10 Childood/Teenage Favorites I'd Like to Read Again

Today's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is a fun and nostalgic one:

10 Books From My Childhood or Teen Years That I'd Like to Revisit

I was a voracious reader as a kid -- and still am, of course -- and it was a blast to think back and reminisce about favorite stories from long ago. Most are from elementary school and two are from high school (and apparently whatever I read in middle school wasn't good enough to be remembered almost two decades later). I had already been planning to re-read a few of these, but there are several that weren't really at the forefront of my mind until I started compiling my list. What fun!

This tale of two kids who take up residence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has stuck with me through the years and I'm planning to re-read it soon, since I'll be visiting the Met on my trip to NYC in May.

I own both this book of poems and "A Light in the Attic." It's a blast to look back through them from time to time.

I read every single Nancy Drew book there was! Now, of course, there are plenty more ghostwritten modern-day Nancy Drew mysteries, but I'd like to relive some of the old classics. If I ever have a kid, I'd love to read these with her. 

I read "Jane Eyre" in high school and loved it -- and I also really enjoy the movie version(s). 

Ditto "Huck Finn" -- another assigned read that I ended up loving.

Since I work at a library, I'm constantly encountering and flipping through picture books that I loved as a kid -- so those don't really qualify for the list since I'm constantly "re-visiting" them. But just for fun, here's a small sampling of beloved early reading books and series:

Book Review: "The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey

"The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey
First published in 2013
First in a trilogy
457 (very fast) pages
My rating: 4 stars
Image from Goodreads

The first wave in the alien invasion of Earth was an electromagnetic pulse that fried all electronics. The second wave was a tsunami that wiped out everything within sixty miles of the coast. The third wave was a plague that took care of everyone else, save the 3 percent of the population with a natural immunity. But the fourth wave works differently, it eats away at hope, trust and the things that make us human. The fourth wave in the extermination of our race is aliens masquerading in human bodies to look just like us -- meaning there's no way to tell your friends from your enemies.

Our narrator, 16-year-old Cassie, puts it concisely: lights out, surf's up, pestilence, and silencer. She wonders what horrors the fifth wave will bring.

Cassie's camped alone in the woods when meet her with just her little brother's raggedy teddy bear for company. Her parents are dead and her brother, Sammy, is missing -- and the only thing that keeps her moving is a promise she made to him. She hasn't seen another human being since the beginning of the fourth wave and she begins to wonder if she's the last homo sapien on Earth.

So when a boy named Evan Walker saves her life, she doesn't know what to think or whether she can trust him. Her instincts are screaming to beware, but as he nurses her back to health with gentle hands she can't deny his kindness, his survival skills or the fact that he hasn't killed her yet. And there's something else there too -- a spark of attraction, a thing Cassie never expected to feel again as the end of her world looms near.

"The 5th Wave" is told from a couple different perspectives, but Cassie is our main protagonist and the glue that connects our unlikely cast of characters. It's a young adult book, so the writing isn't the best ever, but it was decent and it definitely held my interest. It's the first book I've read in a while that kept me up way past my bedtime devouring page after page. I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the trilogy, "The Infinite Sea."

My Etsy Wish List: March

It's time again for one of my favorite features on the blog -- showing off all my lovely finds from Etsy! Below are 11 awesome handmade goods I'd love to own! Do you have a favorite Etsy shop? Please share!

Etsy shop: ElloThere

Price: $55

Oh my GOSH, I want this national park explorer map so much! Each national park is marked with a mint green tree, and the map comes with darker green tree stickers to put on the map whenever you visit a park (shown in the inset). One of my goals is to visit every national park, and this is such a fun and beautiful way to track my progress!

 Etsy shop: Palomaria
Price: $36
Oh, this necklace. I've been fantasizing about buying it for about two months now, and I'm sure soon I'll just break down and purchase the damn thing. I already own three beautiful necklaces from Palomaria and they're staples in my wardrobe. I get compliments pretty much every time I wear them. 

 Etsy shop: Palomaria

Price: $28
In addition to the necklace above, I've also been lusting after this bracelet. I don't really ever wear bracelets, but I'm thinking this would be a great one to start with! I'm not even sure which color I'd choose -- I like them all!

 Etsy shop: LittleAtoms
Price: $23
This would be a great t-shirt to wear to work at the library! It comes in 5 different colors.

 Etsy shop: PaperArcadia
Price: $25
This print is so pretty and bright, and it perfectly describes the military life.

 Etsy shop: friendlyoak
Price: $19
What a cute shirt! I have another similar shirt favorited on Etsy but it's got birds coming out of the typewriter instead of letters. I think I might like this one even better!

 Etsy shop: Derins
Price: $17.90
What a pretty, spring-y print!

 Etsy shop: coverLove
Price: $46
This shop has all kinds of customizable pillow covers! I really liked this postcard one, and of course I loved the personalized dog silhouette cover. There are tons of offerings that would make awesome baby, wedding, anniversary or birthday gifts!

 Etsy shop: Sparkyvites
Price: $34
How cool is this?! It's a hand-drawn rubber address stamp featuring the dog silhouette of your choice. (We'd need a boxer, of course.) The shop has many other address stamp designs that you can customize too!

