After reading a few thrillers and suspense books back to back, I wanted to shift gear and read mostly romance books in February. Funny, some humor and witty books are always a delight to read.
It Was Me All Along: A Memoir
I feel like I know Andie because I’ve followed her blog (canyoustayfordinner.com) for a long time and I follow her on Instagram. I’ve made her recipes many times and loved them. She has a way with words, so eloquently said in her blog that I knew I would want to read her book when it was released.
I listened to this book thru audiobooks.com and it’s Andie herself reading the book. I love it when authors read their own book, especially when they are good at it, because I feel like they convey the emotion more clearly. This book is about her inspiring story of weight loss-a journey from nearly 300 pounds to losing more than half her size and establishing a healthy and confident relationship with food. The book reads like a diary and very much personal. I loved the chapter with Leonardo DiCaprio in it and also we share the same love for Seattle. There a funny stories but also some heartbreaking moments in the book.
“I will always know that the grass, though it seems emerald and glowing in that field on the other side—it isn’t. Flowers grow here. They grow over there. Weeds do, too. But both are wide, and they’re open. And I can lie and cry in one and move and spin in the other, all while knowing this: they’re the same field. And they’re both mine.”
“Can you do it today? The notion of just trying to take each day as it came. The commitment to the present moment, and only the present moment, without worrying about the big and daunting picture of all the days that followed.”
Fangirl: A Novel
A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love. This young adult story started out slow but I’m glad I didn’t give up on it. I first I thought “I’m not the target audience for this book” but I gave it a chance and I’m glad. It brought me back to my days living in dorm rooms freshman year in college, and in some ways, I could relate. But the difference was, I didn’t have all the technology and social media back when I was a freshman. The book also goes in to details about the character’s involvement in fan fiction, and I was fascinated by it because I’ve recently just started reading fan fiction (something I didn’t know of before). You know how sometimes you are smiling the whole time you are reading a chapter and don’t even realize it?, it happened with this book.
This is the second book I’ve read from this author and I’m planning to read more of her books.
“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”
“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t Google.)”
The Rosie Project: A Novel
This is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges. It is a novel about a man with Asperger’s syndrome and you get to peek into his life. It’s an interesting and entertaining story but especially the dialogue, something I’ve never read before but was quite interested in after I got started. It’s definitely a unique and original story, would be a great summer read. This book was set in Australia but the characters also spent time in New York. Don was a great character and had me smiling a lot, you just wanted to root for him the whole time. I would watch it if it was made into a movie.
“If you really love someone,’ Claudia continued, ‘you have to be prepared to accept them as they are. Maybe you hope that one day they get a wake-up call and make the changes for their own reasons.”
“I need not be visibly odd. I could engage in the protocols that others followed and move undetected among them. And how could I be sure that other people were not doing the same – playing the game to be accepted but suspecting all the time that they were different?”
“Fault! Asperger’s isn’t a fault. It’s a variant. It’s potentially a major advantage. Asperger’s syndrome is associated with organization, focus, innovative thinking, and rational detachment.”
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