November came and went so quickly that I forgot to do my monthly post on the books I was reading!
I did some rereading in November. I started with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares. I enjoyed the first book when it was first printed in 2001. The story is of four girls who find that one pair of jeans amazingly fit them all, even though they all have different body types. Bee, is a jock; the star soccer player who is always moving. Lena is a natural beauty but is painfully shy. Hispanic Carmen has a spicy personality and speaks her mind. Libby is the wild child who live her own way, no one else's. The first book is about the first summer the girls are apart; the summer they are all 15 going on 16. They all find that they hit some rough and hard patches in their journeys and they all handle them differently. Each book after the first touch on the next summer in the girls' lives. These books hit some tough concepts: family member suicide, the death of loved ones, grief, depression, romance, anger, self-control, bad choices, consequences, etc. I really enjoyed rereading them...again. I think this would be the 4th time I have read the series.
Ann Brashares later wrote Sisterhood Everlasting. The setting is ten years after the fourth Sisterhood book; the girls now women around 29 years old. I think this was a great way for closure for those who waited each year for the next Sisterhood book to be published. How often do we read a book in our teens and later wonder if the characters grew at all? Though these books might be considered "light reading" or "feel good" books, they do touch on some very hard and very real life issues. Questions the women face are faced by so many women each day. I found it once to see that the book was realistic. Is there something wrong with me that I am not married? Is this man the one for me, because my friends don't like him and have valid points? Is this really what I want for the rest of my life? Why am I sitting here waiting for someone who may not even remember me? These are just a few of the questions that the women face. This book showed that people do not have perfect lives, no matter how it looks on the outside. Not only that, we need others to help us through the tough times.
Continuing on my theme of the Maze Runner series by James Dasher, I started the third book in the series, The Death Cure. I have yet to finish it at the time of my writing this post. I can say however that this book is INTENSE. There are so many twists and turns and just when you think life is going ok...BAM! another plot twist hits you in the face! Thomas just cannot win. Just when he thinks he is rescued, he finds himself imprisoned again by WICKED. He cannot tell who is lying and who is telling the truth. He finds himself faced with tough choices and once again thinking on the fly.
During the month of November my family watched Summer Magic, an old Disney movie starring Haley Mills. I noticed that it was based on Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin. I found it for free for my Kindle! I love classics and I greatly loved this one. There was one reference in the book that I did not understand so I had to look it up. The reference is to Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies and they reference this multiple times in this book. If you find yourself a little lost to these references I suggest you read a synopsis on the book (if you don't want to or cannot find the book itself). Summer Magic is about a family whose father passes away and they must make due. They move to a small town called Beulah, where they live in a large yellow house that is too fancy for the town but just right for them. Reading about the simple life of the past makes it easier to shun the drama and fuss of the nowadays for me. The book is, of course, different than the movie Summer Magic but I really enjoyed going through the book and seeing what was different and what was the same and seeing why they changed it for the movie (smaller cast, too much info for the time allotted, etc.).
December will be bringing more books, both classic and modern, new reads and rereads.
