October 2016 Reading Round-up

November 1st means Christmas music! Bring it out, Bing!

I tried to do some seasonal reading for October that helped me to get into the fall season. Overall I read some really good books, seasonal or not, this month. You can read what I read in the first half of this month here.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Murier

I had high hopes for this book because I heard it was similar to Jane Eyre and people I follow loved it so I was expecting (and hoping!) to love it as well. And I did. The audio by Anna Massey was fabulous. It's one of those books that I'm sad I can't experience for the first time again. A gothicky type, not horrifying but thought provoking. Usually after I finish a good book, I just want to sit down and discuss it with someone. That's how I felt when this one was over.

I first made the mistake thinking that because it was similar to Jane Eyre that the time period would be similar too (dumb I know, what was I thinking?) so a few chapters in they were talking about cars and telephones and I'm like, 'what?!' It took me a little while to wrap my brain around that. Once I got past that, things started to be okay in my brain. :)

But the narrator, Mrs. De Winter, does such a great job getting pulling you in to think one thing and to have it totally flip on you later on in the book. And just this constant haunting of Rebecca that you can just imagine everything about her even though she's dead. It was really amazing and so intriguing and pull-you-in type book. My only regret is that near the end I couldn't finish all the way in one sitting and so it almost lost a little of its magic when it was broken up in two days. Next time, just sit down and finish it all the way through. Highly recommend. We watched the 1940's movie last night and it was so well done!

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

So I picked this one up a couple of years ago and thought the first 100 pages had too much language so I put it down. But then I regretted it later because I heard it was so good and I actually really wanted to find out what happened in the end.

This week I picked it back up and read it in 2 days and it didn't have as much language as I remembered (or maybe it just doesn't get to me as much...is that bad?) I mean, there is some, but not spilling on every page. And there were some sexual references but it's weird that this one had a different feel to compared to the references in Me Before You. Just my two cents.

Anyway, Alice hits her head in spin class and forgets the last 10 years of life. She doesn't remember having 3 kids and she is shocked to find her and her husband are splitting. This book helps you to reflect on how to value your relationships and keep them from not drifting apart, especially in all the little petty things. A fun pleasure read that is fluffy but not too fluffy because it does make you think about your own life.

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

I was excited when I heard about this book on the What Should I Read Next Podcast because Nina, the main character, was supposed to be a literary matchmaker and I was excited to hear her recommendations. This is a fairly recent novel too. The idea of the book was fun where Nina decides to open up a bookshop in her van and helps the community fall in love with reading. 

But the whole plot was a little flat for me. Her shop was a part of the story but I felt like it covered a small portion of the book. Maybe there's this selfish part of me that wanted to hear more from Nina recommend books to people but I felt that there was more about her being obsessed about certain men in the town. There just felt a lot of unnecessary stuff in there. My favorite parts of the book were the author's note at the beginning and the setting of the story (countryside of Scotland.) High hopes and now a little disappointed.