Top Ten Favourites Melissa (me) Has Read during the lifetime of her blog

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and Bookish, where book bloggers share their Top Ten lists on everything bookish. This week is top ten books I have read since I have started my blog.  I am not going to include Harry Potter because they will always be on my top ten and the list will have no particular order, just that they are my top ten.

1) The Sister Queens (5/5) - Heard some good things about this book and wasn't disappointed.

2) The Help (4/5) - Started a little slow, but really gained a lot of momentum towards the end.  Chocolate pie anybody?

3) The Language of Flowers (4.25/5) - Got a good recommendation from Books on the Nightstand last year and wasn't disappointed.

4) The Hunger Games (4.5/5) - Despite the psychological stuff that I couldn't get over during the reading of the book, I really liked it.

5) My Life in France (5/5) - A really fascinating look at the life of Paul and Julia Child and how they made France their second home.

6) The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (4/5) - Really didn't know what to expect out of this book and was pleasantly surprised.  Am planning on getting the paperback copy this coming fall.

7) The Tea Rose (4/5), The Winter Rose (4/5), The Wild Rose (3.5/5) - Love the historical scope of the series and honestly kinda miss it.  It was weird watching the Olympics knowing that the setting of the first two books took place in that neighbourhood. 

8) A Great and Terrible Beauty (4/5) and Rebel Angels (4/5) - Liked how the books drew me in and were quite engrossing by the end of the book.  Am looking forward to reading the final book in the series this coming fall.

9) Blood, Bones & Butter (4/5) - Really enjoyed reading about why she became a chef and her life in general.  Another recommendation from Books on the Nightstand.

10) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (4/5) - Very much worth the read and has stayed with me since I read the book in 2011.

Honorable mentions:
• At Home by Bill Bryson - Loved reading about the history of the home and found it interesting why certain things exist within our homes today.

• Juliet: a novel by Anne Fortier - As a fan of Romeo & Juliet, really liked this story of how the legend came to be.

• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly - Yet another Book on the Nightstand recommendation; loved the play between the past and the present.

• Room by Emma Donoghue - Definitely one of the best books I have read since I started my blog.  Read this book just as the Jaycee Dugard case was unfolding.

Musing Mondays (Aug. 20)

This week, Miz B at Should Be Reading, asks:

Have you ever reread a book and found that your opinion changed?

Yes, I have.  I had read All Quiet on the Western Front for my Grade 12 English class and really didn't like it.  This was primarily due to the fact that my class didn't really discuss it, as we were about to take our Provincial English exam at the time and I think that the teacher was more concerned about how we would do on the exam rather than if we understood the book we were reading.  About a year later, I was taking a lower-division history course at my local university and the prof assigned All Quiet as the book we were to read that would accompany the material we were studying in class (the prof had a thing for assigning novels based on the material discussed in class for some strange reason).  And after discussing the book as a class, I actually grew to enjoy the book and found it to be one of my favourite novels.

Sunday Salon - A wacky few weeks...

First off, I want to apologize to those that read my blog on a regular basis that I wasn't posting over the last few weeks.  Simply what happened was that life happened and it didn't help that I was engrossed in watching the Olympics pretty much from the time I got up in the morning till I went to bed.  And yes, most of that was live on my TV, not through an internet connection.  Part of the reason was that unlike the United States, which has this stupid thing with tape-delaying events for prime time, Canadian networks that show the Olympics, usually do it live, whether it be CBC or CTV.  Yes it did mean that the live action ended at around 1 pm Pacific from the London games, but it also meant that I still had most of the day to do things. And yes, there were a couple of mornings I was up 1 am watching heats and qualification rounds (heck, I saw Phelps nearly knocked out of his first swim final on the first or second day of competition and saw a number of male gymnasts fall off apparatus during the qualification round).  But in any case, I wasn't reading much and not exactly in the mood to read, but that has changed in the last few days, where I have gotten my reading mojo back and I am probably more pleasant to be around.

