Sunday Salon: Connecting with a book
Wow, this past week has been pretty busy here on Reading and Ruminations. I did the usual Tuesday and Thursday carnival things, reviewed four books, and had the pleasure of hosting my very first author. Dianne Ascroft, author of Hitler and Mars Bars was here on Friday to share some thoughts about war and the role World War II plays in her book. Here are the links for the reviews, as well as the guest post.
- Author visit from Dianne Ascroft
- Review of Hitler and Mars Bars
- Review of Living Dead Girl
- Review of Thirteen Reasons Why
- Review of The Matters at Mansfield
I thought all four of the books were very good, but I thought two were really, truly excellent: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Living Dead Girl is the kind of book you can't enjoy, but it's powerful; you can't stop reading to see what happens next, and by the end, your emotions are ragged. In light of that, perhaps Thirteen Reasons Why wasn't the best follow-up book. But it was the book that was calling to me. And by the time I finished that one, I was sobbing. My review of Thirteen Reasons Why isn't so much a review as it is my reasons for explaining why and how this book hit so close to home for me (the premise of the book is that a girl committed suicide, and left behind a shoebox full of thirteen tapes to explain why she chose to do so). I lost one ex-boyfriend to suicide two and a half years ago, and I nearly lost another the same way five months ago. At this point, it's my top read for the month of November, and I don't see anything else upstaging it. Because I don't know that there is another book I could connect with on such a powerful and personal level.
So I pose a question: what books have you connected with? I mean, to an extent, I connect to a lot of the books I read. But I haven't connected with any book the way I have with this one. I checked this book out from the library, but I think I might have to go get my own copy. It's quite the book.
With the start I've gotten off to, I really think November is going to be a productive reading month. Here's hoping the next 21 days were as good as the first nine.
Hope everyone has a great Sunday!