Greetings, readers! Hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are staying toasty warm; I'm still trying to come to grips with the fact that it's as cold in London as it is here in Gainesville. Brrrrr!
Anyway, this post is cause for celebration: I fulfilled my new year's resolution of writing a blog! *Insert sounds of joyous delight* Alas, I made it only halfway through Les Mis, though I discovered many other great books along the way. For those of you who may be worrying this is the end, fear not: I have decided to continue the blog, and I'm looking forward to sharing all of 2014's good reads with you.
This Christmas marked an important milestone in my shelf life: my parents gave me a Kindle for the holiday!! Some of you may know my, ahem, colorful anti-Kindle history--at my most extreme, I composed a St. Crispin's Day-worthy speech to convince my friend Jason not to buy one of his own--but I have been converted and am now happily reading books on a screen which is more like a book than I expected. The Paperwhite has lots of great features, like a hypertextual dictionary (you hold your finger on a word and release to find the definition) and X-Ray, which allows you to track characters' appearances throughout the book. It comes in handy when reading the mammoth Game of Thrones series (who has time to memorize the minor vassals of House Tully, anyway?)
Currently, I am reading The Emperor of All Maladies (a biography of cancer), The Disappearing Spoon (a tour of the periodic table you think you learned about in chemistry class but actually didn't), and The Wilder Life (a memoir of the author's own relationship with the Little House on the Prairie series, from childhood on up.) I'm also reviewing a book about a student's journey through the Amazon rain forest for my school's Common Reading Program--more details on that to follow.
A lot of nonfiction, I know--maybe you guys can help me out and recommend some good stories for when my brain needs a break from reading about experimental leukemia treatments of the 1940's?
My classes this semester will include a lot of reading, as usual, this time from sources as diverse as the Romantic poets, the internet, and Franz Kafka. It's going to be a doozy, but I think I'll have fun.
That's all I have time for now; take it easy, and enjoy Florida's own version of an Arctic winter!
Until next time,
Anna
