What Are You Reading Wednesdays? (2)

What Are You Reading Wednesdays #WAYRW is a weekly feature here on It’s A Reading Thing. Everyone is welcome to participate. You can answer the questions in the comments section of the weekly #WAYRW post or link back to your #WAYRW post on your blog in the comments section as well. 

How to participate:

Grab the book you are currently reading and answer three questions:
1. What’s the name of your current read?
2. Go to page 34 in your book or 34% in your eBook and share a couple of sentences.
3. Would you like to live in the world that exists within your book? Why or why not?

The Last Telegram

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we are at war with Germany. Do you think it is very sensible, being seen out after dark, alone with a German boy?”

No.  England, WWII.  With all due respect to those who lived through it.  I honor their grit and courage.

Booktubeathon July 2016

Booktubeathon started last Monday and ends tonight at midnight.  A few kind people ask me if I was going to participate and the first instinct was total panic - I can barely read one book a week.  My second reaction was 'but it is for booktubers and I just watch/comment, I am not making videos.  But then I thought "Why not?  I can just do it to challenge myself."  I was happy to see that a there were quite people participating on Twitter and Instagram that don't make videos but were reading along also.

Booktubeathon July 2016 hosted by Ariel Bisect

Reading Challenges
Read a book with yellow on the cover.		Current edition has some yellow on the cover.  There is another edition that is ALL yellow.
Read a book only after sunset.	Easy since I work. That is usually when I read anyway.	Not so easy since the first two days I feel asleep after only reading a couple of pages.
Read a book you discovered through booktube.	Obviously I knew about this book already but I never wanted to read it until listening to the review by MementoMori  on BookTube.	Sorry MementoMori I did not love this story.  It was only mildly interesting to me.
Read a book by one of your favourite authors.	X	X
Read a book that is older than you.	1925	Way older than me!
Read and watch a book-to-movie adaptation.	I planned to watch the Leonardo DiCaprio version	NetFlix was only streaming the Robert Redford, Mia Farrow version. Ok-a classic for a classic.
Read seven books.	X	X

While I did not love the story, I did fall in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The way he uses language. So evocative. “The blue honey of the Mediterranean” “Her voice is full of money,” “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”

As for the movie, it stayed fairly close to the book except they invented more interaction between Gatsby and Daisy. It was only mildly interesting but at least there was Robert Redford in the swimming pool! I will probably still try to watch the new version just because I want to hear the soundtrack.

Overall it was a good experience, I read a book I wouldn't have tried otherwise. The Twitter sprints were lots of fun and I did a few of the Instagram challenges.

What Are You Reading Wednesdays? (1)

What Are You Reading Wednesdays #WAYRW is a weekly feature here on It’s A Reading Thing. Everyone is welcome to participate. You can answer the questions in the comments section of the weekly #WAYRW post or link back to your #WAYRW post on your blog in the comments section as well. 

How to participate:

Grab the book you are currently reading and answer three questions:
1. What’s the name of your current read?
2. Go to page 34 in your book or 34% in your eBook and share a couple of sentences.
3. Would you like to live in the world that exists within your book? Why or why not?

1. The Invention of Fire

2.  "Give me Jesu's cross over the pillory.  A man's not meant to stand bent this long."

3.  No!  As you can tell from the above quote, London, 1386 is no place for a lady!  Dying young in childbirth or from any of the other myriad incurable diseases of the day was never one of my life goals.  Survivors of that time and place had to be a lot tougher than I am.

About Audio books

I am not a huge fan of audio books.
If I have stuff to do, my attention gets focused on what I am doing and somehow I stop listening.  I have to back track a lot.
If I have nothing to do, I would rather just read the book.
Lately though, I have been listening to audio books to kill the boredom of being stuck in traffic during my daily commute to and from work.
What I have learned:
1. The reader makes all the difference; voice actors can really bring the characters to life.
2. Boring detail is much more bearable when read with an accent.
3. Repetition is relative depending on whether it is visual or auditory.
Recommendations:
Outlander Read by Davina Porter who does a mean Scottish accent.  I was thinking in Scottish by the time I was done.  I tried to read this book once but the minute detail of daily life, while interesting, makes for a slow start.  Also this is a LONG book I would still be reading the physical version.

We Were Liars performed by Ariadne Myers.  She made this book.  YA Contemporary is not really my thing ( and I am not it's target audience either).  Her acting made all of the characters come to like, put me inside Caddie's confused head, and I was totally taken in all the way up to the shocking conclusion.  I saw some complaints in the book reviews about the repetition in this story.  There is a lot of repetition and I think I would get tired of it in written form.  But the way this story is performed  shows that the repetition has purpose and makes sense.

The third book I want to mention is a July read.  I just finished And the Mountains Echoed read by the author Khaled Hosseini, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Navid Negahban.  The readers brought authenticity and flavor to the story that would not have been there with my voice in my head.  Also having the Afghani person/place names pronounced correctly was a huge help.  I stumble over the unpronounceable and that distracts me from the story line.  I gave this one 5 stars.

June Books

June was a great reading month for me with 7 books completed!

June read for The Dogwood Belles at www.bookclubsonline.org

Sci-Fi - I gave it 4 stars.  I liked the format but my reading buddy did not.  I will read the sequel Waking Gods which is due out next year.

Next up Audio book - I would call this one historical romance although there is the whole time travel thing.  I gave it 4 stars but probably not have rated it so high if I read the physical book.  More on that in another blog.

The next book is YA and I gave it 4 stars.  I wanted to love this book and I wasn't sure what I thought until Lila Bard walked in.  She made the book for me.  Overall it was good but I felt as if the plot was rushed.  Not a lot of time for detail or to develop the relationship between the characters as we swooshed through the action.  I will definitely read books 2 & 3.

The 4th book was recommended to me on Amazon and GoodReads with the enticing 'because you liked The Night Circus...".  I loved The Night Circus but these two books are nothing alike except there is a circus.  The writing was beautiful, the world was interesting, but reading was slow and stressful.  I worried about the bear.  I suspected the author would break my heart over the bear.  But the end was a total disappointment.  Tragedy happened and the characters didn't seem to care as much as they should have so I didn't even get to sob like I wanted to.   Just 3 stars for me.

The 5th book was an audio book and a big DNF.   2nd time I have read a 'wolf' book and thought how can werewolves be so boring?  It was just too repetitive.  Not at all what I expect from Anne Rice who terrified me with The Witching Hour.  I read enough to know that it wasn't going to get better, life is short, too many other books I could read.  One star.

The 6th book was the June book for Good Reads Group - The Broken Spine Book Club https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/189582-broken-spine-book-club

Based on a true event, set in late 1800's Iceland, a very grim, dark story about a woman who is sentenced to be executed for the crime of murder.  Excepts from historical documentation gave it authenticity.  The end was very emotional and I cared more than I thought I would.  It was a good book but some people might find it depressing. 4 stars for me.

And last, another Audio book.  YA contemporary but I really enjoyed it.  The conclusion was a big shock even though there were clues all along - I guessed wrong.   I cried all the way to work listening to the last disc!  More about this one in another blog.  4 stars.