The Running Bibliophile

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret  by Judy Blume is told from the perspective of Margaret, a young girl who has recently moved to New Jersey and is navigating many of the challenges typical of this stage of life. Margaret is trying to make new friends while also questioning religion, something that feels especially significant as she and her peers prepare to enter sixth grade. Alongside these bigger questions, Margaret and her friends are juggling the everyday trials and tribulations of being a tween and going through puberty, including school dances, boy-girl parties, getting their first bras, and all the awkward moments that come with growing up. Judy Blume does an excellent job capturing what a child might realistically experience during this time of life. She portrays these situations in a way that feels honest and relatable, and she also handles the topic of questioning religion with care and sensitivity. I thought the story was well written and thoughtfully approached. I ...

The year was 2008 , and it seemed everywhere I went, I heard people talking about the book Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The movie based on the book was finally in theaters, and on a Saturday afternoon, I finally decided to breakdown and buy the book to see what all the fuss was about. That night, I started reading the book and stayed up until the wee hours the next morning. When I woke up, I had to buy the rest of the books in the series so I could immediately start reading the next one. I was absolutely enchanted by the story. In the many book discussions I've had with different people, they say how poorly written Twilight is, but in the same breath, they add that they were sucked in by the story line. This always blows my mind because if it were so poorly written, then they wouldn't have been as engaged as much as they were . . . at least in my opinion. Will Twilight ever be considered true literature and be in the same league as the classics? Probably not. With t...

As a high school student, I absolutely loved reading The Great Gatsby . I was enchanted with every book we read my junior year, but I remember this one being one of the ones that I enjoyed the most. When one of the book clubs I belong to decided to read this book, I was excited to reread it as I didn't remember a lot about it, and it allowed me to refresh my memory before the Leonardo DiCaprio version of the movie came out. As an adult, I wasn't nearly as enchanted with it as I was as a high school student.  There isn't a lot of plot to the actual story; the little plot there was moved extremely slow. Basically, Jay Gatsby, the narrator, is a very wealthy man who lives on Long Island in New York and is in love with Daisy Buchanan. He throws a lot of lavish parties where there is a lot of drinking going on. And, then, there is a car accident where a woman ran into the street and was killed by a speeding car. However, the character development and the visual d...