Lost in My Library

Last year, I did a post about my thoughts on required reading. This is a rough follow-up to that. It's that time of year again - the start of a new semester! I know my school starts later than most, so if you're a student, you've probably already started. But I just started my classes a couple of days ago...which explains why my Friday post is going up on a day that's definitely not Friday. (Oh, well.) It also means that it's the perfect time to talk about required reading again. Quick recap of the last post: I was required to reread PRIDE AND PREJUDICE , which I'd originally read on my own and loved, and hated it. Update: last semester, I was required to reread THE GREAT GATSBY , another book that I'd originally loved. But this time, the required reread made me love the book even more. But I can't put my finger on anything that made rereading the two books different, except for the fact that I already knew I wanted to reread Gatsby at some p...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature at The Broke and the Bookish . This week's theme: FREEBIE! Today in the list of things that you may or may not have already known at me: I cry at books ridiculously easily. Maybe not tears-streaming-down-my-face all the time, but it really doesn't take much for me to tear up. It happens often enough that I've created an entire Goodreads shelf for those books. (Which maybe means that I don't have to make this list, but this means that I get to talk about the books more, which is always good.) I noticed while I was putting this list together that most of my tears are linked to spoiler-y scenes. And I didn't want to talk about those! But I do want to talk about all of my emotions linked to those specific moments, if you've read the books, too. So please keep the comments spoiler-free, but if you want to talk about any of these, feel free to message me on Twitter or Instagram and we can scream about our emotions tog...

Title: That Burning Summer Author: Lydia Syson Series: N/A Length: 336 pages Published by: Sky Pony Press Publication date: January 24, 2017 Diversity: none Rating: ★ ★ ★ Source: eARC via NetGalley I love historical fiction, especially books set during World War II, so when I saw this on NetGalley, I had to request it. I knew it would be really hard for me not to like it! And the perspective made it that much more intriguing - I know I've never read about a Polish pilot before. This book is told from three pers pectives: Peggy, a teenage girl living in England during the war; Ernest, her rule-following brother; and Henryk, the pilot who crashes not too far from thei r house. Out of th e three, Henryk was by far my favorite. He was the most interesting to read about , both in the main story and as his past was revealed. I didn't really have any strong feeli ngs one way or the other about Peggy , Ernest, or , for that matter, any of the other characters. I t...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature at The Broke and Bookish. This week's theme: Top Ten Underrated/Hidden Gem Books You've Read in the Past Year or So. One of my favorite things to do is get other people to read books I love. That way, I can discuss the boo ks with them, and if I know their tastes well enough, I know I'm givin g them something that they'll love! Unfortunately, I can't do this with the entire world. And that means that there are books that I've really enjoyed t hat just aren't widely loved. Why ? I don't know. And that's why I spend so much time trying to get other people to read them. Here are ten books I've read some what recently that I think really deserve some m ore lo ve. IRON CAST by Destiny Soria: I'll never get tired of diverse books, I 'll never get tired of historical fiction, and I'll never get tired of positive female friendships. When you pu t those all together, they ma ke a book tha...

In my last post , I mentioned that even though I haven't read any of Heidi Heilig's books yet, I follow her on Twitter and she's amazing. That got me thinking - a whole lot of the people I follow on Twitter are authors, and thro ugh Twitter, they regularly brighten up my day with more than just their books. So I decided to highlight a few of my favorites in this post! (And, in case you were wondering, here's my Twitter . I can't promise greatness matching any of these, but it exists.) HEIDI HEILIG   Wow, I bet you never would have guessed that I'd include this one after reading the intro to my post! Anyway, her Twitter (like all of the ones here) is an awesome mixture of bookish goodness and activism, and following her was one of the best decisions I've made. (Although I'll admit that it also makes me think of my copy of THE GIRL FROM EVERYWHERE just sitting on my shelf, unread.) Also, her twitter icon has a cat in it, which just makes everyth...