Book Reviews by Kim, Our New International SOM Correspondent (Cause we're fancy, like that.)

Hey, friends! As promised, here's a couple book reviews, from one of the ladies in rockin  book club I go to.  These are submitted by my fabulous friend, Kim--who I'm missing a lot since she packed off and moved to the Canadian frontier with her husband and baby.  :(  It's ok, I am going to dress in a lumberjack disguise (gotta blend, ya know?) to sneak over the border and kidnap her for our next book club meeting.

So set some dishes of food and water on the floor for your children to forage from*, lock your bedroom door, and let the reading binges begin! :)  Oh, and remember to chime in with your opinion if you've read any of these books in the comments section! 
-Amy 
*Please don't actually neglect your children...it's a joke.  I don't want to be responsible for that.

Hi, I’m Kim.

I have loved books as long as I could read. I enjoy stories that truly transport you to a different place, and that have characters that I miss when I am done reading the book.

Here are some of my favorite books:

The Book Thief
by Mark Zusak

Genre: Historical Fiction

This is a great book set during WWII in Germany. It follows the life of Liesel, a young girl as she grows up and learns the power of books, and reading. The author is great at writing short descriptions that really help you visualize everything without having to take pages and pages to do so. It is also written with Death as the narrator so it is an interesting and different twist. My favorite part of the book is the characters--he develops them so well, that I felt like I was there experiencing everything with them. He was really able to make them come alive and I truly felt the things they were feeling in the book. Since this is set in Germany during WWII, there are some heavy parts in the books. It has a little bit of strong language, but no words that you can’t find in the Old Testament. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a book that you will want to have some time to read. I had a hard time putting it down, but it is long enough you can’t read it in one sitting.



 
The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield

Genre: novel, gothic fiction

This is a novel that drew me in. It takes a couple chapters to get hooked, but once you are you find a Victorian ghost story that will have you thinking about the book, even when you aren’t reading it. I like the characters and the story was different than a lot of other things I have read so it seemed new and different to me. It is a little bit creepy, but not overly scary, more suspenseful. It glides over the more adult things of the book, without going into a lot of detail (like no long descriptions of sex scenes) but there are hints of adult topics, so its not a book you would want your young kids to read.

The Glass Castle
by Jeanette Walls

Genre: Memoir

This is the story of Jeanette Walls and her family growing up. It is an amazing story or how she grew up in poverty with an alcoholic father, and a mother that likely suffered from mental illness, but in spite of these things became a productive adult. She tells her story starting with her earliest memory, and really gives the reader a glimpse into her life. She does not just focus on the negative, but really tries to explain her family and the relationships she had with them. I loved how real and insightful this book was. Even though it is hard to read at some points, it was also extremely funny, and I though over all it was a hopeful story. It does have some bad language, but it is used as direct quotes from her father, and I didn’t feel like it was excessive.






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Thanks Kim!  

SO, ladies...have you read any of these?  What did you think?  We'd love to hear! :)

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