, reading, escaping from his hometown simply by turning the page.”
Synopsis:
Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world.
My Rating: 4 Stars!
3. The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve
“Each house has its own signature, unknown to all except the grown children who go back to visit.”
More historical fiction! In October 1947, after a summer-long drought, fires break out all along the Maine coast from Bar Harbor to Kittery and are soon racing out of control from town to village. Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefighters. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie’s two young children, Grace watches helplessly as their houses burn to the ground, the flames finally forcing them all into the ocean as a last resort. They spend the night frantically protecting their children and in the morning find their lives forever changed: homeless, penniless, awaiting news of their husbands’ fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists.
My Rating: 4 Stars!
King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard
“He is a monster still, a monster always. And yet I cant stop myself from listening. Because I could be a monster too. If given the wrong chance. If someone broke me, like he is broken.”
Synopsis:
This is the 3rd installment of the Red Queen series and it’s not my favorite of the dystopian type novels, but I keep coming back for more.
Mare Barrow is a prisoner, powerless without her lightning, tormented by her lethal mistakes. She lives at the mercy of a boy she once loved, a boy made of lies and betrayal. Now a king, Maven Calore continues weaving his dead mother’s web in an attempt to maintain control over his country—and his prisoner.
My Rating: 3 Stars!
Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
“Lisbeth, it gonna be hard, but you have to find a way to follow your own heart, even if”
Synopsis:
Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come.
Ultimately this was a really great book but simplified some very complex issues and was a tad on the unbelievable side. Maybe a lot of the unbelievable side, but the story was a great concept and well written.
My Rating: 5 Stars!
3,096 Days by Natascha Kampusch
“people do not emphasize with victims and give them limitless sympathy, but can very quickly switch to aggression and rejection”
Synopsis:
I have a hard time rating memoir style books because when you’ve experienced something as horrific as abduction and essentially slavery, who really cares about how the experience is shared? This is a true story about Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted on her way to school when she was ten and was kept captive in a homemade dungeon accessed through her kidnapper’s garage. My heart breaks for that 10 year old and yet celebrates the thread of dignity she was able to hold onto long enough to finally make her escape.
So tell me, what have you been reading that I need to add to my ever growing list?
John Holton says
My God, eight years in captivity?
A lot of my reading is factual. For example, I’ve been reading a lot on cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum) and trying to wrap my head around blockchain technology. Not that I think I’ll need to know it, but it sounds interesting. I’m also reading “A Man For All Markets” by Edward O. Thorp. It’s his memoir about how he developed a system of card-counting to beat the dealers in Vegas and his role in the development of quantitatiuve analysis in the stock market. I’m rereading a book on writing movie novelizations and tie-in novels (books that use the characters from TV or the movies and creating whole new stories about them; kind of like fan fiction, but authorized so you don’t get sued). Not sure any of these would pique your interest, but that’s what I’m reading…
madamdreamweaver says
The historic one about the fire in Maine sounded interesting. Personally, I get lost doing any kind of research, meaning: I like reading this or that so much pretty soon I forget what i was looking up to begin with and writing a historical work requires a huge amount of research, which is why I decided a long time ago that’s not my venue.
Paula Kiger says
I’ve added quite a few of these books to my Audible wish list!