It's book week!
Everyone in our house loves to read and we're all excited to share a few of our favorites with you.
My turn today.
I love fiction. When I sit down to read a book, I want to be taken to a far away place and hear an amazing tale. I want to be friends with the characters and I cry after they're gone. Yup, I'm a sap.
And I love love love an climactic ending, especially if there's a twist!
I have a soft spot for tales set during the Holocaust {Sarah's Key and Winter Garden below} and I am a huge huge fan of dystopia novels {Divergent below}.
These are a few of my very favorite books.
I love fiction. When I sit down to read a book, I want to be taken to a far away place and hear an amazing tale. I want to be friends with the characters and I cry after they're gone. Yup, I'm a sap.
And I love love love an climactic ending, especially if there's a twist!
I have a soft spot for tales set during the Holocaust {Sarah's Key and Winter Garden below} and I am a huge huge fan of dystopia novels {Divergent below}.
These are a few of my very favorite books.
{summaries via amazon}
This dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the
remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian
who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist
whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's
passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two
lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's
cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology
so vibrantly triumphant.
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner
is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process
of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of
betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the
power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies. It is a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the
devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty
years.
In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into
five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular
virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the
brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an
appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the
faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice,
the decision is between staying with her family and being who she
really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises
everyone, including herself.
During the highly competitive
initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles
alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made.
Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and
intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences.
As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends
really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating,
sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris
also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's
been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing
conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she
also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or
it might destroy her.
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with
her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not
before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's
apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn
nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose
Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads,
moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a
charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's
imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to
embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't
stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an
"excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen
minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last
forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the
wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia
mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could
to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for
days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her
brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another
as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the
resources and will to leave home.
Jane Eyre is the story of a small, plain-faced, intelligent, and
passionate English orphan. Jane is abused by her aunt and cousin and
then attends a harsh charity school. Through it all she remains strong
and determinedly refuses to allow a cruel world to crush her
independence or her strength of will. A masterful story of a woman's
quest for freedom and love. Jane Eyre is partly autobiographical, and
Charlotte Brontë filled it with social criticism and sinister Gothic
elements. A must read for anyone wishing to celebrate the indomitable
strength of will or encourage it in their growing children.
When their beloved father falls ill, sisters Meredith and
Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold,
disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her
daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian
fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed,
their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy
tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins
an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn
Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and
present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing
story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so
terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their
family and change who they believe they are.
Granted, these favorites may change over time, but I love love love all of these titles.
Pick one up!!
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