There were so many ways to go with this week's topic. The official prompt was: Ten Books To Read If You Are In The Mood For X. I had no idea where to even start with this, so I asked my husband to come up with one and he suggested books for when you're tired.
These are the books I go to when I'm tired, when I just want to stay in bed, hide under a blanket, and read "for to relax" (thank you Princess Bride for the quote).
These are in no particular order. I'm including the Goodreads links so that you can add them to your tbr if the mood strikes you.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.
In Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law to marry him. Little did they know how difficult their first year of marriage would be, in a faraway place with little money and few friends. But Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles and uncertainty of poverty and hardship can be overcome by the strength of a loving, loyal relationship. An unsentimental yet uplifting story, "Joy in the Morning" is a timeless and radiant novel of marriage and young love.
A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life ... If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience ... It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. The Nolans lived in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn from 1902 until 1919 ... Their daughter Francie and their son Neely knew more than their fair share of the privations and sufferings that are the lot of a great city's poor. Primarily this is Francie's book. She is a superb feat of characterization, an imaginative, alert, resourceful child. And Francie's growing up and beginnings of wisdom are the substance of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Harry Potter is lucky to reach the age of thirteen, since he has already survived the murderous attacks of the feared Dark Lord on more than one occasion. But his hopes for a quiet term concentrating on Quidditch are dashed when a maniacal mass-murderer escapes from Azkaban, pursued by the soul-sucking Dementors who guard the prison. It's assumed that Hogwarts is the safest place for Harry to be. But is it a coincidence that he can feel eyes watching him in the dark, and should he be taking Professor Trelawney's ghoulish predictions seriously?
Bestselling romance author and ardent knitter Debbie Macomber combines both her skills in this novel about a newly opened Seattle yarn shop and the knitting class that brings four women together to make baby blankets. The owner of the shop and her three students produce more than blankets, knitting together bonds of solidarity, friendship, love, hope, and renewal. The book even includes the pattern for the blanket, which was created by premier knitting designer Ann Norling.
When Lydia Hoffman, a cancer survivor and owner of A Good Yarn, starts a knitting class for her patrons, she forms a special friendship and bond with three extraordinary women--Jacqueline, Carol, and Alix--and together they share laughter, heartbreak, and dreams.
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract".
Meg's father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?
Meet Henry and Winthrop: friends since forever, manga and anime fans, and dead sick of the daily grind. Henry’s girlfriend of four years just walked out on him after a dumb argument about salad dressing and Cowboy Bebop. Winthrop’s burned out on his comic store — paradise when you’re nineteen, but maybe not when you’re thirty-six. What’s left but to rent a car and a hotel room, gather some friends together, get dressed up as video-game characters and head south to drink in the biggest fan convention this side of the Missouri? Then into both of their lives comes crashing Diane, who’s never seen an episode of Dragonball Z in her life and neither reads nor can spell Shonen Jump. A “mundane”. And as it turns out, she might need someone like them just as much as they need someone like her.
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
Three children stumble upon an extraordinary library in an old house. Armed with magical books, and accompanied by an enchanting deerhound, they leave through a door that takes them to a world in the past.
Beyond the door, a kingdom is in crisis. The Great Sword of State has been stolen and destroyed. The Queen reveals an ancient prophecy that says only children can replace the Sword and she sends them on a journey that takes them beyond the world's end.
The children must unlock the secrets in their books as they face storms, fight traitors and tackle dragons. Without knowing who they can trust, can they succeed?
Meet Rebecca Bloomwood.
She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money.
She spends her leisure time … shopping.
Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something – just a little something…
Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card?
All pictures, quotes, and videos belong to their respective owners. I use them here solely for the purpose of review and commentary.
oooh, I LOVE The Ocean at the End of the Lane...except I'm still severely traumatised by that WORM IN HIS FOOT OMG. *breathes deeply* And I do so love A Wrinkle in Time too. It's been yeeeears since I read it. Eeep. This makes me feel like a reread. :D
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by @ Paper Fury!
Oh yes, that *worm*. Blech!
DeleteI think Ursula was on par with the Other Mother, but maybe a bit creepier because she is not even the faintest bit "nice" to the MC before going head over toes crazy.