Celebrate National Library Week

April 13-19 is National Library Week. How do you plan to celebrate? Our family utilizes the public and school library weekly already.

The public library is a great place for children and adults. Also, if you don't do it already, look into renting E-Books from your electronic device. When the book is due, it automatically expires. No late fees!

Some day, I would LOVE to have an amazing home library like one of these:

Celebrate National Library Week by diving into a new book. That's what I plan to do!

Hands Free Mama

I've been working on reading Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters for awhile now. It's taken me a long time to get through it.

I first stumbled across the Hands Free movement on Facebook. I think I saw some sort of post about it. The post directed me to the author's blog Hands Free Mama and I was immediately hooked! I liked the page on Facebook and signed up to receive new posts via email. I enjoyed the regular blog posts so much that I wrote down the book release date in my agenda book and ordered it the day it first came out! I was, however, mildly disappointed that the book wasn't as much as an attention-grabber as I'd hoped for.

Don't get me wrong, the message is VERY important and the book is a great reminder about what is and isn't important in life. The author encourages parents to let go of the distractions, expectations and clutter in their lives (cell phones, laptops, email, over-scheduling, multitasking, etc.) so they can embrace what really matters.

The personal stories add a nice element to the overall read. For some reason though, I just wasn't able to get into it like I expected. A lot of the chapters are repetitive, emphasizing the same information over and over and over again... You get my point :) I'm still enjoying the blog posts immensely though!

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Spring Break

It's Spring Break for us and I haven't been doing as much reading as I'd like. By the end of the day, I've been too tired to do anything! So... I haven't finished Wild yet. I'm on the last part of the book and hope to complete it this weekend. If you've finished, please feel free to start a discussion or give a summary of your thoughts!

On another note, I went to the movies last week and saw Divergent. The movie is based on the novel series by Veronica Roth. Since I really enjoyed the trilogy of books, I was very excited to see the movie. It did not disappoint! I thought the movie followed the book fairly close. Of course there were some small changes but none that I thought changed the story line too much. Even if I hadn't read the book, I would have enjoyed the movie.

The first book/movie in the Divergent series introduces Beatrice Prior as the protagonist. It goes on to describes the dystopian Chicago world she lives in, a society divided into five factions – each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue: Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful) and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all 16 year olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. If they choose differently from the faction they were born into, they must forever forsake their family and friends. “Faction before blood,” is the motto. As the story unfolds, Beatrice discovers something about herself that she must keep hidden from everybody. All the while, she and her fellow initiates struggle to live out the choices they have made.

If you haven't read the books, give them a try! If you have read the books (or watched the movie), which faction would you choose? I'd like to say I'm Dauntless but in reality I'm probably more Candor.

Next up on The Reader Board radar is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Go ahead and purchase, rent or borrow the book if you haven't already!