Adventures in Reading: Kindle Magic

Last year, I struggled to finish reading 20 books.  I would fall aspleep on the train.  I'd forget my books at home.  Lose the book temporarily.

And then once I finished a book, I would inevitably forget to bring the next book with me.  A week, sometimes a month would pass before I was motivated to find the next book.

However, since January I seem to have turned over a new leaf.
I have read 6 books since the beginning of January!  I'm reading book 7 now.

On Goodreads, I always try to set myself a challenge.  Last year, I set it to 20 and just barely managed to hit my goal.
This year I set it to 30, imagining that I would struggle to reach it like last year.
But I'm 4 books ahead!

So what changed?

My brother got me a Kindle for Christmas.

My Kindle in it's new case!

As soon as I finish one of my downloaded books, I can skip straight to the next.  I don't have to wait till I get home or get to the bookstore or library to pick the next.  I don't have to carry multiple books with me, if I'm almost done with one.
It's made my life a lot easier in that sense.

I'm actually really impressed.  It's the best present my brother has ever gotten me!  I love it.

You can adjust the text size and the brightness of the screen to read comfortably

Don't get me wrong. I love paper books.  There's something about how they feel in my hands, how they smell that just gets me.  I will always love paper books, but the Kindle is so very convenient for my commute and I imagine it will be when I'm travelling also.  I'll still be reading paper books.  I have a few sitting there waiting to read.  But those will be my home, lazy Saturday books.  I'll read those at bed time while curled in bed or on the sofa with dim lights and hot tea.  I now have the entire Eragon series (signed I might add!) to reread.  I'll curl up and imagine being in one of my favorite fantasy worlds.

But on my daily train, I'll reach into my bag and pull out my kindle (I got it a case from Amazon so I'm not worried about damaging it).  It's lightweight and I can keep as many books there as I want.  It lives in my bookbag and comes out to charge after weeks of reading (I've charged it 1 1/2 times since getting it for Christmas).

My Kindle cover from Amazon... I already scratched it, but my Kindle is safe!!

I'm really excited to see how many books I read.  I'm trying new authors and different series and things that I may not have bought for myself before (and let's face it, I've been super lazy about getting to the library to borrow books too).

So far I've read:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (for the third or fourth time) - Lewis Carroll
• The Tuscan Child - Rhys Bowen
• The Pages of Time - Damien Knight
• Songs of Insurrection - J.C. Kang
• The Unexpected Gift of Joseph Bridgeman (The Downstream Diaries #1) - Nick Jones 
• Joseph Bridgeman and the Silver Hunter (The Downstream Diaries #2) - Nick Jones

I really enjoyed these books for different reasons.  I won't individually review them here but I have their individual reviews on Goodreads which is where I keep track of all my reading goals.  I love it since it enables me to track what I'm reading as well as remember what I thought of each book.  When you read a lot, things start to blend so it's nice to be able to look back at my reviews.
I liked all of the books so far this year but a couple did stand out to me.  

My favorites have been the Joseph Bridgeman series.  They were funny and well-thought out. I got a kick out of them.  It's time travel and hilarious and still dramatic and touching. 

The Pages of Time was another time traveler story, but a little more angsty. 

I also really enjoyed The Tuscan Child.  It was more dramatic and in a historical fiction mystery category.  And I loved that it mostly takes place in Tuscany.

I will continue the Songs of Insurrection series but it wasn't my favorite.  I really want to see if the main character is developed more as the series continues. In the first book, she's the weakest link.  But it was super interesting and is the first fantasy book that I've read that utilizes Asian themes. Many fantasy I've read have utilized medieval European characters and themes so this was a really cool and interesting change.

Right now, I'm reading The Last Girl by Joe Hart. So far I'm enjoying it.  I'm almost half way through so I'm very curious to see where it's going.  It's kind of Handmaiden's Tale -esque.  It's a future world in which female births have gone down dramatically so any female child is taken into custody for "protection" and to try to solve the problem.  The main character is interesting and written pretty well.  I won't give away anything else yet...  but I'm enjoying it so far, even though it's more serious than the other books I've read so far.

Have you guys read anything interesting lately?

My list to read is so long but I'm always looking for new suggestions!!

Adventures in Reading: A Simple Favor

So I've been pretty good about not falling asleep on the train lately so I was able to devour "A Simple Favor" by Darcey Bell really quickly and then to start "The Girl on the Train" (which I'm 120 pages into so far).

All done!  What a quick read!

I enjoyed reading A Simple Favor.  It was a quick read for me that really got me turning pages.  It's similar to Gone Girl in a lot of ways but perhaps less shocking and in a way, easier to read due to the language.  Since one of the main characters is a "Mommy Blogger" the writing style is quite accessible. I enjoyed Gone Girl when I read it but I hated the ending.  I really, really hated the ending and if you've not read it, I won't spoil it but I know a lot of people felt the same.

A Simple Favor does have a very similar vibe but the premise is slightly different. The story starts out with our Mommy Blogger posting about her missing friend.  It's a similar mystery to that in Gone Girl.  What has happened to this woman? Where did she go and why? But the narrative is not split between husband and missing wife.  The first half of the narrative is told from the "loving" friend. Then later on different narrative voices are introduced at the second half of the book.

And the twists abound.  I don't know if I found it as realistic as Gone Girl.  With Gone Girl, I really did believe the sociopathy of certain characters.   Here, I found certain twists not as realistic. In the first two chapters, we find out that our Mommy blogger is putting up a front of perfection.  Which feels realistic to the social media world.  Very few people focus solely on the negatives in their worlds on social media so that made sense to me.  But her secret was so out there for me that it was hard to reconcile her two personas.  Then she was so easily manipulated at times that I wasn't sure what to feel about her. She was manipulated by the other characters but sometimes I felt like she was manipulating herself as well?  Do you feel bad for her?  Or are you annoyed by her lack of moral compass in regards to certain actions?  She's a good mom, that's her saving grace. I spent a lot of the book trying to figure out if I sympathized with her or not.

