The Running Bibliophile

One of the book clubs I belonged to decided to read the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I rushed out and bought all four books because Barnes & Noble was selling them in a bundle for $20.00, plus tax. Not too long after, the fifth book in the series came out.    Not realizing how long they were, I waited until a week before we were to meet to crack the book open. Since there was no way I was going to come even close to finishing, I waited to read it and started on another book. With the next book club still a month away, I thought I could push through both the first book and the second book in the series. That is until I looked at the second book and saw it too was super long. I finally decided not to read the series with the book club and would wait a couple of years to read them because I knew I'd forget the discussions of who had died. Fast forward five years later to 2016, and I finally started reading A Game of Thrones  by George R.R. Martin . It took...

Have you ever read a book and had a moment of déjà vu? A moment where you thought you've read it before? While reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, I had several of those moments and kept racking my brain of what book I had read that could possibly be similar to Dark Places in any way, shape, or form. And, I came up with Truman Capote's true crime book, In Cold Blood that I started reading but never finished. Both books, Dark Places and In Cold Blood , take place in Kansas where a family, or a few members of a family, were murdered in their home. Coincidentally, or maybe not, both of these homes happened to be on a farm. That's really where the similarities end, but it was enough to make me feel like the basis of Dark Places was taken from Capote's book. Dark Places begins in the present day and introduces us to the main character, Libby Day. I find her to be passive, unmotivated, and continuously blaming others & her past for not being able to keep a...

The Lake House by Kate Morton opens in Cornwall, England in the year 1933. Sixteen year old Alice Edevane loves writing and is working on her first novel at her family's lakeside estate. The night of their midsummer's eve party, Alice's eleven month old brother, Theo, vanishes. Present day. London Detective Sadie Sparrow is visiting her grandfather in Cornwall and discovers an abandoned estate frozen in time. Wondering why the house was left to decay, Sparrow starts digging into the history of the estate, revealing secrets long forgotten. When another member of my book club recommended The Lake House by Kate Morton, my first thought was to ask if it had anything to do with the movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Thankfully, the two are completely unrelated. When I pulled up the book on Goodreads, I realized it had already been sitting on my "to be read" list. Not your typical thriller, I had some trouble getting into the book but forced myself to co...

Book Review: The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware The Woman in Cabin 10   by Ruth Ware has been compared to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train by many, so there was some hesitation on my part about reading it at first but the pull of it being reminiscent of Agatha Christie was greater. After reading a synopsis of the novel, I desperately wanted an Advanced Readers Copy but that wasn't in the cards for me.  When it was released to the general public, I purchased The Woman in Cabin 10 from Barnes & Noble with the intent of reading it while on my first cruise. However, I had second thoughts figuring it probably wouldn't be such a good idea for me to read a thriller taking place on a cruise ship while I was actually on a cruise. So, I put off reading the book, and boy, was I ever glad I did so because I would have been paranoid and imagining things the entire time.  This was the first novel I've read that was written by Ruth Ware and actually had never hea...

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson opens in Denver, Colorado in the year 1962. Readers are introduced to friends Kitty Miller and Freida, who own and operate a bookstore in Downtown Denver. Following Kitty's life as a single, working woman in the 1960's, she places a personal ad in the local newspaper to meet "Mr. Right" and gives her cast offs to Freida. Then, the dreams begin ... Katharyn Andersson is married to the perfect man, Lars, and they have three children. To Katharyn, it's the perfect life, the one she longs for. Each time she dreams, the more real it is. As her worlds begin to blur, Kitty doesn't know which one is reality and which one is imagined. Which one will she choose? Let me begin by being upfront ... I won an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson in Goodreads.com's First Reads Giveaway in exchange for my honest review of the book. Third time's a charm, right? It took me THREE attempts to finish readi...

Desperation by Stephen King is a chilling horror novel set along the desolate stretch of Interstate 50, where travelers may stumble upon the eerie, nearly abandoned town of Desperation, Nevada ...  a place where stopping could cost you your life. Beneath the surface of this lonely desert town, an ancient and malevolent force is unleashed, possessing the bodies of its residents one by one. In Desperation , no one is safe. You can run, but you can't hide. Have you ever come across a book so relentlessly bleak that it took you years to finish? Desperation was that book for me. While it’s undeniably well-written, the overwhelming sense of dread and emotional heaviness made it difficult to read for long stretches. I found myself repeatedly setting it aside in favor of lighter novels, only to return when curiosity and determination pulled me back in. At one point, I gained enough momentum that I was determined to push through and finally finish it, despite its deeply unsettling to...

11/22/63  by Stephen King opens with high school teacher Jake Epping being recruited by his friend Al, a local diner owner, to travel back in time to 1963 and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy . Though skeptical at first, Jake follows Al’s instructions and discovers a portal to the past. As he builds a new life in another era, he quickly learns that altering history comes with unexpected consequences and not everything goes according to plan. Who hasn't thought about time travel ... of going back into the past or jumping ahead into the future? With so many books, and movies, on this subject matter, you'd think the subject of time travel would be overdone and predictable. But, Stephen King is anything but predictable and delivers a story that feels fresh, immersive, and completely unforgettable. I frequently find myself thinking about 11/22/63 . Does the date sound familiar to you? On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, leaving the nati...