Day 13: Written Words

(source)

Current books:

• PUSH
  
• The Devil in the White City - Historical but not a book I'd typically read.
  

And a few things I nabbed at the local library today:

• The Craft of Baking - I loved 'wichcraft's first book especially the peanut butter cookie recipe. Next trip to Vegas, I'm totally heading to the restaurant!
• Kardashian Konfidential - Really fun to read especially if you're me and you found your love for these girls.
  
• Cooking with Trader Joe's - Kind of a disappointment
• Eva's Kitchen - Not bad with lots of basic recipes. A lot of the recipes can be found in almost any typical cookbook though.

What I'd like to read in 2012:

• Belong to Me - I read Maria de los Santos' book Love Walked In and am excited for the sequel.
• American on Purpose - Sounds funny.
  
• The Year of Living Biblically - Ridiculous experiment that I hope teaches me more about the Bible
  
• I Love Yous Are For White People - Vietnamese-American story as part of my cultural reads
  
• Barefoot - Trying something different: Northeast and family
  
• Knit the Season - Read all the others by Ms. Jacobs
  
• Population: 485 - Loved Truck and can't wait to read more about his hometown
  
• The Last Summer of You & Me - A book by the author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
  

Some of my favorite books:

• The Help - Just as good as everyone says! It doesn't move along well though. The movie might be better because it made me cry.
  
• Eat Love Pray - I absolutely hated the movie. I was so excited and loved the book so much that I went to see it in theaters. My butt hurt from sitting for so long...
  
• The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm - It was required in a class I took with my favorite professor. I've read this book twice, and I don't read a lot or any books twice. I had to re-purchase it when I moved. That's how good it was.
  
• East of Eden - My favorite classic. I love Steinbeck's works, mostly because of the region and population he writes about: California and the West during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and immigrants. I'm a history nerd sometimes.
  
• Room - I read this as part of the Peanut Butter Fingers book club. I like it and I don't like it. It's disturbing in a non-mysterious way.
  
• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - I've read all of Ann Brashares' books including the spin-offs. I also watched the movies. I cried.
  
• The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo series - Unlike "Eat Love Pray," when I went to see this movie in theaters, I was so entranced, I forgot I had to sit for 2 hours and 40 minutes. The books are extremely detailed with lots of useless information, but honestly, you learn to skip those and get on to the juicy, juicy details. On the end of my seat all the time.
  
• Friday Night Knitting Club - I picked these books up by chance and found myself really enjoying the mother-daughter relationship. Is it similar to my own? A little. I think I have an interest in books about groups of women and their relationships (see some of my other choices on this list).
  
• Waiting for Snow in Havana - This and the book below are about immigrant children and how they lived. For some reason, I think Cubans have exotic lives.
  
• The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood - My family went through the Vietnam War. This story is about one of the many children born to Vietnamese mothers and their American fathers.
  
• Lipstick Jihad - Required reading in a humanities class, but I ended up loving it. I've had this prof several times and he always chooses great books.
  
• The Book of Salt - I remember being so into this book so much that I got excited about getting on the elliptical to read it!
  
• The Girls from Ames
  
• The Coldest Winter Ever
  
• Truck: A Love Story - It's a biography about a rugged man and his little hometown. I love small towns - they're something of the past.
  
• Stealing Buddha's Dinner - I love food. She loves food. We grew up in a similar culture as well.
  
• Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure - I read this book when my friend Kris went to India for the summer. I didn't know much about India and I loved reading about someone adjusting to the country.
  
• The Life & Times of The Thunderbolt Kid - I've read Billy Bryson's travel books, but this is my favorite of his. It's about American life in the middle of the century (love!), in the Mid-West I think too.
  
• Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - Before I went to college in the South (North Carolina though), I imagined something like this. Picturesque. It wasn't exactly that, but I still loved the Southern charm of the stories.
  
• Wicked: The Life & Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
• Firefly Lane - The book chronicles the lives of two girls whose lives intertwine. I guess I liked this because I yearned from a lasting friendship like this, where you have a friend you've known since forever.
  

Also, check out my goodreads for more recs!