Bookends About Brida

Title: Brida
Author: Paulo Coelho
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★★
Review Summary: A beautiful, thoughtful musing on the nature of life and love.

On the surface, the is the story of Brida and her quest to learn magic. I’m sure there are as many interpretations of this book as there are readers, but I read it as the story of a young woman trying to find love and her place in the world. Along the way she has to make some tough decisions about who she loves and what place love has in her life as it becomes filled with her focus on magic.

Monday Musing on Discovering New Genres

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

This week I’m thinking about the fact that I’m still discovering new genres and genres I’m surprised I like, despite having always been an avid reader. Here are a few genres that I’ve recently fallen in love with…

Bookends About 1Q84

Title: 1Q84
Author: Haruki Murakami
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review Summary: Although the book was long and the ending was abrupt, I loved the writing and can’t wait to read more books by Murakami.

This book was so long and so strange that I’m not even sure where to start telling you what it was about, but I’ll do my best. The story involves two main characters and we alternate between their view points. Aomame is an assassin and Tengo is a writer. As the story progresses, they get pulled closer and closer together by events that initially seemed unrelated but which turn out to have a deep connection. The book involves questions of destiny and pre-determination, parallel worlds and some surprising magical elements.