Reviews – Page 11 – Mia The Reader

Bloomsbury Books Are The Bomb

Posted on July 15, 2015

People are always saying that there is so much trash in modern literature. I disagree. Yes, there is some pretty horrible stuff out there. But I’m pretty sure that there has always been sub-par literature and readers in Dickens’s day had to sift through the junk to get to the ones we consider classics now, just like we current day readers have to really search for the good stuff. It would be tragic to be a true Old Book Snob like the father figure in The Precious One who wouldn’t let his daughter read anything written after 1900. Who would want to miss out on The Help, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, or worse, Harry Potter!?!?

But I have to admit…old books are my favorite.

And that’s why I am totally in love with The Bloomsbury Group. It was launched in 2009 and publishes “lost classics written by both men and women from the early twentieth century.” Thanks to The Bloomsbury Group, I discovered a new favorite author and am in the process of refreshing my bookshelves with some beautiful paperbacks.

Right now I’m in the middle of Henrietta’s War. I love the writing style and the lighthearted tone of Joyce Dennys as she writes about her experiences of being on the home front in WWII. Before you go saying, “great, another WWII book,” please know that the books actually written during the war in Britain are so very different from the ones being written now. For one thing, the worst about Nazi Germany was not yet known. For another, they did not dwell on the tragedy because life became normal even in the midst of war.

Here’s a snippet from the Author’s Note:

I never do Spring Cleaning. I know I should and every year am filled with a longing to do better and rush round the house emptying drawers and shelves on to the floor and unearthing many treasures such as my dark glasses (mourned as lost) and endless snapshots. After enjoying several holidays in retrospect I somehow lose heart and bundle everything back again.

My sentiments on Spring Cleaning exactly.

If you loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society as much as I did, definitely check out Mrs. Tim of The Regiment, Henrietta’s War, and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day. They’re perfect for light reading without feeling like your mind is going to mush.

Too bad the house goes to mush while I read these fabulous books…

Happy Summer Reading!

Reading, Reviews

What Books Become Part of Your Life?

Posted on July 13, 2015

So many people are looking for good novels right about now. We need them in summer to take on vacation, or read by the pool, or just because books are always a part of life. Books can be the best vacation your mind can get. And isn’t it beautiful how there are enough different kinds of books and authors in this world so that every reader can find that book that will be just what they need? Writing a book blog is weird because a book I love may be a book you hate, or visa versa. Books speak to people in different ways and connect uniquely. But since readers are always on the quest for the next great book, we go on sharing what we like and helping each other along the way the best we can. Novels -stories, settings, characters, themes – can be so powerful. Today I’m featuring some books by one of my favorite authors. Not everyone will like her books, but I will always read everything she puts out. Here’s why: I vividly remember every point in time that I was reading a book by Marisa de los Santos.

I read Loved Walked In at the desk in my hated cubicle a year after I graduated from college, or on the bench in the park where I went on lunch breaks to escape the office.

Belong To Me was my companion as I sat at my kitchen table eating Honey Nut Cheerios at 3:00 a.m. in the early throes of labor, and then later in a hospital bed as I nursed my newborn son. (That book made me cry buckets, but it could have been because of other stuff going on…)

Falling Together was in my hands at the beach on a cooler September day as I sat on the porch and wished the plot would get better already (hint: this one is not my favorite).

Belong to Me And just two weeks ago, I read The Precious One in the finally silent house after the children’s bedtime, as I curled up on the couch with a hot wash cloth on my face to ease the sinus pressure from a rare case of summer sickness.

This is how I judge an author’s power: if his or her novel intertwines with your life enough to become part of it.

As I read The Precious One last week, I finally got an idea of why de los Santos’s books have that power in my life. She always includes a few characters who are good at forgiveness and loving and being a friend just for the sake of being a friend. The characters are not morally perfect and they don’t have easy lives, but they are good at loving the abandoned daughter or lonely neighbor or friend suffering cancer. These are the tough concepts so often thrown on us in modern fiction, but so gently dealt with in de los Santos’s work and by her characters. Her work helps me think harder about the kind of person I want to be in real life. It’s not the Bible, for sure, but if you’re a lover of fiction, I think you’re always looking for pieces of a book that you carry with you after the book is over to inspire you or make you laugh, to bolster your resolve or keep you grounded. I love finding that kind of book and those kinds of writers, and I get so excited to share them here on the blog. There are many, many wonderful non-fiction books that can be called life changing or earth shattering, but in my own experience, it’s novels with artistry and story that stick in my mind the most.

So tell me, which novels have been so powerful that they became a part of your life as you read them?

Reading, Reviews

The Best Book of The Summer: The Truth According to Us

Posted on July 6, 2015

I’m adding a new book to my Favorites Page today after finishing Annie Barrows’s latest work, The Truth According to Us. This is hands down the best book I’ve read this summer and possibly this whole year. Seriously, it was so good, I’m in a book hangover right now because I just can’t move on.

You may remember Annie Barrows from her co-authorship of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, another book I dearly love. The Truth According to Us is only similar in the strength of character and setting. Otherwise, it has a whole ‘nother feel and plot to it. In fact, it rings more of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help in style and is almost as compelling, if not equally so.

