Once Upon A Read-a-Thon

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This mini-challenge is hosted by Casey at The Bookish Type.

Here Goes:

Miss Alexia Tarabotti is a young vampire who is practicing for vampire cotillion. In the heavy smog of industrial 1850’s London coupled with her trusty black parasol, Alexia is able to take jaunts into the city during daylight hours to practice her poise and posture so as not to disappoint her grandmother. Will she prove successful…or will the others present at cotillion notice the devastating side effects of her posture-altering accident years before. 

Shoulders straight, Alexia, and walk with a purpose. There’s no room for error… 

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Day Three Mini-Challenge {2}

Well, this is easy for me! I KNOW that you are a big YA nut reader but I am about 97% finished with an adult fiction book that is easily in my top 5 for the year…Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok. It is the story of a Chinese mother and daughter that come to America to make a new life for themselves and all of the (bazillions of) hardships they face in doing so. Kim, the child, leads two different lives…a double-life, if you will…she works alongside with her mother illegally (both in age and length of workday) for nearly no-pay in a stifling factory just to survive AND she goes to school in Brooklyn where she struggles (even though she was at the top of her class back in her home country). Despite the long hours worked, Kim and her mother live in their home for over ten years with no heat…and they never have glass panes on their windows. They stay as warm as possible by leaving their oven on and sitting close-by at their kitchen table. After overcoming the language barrier that holds her back, Kim begins to excel in school and eventually earns a prestigious spot in a private academy in Brooklyn that could lead to a chance at an ivy-league college. This is by scholarship, of course, and she dangerously balances working in the factory until late, late, late in the evenings with keeping her grades up in school so she will have a chance to get her Ma out of that cold apartment. The interactions of Kim with the Americans in the book are remarkable and memorable, and her coming-of-age from middle-school to college-age tore my heart out! She wanted to be like the American girls so much…a little more popularity, boys, make-up, parties, all that stuff…but instead she had the Chinese culture and the work at the factory, both of which prevented her from becoming more Americanized. And the choices she has to make in the ending…man, oh, man. Whether or not you choose this as your ‘winner’ you still need to read this book. I really think you will love it.

   

My favorite book for this readathon was easily Unashamed by Francine Rivers. I have read most all of Rivers’ books. I love her so much! This was a re-read for me. I do not read a lot of Christian fiction, because I find it to be very cheesy and bad. But Francine Rivers is amazing and her writing is just as good as anyone out there on the mainstream market…this is why she is one of the few people I will re-read.  I have always been very interested in the people of the Bible, particularly the women, and so if I find something where I can learn about them, I will devour it. And I did. (This is the second book in a series of short novellas that Rivers wrote about five different women in the Bible. She similarly wrote a series of five short novellas about five men in the Bible.)

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