Our Hearts Are Restless

Finally, I managed to break the Netflix addiction just enough to pick up a few novels in the past couple of weeks.  A few days' travel to DC helped, because who wants to waste phone battery in an airport when books fit neatly into a purse?  My recent reads are an odd variety of genres, but here goes. I've been in the happy process of reviewing a handful of books, most recently Karina Fabian's Dicovery .   (And I got to interview her !  Yay!)  No spoilers on the other two, but suffice it to say I burned through one of them in a total of two hours.  And discovered again that non-fiction takes me forever to get through unless I have to read for class. On audiobook, I picked up Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth , which was a fascinating start to a series that I only hope I have the stamina to finish.  If I only read this one, though, I think I'll be okay, as it's much more sci-fi and much less fantasy than his other books (not ...

This blog is getting pretty quiet, isn't it?  I'm close to launching Restless Independent, my new site, and that's draining most of my creative energy.  BUT I haven't decided yet whether I'll keep Our Hearts Are Restless as a separate entity, or possibly switch its identity to more of a books-and-faith focus, or say goodbye to this site altogether.  The life updates and miscellania will all switch over to RI, which is basically a blog about adulting. Anyway!  The OpenBook linkup is still the highlight of my blogging month, so here's your regular window into my bibliophile world.  This one is slightly delayed, but what the heck. My mom and I share a love of fiction.  When I asked her for a reading list this summer, because I needed recommendations for new novels, she happily gave me a piece of paper that brought nostalgia and excitement.  As a kid, I knew the season had begun when Mommy gave me my summer reading list.  Always hand-written...

Welcome to July's edition of An Open Book linkup!  I've got a lot to share this month. Two other book nerds were aghast when I told them I hadn't read Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo . The reason was that The Three Musketeers had scarred me as a kid, and it took a lot of bibliophilic peer pressure to get me anywhere near another Dumas. I took the plunge, finally - and if CMC didn't hit any other superlatives in my book, it definitely wins the prize of The Book that Took Me Forever to Read. I started the massive tome (okay fine, it was an e-book) in mid-May, thinking to have it done within a week or two. Took me over a month to get through it. Dumas' skill is readily apparent, opium trips and irritating not-quite-heroes aside. He manages a dozen primary characters and several supporting plot lines, successfully wrapping up all the loose threads with neatly bookended scenes. Simultaneously, he manages to create in Edmund Dantes a sort of soci...

Welcome to this month's An Open Book!  While the calendar tells me we have entered June, my brain is not convinced that March has ended yet. Last month's linkup generated quite a discussion about audiobooks, with various recommendations bouncing between blog sites.  While I grew up with beloved memories of my mother reading innumerable classics to me - everything from Little House on the Prairie, to Jules Verne, to Regina Doman's fairy tale retellings - I could never wrap my mind around audiobooks.  Why listen to some unknown person reading a story when I could pick up a hardback and immerse myself, a few pages or a few hours at a time? Then last summer, adulthood hit like a systemic disease, and in three weeks I had bought a car and moved to Michigan, four hours from my parents' house.  I can manage a four-hour drive, but even music gets old after a while, and it doesn't take long for me to get bored and drowsy.  The Overdrive app lets me borrow audiobook...

Welcome back to another round of the Open Book linkup via Carolyn Astfalk !  I'm sorry to say I haven't been reading much this past month - blame it on travel, Netflix, and my current propensity for reading really long novels.  Happily, working a full-time job gives me a nice long lunch break, and I've been using it lately to work through the seventh book in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series . My parents tried for years to get me hooked on these books, so last year I finally picked up most of the set in paperback from the Half Price Books annual clearance sale.  This spring, I spent about two months burning through the first half-dozen. If you're not familiar with Clancy, his novels are typically shelved with "spy thriller" or "military fiction" genres, although the books also take on characteristics of alternative history and political commentary.  Stylistically, Clancy resembles Charles Dickens - he has a remarkable ability to present ...

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. Time for another round of "An Open Book" linkup via Carolyn Astfalk!  I've already made a new acquaintance in the blogging world through this linkup, so I'm looking forward to another round this month. If you didn't guess from the quote, I've returned to an old favorite: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  My copies, a gift from my parents in pre-teen years, are starting to wear.  The paperback covers' plastic layer is peeling at the edges, and the pages are yellowing.  After I first devoured these books, I read them religiously at least once a year until highschool.  Then, new literary discoveries and many musical obligations, followed by a cell phone and college applications, combined to distract me from picking the trilogy up again.  College killed my reading habit until senior ...