 Etsy shop: PAGEFIFTYFIVE
Price: $6
I love these fun little library buttons! They'd be great to pin on my name tag lanyard at work!

Etsy shop: wallvinylart
Price: $12
True dat! This vinyl decal would be so cute in a laundry room -- and there are several colors to choose from. Sadly my current laundry room doesn't have real walls, but I'm keeping it in mind for the future!

The Top 10(+) Books On My Spring To-Read List

Hello, bookish friends -- or should I say aloha? This is the first blog post I've written since we left for our glorious Hawaii vacation at the end of February. It was so nice to spend two wonderful weeks without thinking about work or Ohio or anything else except relaxing and soaking up sunshine and having fun. (Plenty of vacation pictures to come soon!) And what better post to start back on than Top Ten Tuesday, created by my fellow list-loving read-a-holics at The Broke and the Bookish!

 

 

Can you believe it's time to put together a spring TBR list already? Not that I'm complaining -- I'm more than ready for warmer temperatures and sunshine and flowers and green grass. But it's weird to think we're already halfway through the third month of 2015! This is a big year for us -- it's our last year in Ohio before the Air Force sends us somewhere else and I have so many things planned; I have a feeling the whole year is going to feel like it's going too fast!

So onto the BOOKS! I've somehow managed to pare down a list of the 10 books I most want to read this spring (well, sort of -- you'll see). It was a tough decision! I'm having one of those moments where I'm just completely overwhelmed with the impossible number of (hopefully) awesome books I want to read -- new releases, old titles that've been gathering dust on my shelf for years, recommendations and books I've only just discovered. I want to READ ALL THE BOOKS and since that's just not humanly possible (it would take over 5 years to read all the books currently on my Goodreads to-read list) I kind of feel like my head is going to explode from all the choices -- and I'm sad thinking about all the gems I'll miss out on. Does that ever happen to you? What books are you planning to read in the next few months? One thing I know -- it'll be nice to sit out in my hammock with a good book on sunny afternoons again!

 

(I dare you to lie in this hammock for more than 20 minutes without dozing off!)

 Golden Son by Pierce Brown

I'm very anxious to get my hands on this sequel to "Red Rising," which was quite possibly the best book I've read so far this year.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

I first read about this book several months ago and was hooked instantly just by the quirky title and cover art. It's about an elderly woman who decides to walk to the ocean.

Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan

This cover is beautiful and the story of secrets and fate -- written in dual narrative -- sounds intriguing.

 The Marauders by Tom Cooper

One of my favorite book bloggers loved "The Marauders" and a co-worker at the library is also reading and enjoying this novel, which tells the interconnected stories of several different characters in the Louisiana swamp following the BP oil spill.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Another interesting cover and an intriguing plot about magic in parallel-universe Londons.

 The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

Two of my fellow library co-workers have read and liked this book, about a Jurassic Park-style attraction featuring dragons.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

This novel about early-onset Alzheimer's disease has been on my to-read list forever! It sounds like a fantastic -- if heartbreaking -- read and I'd like to take in the novel before I see the movie. I've been warned that I will probably cry.

 Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Non-fiction writer Larson has a new book out this month, "Dead Wake," about the sinking of the Lusitania -- which is also on my to-read list. But first I want to read his book about the 1920 Chicago World's Fair. I've heard nothing but good things about this work.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I'm pretty late to the game on this one, I know. But I'm fairly sure I'm going to really like "Ready Player One" and I think I was sort of saving it for the right time -- like our vacation to Hawaii! Except that it stayed in my suitcase the whole time... It's on the to-be-read-very-very-soon-list though!

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

Now, who could resist that title? This is another recommendation from a friend at work. "The Dud Avocado" is about a single twenty-something American moving to Paris in the 1950s. I'd been planning to read this novel for a while, but just the other day I ran across a "re-read" review of it on The Guardian's website and it convinced me to read this "hoot" of a book sooner rather than later.

And I also really want to make sure I get to the three books from my Winter TBR list I haven't read yet:

And, as if that's not plenty of books to keep me occupied for a long while, I also need to get busy working on my New Year's resolution list of 12 books I must read this year. (Here's the list.) It's mid-March and I've only read one-half of a book from this list so far (I'm currently working on "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), so I have a lot of catching up to do! Maybe I'll try "Watership Down" next -- rabbits and springtime go together well!

My 10 Favorite Reads From The Past Three Years

The topic for this week's Top Ten Tuesday list -- hosted by the fabulous bookworms at The Broke and the Bookish -- was a doozy:

The 10 Books I'd Classify As All-Time Favorites From the Past Three Years

Holy cow. This is the best of the best in 1095 days of my reading life -- and there have been some fantastic books mixed in there. It was pretty tough to cull the list down to 10 and I'm feeling a bit guilty about the contenders that I left off! It's interesting what broad variety my list contains -- fiction, non-fiction, memoir, thriller, fantasy, dystopian, romance...

I'm really looking forward to browsing everyone else's lists and seeing what other books have been given this high honor! I'm positive I'll be adding a few to my to-read list (which, as you can see from my previous TTT post on bookish problems, that's certainly not something I need to do!).

Here's my list; the books are really not in any order... they're all amazing in their own way! Have you read any of them? What books have stuck with you over the last few years?