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This week I am reviewing The One Kingdom: Book One of the Swans’ War by Sean Russell which is not the next book I listed in my last review of On the Beach.It has been a year since my last review and I wanted to […]
Although On the Beach by Nevil Shute is not on my original list of Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away, it is a book that I had heard about a bunch of times before adding it to my cart and accidentally buying […]
We are getting closer to the finish line with our first list of 10 Books I am rereading before giving them away with this week’s book, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. When I first started this list I had high ambitions about finishing the list right away but as many of you know, my good intentions of productivity tend to take way longer than originally anticipated. I definitely overestimate how much I can get done in a day regularly and I am totally ok with that. Progress is progress and we are nearing the end of our first list! Look out for our second list before the end of the year and some additional book reviews from books I have read this year that are not on this list including our next book review, On the Beach by Nevil Shute.
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When the Emperor Was Divine is about a Japanese family living in America during the internment camps of World War II. This family goes through many struggles while the war is happening and this book is a great inside look into how the camps affected people. It is a shorter book but the story is amazing and should be read by most people since this part of history is often overlooked in our classrooms.
One of the many things that struck me about this book was the way the author used imagery to paint a picture in the reader’s mind about the conditions of the camp. The dry, dusty camp was well described and made the reader feel like they were there with the kids trying to navigate life in camp. The isolation and despair felt by the adults was palpable and very well done.
This book was very well written and I loved reading it again but my decision is to give it away because I have too many books. I don’t think I will read this one again sometime and my hesitation about giving it away is only due to having a child coming into the age where I might recommend that they read it but we can always check this one out at the library so it will go into the give away pile.
Have you read this book? What was your favorite part?
Verdict: Give Away
Our next book: On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Links:
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
The latest book in my series 10 Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away Part 1 is the namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I am most of the way through my list of books to read and will be posting Part 2 coming up […]
Number 5 in my Rereading Books Before I Give The Away Part 1 series is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. This book has been around for a while and I forgot how much I liked it the first time I read it. There […]
March is upon us and it is time for new monthly goals. This year my focus is on finishing up projects that I have so it should come as no surprise that my main goal for March is to work through my project backlog. I am continuing the goals I didn’t finish in February and starting some new ones as well. I posted a video of my March goal page set up here if you are interested in watching my process.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
My first goal is again to finish my Midnight Rainbow Comet piece that I made. I made good progress on this pattern in February and I really want to finish it for March so I can start on another piece for the store. Now that I have started the rainbow section the piece is getting more complicated but I am also excited for some different colors.
My second goal for March is to finish my Joyous Ladies piece from Diamond Art Club (referral link at no cost to you). It looks like they have discontinued this diamond painting but I have many more of them if you want to join me in working on those. I am not an affiliate with Diamond Art Club but they do give out referral links which is what I posted. This is my first diamond painting from them but I am completely in love with their quality and how sparkly the diamonds are.
Next up is the Wild Kingdom Shelves puzzle by artist Aimee Stewart that I started as part of my New Year’s Day puzzle start. I have made some progress on this one but it is much harder than I thought it would be to complete. I really want to finish this one in March so that I can move on to a different puzzle from my gigantic stack.
For my next goal I want to finish at least two coloring pages. In February I started this one out of my Art of Coloring Nouveau book and I want to finish it plus another page for March. It looks like this coloring book is out of print so I linked this Easy Patterns one from Amazon instead.
One of the pages I also want to work on for March is this free download from the Johanna Basford website which can be found here. I printed it on cardstock for more durability and will be working on it periodically throughout the month. I am not sure if I will finish it or not this month but I can always mark it off on the bonus wheel if I work on it.
The book I want to read for March is “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. I was trying to read this for February but did not get to it so I definitely want to finish it this month. I started it in January but did not get very far so I may just start it over.
Lastly we have our bonus wheel where I get to choose something random and work on that. I put a few different choices on there but now that I am looking at it I don’t see diamond painting which is fine. Based on how long it took me to work on Joyous Ladies I am not sure if I will have time to start another piece this month. If I do though I will use white out to change one of the spokes of the wheel.
Alright so those are my March Project Goals. I am hoping they are more realistic this month and I will get through more of them but I know the tracking of hours will work better for me than tracking days. If I hit 30 hours this month I will be getting myself some fancy colored pencils and I am pretty excited about that!
What are your project goals for March? Join me here for my Live Crafting Togethers most Wednesday nights in March to see my progress!
Links:
Diamond Art Club (Referral code at no cost to you)
Wild Kingdom Shelves puzzle by Aimee Stewart
Easy Patterns coloring book
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The fourth book in my first Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Series was “We’ll Meet Again” by Mary Higgins Clark. As usual I am writing a brief review of the book with my decision to either keep the book or give it away. […]
I reread The Beach House by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge as part of my Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Part 1 early in my stack of 10 books. As with my other books, I wanted to do a brief review of […]
At the end of September, faced with a mountain of books I had not read in almost a decade, I decided to start sorting through my books and reread any of those that I was unsure of keeping. I originally created this list of ten books with the goal of reading them before the end of the year. At the moment I have so far read three books from the list and have written one review for Pearl Cove. My progress was halted slightly over the past couple of weeks by school work, actual work and the lack of motivation to write more reviews. I did not want to get too ahead of myself with reading and then forget to write my reviews of the books so I made myself wait a bit before starting the fourth book. That being said, the second book I read was “An Inconvenient Woman” by Dominick Dunne and it is quite frankly one of my favorite guilty pleasure books to read.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
“An Inconvenient Woman” is the tale of the waitress turned mistress Flo March and it is excellently written. This tale is full of surprises and twists and the end is not what you think it will be but I will not give anything away. Flo starts out with humble beginnings and ends up being the mistress of a very powerful man, Jules Mendelson. The book goes back and forth between Jules and Flo telling their story which is a great way to get perspective on each character. Philip, a writer from New York, is also prominently featured as an outside view into the closed off life of Jules, and later Flo. There are several murders, fancy parties, love triangles, spies, mobsters, health crisis and of course, the romance of Jules and Flo.
All of it is well written and I really don’t want to give too much away but this book is about old money, how old money power is used, Hollywood ideals, romance, action and adventure. There is some talk about the finer things in life but only to show the character’s station in life and to add to the story background.
I like to keep these reviews short but I will definitely be keeping this book. At some point I may need to replace my copy but so far it is going strong! Our next review will be for “The Beach House” by James Patterson if you would like to read ahead before my review posts next week.
Side note: I just read the publishing date on this book and it is 1990 which means I was not old enough to read it when it came out. I highly suspect I appropriated this book off of my mom’s book shelf at some point. It is the kind of book her friends would read, lend to her, and she would politely file on her bookshelf to gather dust. I am sure there are used copies out there somewhere!
Links:
An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne
“The Beach House” by James Patterson
When I created my post about rereading books kept in storage for too many years I wasn’t sure whether I would actually have time to read the books on my list. My post “Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Part 1” was an attempt […]
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