Book Confessions of an Ex-Ballerina

It's been a while since I've sat down and shared what I've been reading. I've been reading and even though I share some of my reviews, I don't share all of the books that I've read. I guess it just comes down to time, and what I'm able to fit on the blog. The problems of reading too much I guess.

My reading life consists of 205 books this year already. I know that's a lot, but I listen to audio books while I work. The longer I listen, the faster it gets, until I'm listening to a book at almost 300 works per minute. So 205 books isn't really that unusual.

Lets dive into what I'm working on right now.

This book has been on my TBR shelf since 2013. It is the oldest book. I've never seen the movie, but I might after I read the book. A lot of controversy surrounds this story with a terrible murder of a child and how her family has to cope. There are mixed reviews on Goodreads, but it carries a 3.78 rating. I'm excited to dive into it and hopefully I can finish it by the end of the week.

Summary: The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.

The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.

Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature. 



In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Dragonriders of Pern series, Gigi does her mother proud, adding to the family tradition of spinning unputdownable tales that recount the adventures of the brave inhabitants of a distant planet who battle the pitiless adversary known as Thread.

The last time Thread attacked Pern, the world was unprepared for the fight--until the Oldtimers appeared. These courageous dragonriders arrived from the past, traveling four hundred years to help their descendants survive. But the collision of past and present took its toll. While most of the displaced rescuers adapted to their new reality, others could not abide the jarring change and found themselves in soul-crushing exile, where unhappiness and resentment seethed.

Piemur, a journeyman harper, also feels displaced, cast adrift by the loss of his spectacular boyhood voice and uncertain of his future. But when the Masterharper of Pern sees promise in the young man and sends him undercover among the exiled Oldtimers, Piemur senses the looming catastrophe that threatens the balance of power between the Weyrs and Holds of Pern.