Sisters Reading Books

 All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Harriet These books are amazing! I would say after reading both of them that they are in my collection of favorite books. Martha you gave me All Creatures Great and Small to read, and Mom gave me All Things Bright and Beautiful. There is so much beauty and depth to these books. I really like how he describes the setting, the humor in the book, how the stories he puts in there are usually the ones that don't go right, and his understanding of life. His character description is spot on, his natural ability to tell a story is clear. I'm not sure which story is the funniest or my favorite. However, he often points fun at himself or shares stories where he looks ridiculous which is a good life lesson to not to yourself too seriously. These books are real treasures and I would definitely give them 5/5 stars.  

This book was our January D'Anna Lady book club book. I audiobooked it since it was chosen from Reese Witherspoon's book list and all of those books have a very long wait time. Again, the typical challenges of trying to follow a story by listening were present.  This is not a book that I would have chosen for myself to read and I don't mean that in a bad way. I tend to stick to memoirs and historical fiction commonly. However, after reading this, I'm glad to have read it because it exposed me to Indian culture and customs in the 1950s and the complexity of the women's roles in society.  It followed a women who has become a renown henna artist with rich clientele and is used to a life of taking care of herself. She is confronted by a unknown younger sister who then proceeds to complicate her relatively carefree and controlled life.  I enjoyed this story for many reasons, first because I enjoyed the vivid descriptions that were easy to imagine, it makes sense to me th...

This is only the second book I've read by Tolstoy. Anna Karenina was a wild ride but much, much longer than this one. I listened to this story in a car drive and I'm thinking that this why I did not enjoy it as much as I could have. In my opinion, it can be difficult to appreciate the author's true writing style when you only listen to it, maybe I'm just more of a visual person.  This story follows the life of a man, Ivan Ilyich, up until his death (lol). He lives in Russia and become a moderately wealthy married with children by the end. The final scene is quite intense as he realizes he is approaching death. The story opens with Ivan's funeral and I should have went and relistened to it after the story was over which could have led to a more complete feeling story.  I appreciate Tolstoy's somewhat sense of humor and matter of factness in his description of life in this book. He sees things as they are and looks beyond the façade. His storyline of starting at t...

     Dracula by Bram Stoker    I just finished reading Dracula last week and I really liked it. One of my favorite aspects of the book was the setting. It begins when one of the main characters Johnathan visits a castle where Dracula lives in Transylvania. This is Eastern Europe, close to or maybe Russia. The castle is on a cliff. Johnathan notices something is off pretty soon with Dracula, but soon realizes he is trapped, his doors are locked during the day. The Count Dracula does not eat meals with Johnathan, and eventually the ploy is up and he stops treating him without any regard, and imprisons him. He begins to see the Count sliver down the castle, like a spider. He  attempts to escape by retrieving a key in the Counts room, by going out the window and walking along the castle. One slip up and he would probly drop to his death. He is unsuccessful in getting a key. The Count makes him write letters saying he is ok, and Johnathan knows he may soon die....