books

It surprises me that I've enjoyed reading all three books we were assigned to read this summer. And all have made me think. And after reading all three, I can say that I like all of them. Which generally doesn't happen, especially with school assigned books. Like last year, I liked The Secret Life of Bees but didn't absolutely love it or anything. And then I didn't like The Color of Water, but was able to finish it anyways. But this year, I liked Hole in my Life, and read it in all of two hours driving up to New York. I liked Mountains Beyond Mountains, even though I disliked the style of basically a really long interview. So that took me longer to read, but I did like it after I got past my dislike of the interview style and just concentrated on the story. And then I just finished The Poisonwood Bible, which I liked a lot, even though it took me forever to get interested in it, just cause of the personalities of all the characters in the first eight or so chapters. And after the climax, it seemed like the book should end very soon after, but it dragged on for another 200 pages. Yet, I needed to know how it ended and after finishing it, I appreciate the story and message given in the last half of the book.

Recently, I've also read four other books I absolutely loved. The Shadow of the Wind is an amazing book that was translated from spanish, yet has better grammar/vocabulary/etc than most books I've read that started in english. But it's an amazing book about a boy's search for information about the author of a book he loved. (Amazon hates me right now, but this is the link I gave arsinyk for it last night, so it will probably work once Amazon's back up...) But it's the first book that has had me stay up until 2 AM to finish it in a really long time. I mean I thought that by the end everything was coming together too easily, but I still loved it anyways.

And then I reread Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage series. Which I read straight through in the three days we spent in Horseheads, NY to see my grandmother. And I yelled at people, mainly my brother, whenever they interrupted me. And wow do I still love Vanyel's personality and feel for everything he went through. Also, Vanyel/'Lendal and Vanyel/Stefan are <3.

So the last seven books I've read, I've liked. Which is finally giving me the motivation to start reading again. And instead of adding books to my list of books to read, cross them off. Except not just yet, as I have to choose which book to read from that list of like 70 books and read it before I can cross it off. But still.