Bout of Books Check-Up

This week I’m participating in the Bout of Books read-a-thon. My goal is to read more than usual, mostly by eliminating the TV watching I do. I’m also actually looking forward to a 4.5 hour bus ride I’m taking into NYC this weekend (and the 4.5 hours back!) as a prefect time to fit in some extra reading. In the meantime, I’ll be up-dating this post every day with my the amount of reading I managed to fit in the day before. I hope everyone else participating is having a lot of fun and making great progress on their goals 🙂

Pages Unbound Interview

Today I’m very excited to have an interview over at Pages Unbound! We talk about useful things, like the most interesting things I’ve learned while blogging, and fun things, like which character I’d want as a sibling and my favorite sport. You should stop by and check it out here.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts

Title: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Author: Susan Cain
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★★
Fun Fact: Individual animals may also be categorized as introverts or extroverts.
Review Summary: This was fun, easy to read, enjoyable and educational. Also somewhat inspiring for us introverts 🙂

The stereotypical introvert is not viewed as someone who could be a great leader, lawyer, or salesperson. Susan Cain challenges that view with both fascinating research and enjoyable anecdotes. This research strongly suggests that society could benefit from the complementary strengths of extroverts and introverts. However, much of American society is designed to favor extroverts. Cain discusses why that is; why we should try to change it; and how we can begin doing so.

Beautiful Lies

Title: Beautiful Lies
Author: Clare Clark
Source: from publisher for a TLC Book Tour
Rating: ★★★★★
Review Summary: I loved this book: the mystery, the beautiful descriptions, the protagonist’s insightful thoughts about art, and  most of all the writing style which made me feel like this book could have been written in the early 1900’s.

In Victorian London, scandal can so easily ruin your life. And Mirabel and her husband have a very big secret to hide! Dealing with a creepy newpaper reporter’s sudden interest in Mirabel and her abandoned family’s sudden reappearance in her life, Mirabel is an awesome, independent, heroine who refuses to conform to societal norms. She’s also an artist, with an artist’s fascinating observations on life and the meaning of art.

Monday Musings

This week the Monday Musings question from Should Be Reading is the following: Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?

Lately I’ve been sneaking in my reading whenever I can, which has included using little snippets of time at the end of which I have to put down the book – no matter where I am.  But when I have all the time in the world, I certainly prefer to reach the end of the chapter or a good stopping point.  Of course, there are also those wonderful books which it’s simply impossible to put down even if you are at the end of the chapter.  With that sort of book, I just try my best to only pick it up if I have plenty of time to devote to reading 🙂

What about you? Are you able to stop anywhere in a book or do you have to finish a chapter?

Three Tips for Reading Historical Non-Fiction

This week I jumped into historical non-fiction for the first time and as some of you may have gathered from this post , I found the experience a little intimidating!  Fortunately, with lots of help from the internet, I made it through – something which turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying experience.  So today I’m going to share with you what I learned, in hopes you won’t need to start a book feeling as lost as I did 🙂

1 – Orient Yourself in Time
My biggest problem when I started reading was that I really wanted to learn something from this book, but I had no prior knowledge of what was happening in the late 1500’s.  I also didn’t know much about when other important events took place in relation the the 1500’s.  Fortunately, I’m not as totally hopeless about history as I may sound, so I was pretty sure I just needed to find a website that gave me a timeline of events to help give me some context.  While searching, I came across this wonderful website which lets you view important world events broken down by era and geographical region.  For instance, I learned that living the late 1500’s Tycho and Kepler were living after the war of the roses, the Spanish Armada, the gun powder plot, and Joan of Arc.  It was really helpful and I highly recommend this as a place to start if you’re feeling lost in time!