"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
-Haruki Murakami
A rather austere title to commence my blog, but I suppose, simplicity is truly ultimate sophistication. As I pen this, it is rather important to keep in mind the purpose of this post. Hopefully, you may have a gist of it from the awfully flawed excerpt. Please excuse the formatting blunders as it may be difficult to accommodate both mobile viewers and our laptop lurkers.
Getting to the point, I am an A-Level student, so the past two years have not treated me excitingly well. I am quite out of touch with reading anything other than my textbooks unfortunately, but awaiting a four month long summer, I have decided to share with you, my Goodreads account. #underwhelmed
If you are going through my 'Read' list on Goodreads, I'll save you the trouble and say, stop right there. Most of the books I have read at the time are books I do regret reading today. There are a few exceptions of course.
The books I did enjoy would include:
1. The Harry Potter series
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter is an ordinary boy who lives in a cupboard under the stairs at his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's house, which he thinks is normal for someone like him who's parents have been killed in a 'car crash'. He is bullied by them and his fat, spoilt cousin Dudley, and lives a very unremarkable life with only the odd hiccup (like his hair growing back overnight!) to cause him much to think about. That is until an owl turns up with a letter addressed to Harry and all hell breaks loose! He is literally rescued by a world where nothing is as it seems and magic lessons are the order of the day. Read and find out how Harry discovers his true heritage at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, the reason behind his parents mysterious death, who is out to kill him, and how he uncovers the most amazing secret of all time, the fabled Philosopher's Stone! All this and muggles too. Now, what are they?
2. The Percy Jackson series
Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.
3. A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess is a 1905 children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is an expanded version of Burnett's 1888 short story entitled Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, which was first serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine from 1887 to 1888. According to Burnett, after she composed the 1902 play based on the story, her publisher asked that she expand the story into the novel with "the things and people that had been left out before." The original book, A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons with illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." It was one of the "Top 100 Chapter Books" of all time in a 2012 poll by School Library Journal.
4. Angels and Demons
Dan Brown
An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target. When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to his first assignment to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol—seared into the chest of a murdered physicist—he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy—the Catholic Church. Langdon’s worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican’s holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival. Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.
5. Throne of Glass
Sarah J. Mass
In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king's champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass--and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.
Now the five books I have listed are quite different genres. These books are a few gems that will always be a part of me. As promised, my Goodreads link attached below.
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/76122135-midnight-lullaby
Picture credits
I do not own any of the pictures that I post on this post. All credits to the talented photographers that I admire from afar.