Traveling to Africa and losing sleep....

I traveled to Africa last week....
no not on an airplane, but thru the words of a book.

I went to Rwanda right as the genocide was about to erupt in 1994.  A few pages was all it took for me to get transported to another time and country.  A few hundred more changed me and gave me a greater understanding of the world around me.  How you may ask, a book by the name of  'Running the Rift' by Naomi Benaron.

All I had to do was give up a little sleep.  I read a lot.  I mean A LOT.  My yearly book totals are always over one hundred.  The problem, I generally give up sleep to read them.  I read to settle my mind before I go to bed, but if a book hooks me, I am unable to put it down until I know the whole story.

When I am stressed, I read.
When I am happy, I read.
When I am busy, I read.
When I am relaxed, I read.

The only thing that changes are the genres that I read.  When I'm stressed, I read what I affectionately call 'slut books', you know the ones...  You can figure out the couple in the first 5 pages and know at the end of the book, they will live happily every after.  Life solved in under 300 pages.  Don't you wish it was like that in real life?  Problems solved in a couple of hours.  When I'm busy, I tend to read authors I've read before, due to the fact that I know their style and what I'm in for.  The rest of the time, I'll tackle new authors, biographies and non fiction.  The thing to remember, I always have a book to read.

2011 was somewhat of a disappointment in books for me.  I only had a couple of books that I HAD to tell people about. 

'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern
'Violets of March' by Sarah Jio  (a first time author, which makes it all the more amazing, because this book is PERFECT)


2012 has been a different story.  I have already found books, that I will reread again and again.  So, I thought I would pass them on to you with a brief summary.

'Sarah's Key' by Tatiana de Rosnay:  A heartbreaking tale that starts in Paris in World War II.  It gives a haunting tale of a young Jewish girl that went thru a part of history that I never knew about.

'Last Letter from your Lover' by JoJo Moyes:  An unexpected love story and will leave you with your jaw dropped at the end.

'A Summer in Europe' by Marilyn Brandt:  A story of finding yourself again or for the first time, plus you travel all over Europe in it.

This post is running a little long, so I think I'll stop here and periodically do this again.  Talk about books.  My inner librarian seemed to enjoy it.

Melissa