Bookish (and Not So Bookish) Thoughts (14)

I'm linking up with Bookish (and Not So Bookish) Thoughts over at Bookishly Boisterous.

Trick-or-treating with grandma!

1.) We had so much fun on Halloween! Julia was a Rockford Peach from 'A League of Their Own' and she was just too cute. She can be pretty shy but she had so much fun trick-or-treating. My mother-in-law lives in a very friendly neighborhood so everyone was handing out candy and there were kids everywhere. It was great!

2.) I swore that, for the rest of the year, I would only read books I own. Yeah...that lasted about two seconds. I went to the library to drop some movies off and wound up having time to browse the shelves and ended up leaving with four books. Oops.

3.) When I first finished grad school, I bought the first two Harry Potter books in Russian so I could practice my language skills. Fast forward to many years later, I finally bought the rest of the series in Russian and plan to start reading them next year after I finish my English re-read this year. I just don't feel like taking a Russian class this spring so I'm hoping this will be almost as helpful.

4.) I'm so excited for the holidays but am not excited for the complete financial drain that is the holidays. I'm going to really try to keep spending to a minimum this year but it is so hard. I've been terrible with my budget lately and need to get my act together since we're planning to buy a house this spring.

5.) I went to vote for Goodreads books of the year and realized that I have read very few of the books nominated. A bunch of them are on my TBR list but I've maybe read 6-7 of all the books nominated. I feel like a read a lot but maybe I just don't read enough brand new books.

6.) Halloween killed my diet. I have to get back on track but we've been having a bunch of parties at work this week so it might not be until next week. I'm still doing pretty good with my exercise though! I really wish I could just eat all the time and not gain weight. (HA!)

Have a great week everyone!

Comments

Review: "Oleanna" by Julie K. Rose

Synopsis: Set during the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905, this richly detailed novel of love and loss was inspired by the life of the author's great-great-aunts. Oleanna and her sister Elisabeth are the last of their family working their farm deep in the western fjordland. A new century has begun, and the world outside is changing, but in the Sunnfjord their world is as small and secluded as the verdant banks of a high mountain lake. The arrival of Anders, a cotter living just across the farm's border, unsettles Oleanna 's peaceful but isolated existence. Sharing a common bond of loneliness and grief, Anders stirs within her the wildness and wanderlust she has worked so hard to tame. When she is confronted with another crippling loss, Oleanna must decide once and for all how to face her past, claim her future, and find her place in a wide new world. My Thoughts: I was very surprised by what an absolutely beautiful story Oleanna is. The ...

Review and Giveaway: "Distant Signs" by Anne Richter

Synopsis: Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall. In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor’s daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in Thuringia. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East German history gradually unravels, with collision of the personal and political, their two families’ hidden truths are quietly revealed. An exquisitely written novel with strongly etched characters that stay with you long after the book is finished and an authentic portrayal of family life behind the iron curtain based on personal experience of the author who is East German and was 16 years old at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Why do families repeat destructive patterns of behaviour across generations? Should the personal take precedence over...

Mailbox Monday (49)

It's time for another Mailbox Monday post! Once again I could not resist the cheap ebooks that Amazon and Barnes and Noble were promoting this week. I really need to stop! I already have more than I can read. I also was able to spend a little time browsing at the library and I came home with a nice stack of books. These days, I hardly ever get to spend time at the library by myself for more than a minute or two so it was wonderful to have time to just wander and see what I could find. Purchased (for kindle): The Color of Secrets by Lindsay Ashford The One I Was by Eliza Graham House of Bathory by Linda Lafferty Purchased (for nook): One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore Becoming Queen Victoria by Kate Williams From the Library: The Messenger by Daniel Silva The Ripper's Wife by Brandy Purdy Hotel Moscow by Talia Carner Brazen by Katherine Longshore What books did you get...

So Many Books, So Little Time

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