Welp, it's been a while. While I'm trying to get myself back on a schedule with project life and everything else (there's so much to catch up on, I can't even explain how overwhelmed and anxious I have felt while this blog has just been sitting here waiting for me over the last couple of months. I promise, I'm coming back) I figured I'd throw out a book report.Fangirl. I loved this book so much. Like all of Rainbow Rowell's books, it ended so abruptly you almost have to admire her for making a clean break every time. Within this story about a girl who is a twin going off to college with her sister, is the story of Simon Snow, a very Harry Potter-like franchise. Cath, who writes fan fiction (very famously, might I add) based off Simon's story, learns how to be herself in a new place, find who she is without her sister living in the same room, and discover what it means to let someone love you.
“I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.”
American Sniper. This is definitely not the type of book that I normally pick up, but on a recommendation I went for it, and I'm so glad I did. It's not that I didn't appreciate the military before, I think I just didn't really know much about it. Reading this book opened my eyes to what America's Navy SEALS and the rest of our military forces are capable of, what they go through, and how they deserve to be treated (spoiler: they need to be treated better). Chris Kyle's story is incredible, and I highly recommend that you read it for yourself.
"The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes."
Lone Survivor. While I was on the Navy SEAL train, I picked up Marcus Luttrell's story about him and his amazing team of men who risked their lives on a mission that went wrong. I couldn't put this down — the way he talks about his friends, and the way he describes what happened in the mountains of Afghanistan is so compelling, so heartbreaking, and so inspiring.
“Fear is a force that sharpens your senses. Being afraid is a state of paralysis in which you can't do anything.”
Eleanor & Park. Another charming Rainbow Rowell story (that again, ends so abruptly), it follows Eleanor, a girl who comes from a pretty broken home and struggles to fit in anywhere she goes, and Park, who comes from a mixed race family and has never been looked at as "normal." Together they realize that maybe normal is overrated, and embark on a teenage love that made me feel nostalgic about all of my high school boyfriends.
“'I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,’ he said, ‘and then take it back.’ ‘I can,’ she said. ‘Life’s a bastard.'”
The Husband's Secret. One woman is mourning the loss of her daughter who died nearly three decades ago, one woman is dealing with a separation from her husband that she could never have seen coming, and another woman is holding onto a secret of her husband's that she read in a letter that was never meant to be read. In an "everyone is connected somehow" story, the influence of one husband's secret on the lives of a bunch of other people is compelling enough, BUT THEN, the epilogue — the best ten or so pages of the entire book, hands down — just crushes it. Those last pages are reason enough to read the entire thing, I swear — your jaw will be on the floor and you'll undoubtedly do some thinking about your own life.
“None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have, and maybe should have taken.”
That's 14/25 of my 2015 reading goal. Right now I'm in the middle of The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See.
