A Little Bit of Reading

I was on a roll with my reading! But then finals struck and my reading time quickly dwindled. However, I have read 2 1/2 books since the last time I posted about books. I reread Speak, picked up a random book called All We Know of Heaven, started Jane Eyre, and have gotten almost half-way through Spindle's End. Here's the recap for anyone who's interested.

Speak
Amazing, just like it was the first time! I love this book because it's all about finding your voice and speaking up, standing up for yourself. I think I especially like it because it's about a girl in high school who is dealing with a lot of depression and other horrible problems, and I really want to go into social work with teens. It's just such a great message! A message about making it through hard things and realizing that bad experiences don't have to define who you are.

All We Know of Heaven
It was kind of a cute story...I don't know. I got tired of it. (The following is not a spoiler, it all happens in the first chapter or two of the book.) It's about two best friends who look a lot alike and they get in a car wreck...one of them dies and one of them lives (in a coma for a while) but the authorities mistake the girls for each other. That's basically the first little section of the book. The rest of it is boring. And it seriously didn't mention or allude to heaven at all, except for when the coma girl was thinking, "Am I in heaven? Am I in limbo?" for 4 pages. It wasn't even uplifting. So I don't get the title. The end.

Spindle's End
It took me forever to get into this book. Once I realized it's basically the story of Sleeping Beauty, I got a bit more excited about it. Now I'm on page 174 out of 422 and am thinking I'm done with it. I love Harry Potter but I've discovered I'm just not entertained by a lot of other fantasy. I love detail, but this book is over the top. No one cares if an "earth sprite" is digging through the ground and gets interrupted by a mole. Plus this book is a week overdue at the library so it's a good excuse to stop. I wish I wanted to finish it.

Jane Eyre
I started it but couldn't get past the first 10 pages. I might try again in a few years.


So, for my own personal records, here is my updated list.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
((Spindle's End))
Pride and Prejudice
Moby Dick
Lola and the Boy Next Door
1984
The Da Vinci Code
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Cinder     <-------picking up from library today
The Book Thief    <--------have but already overdue :[
((Jane Eyre))
Atlas Shrugged
Speak
The Hiding Place
Harry Potter
**All We Know of Heaven
**The Once and Future King (Sword in the Stone! Though I'm afraid it will turn out like Spindle's End...)

((gave up for now or forever))
**added to original list


A lot has happened in the last few weeks so hopefully I'll post about that when my mom sends me pictures.

So Far

Here is what I've accomplished from my list of books to read:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Spindle's End
Pride and Prejudice
Moby Dick
Lola and the Boy Next Door
1984
The Da Vinci Code
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Cinder
The Book Thief
Jane Eyre <---------checked out from library
Atlas Shrugged
Speak <------------started last night
The Hiding Place
Harry Potter

Not too bad, right?


Lola and the Boy Next Door:
Super cute and spunky. It was a fun story and an easy read. There is a bit of swearing though. Nothing in this book was too deep, just purely entertainment. Good book to read if you just want to get a little lost in romance drama and have a laugh along the way.



The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:
I loved this book. So much. I don't really know what it was about it--it didn't have a dramatic storyline, there wasn't much suspense, the romance was more of a side theme. But it was amazing!

I think I loved it so much because of the characters. They were so well-developed and I fell in love with each one of them. And the romance that was a part of the story was so cute. It was old-fashioned romance, completely clean, and just twitterpating as my dad would say. I also think it was so good because it's the kind of book that when you're not reading it, you're thinking about it, wishing you were actually part of the story yourself.

One of the authors wrote an afterword and she wrote about how she and her aunt (the other author) never thought this book would take as well as it did...with the whole world. She wrote of how people sent her letters saying things like, "I was so sad when it ended!" or "I wish it didn't have an ending. I wish I could read on forever." I was glad I read the afterword because that is how I felt after finishing the book too! The end was so satisfying but at the same time so unsatisfying, because how could the book really end?

Anyways, I highly recommend it.

Books

I have been reading a lot lately and just finished my latest book. I haven't had time to get a new book, don't have homework (excellent), and am avoiding Pinterest, so I am left slightly bored at work. I've been browsing blogs but not many people have updated recently so I decided perhaps I'll update.

I just finished reading the third book of this series:



Uglies, the first book, was so good. Pretties was alright. Specials was just plain annoying. I'm not even going to bother reading Extras. I really like the plot of the books and think it has awesome potential, but I just feel like they're written similar to the Twilight series--something that could be said in one sentence instead takes a whole page. Halfway through Specials it was just dragging. I think this series could have been satisfactorily told in two books rather than four.

I've made a goal to read more this year. Here's the list of books I'm hoping to check off (I'd better get a move on it!):

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Spindle's End

Pride and Prejudice
I've never read Jane Austen before.

Moby Dick
A classic that I don't really know much about
but it sounds really interesting to me.

Lola and the Boy Next Door

1984
Another classic that I have not read.

The Da Vinci Code
I know I'm like 6 years late on this one...

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Cinder

The Book Thief

Jane Eyre
We read this my junior year of high school, but as always,
I was a procrastinator and ended up reading a cliff-note version
of the book that had been passed down for years from
one class to another (which I dutifully passed on as well). I really
loved the summary but just have never gotten
around to reading the whole thing.

Atlas Shrugged
Something like 1,100 pages...wish me luck!

I'm also considering reading The Hunger Games series but I'm too lazy to get that picture since I just barely remembered it.

I also want to reread some books that I've already read and loved.

Speak

The Hiding Place

And of course have to have my annual fill of the
Harry Potter Series.

Feel free to recommend any others to me as well.

In other news, my taste buds have been turned to this loverly treat thanks to Shley:

A treat I can count on Dan not stealing as he hates dark chocolate.
Mmm!!

I also made lasagna from scratch last night! Dan loved it. I'd only made lasagna from scratch one time before, but I used an incredibly simplified recipe (that had like 5 ingredients as opposed to the 20 the one I made last night called for [recipe--and no I didn't actually use a dutch oven, just an electric skillet]) and used thinly sliced zucchini instead of lasagna noodles. Surprisingly you could barely taste the difference. But I used real noodles this time.

Anyways, I didn't get home from school til around 7:15 and started dinner (complete with garlic bread) until around 7:30. Yeah, we ate dinner at 10:30. At least Dan told me that it was the best lasagna he'd ever had (which is saying something as it's his favorite food!) and that it was worth the wait. :]


Hooray for boring blog posts. Maybe one day my life will be exciting enough to document.

P.S. I think every time I blog at work I'll post what it smells like because believe me, for whatever reason, Independent Study has some weird smells. Actually, the reason is because we share a building with BYU Food To Go.

Today it smells like aloe vera. Not like the lotion, like a fresh chop of the actual plant. The stinky smell.