Reading Vs. Real Life

I love reading. Exploring a world that isn't your own is a wonderful way to lose yourself and forget your troubles. I also have learned (from this experience and you wonderful people) that I love blogging. So I will continue to post reviews of books (which I'm currently reading The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks), but I'll be posting more life stuff at Sarah's Spiel. Thank you for your patience! And for support!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on your Fall TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.

 

Reading in the fall is always harder for me, I always have to choose between reading or watching Revenge, Once Upon A Time, Bones, New Girl. There are so many good shows on.. It's hard to resist.

 

Onto the list that I will try to get all the way through!

 

I am so excited about these. I currently have two other books that are going to come before all of these. But these are definitely getting read soon.

Gone Girl  by Gillian Flynn

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks

 

These are on the TBR list because I've heard some really great things about them, I'm most excited about The Book Thief.

The Book Thief  by Marcus Zusak

The Color of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

 

I only listed six because I know others are going to find their way into this list that I haven't seen yet. :)







Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah

 

 

Distant Shores  by Kristin Hannah

Published by Random House Trade

 

 

Author's Summary:

"Elizabeth and Jackson Shore married young, raised two daughters, and weathered the storms of youth as they built a family. From a distance, there lives look picture perfect. But after the girls leave home, Jack and Elizabeth quietly drift apart. When Jack accepts a wonderful new job. Elizabeth puts her own needs aside to follow him across the country. Then tragedy turns Elizabeth's world upside down. In the aftermath, she questions everything about her life - her choices, her marriage, even her long-forgotten dreams. In a daring move that shocks her husband, friends, and daughters, she lets go of the woman she has become - and reaches out for the woman she wants to be."

 

 

Let me start this by saying I LOVE Kristin Hannah, and let me follow that up with, this was a tear jerker. The way Kristin Hannah writes is beautiful. She brings you in with so many dimensions of the story, with so many different characters, and this story was no different.

 

This book was written from both Elizabeth and Jacks view, which I loved. Elizabeth has spent the last 24 years of her life being Jack's wife and a mother to her two daughters. Jack has spent the last 24 years chasing what he saw as the dream. One day Elizabeth makes a decision that rocks both her and Jacks life. She's realized she's lost herself along the way of her and Jack's journey together. Spending years cheering on your significant other and making sure everyone else is happy, it's easy to lose yourself and your dreams.

 

As Elizabeth is finding what she feels like she's lost along 24 years of life, Jack realizes that he's probably made a huge mistake.

 

I can't tell you anymore otherwise it'd be a spoiler, and let me tell you about a spoiler....I innocently clicked on a Breaking Bad link and my world was shattered, because I hadn't gotten to watch the most recent episode. And Bing ruined it. I'm still bitter.

 

 

 

But I hope you read Distant Shores, or something by Kristin Hannah because your world will be changed. I promise.

 

 

P.S. I'm still working on getting these pictures aligned with the words so please bear with me.

 

Waiting on Wednesday

 

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine, as a way for everyone to see what we're all impatiently waiting to read!

 

 

As in love as I am with Kristin Hannah, Nicholas Sparks was my first favorite author. His books will always have a special place in my heart. That's why I'm extremely excited for this week's Waiting on Wednesday, because his new book The Longest Ride  comes out this month! I can't wait!

"Ira Levinson is in trouble. At ninety-one years old, in poor health and alone in the world, he finds himself stranded on an isolated embankment after a car crash. Suffering multiple injuries, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes and comes into focus beside him: his beloved wife Ruth, who passed away nine years ago. Urging him to hang on, she forces him to remain alert by recounting the stories of their lifetime together – how they met, the precious paintings they collected together, the dark days of WWII and its effect on them and their families. Ira knows that Ruth can’t possibly be in the car with him, but he clings to her words and his memories, reliving the sorrows and everyday joys that defined their marriage.

A few miles away, at a local rodeo, a Wake Forest College senior’s life is about to change. Recovering from a recent break-up, Sophia Danko meets a young cowboy named Luke, who bears little resemblance to the privileged frat boys she has encountered at school. Through Luke, Sophia is introduced to a world in which the stakes of survival and success, ruin and reward -- even life and death – loom large in everyday life. As she and Luke fall in love, Sophia finds herself imagining a future far removed from her plans -- a future that Luke has the power to rewrite . . . if the secret he’s keeping doesn’t destroy it first.

Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples who have little in common, and who are separated by years and experience. Yet their lives will converge with unexpected poignancy, reminding us all that even the most difficult decisions can yield extraordinary journeys: beyond despair, beyond death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart" (Courtesy of Goodreads)

What are you excited for?

 

  

 

Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews. This is also my first meme, and I'm pretty excited. I'm also excited about the books that are stacking my shelves this week! I LOVE Kristin Hannah, and this week our Hastings was having a "Buy 5 for $20" on used books. So I racked up! Poor Roland had to trudge around the store with me for at least an hour and a half.

 But, now I have enough books he'll be able to play his game/watch football for at least a month without being interrupted! WIN-WIN! Well, onto the stacking! Happy Saturday!

Beautiful Creatures: The Movie

 

Well, as I've said before: the book is ALWAYS better than the movie. I suppose Roland was right to not watch another book based movie after the One Day bust. Because Beautiful Creatures was TORTURE. There were maybe two points in the movie that matched the book. Half the characters weren't in the movie, the ones that were in the movie were completely misrepresented. If you read the book, don't watch the movie. Or watch the movie, but don't read the book. Severe disappointment. If I were an author and my book had been mutilated to the point that it was unrecognizable, I'd be livid.

 

 

Ok, I'm done ranting.

 

 

If you read the book and watched the movie, what did you think?



 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

   

Beautiful Creatures
Written By: Kami Garci and Margaret Stohl
Published by: Little, Brown, and Company


Authors Summary:
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten south, a secret cannot                                        stay hidden forever.

 Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
               In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Ethan and Lena are drawn together by something neither one of them can explain at first. As everything starts to come to light and the plot thickens, everyone they've trusted starts to deceive them. Even though it's for they're own good, they feel like it's them against the world. Well, in this case world'S, both Ethan's and Lena's.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I love that Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl are such detailed writers. Most writers are pretty good at describing their characters, but I really felt like Garcia and Stohl put you there with Ethan and Lena. Which, in my opinion, is what a good book should do.

I liked the characters, they were creative, funny, and unique. But you could imagine them being your family. There were a lot of them though, sometimes it was hard to keep up, I read a name and had to go back to see if I had read that name before and forgot about him or if I was supposed to not know who it was.

Also, and this is my #1 pet peeve, there were grammatical errors. In a professionally published book that has been turned into a movie. At some point, you think one of the professionals would have caught it. I couldn't imagine what I would do if I had spent months writing/correcting/finishing a book, just to go back a find a grammatical error..
-Step off soap box-

Other than that I was very pleased with this book, and would definitely be a recommended read.
Also, Roland refuses to watch this movie after the One Day bust. So, I'll be watching it with my friend tonight, and let you know how it compares!

Have you read it? What do you think?