I hate when people waste my time describing a book in their review. That is not the point of a review. I want to know if it was good and if the book will be worth reading. That’s what I do in my book reviews. I don’t really have time to finish less than three star books anyway, so you won’t find a bad book (at least in my opinion) here.
Here’s what I read in April.
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Oh my gosh. I read a book about hockey, and I loved it. My reading a book about hockey, which isn’t really about hockey, is a feat in and of itself, but loving it, even while I hated it, was incredible. It’s beautiful and tough and real and gritty. I was filled with despair and hope and satisfaction.
The quotable material and phrases and words I want to remember forever filled several notebook pages. I couldn’t make it five stars because of the depth of detail about some of the awfulness that can happen to people, but it will still be one of the best books I read this year. You must read this book.
**Check out spoiler reviews on Goodreads though if you feel you might have certain triggers about any of the difficult topics addressed. **
This is the Queen of Mystery in excellent form. If you’ve never read her, I recommend starting with this one or And Then There Were None. It’s dated, obviously, so you do need to prepare yourself for that. I generally like Miss Marple better than Hercule Poirot, as far as Agatha’s detectives go. We have integrated one of his phrases from this book into our family lexicon as a joke, with an exaggerated French accent; “Because sir, I do not like your face.”
I would have liked to have a handy French dictionary with all the pronunciations for the many French phrases. Maybe when she wrote this, it was expected that the general public spoke French, but it certainly isn’t the case now!
Oh my goodness! The entire first half of the book made me want to gnaw my arm off! I hated being kept in suspense about what had happened the day of the ding-dong-dang barbeque! But once we got into the second half, it was a wonderful thing. It was so real, so healing. I cried in several different places. It was a phenomenal ending with so many good things.
As guide to motivate you and explain why you should pursue your dream of an internet based business, this book is on the mark. As an actual how-to do that, it is seriously a fail. It does help to get you motivated and it does make you believe that you can leave the regular workaday life and start something you’re passionate about via the internet. He does a good job of outlining how people seem to make money from a variety of sources via social media and the web. He describes it’s possible for you to take your blog from basic, to a full time income. And possibly that’s all the book is supposed to be. Maybe it’s not meant to get into detail of how to actually make that dream happen.
My understanding was that it was supposed to though. It was disappointing that he didn’t get into the nitty gritty or the actual how to. I got this book because one of my favorite YouTubers recommended this as a life changing book. I definitely wouldn’t go that far, but it was encouraging. It was a fast read, so I didn’t feel like it was a lot of time wasted.
I love World War II stories, there is something so powerful about the triumphs and tragedies that happened in my grandparents’ and in-laws’ life times. This book was especially compelling. I seriously found it to be one of the best books I’ve ever read. It contained such interesting and incredible perspectives and intersections. Wonderfully well researched, Lilac Girls was enjoyable and heart touching, as well as awful to contemplate. I can’t recommend highly enough.
I was fascinated by this book. It is written in an anthropological style, so it is just a report of people, their stuff and how they interact with it. No judgement, no assessment, just details. I loved being invited into these families’s homes and peeking around at their belongings and home life. It’s an aspect we often, if ever, are not privy to. If you’re as interested in other people and how they live as I am, you need to get a hold 
of Life at Home. It’s real life, y’all.
It was intriguing enough to make me want to keep reading but I had already forgotten the title by the time I came to put in in Goodreads a few days later. The title was why I picked it up in the first place. I wasn’t even sure I liked the main characters and didn’t know whether I wanted good things to happen to them. I was also irritated that being thin and good looking was emphasized so much in the main character’s transformation into becoming more confident.
What an amazing book! I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up until the early hours of the morning because I had to finish this story. It’s been ages since I have been that engrossed in a book, or that affected by a story for that matter. There aren’t words to describe the emotions you feel while reading this.
Awed that the author was able to impart such an unvarnished, yet grippingly beautiful story of life in Virginia in the late 18th century, the plight and powerlessness of both slaves and women, the interesting turns in fortune, I rate this book unputdownable. I should tell you, that I read Alex Haley’s Roots and Queen at a young impressionable age, so my bar for this type of story is pretty high. I felt like I could genuinely SEE each of the characters in my mind as I read, which, frankly, doesn’t really happen to me all that often. So much tragedy happens to so many people that one does start to get a little numb, but I still couldn’t stop reading. I felt as if I were an unfortunate witness to their lives. Nearly everyone in this story is admirable, and even those who aren’t, you still feel anguish for the things they went through to make them be as they are. This is a book I will remember for years to come. I highly recommend you block out some time and pick up this book.
**Check out spoiler reviews on Goodreads though if you feel you might have certain triggers about any of the difficult topics addressed. **
I like that you recommend people like me should read the spoiler reviews. Really, that says it all for me! Good reviews, even though I mostly read “fluff.”