{"id":3099,"date":"2012-02-14T11:53:38","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T17:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/2012\/02\/14\/a-reading-machine\/"},"modified":"2012-02-14T11:53:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T17:53:38","slug":"a-reading-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/2012\/02\/14\/a-reading-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reading Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have always enjoyed reading, but have not found much time for it the last couple of years for whatever reason. Now that my full time job is caring for Mikayla, I have found much more time for reading. That and we live where there is not much entertainment but each other and the occasional television show. Plus power outages make reading a necessity at night!&#160; A couple of weeks ago Ben sat down and wrote out a list of books he has read since arriving in Swaziland. After reading through his, I decided it would be fun to jot down all of the books I have read thus far. Here are the ones I can remember so far. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Little Women<\/strong><em> \u2013 An oldie, but a goodie.&#160; I cry every time I read this book.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Let Me Call You Sweetheart<\/strong><em> \u2013 A Mary Higgins Clark novel.&#160; She used to be a favorite author of mine, but I am not sure if she still is.&#160; I would have to read a few more books to decide.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Harry Potter series (7 books) \u2013 <\/strong><em>I refused to read this series for so long, but after several pushes from close friends I decided to give it a go.&#160; I am so glad I did.&#160; I actually read the series in <\/em><em>like two weeks, it was that good!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Hunger Games Series (3 books) \u2013 <\/strong><em>I also loved this series!&#160; The third book wasn&#8217;t great, but the first two were awesome.&#160; <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kitchen Confidential \u2013 <\/strong><em>There were several books in the closet we now use as our pantry when we arrived and this was one of them.&#160; It was okay, but got a bit repetitive.&#160; Not a favorite of mine.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Poisonwood Bible \u2013 <\/strong><em>Another book that has been on my radar for awhile now, but I had never gotten around to reading.&#160; It was a very well written book and I really enjoyed it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Animal Farm \u2013 <\/strong><em>Ben read this one first and suggested I read it as well.&#160; It was a decent read, but not really my style of book.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Complete Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (4 books) \u2013 <\/strong><em>This was another free Kindle download and included four books (Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer Detective).&#160; I loved the first two, but the last two were a bit of a stretch.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>One September Morning<\/strong><em> \u2013 Easy read, but not that enjoyable<strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Manny Williams Trilogy (3 books) \u2013 <\/strong><em>This was a murder mystery trilogy by Rick Murcer.&#160; I really enjoyed this one and can&#8217;t wait to read more of his books.&#160; The three books in the series were called Caribbean Moon, Deceitful Moon and Emerald Moon.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dixie Divas \u2013 <\/strong><em>I read this one early on and can&#8217;t remember what it was about\u2026must not have been that good!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Life From Scratch \u2013 <\/strong><em>Another easy read, but not that incredible.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Late Rain \u2013 <\/strong><em>Free kindle download that was a super quick read.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Abbey \u2013 <\/strong><em>A well written murder mystery book.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Crossing the Bridge \u2013 <\/strong><em>Another one I read early on that I don&#8217;t remember very well.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Megan&#8217;s Way \u2013 <\/strong><em>A story about a mother who is dying of cancer but doesn&#8217;t know how to tell her daughter and friends.&#160; This one really hit home with me because I read it right after I found out my uncle&#8217;s cancer had come back.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Stealing Faces<\/strong><em> \u2013 This one is about a guy who literally steals faces off of his victims.&#160; Appetizing right?&#160; It was actually a decent read though.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Help \u2013 <\/strong><em>I loved this one.&#160; I think it was one of the first I read when we got here, but it was really good.&#160; I would eventually like to see the movie.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kisses from Katie \u2013 <\/strong><em>This is a book about a girl from Tennessee who lives in Uganda.&#160; She has &quot;adopted&quot; 13 or so kids from there and it talks about her story.&#160; I have read her blog for awhile, so the story wasn&#8217;t that new to me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Steig Larson series (3 books) \u2013 <\/strong><em>For those of you who aren&#8217;t familiar with this series the three books are called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet&#8217;s Nest.&#160; The first book was really slow to get into, but once it got going was excellent.&#160; The second book was great, my favorite in the whole series.&#160; However, I could have done without the last one.&#160; Way too many characters and plot lines were introduced for my liking.&#160; All in all though, it was a good series and well worth checking out.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A lot of these books were free Kindle books I downloaded. I am a big fan of murder mystery books so that is what a lot of them ended up being. I have enjoyed the few series I read.&#160;&#160; I have also read a lot of books from our closet here, but unfortunately after reading them we got rid of them so I am not sure what they were called. I know several of them were James Patterson books and some were just random books.&#160; So all in all I have read about forty books in the last six months.&#160; Crazy huh?&#160; I am currently in between books and leave for a long weekend getaway in a couple of weeks if anyone has any good suggestions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have always enjoyed reading, but have not found much time for it the last couple of years for whatever reason. Now that my full time job is caring for Mikayla, I have found much more time for reading. That and we live where there is not much entertainment but each other and the occasional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-3099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/beth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}