What I'm Reading

I have always been an avid reader,  this year I had set a goal to read 55 books. I was  on track in April completing 27. Then progress came to a screeching halt as I started summer classes. I begrudgingly gave up any free moments to read for pleasure to study bones and molecular orbitals.

After pulling an all nighter reading Finding Colin Firth  I realized reading was "the something"  missing last in the few months. You could say reading in my guilty pleasure and once I start a good book it is so hard to stop! I love nothing more to get lost in the pages of a good book. Every now an then time really flies I look up and realize it's 3 AM. oops!

I vow to keep up the pleasure reading while in class this coming semester. So I'm adding a series of what am I reading posts to the blog. Feel free to give suggestions and read along with me! Here is my past, present, and future of what I am reading. 


Finding Colin Firth 
I found myself giddy with excitement when I saw this title and that is what drew me to this book at first. I love Collin Firth movies! Plus the Cuyahoga County library suggested it as a hot new read...why would they steer me wrong? I really need to stop starting books after 9pm as I had a rough book hangover then next day, but well worth it. Good suggestion BV library!

Finding Colin Firth was a light, fun, feel good story full of hope. The story follows three women one summer in a small town in Maine, where a Colin Firth movie happens to be filming. The three women one way or another are forever entwined in each others lives. One who placed her baby up for adoption 22 years prior returns to her hometown, another recently found out she was adopted goes in search of her birth mother and the last a recently unemployed journalist is  struggling with impending motherhood. Each women finds new ways to come to terms with who they are as a person, woman, and family member. I really liked how each chapter alternated a characters view point and I quickly got engrossed with each of the women's lives. I was rooting and hoping for the best for each of them as the story progressed. 

I closed the book with a smile on my face and it was just what I needed before starting a new semester. After reading I now want to have a Colin Firth movie marathon and check out the author's previous book! There are also questions at the end of the book to assist in book club discussions. Even though this book is on the lighter side touches a lot of topics that almost anyone can relate to and would be a great choice for a book club. 



For my current read, I going a totally different directions and trying a nonfiction. As August marked Curiosity's one year anniversary I thought this book would only be fitting.

Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to Mars Rover Curiosity

Wiens paints the portrait of one of the most exciting scientific stories of our time: the new era of robotic space exploration. Beginning with the Genesis mission that launched his career, Wiens describes the competitive, DIY spirit of these robotic enterprises, from conception to construction, from launch to heart-stopping crashes and smooth landings.

An inspiring account of the real-life challenges of space exploration, Red Rover vividly narrates what goes into answering the question: is there life elsewhere in the universe?

source: amazon.com

Next on the reading shelf is a historical fiction, more my normal style. I love the impressionist artists especially Degas so knew this was a book I would have to try. I picked multiple copies at the library in hopes that all the girls in the family could do a mini book club. Only my mom has read it so far, so if you want to join in I hope to have this finished by the end of October. 

The Painted Girls:  A Novel

A heartrending, gripping novel about two sisters in Belle Époque Paris. 1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of “civilized society.” In the end, each will come to realize that her salvation, if not survival, lies with the other. 

source: amazon.com