Read and Dream: My Book Life: May 2016

A Change

There are a few new changes that have come into my reading life and my blog recently, and I wanted to talk to you about them before making the transition. First, NEW DESIGN!! I've been wanting a new design for a very long time, but didn't get around to it until this weekend where I accidently completely lost my template and had to start from scratch. There were tears...but it all worked out and I am so glad with the end result! Let me know if you would like all the links/info of how I did it!

Most importantly, there are HUGE reading changes that have already been put into place, as can be seen by my blog header: Countries, Classics, Books.

Title: A Separate Peace

Author: John Knowles

Genre: Classics

Blurb: An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

Welcome to a different type of post today! I pondered whether to call this a DIY, but decided on it being too easy and just wanted to share it with you instead. I love books, and incorporating bookish things into daily routines of my life makes everything more vibrant and exciting for me. Quotes are one of my favorite aspects of reading so many books- I feel like there is one that fits what I need to hear in every situation.

Gender and Books, A Correlation?

Hey everyone! Today I have a very interesting...but possibly touchy subject about gender, authors and books. Being familiar with YA and hoping to read more classics, I can't help but notice the gender differences between those drastically different genres, and the book industry in general.

Title: Kids of Appetite
Author: David Arnold
Publishing Date: September 20th, 2016
Genre: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

Blurb: Victor Benucci is an intelligent boy with a love of art (Matisse!) and an urn full of his father's ashes. Madeline Falco is a simultaneous extreme opposite. Both find a home in a greenhouse with a group of dreamers.

Madeline's uncle has been killed. The police would like to know their story. Songs of flowers, ice cream, a family of five, terrible things happening to the most wonderful people, and a bit of love all combine to create the most Super Racehorse of a story.

Title: Let's Get Lost
Author: Adi Alsaid
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Genre: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

Blurb: Five strangers. Countless adventures. One epic way to get lost.

Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named Leila. She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.

Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. And when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth—sometimes, what you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way.

Title: A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

Genre: Classics

*Spoilers in white. Highlight to read.*

Blurb: After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.