Lets Talk Books

All through high school, I never got too much into reading. I pretty much only read when it was required. After high school I completely stopped reading for about 3-4 years. It had no appeal to me whatsoever until someone told me I had to read "A Thousand Splendid Suns". Now when I was in school and did read I would usually read mostly nonfiction books mostly about drug recovery or teenage girl problem real story type books. 

I was quite weary of reading fiction when someone told me about "A Thousand Splendid Suns" but I decided to read it anyway. I fell in love completely. After that I read "The Kite Runner" and loved that one just as much and realized that I really enjoy reading. Not only reading but also enjoying reading fiction. Who would of thought. 

I have been reading pretty much ever since, minus my small hiatus I have spoken about here before. Following those two books is when I started to actually buy books and start my little collection. Usually I would go to the bookstore and always head to the young adult section. I was SHOCKED the first time I went after high school because it was nothing but all of these vampire books that to me looked absolutely ridiculous. It was a craze that was going on that I knew nothing about and I did not like it. I mean who wants to read all these books about vampires that I am guessing are pretty much the same just with different characters. (my opinion). After that I stayed out of the young adult section for a long time. 

Now is the time you get to call me a coward or what have you. (everyone has a guilty pleasure) I kept hearing about this Twilight series. I mean anyone and everyone was talking about these books. I heard vampire and strayed far away from these conversations until a good friend of mine said just read them. So I gave in. Surprisingly I read all four books in a matter of a couple of weeks. I was hooked. Judge me all you want, I don't mind. I will say this though, those will be the only vampire books I will have read and don't plan on sticking to this craze that finally seems to be dying out and being replaced with a new craze. 

Dystopian Fiction Novels. I'm not for sure if this will become as big of a craze as these vampire books did but I am seeing a trend. I read all of the Hunger Games books kind of by accident. I was in search for a book and one day on my lunch break was at Walmart looking for one. I have seen the Hunger Games book all over the shelves at numerous places, had no idea what they were about, the cover didn't look appealing and I kind of just didn't really pay attention until this day and I was desperate for a book and didn't have time to go to the book store so I said fuck it, let's give it a try. 

This trilogy was AMAZING! I had never read a dystopian novel before and I was completely intrigued. I don't think there was anything that I didn't like about any of the three books. I really enjoyed the movie as well. I was told that they are going to split the third book into two movies. Why?? I don't understand why movie people feel the need to prolong a series for as long as possible. We dealt with this through the Twilight series, which by the way I know I loved the books, but I HATED the movies. We went through 5 years of this shit. These movies winning every single award they were nominated for, never giving any of the other extremely better movies a chance. That urks me to the core. I'm sure I will like the other Hunger Games movies but it really isn't necessary to prolong the third movie. 

I have read plenty of books since the Hunger Games until now. I'll give you a little recap of the last three I have read. 

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden: This was actually the only book I have read after seeing the movie first and I am very glad that I did end up finally reading it. I had seen the movie a copious amount of times. Being one who has a lot of Japanese in my blood and loving the culture as much as I do and with the amount of detail the author goes into on the very private and provocative life of a Geisha before WW2 and the detail of the cities and surroundings of the main character, the book did not disappoint me in the least bit. A lot of people hear the word Geisha and automatically assume prostitute. After reading this you will know that a Geisha is far from that and that being a Geisha is like being a piece of art. If you are interested in what a Geisha really was back then I highly suggest you read this book!!

Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie: First off, I love all of Rob Zombies music and all of his movies except for Halloween 2. (fucking horrible, in my opinion). Devil's Rejects is actually one of my top 3 forever favorite movies. Anyways, this book took a little getting used to. This is his first novel and you can definitely tell. His writing is very elementary and you have to slow your brain down to read it. It's about a girl named Heidi who is a recovering addict and works in a radio station. She receives an anonymous record  from a band called The Lords. After playing it on her station weird and unexplained murders start happening and the town of Salem is going a little crazy. That's all I will say for now since the movie just came out (by the way I heard it is a joke and the worst of Rob Zombie's movies by far. So I will wait for it to come out on DVD). If you thought it was good, please tell me because I haven't heard one good thing about it yet. 

Churchill's Secret Agent by Max and Linda Ciampoli: If you love reading about the Holocaust this is a book for you. It is a non-fiction autobiographical novel that depicts Max Ciampoli's life as Winston's Churchill's Secret Agent during the Holocaust. He goes on numerous missions behind enemy lines from 1940-1945  all for the main goal of freeing his home country of France from the Nazi's. Some other Holocaust related books I recommend are Jacob's Courage a Holocaust Love Story, Sarah's Key, and Not Me.  Do you have any Holocaust related books to recommend? 

Let's get back to the Dystopian Novels. I just finished the first two books of the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. These books are very similar to the Hunger Games books. There is a lot of talk about the Divergent series vs. the Hunger Games series. I'm kind of stuck in between. I loved both series for different reasons. I'm not going to pick a side. I have a feeling that once the Divergent series gets a little more known there will probably be a lot of hate talk going on. I see people saying that she probably ripped off the story line or what not. But If you loved the Hunger Games I think you will also love the Divergent series. If you don't compare the two, you can enjoy both of them. When I finished the second book I was upset. There is no way she can just end the series like that. I was thinking no, there has to be a third book, there just has to be. So I did some research and found out that she is coming out with the third book BUT NOT UNTIL OCTOBER. Ugh that frustrates me. I don't want to wait that long to get to the conclusion. I guess I have no choice. I also came across some info about a movie in the works. That will cause a lot of ruckus among readers/viewers and fighting for awards and all that good stuff. 

I notice a lot of people go to the library for books, or buy those nook/kindle things. I am not one of those people. I am one who likes to keep all of my books. One day I will own a house and I will have my study and have my library that I've been dreaming of. I don't even like to let people borrow them because I will most likely never see it again. I could never have a nook/kindle because I need to have the real thing in my hands, turning the pages, highlighting words and sentences and the smell of them. The smell of books especially really old books is one of my favorite smells in the world. Walking into a used book store and getting that whiff of old dusty pages. It's so calming. 

Enough of my ramblings about books. I realize this post is kind of all over the place. Actually I realize that most of my posts that have a lot of writing are all over the place. I'm not good with structuring my thoughts I guess. Sorry for that.

Anyways I'm always up for book recommendations. Shoot some over if you have any!!