Libraries

In grad school they talk to us a lot about self care and making sure that we are not getting burned out due to the nature of the counseling profession. I feel lame and boring when I say it but part of self care for me is reading so I love going to public libraries. I've been reading The Lord of the Rings lately, but sometimes it's a little much. So after working today with  a screaming baby that wanted to be held all afternoon, I drove over and joined my local library!

I'm pretty sure I could easily spend two hours there browsing and selecting the next book to read. It's so quiet and I leave feeling relaxed. I also leave feeling a little bit like I've "stuck it to the man," because I get to read new and bestselling books without buying them! Winning!

Interesting fact... the average American checks out 7 books a year from the local library. If they broke that down by age group I think my age group would be quite a bit below that, but who's counting?

A Soft Place to Land

I read A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White and I really liked it.

It's about two girls whose parents died when they were 13 and 17 respectively. They are half sisters so when their parents passed away the older daughter went to live with her father in Virginia and the younger one went to live in San Francisco with her aunt and uncle.

The girls grew up in Atlanta so I loved that the author mentioned so many Atlanta/ Buckhead places I was familiar with. It was a little taste of home as I read it up here.

I love books written from the narrative perspective of a character because you really get to understand their thought processes and they develop as someone I can really identify with in the story. This main character had problems she was reeling from because of the death of her parents and other life choices she made so I loved seeing her struggle and wrestle with the problems.

It was a great book and it made me hunger for more books by Southern authors- especially Atlanta ones.

Jane Eyre

So I finished Jane Eyre about two months ago but haven't had the thoughts to write about it. Well let me just say I loved loved loved it. People have recommended it to me but I hadn't heeded their advice yet. It was because when I was younger I watched about 15 minutes of the movie on tv and it was so sad that i didn't want to ever read that book.

How wrong could I have been. I loved her humor and her wit. She talked to herself all the time and tried to talk herself out of having a crush all the time. I found myself understanding myself better by reading her words. it was so great to read about a heroine that was young and independent and funny and smart. I could not have read a better book at that time in my life.

You should definitely read it. Anyone would benefit from Jane Eyre's wit, her honesty and hopefully you'll laugh out loud a couple times like I did.

Monster

I just finished reading Monster  by Frank Peretti. He's a Christian author that writes thrillers. Yes, those two sound contradictory in my opinion. But I got the book as a gift so I figured I'd give it a shot.

The book was a quick, easy read but definitely kept my interest the whole time. Peretti uses his Christian influence to talk about evolution some and it's really interesting how subtly he shows his Christian influence.

It didn't scare me- which was good. I was a little worried about that, but it definitely had some thrilling moments. For this genre of Christian thriller I really enjoyed it. I probably won't buy another book by him just because it's not my type but if I was given him as a gift or could rent it from the library then I would read it. I've heard his other one, This Present Darkness is even better.

So that's my review of that one. I'm currently reading Jane Eyre which I love love love so get ready for that review shortly. I'm currently flying through it but still trying to savor it all at the same time. Readers know what I mean.