The Truth According to Us is set in the small factory town of Macedonia, West Virginia in 1939. Layla Beck, a fiesty socialite, falls out of her father’s good graces and finds herself in the Federal Writer’s Project with the job of writing the history of Macedonia. Beck gets much more than the back country, backwards society she bargained for when she lands a boarding room in the house of the Romeyn family. As the book progresses, it turns out that the Romeyn family is the true heart of the book. There are secrets upon secrets that shape this family, but this isn’t a soap opera story. It’s more like a classic family saga in which the characters seem to live and breathe in your mind and the story is wrenching and gripping even though it’s not your own and has nothing much to do with your life at all.

Under it all is this idea that history and the course our lives take is always based on what we believe is true. Though definitely not a morality story meant to drive home a particular point, I couldn’t help but think of how important it is to surround ourselves with truly trustworthy people. Trusting the wrong person can change everything about a person’s life. I can’t say too much more or I’ll give it all away! I think this is the type of book that will span many genres and reader preferences. Grab a copy and get reading!

Reviews

Why I Like BookBub

Posted on June 9, 2015

Today is my very first product review on the blog! It’s unofficial, because Bookbub didn’t actually ask me to review their service. But I want my fellow readers to know about it. If you have an e-reader, you can get some cheap prices on quality books by signing up for Bookbub. What’s not to love?

Bookbub is a daily email that sends subscribers a short list of e-books on sale for $2.99 or less. The list often includes free books, as well. When you sign up for the emails, you enter information on what kind of books you like and the emails you get on a daily basis reflect your preferences. For example, I love some 1940s fiction and today I was thrilled to find that Listening Valley, which I read and raved about a few months ago, is on sale today for $0.99. Woohoo! I buy a book from the Bookbub list every month or two. Other titles I’ve gotten for $0.99 include 100 Days of Real Food (still only $0.99 today!) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Bookbub emails usually include sales on Amazon e-books for Kindles and Nook books.

Another similar service is called Rifle but I find the two services are pretty redundant, and Bookbub features the books I like more.

For those of you who are horrified by ebooks and think paper is the only way to read, I have to tell you that I feel you. I prefer real books, too! But as an avid reader, I just can’t ignore the beauty of instant books at my finger tips, and as a minimalist it is really nice to not have to actually store paper copies of books I may or may not want to keep forever. And then there’s the fact that I don’t have to pack a whole suitcase of books on vacation…these are just a few reasons I am a fan of my Nook. If you’re a ebook fan, too, definitely try out Bookbub for yourself!

Nonfiction, Reading, Reviews

Love Books: Read This, Not That

Posted on May 1, 2015

Any book worth its salt has some love in it. Friendship, romantic love, sacrificial love, usually self-love whether glorified or not…humans are made to love and they will love something or someone as a default. In the last week, the two books I read actually had “love” in the title, but they were as different as night and day.

The Look of Love by Sarah Jio is classified as literary fiction, but it’s really not. The only literary thing about it is the premise. It had potential, in an O’Henry kind of way, but it falls severely short of the mark of good literature. And it doesn’t make me happy to say that because I loved Jio’s The Violets of March and enjoyed several of her other books. The Look of Love isn’t anywhere close to Jio’s best work. The book’s main character, Jane, has a gift: she can see true love. She’s just figuring out that she has this gift at age 29, and she also learns that she has to identify the six forms of love before her 30th birthday or she will never find true love herself.

Here’s where you start thinking, “Wuv. Twue Wove.” (Books and movies come and go, but The Princess Bride never fails). The definition of true love and the six types of love Jane defines are not love. They are chemistry, lust, the kind of stuff from songs like “Hooked On A Feeling.” In Jio’s book. people can have love and then just fall out of it, find it somewhere else, and it’s all mystical and inexplicable. I understand that elements of romantic love are kind of inexplicable, but love has reasons and choices and true love is selfless.

Enter the next book of the week with love in the title: Love Does. Bob Goff writes in memoir style about the kind of love that has transformed his life. The whole idea is real love doesn’t just feel or talk but it does stuff. It is action. It is being with people or giving to people, believing in people and telling them you’re for them. Real, perfect love is loving like Jesus. Now, before you roll your eyes, make sure you’re thinking about Jesus here and not the people who claim to follow Him. I’ve been a Christian my whole life, met some amazing and incredibly loving followers of Jesus, but I’ve still never seen anyone come close to Jesus. No one can love the unlovable like Jesus. And we’re all unlovable in some way. But Goff tells stories with humor and intelligence and, his favorite word, “whimsy” about how he has experienced love in his life. For example, when he was in high school, he decided to drop out and move to Yosemite. He packed his car, headed out of town, but stopped by a mentor’s house on the way to say goodbye. And this mentor answered the door in the early morning, and a few minutes later, was in the car with Goff, going on his journey not as a chaperon or a parent figure, but a loving friend who still let Goff hold the reigns but said, “I’m with you, Bob.” These and other stories will blows to bits the love presented in pop culture. Love Does is a challenge to trade in the watered down sensation of love in our movies and books for love that is soul satisfying and deeply changing. This book is also just a plain fun read and if nothing else you will laugh (Thanks to my friend, Mary, for lending it to me!).

So if you’re looking for some summer book love, read this, not that. And feel free to chime in with the books you think give a good picture of real love.