#thisyearinbooks

[thisyearinbooks]

2015 Book #3: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Review

[thisyearinbooks]

MY NEXT REVIEW, CHOSEN BY YOU!

Thank you to everyone who has sent book recommendations! Please keep sending them throughout the year! I'd love to know what you want to see reviewed!

To celebrate 300 followers, I placed your recommendations in a bowl, and chose one to be my next review!

And the winner is....

PERSUASION by JANE AUSTEN!!!!

Thank you to real-life-part-2 for this recommendation, everyone else who sends recommendations, and to every single one of my amazing followers. 

AGAIN: Please send more recommendations! I love them. Some great recommendations have been added to The List. You are all amazing.

Keep On Reading

[thisyearinbooks]

300 Followers Book Draw...Thing

Hey, all! 

Just wanted to let you know that there is still time to give me a book review for my 300 Followers Book Draw...thing. (I totally take recommendations for reviews ALL THE TIME, by the way, so please don't stop with this one time.)

But right now is the only time when I will actually commit to the one book recommendation that I draw out of a bowl! (Any other recommendations that I find worthy will be put on The List.) So go give me a recommendation that you would like to see me review! Got a childhood favorite? A new great find? A book that changed your life?! 

I want to know about it. 

Thanks again for all of your great support! Can't wait to hear from all of you! 

Keep On Reading

[thisyearinbooks]

Almost to 300 followers!!!

Thanks so much to everyone who is a part of our little reading circle! I wouldn’t enjoy reading half as much if it weren’t for community.

So I’m almost to 300 followers, and I want to do something special! What I’d like to do is from now until I reach 300, I will take any message requests to read a certain book and place them in a bowl. When I reach 300, I will pull one out and review it no matter what the book is!!!

Some quick rules:

ONLY one book per account.

(Books with more than one request will get more than one chance.)

Only books that are written in or translated to English will count. (Sorry, I am a horrible American with no language learnin’)

No books that I have reviewed before. As seen here.

HAVE FUN CHOOSING! I can’t wait to see what hidden treasures you guys come up with.

THANKS AGAIN FOR FOLLOWING!!!

Keep On Reading

[thisyearinbooks]

2014 Book #16: The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

Review

[thisyearinbooks]

HAPPY LITERACY DAY!!!!

In honor of literacy day, I am going to be sharing some never before seen photos from past shoots!

My roommate was my photographer for this shoot, and I gave her complete creative freedom. She had fun with it. I ended up going with a city-scape instead.

Read my review of Divergent.

[thisyearinbooks]

HAPPY LITERACY DAY!

In honor of literacy day, I will be sharing some never-before-seen photos from past shoots!

I absolutely loved this one, and had a lot of fun making my car a model. I listened to this one on audiobook, and I would highly recommend it!

Read my review of Bossypants.

[thisyearinbooks]

2014 Book #13: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Recommended to me through the nerdfighter book club via John and Hank Green's youtube channel, vlogbrothers, I started this book very eager and willing to take part in this discussion, but my excitement quickly waned. 

I found Behind the Beautiful Forevers extremely difficult to swallow, and I think I always will. Many people will probably feel the same. In the United States, in a small private college, and in a group of friends with relatively the same wealthy/white background as me, it is easy to place myself in a bubble and keep my head down to what is going on around the world. I am grateful that this book broke that bubble, but growth hurts.

Before I go too deep into my own human flaws (or advantages based on your perspective), I'd like to express that I do recommend this book. Katherine Boo does a phenomenal job of entering the facts of a broken world into the lives and stories of these characters. Literarily speaking, her work is a symphony of well placed melodic characters and supporting worldly harmonies. She gives truthful insight into a world she has become familiar with.

But for all of its literary beauty, this book took me over a month to finish. 

I had to take the time I needed to digest what was (and is) happening across the globe to people who were simply born into a different story. As an actor, I am extremely empathetic, and I couldn't help but put myself in their shoes. Every avenue these characters took towards happiness suddenly became blocked off by the corruptness of our world, and I felt just as helpless as the characters. I couldn't sleep some nights, and I honestly would ignore picking it up because I didn't want to feel their pain anymore. I was becoming depressed. 

I don't want anyone to ignore the facts of this life and the broken world we live in, but for some, this book might not be the right road towards knowledge. I don't want anyone else feeling useless and guilty for simply being born into a far different story. 

So read this book. Explore its beauty. Find truth in its pages. Slowly open your mind to the world around you. Just promise me you won't beat yourself up over any of it. And let's all research the trustworthiness of any and all charity organizations before we support them. This book also presents the consequences of selfishness and animosity, so let's show our world little kindness. Then maybe, just maybe, we can help 'decrease world-suck'.