Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

I was scrolling through the month's selection of Audible Originals and this was one that came up. From the summary, it sounded interesting, though I thought it would have more of a fantastical spin.  Disclaimer for this post: Romance is not  my usual genre, and it's not one that I usually like either. That's probably why I rated this so low. At any rate, The Mountain and the Sea  is about a widowed artist, Esther who lives in Jamaica. She has a house on a small island off the coast, as well as an art studio. She tends to head there during hurricanes and other tropical storms. On her way to the island, she comes across a naked man lying on the side of the road. He has no memory of who he is, what happened to him, or even where he is, and how he got there. Esther takes him to her island home to wait out the coming storm. In the time after the storm passes, they fall in love, the first love Esther really feels she's ever had. Will this love story last? Will Monty remember

Skyward  by Brandon Sanderson follows a rebellious girl called Spensa. She has spent her entire life looking up to her father; a man who the military government of their underground settlement has labeled a traitor. Her homeworld, where their ship crash-landed before Spensa was born, has been under attack by strange aliens for her entire life. In order to clear her father's name and bring glory to her family, Spensa gets into Flight School. But even with the honor of being in school, she's not allowed to stay on the base with the other cadets. She stumbles upon a cave where a strange ship has been parked in the cavern for years with stealth technology and a sassy AI. Can Spensa repair the ship? Will she ever be allowed to graduate flight school? Can she clear her father's name? I loved Skyward . I don't know why it took me so long to pick this one up, but I'm grateful I got around to it. Brandon Sanderson is a master of character rotations (writing in the third pers

The Tales of Beedle the Bard  are a short, but delightful collection of fairy tales from J. K. Rowling's Wizarding World. This version also includes characters from Rowling's original Harry Potter series such as Hermione Granger and Albus Dumbledore, who are meant to annotate and commentate on the tales. These tales are mentioned in Harry Potter , and Rowling has now written them out for all to read. I loved The Tales of Beedle the Bard . This is not a long book in the least but it is absolutely delightful to read if you love(d)  Harry Potter . I was also delighted that the audiobook (the version I picked up on Audible) was recorded with Jude Law and Evanna Lynch, who you may recognize from the films (Jude Law plays Albus Dumbledore in the Fantastic Beasts franchise). At any rate, I loved that this book didn't take "Muggle" fairy tales and reimagine them to fit into Harry Potter , but instead were completely original magical fairy tales. I loved as Albus Dumbledor

The Selection  by Kiera Cass is essentially dystopian style The Bachelor . What if the prince of a country had to choose his wife on live TV from a pool of eligible girls? America Singer is one of those girls. She is fairly low on the caste totem pole (a 6 to the royal 1) and is in love with a boy in her neighborhood. She entered the contest to appease his concerns that he was holding her back. She enters, tries to spoil him, and he breaks up with her. America is then chosen for the Selection and meets Prince Maxon who is nothing like she expected. Will America make it to the end of the Selection? Ultimately, this book was not the most enjoyable book I've ever read. It wasn't terrible, but I found it predictable, and I wasn't impressed with the ending. I liked the overall idea, even if it wasn't all that original, and I personally have no interest in reality shows like The Bachelor . I thought America's name was unoriginal, and I found her character a little obnoxio