A Monster Calls

Okay, so I cry a lot while reading books...a lot. A lot of books. A lot of tears.

And yet, this book ... I cried ... a lot.

Patrick Ness's "A Monster Calls":

["Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. 

Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking tale of mischief, healing and above all, the courage it takes to survive."]

#amonstercalls #patrickness #childrensbooks #books #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks

The Storyteller

"The Storyteller" was the last Jodi Piccoult book that I've read (and I've read about half of them over the years).

Jodi's books are all amazing and deep and raw and thought-provoking and oh, so, controversial.

Every book I read of hers I think, "this one is my favorite." But I really do think this one was my favorite.

["Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?"]
#thestoryteller #thetenthcircle #thepact #betweenthelines #nineteenminutes #mysisterskeeper #jodipicoult #books #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks

My Sister's Keeper

Seriously, have you read this book? No.
Have you seen the movie? Yes.

Then you haven't experienced what Jodi Picoult truly, really meant to say with this text.

She picked out the ending before she started even writing Chapter One. She picked out the perfectly aggravating and perfectly amazing ending to the most emotional book I've read in a while. And then the movie people messed it up (like the do, but this was worse).

#mysisterskeeper #jodipicoult #bookstagram #bookphotography #books #ilovebooks

Sexing The Cherry

"Sexing The Cherry" by Jeannette Winterson...this book was even stranger. Like, really quirky, really, really. But I remember loving it, a really lot.

What I also remember: fairy tales, self-discovery, pineapples

What I couldn't remember:
["In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child, Jordan, is rescued by Dog Woman and grows up to travel the world like Gulliver, though he finds that the world’s most curious oddities come from his own mind. Winterson leads the reader from discussions on the nature of time to Jordan’s fascination with journeys concealed within other journeys, all with a dizzying speed that shoots the reader from epiphany to shimmering epiphany."]

#sexingthecherry #jeanettewinterson #books #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks

The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Mitch Album's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven"... I read this way back in the beginning of high school. It was quirky, but deep and beautiful and thought-provoking.

["Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?""]

#thefivepeopleyoumeetinheaven #mitchalbum #books #bookphotography #bookstagram #ilovebooks

The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders"....how to describe such a cultural phenomena...

Hmmm...okay, here goes nothing....

(Grease + West Side Story - Music) x Socioeconomic inequalities = The Outsiders

It's amazing. Read it.

Did I mention that Hinton wrote this when she was seventeen? In high school? And she got like a C on it because her teacher thought it was unrealistic and childish?

#theoutisders #sehinton #books #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks

Wonders Of The Invisible World

Christopher Barzak is a wonderful person. I should know. I had the privilege of being his student during a 10-day writing retreat. He helped me so much more than those 10-long-ass-days.

I read "Wonders Of The Invisible World" before the retreat started. I loved it. I was intimidated by him. This books...is wonderful. Read it.

This book even fits into my very narrow genre niche: young adult, LGBT romance + magical realism.

["Seventeen-year-old Aidan Lockwood lives in the sleepy farming community of Temperance, Ohio—known for its cattle ranches and not much else. That is until Jarrod, a friend he hasn't seen in five years, moves back to town and opens Aidan's eyes in startling ways: to Aidan's ability to see the spirit world; to the red-bearded specter of Death; to a family curse that has claimed the lives of the Lockwood men one by one…and to the new feelings he has developed for Jarrod."]

#wondersoftheinvisibleworld #christopherbarzak #books #LGBTbooks #bookstagram #bookphotography #ilovebooks