Books I Finished The Past Two Weeks

September 30 - October 13, 2018

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

This book of the series, like the others, is a perfect mixture of whimsical and important. It is about hope, acceptance and love and how we are all on the search for this in our lives. It is dark and weird, but truly charming. So I am now anxiously waiting for the fourth book set to come out in 2019.

Synopsis: At Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world. Sumi died years before her prophesied daughter Rini could be born. Rini was born anyway, and now she’s trying to bring her mother back from a world without magic.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I finally finally finished this book! And I didn’t really like it…It’s worth reading since it is a classic and Vladimir is a writer on his own level, but you won’t necessarily want to recommend it to others, nor will you probably ever want to reread it

Synopsis: Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. 

Books I’m Currently Reading

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I’m listening to the audiobook of Anna Karenina read by Maggie Gyllenhaal. I’m about 70% through (man this book is long) and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a super annoying narrator. However, I do like some portions, but not all of this book.

Synopsis: Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover. Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an increasingly hopeless situation.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Yep, still reading. I didn’t calculate my time correctly and had to return the library copy after getting only halfway through, but since I am seriously enjoying this so far I just purchased my own copy. Will have to resume once it gets here.

Synopsis: "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured." So begins this epic, mesmerizing novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia.

Books I Was Reading Last Year - 2017

One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper

I think that had I read this book of Trooper's first, I would have liked it more. But after reading "This is Where I Leave You", which I loved, I expected more from this book.  Click the book cover for my full review.

Synopsis: “Mistakes have been made.”

Drew Silver has begun to accept that life isn’t going to turn out as he expected. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is behind him. His ex-wife is about to marry a terrific guy. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she’s pregnant—because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down. So when Silver learns that he requires emergency life-saving heart surgery, he makes the decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to spend what time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment.

Books I Was Reading Two Years Ago - 2016

Bo Blackman Series by Helen Harper

I read this entire series in just a couple days as I really enjoyed the first two books. However, once you hit the third book it started to get a bit too drawn out and boring. For those of you interested in the vampire world and a strong female lead, with a good amount of romance thrown in, it’s definitely a good series to read.

Synopsis of Book 1: Bo Blackman is a rookie private investigator working for the London based firm of Dire Straits. She doesn't often get triber-based assignments, which is just as well. Vampires and daemons don't interest her as much as humans do. However, when she has to serve a summons on a dodgy daemon called Devlin O'Shea and she ends up saving his life instead of being framed for his murder, her life takes a shocking turn for the worse. And when the vampire Families start involving themselves too, Bo no longer knows where to turn...