A Wide Assortment Of Books

I normally don't blog on Saturdays but I'm making an exception today. I'm doing an Instagram "photo a day" project and today's prompt is "black and white." Since I needed to post about my Friday reads, I decided to combine the two. So here are all my thoughts on my latest reads in BLACK AND WHITE just for you! I will warn you -- I read an eclectic assortment of books these past few weeks!

I saw Jenny Colgan books pop up on Instagram during one of the readathons I participated in so I decided to check her out. I also read her book, Meet Me At The Cupcake Cafe. These are extremely British novels. I found that both of these books started out s-l-o-w-l y but then, about one hundred pages in (of a 400 page book), suddenly, I couldn't put them down. Colgan does use a lot of British slang, so especially in the Sweetshop book, I missed a lot of references to what certain candies were, but I would recommend these books as good pool/beach/airplane reads.

I was surprised by how much I loved Cork Dork. This is one woman's journey to try and become a Master Sommelier. I really enjoyed the author's ability to laugh at herself and take me into a world I know nothing about. I really enjoyed this book, and I don't even like wine all that much. One thing I wondered is that the author seemed to get access to a lot of inside people and events. Did she have connections/luck or would I have found the same connections (as a regular person), if I had tried this experiment?

This is another book I found out about through a readathon. It's the story of one particular hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Some decisions were made which had far reaching repercussions. Reading this book was really stressful and I could only read a little bit at a time. It was also a really hard read. And after I was done, Dave and I had a big conversation about how these kinds of natural disasters can't really happen in the area where we live so I didn't need to worry too much about surviving five days without power or having to evacuate.

I realize that is not true of everyone who reads this blog (in fact at least three blog friends have had to evacuate their homes due to disasters), so I would only recommend this book if you feel like you wouldn't have to live through this type of situation.

When I get stressed in life, I can't handle stress in books, so I added in a few Nora comfort reads. I just needed something predictable and easy, and these books were it for me.

I accidentally read this in one sitting. It's by the same author as The Wedding Date which I read a few months ago. I really enjoyed this light hearted book, although a few parts had me tearing up. If you need a good, fun romance, pick this one up. For those of you who have read The Wedding Date, I think I enjoyed this one more.

Two years ago on my birthday, I read Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly and this year I read this book. Lilac Girls focused on Caroline Ferriday and some atrocities that happened during World War 2. This book focused on Caroline's mother, Eliza, and the happenings of World War 1. Caroline and Eliza were real people. I found this book interesting because it focused on events in Russia during World War 1 and that's a part of history I don't know a ton about. The author has said that next she will be writing about Caroline's great-grandmother and the Civil War so I'm looking forward to reading that one too.

So there you go -- my last few weeks of reading in BLACK AND WHITE. Have I inspired you to pick any of these up?