Welcome to another WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.
As usual, just answer the three W questions:
What books have you read this week? Discovered new favorites? Feel free to share!
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
~Elizabeth Gilbert
The story is set during the Thatcher-era in Glasgow, Scotland. A time where men are almost out of work and single mothers try to keep their families together. Agnes Bain marries for the second time and she sinks deeper and deeper into alcoholism. Shuggie is the only child from this second union and he loves and adores his mother so much and he tries his best to protect and save her from herself. Shuggie had a difficult childhood but his love for his mother never ever falters. He has a philandering father and a sister and a brother from his mother’s first marriage. They lived a poor life relying on government aid and sometimes stealing money from coin boxes to use electricity. Moreover, Shuggie is not like the other boys in their neighborhood, he tends to act more like a girl and this caused him unwanted attention and bullying. It’s heartbreaking reading about him growing up with this sense of being different while being humiliated and hurt by the people around him.
Shuggie Bain tackled many themes: love between mother and child, poverty, resilience, addiction, alcoholism, sexuality, devotion, struggle, hope. This is not an easy read and the story was paced rather slow. It’s heart-wrenching but it shows the power of human spirit. It’s miserable but there is always that hope, no matter how tiny, that it will somehow get better.
Highly-deserved winner of the Booker Prize.
Quotable Quotes:
“Sometimes you don’t even want a thing. You just can’t
bear anyone else to have it.”“Flames are not just the end, they are also the beginning. For everything that you have destroyed can be rebuilt. From your own ashes you can grow again.”
“Rain was a natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”
“My mother has never worked a day in her life. She’s far too good-looking for that.”
Welcome to another WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.
As usual, just answer the three W questions:
Happy Tuesday, Homo sapiens! Welcome to another Top 5 Tuesday!
Top 5 Tuesday was originally hosted by Shanah at Bionic Bookworm and now found its home with Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.
These are the top five middle grade books for me. Not sure if they count as middle grade, haha, but I believe they’re very suitable for children aged 8-12 years old.
What are your top middle grade reads? Do we have a book in common? Feel free to share. 🙂
Kira-Kira means glittering. Katie’s sister, Lynn, taught her this. Katie adores and loves her sister too much. As sisters, they mostly do everything together. Lynn taught Katie mostly everything. Katie wants to be like Lynn. From Iowa, they moved to Georgia for a better life. The story took place in the 1950’s and at that time, the people in Iowa were not very friendly to them. Lynn got sick and their family is faced with many roadblocks. Life seemed not very glittering anymore.
The book was narrated in a very gentle way by Katie as a child with a child’s understanding of things. Though the story dealt with difficult topics like death and racism, it was still easy to read even for children.
Kira-Kira is a powerful and engaging read. It has its moments of happiness and moments of ultimate sadness. The ending was quite sad but the lessons learned while reading were all worth the read.
Quotable Quotes:
“My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.”
“Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I’d had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick.”
“The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time.”
You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.
~Chuck Palahniuk
Welcome to another WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.
As usual, just answer the three W questions:
This was a quick, amusing read. I finished it in one sitting. 3-stars.
I’m close to finishing this book and I am really liking it.
I was meaning to read Home Going for quite some time now so I hope to get started soon as well as Before We Were Yours.
How was your reading week? Any new favorites? Feel free to share!
Happy Tuesday, Homo sapiens! Welcome to another Top 5 Tuesday!
Top 5 Tuesday was originally hosted by Shanah at Bionic Bookworm and now found its home with Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.
I was exposed to reading at a very early age but as far as I can remember, one of the books that really got me into reading as a child was Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.
It was my older brother who introduced these two books to me when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. And I just love both of these! These made me seek for more adventures and books that I can relate to.
Norwegian Wood started my love affair with Japanese literature.
The Kite Runner touched me to the core unlike any other and so this book got me into reading all the more.
How about you? What books got you into reading? I’d be delighted to know!
Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.
