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"There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage."
--Martin Luther

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Bookworms from Literatures (How Meta)

Gah, I'm late posting this week! I got caught up with two assignments, but I really liked this topic, so better late than never. This week's post at The Broke and the Bookish is about characters who are book nerds. I love me some book nerds. Here are some favourites from the books that I've read:

1. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter: This has to be a given, right?

2. Francie Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: I love how she just went to the library every day to educate herself. Libraries change lives, y'all.

3. Matilda Wormwood from Matilda: Another point for libraries! Who doesn't love how little Matilda went to the library and ended up with Great Expectations.

4. Marie-Laure from All The Light We Cannot See: I love how this character was so limited in what she could read (because she was blind and braille books are expensive), but yet was such a voracious reader of the books she had.

5. Cath from Fangirl (gee, I feel like I include this book every other week!): She read Simon Snow books and she wrote a Simon Snow book.

6.  Jo March from Little Women: Jo loved books and plays and writing. She's kind of my hero.

7. Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables: Okay, she got a little wordy, but she was definitely a lover of literature. Remember her adventures reenacting the Lady of Shallot?

8. Diana Bishop from A Discovery of Witches (and sequels): This woman practically lived in the library.

I realized almost all the way through the list that it was almost entirely females, so here are some male bookworms:

9. Hanta from Too Loud a Solitude: I read this ages and ages ago, and would love to revisit it. It's a short novella about a man who works compacting paper and books, but as much as he can, rescues the books and reads them himself.

10. Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina: I don't actually remember what he read, but I remember him as a man of books and learning.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Books To Come My Way

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic (as always, over at The Broke and the Bookish) is the most recent ten books that have come into our possession. It could be purchases or library books. The majority of my reading comes from the library or via OverDrive, but I'm doing a course on graphic novels in which we are encouraged to do a lot of reading on the side, so I have purchased several of those in the recent past. This week was a little difficult because I had to retrace my readings based on Good Reads and try to remember when I purchased certain books or picked them up at the library. There was one book that I read recently, but I remembered that I actually signed it out in early June but renewed it a couple of times before committing.

1. Saga, Volume 4 by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples (library): I'm kind of addicted to this series, something I *never* thought I would say about comics. I'm growing! Too bad volume 5 won't be out until September.

2. Persephone by Kaitlin Bevis (e-book purchase): I bought this after I saw it advertise on a list of e-book details. I have a bad habit of purchasing e-books and letting them sit on my Kindle for ages though...

3. The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge (school library): One of the books on my summer to-read list.

4. Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge (library): We just did a presentation at school on Gulledge's second graphic novel (see below), so I took this out for comparison.

5. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (purchase): I initially borrowed this book from the library, but when I heard that a new version was out with an excerpt from her forthcoming book, I had to had it because I'm a total... wait for it... fangirl. :)

6. Russian Winter by Daphne Kolotay (OverDrive): Another entry on my summer TBR list, one which I ended up loving.

7. Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge (e-book purchase): This was for a school project, and unfortunately my local library does not carry it. I'm glad I bought it, though, as it's a great book.

8. Runaways: The Complete Collection, Volume One by Brian K. Vaughan (purchase): A guy at the book store recommended I check this out for my graphic novels course. I haven't started it yet though.

9. The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett (library): I read this for a summer reading challenge that I'm doing. I had to choose a book that was a bestseller in my birth year (1980), which was hard because I'd already read two on the list and some of the others were not to my taste. I can't say that I particularly liked The Key to Rebecca, unfortunately.

10. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer (OverDrive): An impulse download that I quite enjoyed.

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Top Ten Tuesday: Hyped Books I've Never Read

This week's topic at The Broke and the Bookish is "Top Ten Hyped Books We've Never Read". It's hard for me to do this category because I'm not a hype kind of person. I tend to read a lot of classics and older books rather than jumping on too many bandwagons; still, there are books that are hard to avoid if you follow the blogging community, so here are some books that would fall into this category:

Books with General Hype:
1. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert: I generally dislike the whole genre of "I did this thing and found some kind of enlightenment and let me write a book about it." I didn't particularly like Wild (I know, I know), and I have the feeling I won't like Eat Pray Love. If I do end up reading it one day, I'll just focus on the eating part. ;)

2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg: Yeah, I know I should thinking about developing in my career and all that, but I like to read books that bear little resemblance to actual life.

3. Bossypants by Tina Fey: Everyone seems to like this book, and I probably would too, but I tend to only read biographies of dead people.

4. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: I hear about this all the time, especially now with the television show, but it's a huge time commitment. Maybe one day....

5. A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin: See above.

6. Captivating by Stasi Eldridge: I really wanted to like this book because it was soooooo hyped in the Christian community for a while and most of my friends were raving about it. I have never managed to get past the first chapter. I remember having a great bonding moment with a friend when we realized that neither of us could get through Captivating.

Books With Blogging Hype:
7. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: It's on my list, I swear!

8. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins: So many bloggers seem to think this book is the bees knees. It doesn't seem to be my kind of thing, but I won't rule out reading it one of these days.

9. The Selection by Keira Cass: I hear about this book all the time and it seems you either love it or hate it.

10. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: I've been hearing a lot about this book lately and I'm not sure if I'd like it. Anyone want to convince me? ;)

What about you, readers? What hyped books have you never read?

Friday 3 July 2015

Not Today

In mid-July of 2013, Gill and I started our journey to become parents. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, today it became clear that two years have gone by without a pregnancy. I have a myriad of thoughts about this depressing anniversary, which I'll be sharing later on when I've processed things a little more, but today, I am sad. Today, I am grieving. Today, I will let myself feel the heartache that is overwhelming, in hopes that tomorrow I can find that sliver of hope to keep going. If you happen to know me in 'real life', I could use a hug.