Book Review: Ashley's War, The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

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Ashley's War:  The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a non-fiction book published in April 2015.  The story follows several women and their quest to become the first women to be in combat along the Green Berets and Army Rangers. This is a book that was selected in my workplace for discussion between women and/or veterans.  The book discussion was broken into three parts much like how the story was broken up.  It garnered great conversations. Some of the things that happened in the book didn't surprise me, such as how physically demanding the tryouts were to be part of the special operations.  It's a demanding job that requires people to be not only physically strong but mentally strong.     What did shock me was that it took the military so long to allow women to fight along men on the battlefield.  Another thing that astonished me were how accepting most of the men in the Army Rangers were of the women fight

Book Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1) by Ransom Riggs

miss peregrines home for peculiar children by ransom riggsI am the type of person who will put down a book if it doesn't grab my attention within the first five pages or so, even when it comes to adult novels. The reason for this is that I just don't want to waste my time, or money, on something that isn't any good. And, yes, I'm one of those that has to own their copy. I've just now started borrowing books from the library, especially when it is a book that I am unsure of.

The young adult novel Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs is a novel that I put off buying and reading for the longest time just because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. I tried reading the first couple of pages while I was at my local Barnes and Noble store, and it just didn't grab my attention, even though the synopsis sounded intriguing.

So, I saw that my local library branch had the electronic book version and electronic audio version available for downloading on my tablet.  (I have three different versions of the Nook.) Listening to audio books have never been high on my list as I much rather read the book myself. Plus, I have trouble saying I've read the book if it was read to me. 

Since I was pressed for time, I decided to download the audio book to my Overdrive app on my Samsung Galaxy Nook Tablet. Since, it was a slower time at work, and I was just doing some data entry type of work, I put my earphones in and began to listen to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children while I worked.

The audio version was done quite well and really impressed me. Since the novel is told from a teenage male's perspective, they had a young sounding male read the book. He was great at using different voices for all of the characters, even the female ones. I found this surprising as the only other experience I had with audio books was terrible because of the narrator was awful. I couldn't believe the vast difference.

I got busier at work with lots of interruptions, so I ended up buying the paperback version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. After reading the portion that I listened to on the audio book, just to make sure I didn't miss anything, I had trouble putting the book down . . . I wanted to call in sick to work to finish it but didn't. I was glad that I did end up reading the paperback version because otherwise, I wouldn't have seen all the photos that were mentioned in the story, and they actually helped make the book.

Even if I hadn't waited so long before picking up Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children to know that there were two additional sequels, the story ended in a way that you knew there would be at least one more novel published to finish because it had such a huge cliffhanger. I might not pick up the second book in the series right away but only because I have a huge to read list and limited time.


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