But despite this, its been a rather wacky summer and for some reason I just don't feel like myself.  Maybe its due to the change that has been going on in my family and maybe its because I would like something that I don't have.  I suppose a major culprit has been the fact that my mom retired from teaching this past March and that my mom's dad got sick this past June and the fact that I got used to having my dad out of my life for long periods of time and suddenly he's back from his year up in the Yukon and there's more adjustment for me and therefore it will take me that much longer to readjust again.  But I think a huge part of it was that my routine was gone for July and August and after a couple of weeks off, I really wanted to go back and felt bored when I was at home.  At times, I felt like I was spinning my tires trying to find something to do at times to occupy my time and felt like I was missing out on something and was very frustrating at times.  I think this was due to the lack of routine.

I finished a few books this week, but only managed one review this past week.  I am hoping to get the other three reviews up sometime this week and link to them in a future Sunday Salon.

Review:
1) The Rebel Wife by Taylor M. Polites (review)

Weekend Cooking - Need some help...

I hate doing this, especially since I know that this feature is to share things among readers, but I have to.

I am not much of a cook and I would rather make something that comes from a can or a bag and is done within a few minutes.  Basically I am not much of a cook and I really don't like doing it and I would rather just have something to eat quickly and be done with the task, as I would rather be online, reading a book or watching TV, not spending my time cooking.  But in the last few months, I have an itching to cook food that basically doesn't come from a can or a bag.  Problem is I don't have many cooking skills and feel like I am constantly looking for something that I can quickly put together for dinner and have leftovers for lunch.  Sure I have a few meals that I can make, but like I said earlier, they come from cans and bags, not a lot of fresh food.  The other problem is that I am primarily on my own and therefore try to make things that are basically for one person and there isn't much that I can make, as most recipes that I want to try usually are for those with four or more and somehow don't translate well to decreasing the amount for one or two people.  And I have found that the cookbooks that are out there translate mostly to people who know how to cook, not to people who don't have many cooking skills.

So my question is this: are there any cookbooks that you can recommend that are for singles that don't have many cooking skills?  Yes, I do have a Betty Crocker cookbook, but I seem to only use the section for steaming veggies and not much else.

#bookbloggerhop (August 17-23)

This week, Crazy for Books asks:

What is the one genre you will NEVER read?

There are probably a couple, but I would probably have to say erotica.  I understand why people would read it, but I just don't see the appeal.


Downloaded photo from Crazy-For-Books.

The Rebel Wife - Taylor M. Polites

Title: The Rebel Wife
Author: Taylor M. Polites
Pages: 304
Published: 2012
Genre: Historical Fiction, Gothic Fiction
Challenges: Historical Fiction, Support Your Library
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library

Description: Augusta Branson was born into antebellum Southern nobility during a time of wealth and prosperity, but now all that is gone, and she is left standing in the ashes of a broken civilization. When her scalawag husband dies suddenly of a mysterious blood plague, she must fend for herself and her young son. Slowly she begins to wake to the reality of her new life: her social standing is stained by her marriage; she is alone and unprotected in a community that is being destroyed by racial prejudice and violence; the fortune she thought she would inherit does not exist; and the deadly blood fever is spreading fast. Nothing is as she believed, everyone she knows is hiding something, and Augusta needs someone to trust. Somehow she must find the truth amid her own illusions about the past and the courage to cross the boundaries of hate, so strong, dangerous, and very close to home. (via Goodreads.com)

Thoughts: Overall, it was a decent book and a fairly quick read.  I was able to get my way through the book quite quickly and able to read large chunks of the book at one time.  But what bothered me is that the book sort of just went over me and I felt that I had to re-read the book, even though I was close to the end.  It just felt that I missed too many details in the book to make any sort of true analysis and also its been almost a month since I finished the book.

Bottom line: Its a pretty good book and would recommend the book to those that like historical fiction or fiction surrounding the era of reconstruction in the Southern United States after the American Civil War.

Rating: 3/5

Pages for 2012: 15287

#bookbloggerhop (Aug 3 - 9)

This week, Book Blogger asks:

When a book goes "viral", do you rush out to read it like everybody else, even if its not your typical genre?

Depends on the book; some I might do that but for the most part I don't really do that.  I just find that some of the books that go "viral" are a tad over-hyped and therefore not worth to read it.  I usually wait until I have seen a number of reviews before giving the book a try.  Although a price drop does influence on my purchase.