~Matt Haig
The Midnight Library centers around a thirty-five-year-old woman, Nora Seed, who has been living her life in despair and regret. She lost her will to live. She doesn’t talk to her father, brother and friend. Her mom died two years ago and she was suffering from depression since then. She lost her job and her cat died. She felt like a mess, she felt useless. She thinks she just disappoints everyone and so no one wants needs her. She’s having a very difficult time and so she decided to kill herself. Just a few moments before she’d kill herself, she finds herself transported in the Midnight Library. Here in this library, she met Mrs. Elm, her old school librarian, who explained to her everything she needs to know about how things work and why she’s there. She said the Midnight Library is a place between heaven and hell, a place where she has a chance to change her circumstances, a chance to make things right. So, will Nora take the chance?
I decided to read this book because it won Best Fiction in Goodreads but I was not very happy about it. I never felt connected to Nora Seed or her troubles at all. I was annoyed by her all through out. I didn’t feel engaged or captivated in anything that’s happening in the story. I wasn’t moved. The idea of the Midnight Library was quite interesting but the ending was predictable early on which makes the story not so interesting anymore. I almost gave up halfway through it. I’m just glad that the second half of the book was better than the first. And luckily the book was short.
I must say I felt dissatisfied with this one maybe because I was expecting something deeper. I expected to feel more but didn’t. However, I did very much like the lessons from this book. These lessons would be enough takeaway but I think I’d avoid over-hyped books for a while.
Quotable Quotes:
“In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.”
“Never underestimate the big importance of small things.”
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
“She realised that you could be as honest as possible in life,
but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their
reality.”“The only way to learn is to live.”
Welcome to another WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.
As usual, just answer the three W questions:
How was your reading week? Have you read any of these books? Feel free to share!
Happy reading and keep safe, Homo sapiens!
Happy Tuesday, Homo sapiens! Welcome to another Top 5 Tuesday!
Top 5 Tuesday was originally hosted by Shanah at Bionic Bookworm and now found its home with Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.
How about you? What books did you wish you’ve read sooner or when you were younger? Feel free to share!
“It’s true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We’re all busy people,we can’t spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”
~William Boyd
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell is a very touching, very engaging, coming-of-age story of a boy named Sam Hill who faced adversity all his life because he was born with ocular albinism which gave him red eyes. He was bullied and called Sam Hell or devil boy. Though he was bullied in school, he was very much protected by his mother, raised to be a real man by his father and was very much loved by his few friends.
Sam grew up from a religious family and he wanted to believe what his mom always tells him — that God made him extraordinary. He struggled to overcome his fears and the obstacles that come his way and he started questioning his faith.
The chapters were short and easy to read. The characters were remarkable. Sam’s mother was a very note-worthy character, a very important woman in his life. His father was the same. The friendships were also endearing, it would be very nice to have friends like them.
I absolutely loved this book. It was incredible. I can’t recommend it enough. This is my first Robert Dugoni experience and it certainly won’t be the last.
Quotable Quotes:
“There comes a day in every man’s life when he stops looking forward and starts looking back.”
“But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.”
“Our skin, our hair, and our eyes are simply the shell that surrounds our soul, and our soul is who we are. What counts is on the inside.”
“We realize it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extraordinary.”
“Time is wicked. It comes and goes like a thief in the night, stealing our youth, our beauty, and our bodies.”
Welcome to another WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam from Taking On A World of Words.
As usual, just answer the three W questions:
Happy reading and keep safe, Homo sapiens!
Hello there, Homo sapiens! Love month is over… how time flies! Today I’m sharing with you the books I’ve read in February.
How was your February reading? Did you read any good ones? Any new favorites? I’d be delighted to know so feel free to share!
Happy Tuesday, Homo sapiens! It’s March and here’s my first Top 5 Tuesday of the month!
Top 5 Tuesday was originally hosted by Shanah at Bionic Bookworm and now found its home with Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.
Today I’m sharing five of my favorite reads during my childhood. There were a lot of books I enjoyed reading as a child but these five books are some that I can turn back to again and again and again.
HappymessHappiness 