 All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr 3 Stars Amazon | Barnes and Nobel | Book Depository | From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). My Thoughts: This book as many people said had a unique point of view telling the story of two children growing up in world war II. We see the story of a blind girl in France and a boy in German who goes to a Nazis school to train boys to be soldiers. Marie Laure, and her father flee Paris after the German occupation to live with her granduncle who is a little crazy (he has PTSD). While Werner the German boy goes to a German school for sceince where is also trained for war. He is brilliant at math and works with the Germans to take out people that have illegal radios by triangulating their location. Eventually the two timelines collide when Werner is sent to the same town that Marie Laure is staying in. This book is complimented time and time again for it's rich descriptions. I do agree that it had some wonderful descriptions. Doerr's descriptions were very vivid and kept your grounded. But I found it difficult to keep engaged. This was my second attempt at reading this book this year, so at times I was bored because I knew what was going to happen. But at others there just wasn't enough going on. It is ironic that I should feel this way because Doerr chopped up the narrative and inserted it back into the text out of order, so you are always wondering how did the characters get to this point? But for me that wasn't enough to grip me. Overall I found the accuracy to be correct for aspects of history. Overall did enjoy reading it but it was not my favorite book by far. This book may have been to literary for me at this time, but I did want to get through it, which is why I picked it up again. Which says something about it. If you are a fan of at times dense literary reading, or historical fiction I think that you would enjoy this book. Many other people have really enjoyed this book. So, maybe you will too. Katelyn Find me on the interwebs https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladykate100/novels/wip-1233502 Twitter @Scripturienting IG: @Scripturient101 Facebook: The Scripturient 101 Youtube: The Scripturient 101 www.thescripturient101.weebly.com https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53086148-katelyn-costello
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 Waterfall (River of Time #1) by Lisa Tawn Bergren Paperback, 369 pages Published February 1st 2011 by David C. Cook 3 stars Most American teenagers want a vacation in Italy, but the Betarrini sisters have spent every summer of their lives among the romantic hills with their archaelogist parents. Stuck among the rubble of the medieval castles in rural Tuscany, on yet another hot, dusty archaeological site, Gabi and Lia are bored out of their minds...until Gabi places her hand atop a handprint in an ancient tomb and finds herself in fourteenth-century Italy. And worse yet, in the middle of a fierce battle between knights of two opposing forces. Suddenly Gabi's summer in Italy is much, much more interesting. My ThoughtsI first read this when I was in high school. I want to say about 10th grade. I have to admit I liked it more as a 10th grader then I did now. I found the characters to be sort of flat. The main characters main goal is to get home from medieval Tuscany. But she gets caught up in all of the wonders of the time. Those wonders mainly being Marcello. She doesn't really care about anything but him and her sister who is missing for most of the book.
I felt that Gabi's character had to many convenient skills, such as: knowing how to fight IE Fencing, basic herbal medicine and how to speak medieval Italian because she read Dante's Inferno. While if one of those things were to happen I feel like I would be okay with it. But all of them? Not to mention that her sister was an acclaimed archer. To many coincidences for my taste. Another issue I found with it was the instalove. As soon as Gabi falls into the past, she sees Marcello and instantly fell in love with the gorgeous italian man. So what did I appreciate? I liked the fact that Bergren did quite a bit of research into the times before writing and kept with the historical contexts throughout the book. I loved the details about the castles and about all of dresses and servants. So for me it gathered 3 stars. It wasn't the worst thing, but it wasn't the best either. Katelyn Costello Twitter @scripturienting Facebook The Scripturient 101 Instagram @scripturient101 Youtube: The Scripturient 101 Hello Bookworms, Here we are as the shortest month comes to an end. I was quite busy at the begining of the month but I made time to read. I have found that my night ends around 10 pm, unless I am still trying to get things done, I normally shut down and crawl into my bed with a book. I try to read until like 11 or so and then head to sleep. I admit that this month I sort of ignored that rule.... (cough cough ACOMAF cough) and stayed up till closer to 2 in the morning. That made getting up the next day sort of difficult. Opps. So this month I read 4 books, and my average rating for the month was 3.85. So not a super high month for reading. My TBR List was
The Race (Issac Bell #4) By Clive Cussler 3.5 Stars Hardcover, First Edition, 404 pages Published September 6th 2011 by G.P.Putnam's Sons It is 1910, the age of flying machines is still in its infancy, and newspaper publisher Preston Whiteway is offering $50,000 for the first daring aviator to cross America in less than fifty days. He is even sponsoring one of the prime candidates-an intrepid woman named Josephine Frost-and that's where Bell, chief investigator for the Van Dorn Detective Agency, comes in. Frost's violent-tempered husband has just killed her lover and tried to kill her, and he is bound to make another attempt. Bell has tangled with Harry Frost before; he knows that the man has made his millions leading gangs of thieves, murderers, and thugs in every city across the country. He also knows Frost won’t be after just his wife, but after Whiteway as well. And if Bell takes the case . . . Frost will be after him, too. The Full Review > A Court of Mist and Fury (Book 2 ACOTAR) By Sarah J. Maas 5 Stars Kindle Edition, 626 pages Published May 3rd 2016 by Bloomsbury USA Childrens Feyre survived Amarantha's clutches to return to the Spring Court—but at a steep cost. Though she now has the powers of the High Fae, her heart remains human, and it can't forget the terrible deeds she performed to save Tamlin's people. Nor has Feyre forgotten her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court. As Feyre navigates its dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms—and she might be key to stopping it. But only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future—and the future of a world cleaved in two. With more than a million copies sold of her beloved Throne of Glass series, Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her seductive and action-packed series to new heights. Etiquette and Espionage by |
Katelyn CostelloA lover of words, reading and writing. Archives
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