Cindy's Recommendations

My mother-in-law is an avid reader. In the time it takes me to read one book, she's probably read three or four. The last two books I read came recommended by and borrowed from her.


The Thirteenth tale by Diane Setterfield started out so slow. I've had experience reading British literature and have found that it tends to get annoyingly detailed to the point where I am screaming just get to the point already! This book had it's moments but as the story developed, it got really intense! Things get really twisty and when "the truth is revealed" I admit I had to go back and re-read because my brain was just going "Wait...what?!".

The Weird Sisters

One night my sister sends me a picture text of the book "The Weird Sisters" by Eleanor Brown. I have three sisters (no brothers) so although it was intended as a joke, I immediately added it to the mental list of books I want to read.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected.

I've never read a book where the narrator was a group of people speaking as one. Would you call that first person plural? The sisters as a whole are narrating the story, which took some getting used to.

The book had a slow start but as it picked up (and the sisters started to reveal their secrets to each other) I really got into it. I was much more interested in the drama between the sisters than in their ability to spit out Shakespeare references at the drop of a hat.

I thought this book would be a hilarious interpretation of sisterhood that I could easily compare to my own siblings but it turned out that there were not many similarities at all.

I felt the book had a pretty abrupt end. Some parts were drawn out and then you get to the end and it seemed like everything got summed up pretty quickly. I'd probably recommend this book but I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I've read about 6 or 7 books since I got my Nook this Christmas. That's all...

Recently I downloaded "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford. It was on the B&N recommended list and turned out to be a really great story. I mostly like to read fiction novels and every once in awhile I come across a fictitious story that will have some historical truth to it. The story takes place in the US during World War II and focuses a lot on our treatment of the Japanese American citizens during the war. In history classes I feel like you learn "Japanese people were sent to internment camps" but they never go into depth over it so I never really thought about what that must have been like. It's really sad and makes me wonder what my stance would have been had I been living back then. Would I have been scared like most people who were satisfied by having the Japanese americans round up and sent to internment camps?...or would I have realized how wrong that was? I don't want to give too much of the book away but it was really good and I would definitely recommend it.

The Beginning

I've always been somewhat of a book worm. My favorite day of week in elementary school was library day. The problem I've found as I get older is that I tend to forget what books I have read, and whether I enjoyed them or not. So I thought this blog would be a fun project to review books I've read and hopefully others might find it useful.

For as long as I can remember I've always thought of reading as my favorite past time. For a short period during high school I absolutely despised reading. We were forced to read "the classics" in our English classes and I found them to be well...boring! I know some people will be highly offended by that statement. But I am not claiming to be some literary expert. I took all of ONE literature class in college (and LOVED it!). While I was in school I did mostly text book reading, but during the summers you'd find me at the beach with a stack of books next to my chair. Now that I have finished school I have more time to devote to reading books I enjoy and so I am a constant reader. I do not read for enlightenment or for some higher understanding of life. I read for fun.