The other two main characters are equally problematic but in different ways.  But it's hard to go into detail without giving away the middle or the ending.  I could believe Sean's character even though I was vaguely irritated by his naivete. He was also an easily manipulated character whereas his wife was just a manipulating force.  For her, I just don't know if I believed her motivation for certain things.  Although she said she felt certain things, it was hard for me to believe her. She didn't always feel real to me.  Her relationships were especially problematic. 

I enjoyed the perspective shifts as they gave interesting insights into each character and I liked the development of the children (the only likeable characters).

I liked the twists and turns but didn't find it as shocking as Gone Girl (maybe because Gone Girl came out first and prepared me for books following this genre of shock fiction).  And I wasn't as angry at the ending.  Although, I'm still not sure how I feel about it.  I found it more realistic but more of a cliffhanger.

It's left so open-ended that I just don't know what will happen and my imagination has so many possibilities that I don't have to settle on one.  But I wanted to know ultimately what happens to each character.  Currently, each is waiting in a limbo in my mind. I wanted to know who, if anyone was actually going to suffer the consequences.
I liked this book but I'm still a bit conflicted about it.

I'm very curious to see the movie which I believe comes out soon.

Currently reading: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Next up: The Heretic Queen

2 more to finish in the pile!

Adventures in Reading: Once Upon a River

Everyone who knows me, knows that I love to read.  I love to escape into a world of fiction and immerse myself in the folds of each page.  When I read books, I travel and live another life and experience another world. There are real worlds and fantasy worlds that sometimes seem more real than the one we live in. There are uplifting stories and sad ones that break your heart a piece at a time.  In every book, there is a choice to escape.

I'm sure if my high school friends and acquaintances had only one memory of me they would remember me with my nose in a book.

I read while walking in the hallways, and while learning in classrooms during class... I went through so many books from middle school to high school.  

In college, I was still a bookworm, but I had to switch gears slightly.  Instead of devouring fantasy, mystery and romance novels I had to shift over to academic reading.  I absorbed psychology, literature in English, Italian and Spanish and my other academic reading on a regular basis.  When there was time, I'd read "fun" books.  

Since college/my masters finished ages ago, I have gone through phases of being a bookworm.  Some years I've read practically nothing while others I have read everything and anything I could get my hands on.  

A couple of years ago, I managed to read 102 books in one year.  They varied from children's fiction to psychology, studies of the brain and genetics. It was a good year for reading.  

Since then, my attention has waned and I've struggled to read more than a handful of books a year.  I use Goodreads to keep track of all the books I've read and to set goals for myself but sadly I'm behind again.  I had set a goal of 30 books in January, but in July I realized I was so behind that I changed it to 25. I'm behind again.  

I've read 12 books and I'm 4 books behind schedule.  

I blame it on sleep.  I keep falling asleep on the train instead of reading.   I've been so tired on my commute since I average 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Hopefully, as the weather turns colder, I can make up the 4 books and hit my goal!

However, in the past few weeks I've been falling asleep less and less.  The book I've been reading just keeps getting better and better.    

I've been reading a beautiful book that I won in a Goodreads Giveaway (the first and only I've ever won... so far) and as I was getting to the end even my exhaustion couldn't stop me from devouring the pages one by one.  

I've been reading Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield.

My loved and used copy of Once Upon a River

Even from the first page of the book, I knew I would be absorbed by it totally and completely.

The writing is beautiful, lyrical but not so descriptive that the eye wanders.  When I've read books like The Lord of the Rings the focus and attention to minute details has always driven me to distraction. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy those books too, I just find them harder to focus on.

Once Upon a River is all story. It is beautiful prose and lyrical writing that is plot driven. Because of the way the tale is woven I find it hard to give a brief synopsis but I'll try. 

In this book, there are many stories and folklore connected by a single event: the appearance of a little girl who appears dead when found, but actually is not.  Who is she? Who does she belong to? Is she Amelia, Alice or Ann? How did she appear? Why? How was she actually alive when she should have been dead with no pulse? Whose secrets will reveal the truth?

It's a mystery that I needed to know the ending to.  The more you learn, the more you want to know.

Bookmarks and chapters... Don't read ahead!!

The pace at the beginning of the novel moved steadily, slowly giving information about each character, tying them inextricably together.  There are the people at the Swan (owners and patrons all telling stories), Daunt, the nurse Rita, the Vaughans, the Armstrongs and countless others affected by this singular event.   But it doesn't feel like too many characters.  Every line, every character is connected in an intricate web that the author somehow makes easy to follow.  I was never lost in the story telling.  I never questioned who was doing what or what.  It was so clearly and beautifully written.

The mystery itself leads to guessing, but I can definitely say I was left surprised quite often.

By the end of the book, the pace moves even more swiftly bringing closure to one loose end after another.  There is sadness and happiness and just enough mystery left to question.

I won't give anything away, but I strongly recommend reading this book. It is an ode to story telling and story tellers alike.  I loved it and Diane Setterfield has become one of my favorite authors.  

I won't give anything away, but I strongly recommend reading this book. I loved it and Diane Setterfield has become one of my favorite authors.  

I loved her book The Thirteenth Tale which is a gothic style mystery also quite story driven with beautiful language.  

Next up: A Simple Favor...
And Others

Shall we begin?