Salt to the Sea
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Publication date: February 2nd, 2016
Salt to the Sea tells the story of several refugees in World War II who cross paths and end up on a ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff. It is based on real events, and a quick google of that ship will tell you why it is important and why Sepetys chose this subject, but that might fall into spoilery territory. It is pretty clear where this story will end up, however.
Winter break is almost over and I have been such a good little reader. I’ve never had this schedule before, being salaried and having to work only while classes are actually in session*, so I have been going days without stepping outside. It’s kinda weird and while it’s very conducive to reading a lot, I have also forgotten what it’s like to be around people other than my husband and my cat.
I wrote an end-of-the-year TBR and I’ve done pretty well on it so far. I’ve read 7 of 17 books on that list, plus 14 others, and I’ll probably read one or two more before Tuesday. You’d think they were going to take all my books away from me or something.
I decided to write little blurbs about the books that stand out to me rather than separate reviews, with the exception of Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. I have written a review of that and it will publish in the next week or two, I don’t remember when. So here goes:
First off I want to say that I have just under two weeks now until the spring semester begins and I am having the hardest time getting motivated to work on my thesis. All I can do right now is write the lit review and the methodology, which I basically already did when I wrote the proposal. I can’t collect any data until the semester begins, and no data collection = no data analysis = no writing those sections whatsoever. So that means two things: A) I probably won’t graduate until the summer, but that’s fine, and B) I just don’t wanna do the things right now. Sure, my lit review needs work and I need to change the methodology from “here is what I propose doing” to “here is what I am doing”, but I have all next week to do that! Right?
On to the bookish things… partly as a way to procrastinate, I have been thinking a lot lately about my reading, how it can be better, how I can spend less, how I can get to books I really want to read, things like that. I’ve also been thinking about ways that I can write more without taking too much time, so there might be some small changes here, but hopefully they will make it so that I can post more often about more books. Over the summer I read about 40 books and wrote about nearly all of them. Then from September through December I read 22 books and only wrote about 4 or 5 of them.
Well it’s that time of year again when everyone decides that they are going to change the way they have lived their lives for years and try to be better in one way or another. I know most resolutions fail but I still make them and give it a whirl, because I don’t see anything wrong with trying to be a better person, whether it lasts a few weeks, a few months, or succeeds and lasts the whole year. That’s still time spent putting effort into something we want to change in a positive way, whether it is permanent or not.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is ten bookish resolutions, and given the amount of books I have bought and added to my TBR in the last six months, it’s probably a good idea to give myself some direction! I have 12 resolutions because I like having lots to do, I like having goals and making lists. So here goes:
Fates and Furies
Author: Lauren Groff
Publication: September 15th, 2015
Fates and Furies is the last book that I have finished for 2015, and I’m glad it was such a good one. This book is the story of a marriage, the people that husband and wife were and what they became, in and out of the marriage. But it’s really a lot more than that.
Books, in other words 