Traveling Through Books

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas Verdict: Read it!!! "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas was originally written in 1844 ( Wikipedia.org ) and is considered by all canonized standards, a classic. My biggest suggestion to everyone who passes by this book because of that status (an alarming number of people seem to find the word “classic” indicative of boring… but I love them, and they are usually far from boring!) to take another look and read it! The best word to describe this book is swashbuckling. The story is an adventure from beginning to end.  The thing that struck me most about this book was not only the fantastic adventure, but Dumas’ talent for writing with elaborate detail, but never getting boring. Often when authors are as detailed as Dumas they lose the urgency to continue reading. This, however, is not the case with this author. I always had a perfectly clear vision of what was going on without ever losing my total imm...

Title: White Oleander Author: Janet Fitch Genre: Fiction Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 9/1/2006 Read In: Nook ePub I have been wanting to read this book since I saw the movie however many years ago. The movie is actually a very good adaptation. This book centers around Astrid Magnussen and her relationship with her mother, Ingrid. Ingrid, early in the book, commits murder forcing Astrid into the foster care system. While Ingrid is described as the more compelling charcter, Astrid and her unique perspectives drive this novel. The novel is beautifully written with explicit description. This is fitting especially because Astrid is an artist; since this novel is written in first person perspective, the despription is how Astrid views the world: and ever-changing art piece. This book gives incredible insight to the ups and downs of the foster care system. During Astrid's six years of foster care she lives in five foster homes, has an extended hospital stay, and one fo...

Hello my readers, I realize that my posts are infrequent. I do apologize, you deserve better. While it is one of my goals this year to become more consistent and read more (which is really a never-ending goal of mine) I want to be sure you have reviews to read. Also, I'd like to consolidate all my reviews to one cyber-space. So here's the plan: I will be going back to my old Facebook group as far as it will let me and pull from the archives of my reviews. I will re-post these reviews once a week (excepting the weeks I post new reviews)  so that as many reviews as I can find will be present here. These posts will be title "From the Archives: [Insert book title here]". This way, you will know if it's a new review or a re-post. I hope that you enjoy the re-postings. Maybe you missed one or haven't been following me that long. Here is your chance to catch up, or not, whichever pleases you. I will be editing posts, adding or deleting thoughts that come to me to...

    Title: The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living Author: Russ Harris Genre: Self-help/therapy Read-in: trade paperback Publisher: Trumpeter Books   I'm not one to generally read self-help books. They do carry a stigma with them. But then, so do many other genres I read regularly. I also wasn't sure if I would share this specific book with you, my readers, because it was not read by my own suggestion but by my counselor's... who for some reason (I can't imagine why) thought I'd benefit more from a book about the type of therapy we're working on than just hand-outs. She was right. My decision to share is based on the fact that 1. My blog is based on the promise of reviewing everything I read and 2. that I find this method very helpful and so may some of you. I will keep this review pretty short because, let's face it, due to its topic, it's pretty boring.   The book explains Acceptance and Commintment Therapy (ACT...