Summer Reads

One month post graduation.  Finished:

Julie & Julia:  Not what I expected.  I expected cutesy, clean, just like the movie (which I love).  But instead it was naughty, crass, maybe a tiny bit vulgar.  I loved it.  LOVED it.  Still love the movie, but in a completely different way.  I literally laughed out loud several times, as she described how animalistic it was to cut open a cow's leg bone to get to the marrow, which tasted like sex.  I started this one weekend before finals and read through quite a chunk of it.  Then I had to stop.  I picked back up while staying at Snowbird with my dad and Peggy after graduation.  I read it sprawled on my couch pull out bed and while getting sunburned by the pool.  In one day.

A Walk to Remember:  Biggest book disappointment of my life.  Have you seen the movie?  I typically like books better than movies (Harry Potter, Hunger Games) but I had my hopes too high for this one.  It was slow, sappy and way too Christian.  I know, that's a terrible thing to say.  But the last thing I expected to read when I picked this up was the Bible.  I expected to ball my eyes out like I did in the movie.  I didn't cry once.  Maybe I was heartless?  I finished this before I left Snowbird.  I should have gone swimming instead.

Doubt:  This was originally a script for a play, and then it became the movie with the lovely Meryl Streep.  I may be in a book club where we read a book and watch the movie adapted from the book.  This was our first read.  I especially liked the intro and the first sermon, when the priest explains that doubt can bring people together just as much as a tragedy or a shared interest.

Harvesting the Heart:  Oh, Jodi Picoult.  I don't know why I keep coming back to her.  But I do.  This was a decent read.  Decent.  It focuses on a woman who has no plans of becoming a mother and finds herself having a baby (yes, she's married). 

A Long Way Gone:  Horrific.  This is the memoir of a child soldier in Sierra Leone.  I started reading this while I was still working at Campus Accommodations, but it was literally too much to handle and I didn't pick it up again until half way through this week (about 2.5 weeks later).  You can tell that the author's native language isn't English, as it seems clipped.  Like the sentence structure is a bit off.  And it's interesting that he doesn't go in to a lot of detail about many things except the horrors of war, and you can see that the violence completely took over his life.  He can't tell you what he did for weeks at a time as he wondered through the jungle alone, but he tells in detail what it was like to slit a man's throat or to watch his friend die.

The Lovely Bones:  Creepy.  So very, very creepy.  Susie gets raped and murdered in the first chapter.  The ending is lovely, so it does get happier as the book goes on.  However, out of nowhere she will remind you of a horrific detail during the attack.  Hauntingly beautiful.  I read this in two days.  The second in our book/movie club.

Currently:  Songs of the Humpback Whale (Another Jodi Picoult)

Other books I currently have from the lovely Provo Library: 
Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk (the talented David Sedaris of Me Talk Pretty One Day)
Middlesex (of course I would read something about someone with a sex development disorder)

And yes, I now have a Downton Abbey Pandora station.  I'm still confused by why the Turk died.

Also, if you know what's good for you you will view this recipe and eat it as soon as you possibly can:  Bright-eyed Delicious