The Reading Perusals of Rose Summers

Basically playing catch-up with the 30 Day Challenge because I've gotten behind.  So I'm posting Days 24 through 27 in this post.  Simple enough considering the prompts themselves.

Day 24:   A Book You Wish More People Would've Read

Hands down, Susan Cain's "Quiet: Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking."  I think this is required reading for introverts and extroverts alike, considering the wealth of information on personality type and learning to understand the value of introverted contributions to our society and the ways introverts think and interact.  

Especially considering I've been an introvert my whole life and this book hit the nail on the head for so many of my experiences.

Day 25:  A Character You Can Relate to the Most

Ahh, this one's difficult, for sure, so I'll choose the ones off the top of my head.  Rainbow Rowell's "Fangirl" I related to Cath because she's not only a twin, but her experiences mirror so much of my first-year in college, it's a little scary.  Though Cath's not really much like me in terms of personality.

Ida Mae from Sherri L. Smith's "Flygirl" was another character I really related to, as a woman of color and also being the odd person out trying to achieve a dream or a series of goals. I had some of the same senses of isolation and struggle that Ida Mae faces in this book, but in different contexts.

Day 26:  A Book that Changed Your Opinion About Something

All right, I'll bite on this one because it's controversial, and my choices might be as well. So, I wouldn't consider myself a regular reader of erotica or erotic romance, and there used to be a time when I didn't read the genre at all.  I think part of it was because I perused fiction that was so badly written in the genre or the ones I picked up just never appealed to me, and/or maybe it was my own biases that prevented me from picking up many of the titles.

But as I started reading past my boundaries in a myriad of different measures in these genres, I realized that there were many well written books in this genre, and that while some of the books took me well past my comfort zone with respect to content, it got me thinking more about how people perceive physical, mental, and emotional intimacy in different ways.  With respect to Tiffany Reisz's "The Siren" and the collective "Original Sinners" series - those books broke so many of my "no" buttons with respect to content that I'll admit I was unnerved and mentally I had to read them from something of a filter, but I was able to follow the reasons why those characters acted, thought, and engaged the way they did.  It wasn't the easiest thing for me to read (still isn't, and I honestly wouldn't recommend these books for people who are offended by some of the measures it touches on), but at least with every book I've picked up from this series, I did appreciate Reisz's writing.

Day 27: The Most Surprising Ending

I could think of many, but I'll choose a few that came to mind:

"Fight Club" - because...you know...I can't talk about Fight Club because it's against the rules, but the ending was a massive WTF? moment.

"Monsters of Men" - the third book in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking Trilogy truly surprised me, but I thought it was a fitting, emotional end.  I loved it.

"All Quiet on the Western Front"  - I mentioned this before, but I didn't expect it to end in the way it did back when I read it in school.  It's a rather potent account of the horrors of war.

"Noughts and Crosses" - Dude,  this ending completely gutted me.  The whole novel is an emotional rollercoaster ride, but goodness. =(  Was not expecting that ending at all and it was pretty emotional.

I think I'm now caught up and I'll follow with the next prompt for the present day shortly

Cheers,

~Rose