Do you have any special Valentines Day plans? I wish I could say yes but I am gonna try to be truthful and just accept the truth that I will most likely end up spending the day reading some books.
Does that sound like you? Then you won’t be disappointed with this listicle.
Set in the 1920s when the American stock market shot up the roofs and the wealthy became wealthier, the Great Gatsby is a tale about hope, love and despair.
Nick Carraway, a bond salesman, befriends his neighbour Jay Gatsby, who is obscenely rich and is always throwing the wildest parties. But Gatsby is secretly pining away in darkness for his one true love Daisy, who is married to the ‘old money’ Tom Buchanan.
What better way to spend the Arguably one of the best novels of Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby is filled with quotable quotes and you won’t regret reading it even on your down day.
That couldn’t have come as a surprise. One of the most famous romances by Shakespeare now stands the standard to compare any modern love to.
The young lovers Romeo and Juliet find themselves on the opposite sides of the familial feud between the Montagues and Capulets. In order to save their love they try to cheat death that seemed inevitable and fail infamously.
Even if not for the romance part, you should read it for the funny conversation between Romeo and his friend Mercutio. The play is definitely funny and will provide you a comic relief, despite its flowery, archaic language.
The colorful world of the unhappily married Anna and her lover Vronsky is seldon overlooked while talking of classic romances. Who would not fall in love with the magnificent Anna who struggled to fit in a society she didn’t feel a part of, while she pined for Vronsky?
I know the size of the book is terrorizing yet once you start reading you will have no choice but to finish it.
Tolstoy’s masterpiece should be on your must read list if you want to choose a classic romance novel for this V-day.
2) Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
Are you a firm believer of ‘true love conquers all’? Then you should read Love in the Time of Cholera for this Valentines Day. Love finds Fermina and Florentino when they are quite young.
When Fermina marries an older doctor Urbino, Florentino pines for her (though has about 622 affairs) for about 50 years until Urbino dies. He once again proposes his love for Fermina after all these years, seeking a second chance.
Yes this is a love story, but just not a love story. It talks about pain, jealousy, obsession and sex (a lot of perverse, sick sex). Above all, the language and prose of the Nobel laureate Márquez is to die for.
Gone With the Wind could easily be my favorite romance of all times. We can’t help but love Scarlett O’Hara (who is one of the most badass female character written ever) though she can be bitch-y, annoying and too head strong at times.
To make matters worse (or better) for her (and us) we have the ultimate bad boy, the arrogant, handsome devil who has a liking for her.
This American Civil War saga will feed your Valentines Day craving as long as you don’t look for your own Rhett Butler. If you have not read Gone With the Wind yet, you should definitely pick it up during this Valentines Day.
No time to read these books? I am sure all these classic novels have a film or two made on them. You can catch them up as well.
Choosing age appropriate, yet entertaining books for middle schoolers can be a daunting task. But fear not, here are some wonderful books that your young reader might find joy reading and getting lost in the literary world.
Between 11 and 12 years, a middle schooler can read independently for extended time period. And keeping their piquing curiosity and short attention spans in mind, here are some great books for tween readers.
In the valley of Fruitless Mountain, a young girl named Minli spends her days working hard in the fields and her nights listening to her father spin fantastic tales about the Jade Dragon and the Old Man of the Moon. Minli’s mother, tired of their poor life, chides him for filling her head with nonsense.
But Minli believes these enchanting stories and embarks on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man of the Moon and ask him how her family can change their fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest.
The To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?
Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only.
Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
Tommy and his sister Annika have a new neighbor, and her name is Pippi Longstocking. Nine year old Pippi is an unusual and unpredictable character, she lives alone with a monkey, a horse, and no rules whatsoever!
She has crazy red pigtails, no parents to tell her what to do, and a flair for the outrageous that seems to lead to one adventure after another!
Every day is a crazy adventure with Pippi, but what else would you expect from the daughter of a swashbuckling pirate captain?!
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience’s applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she’ll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall.
But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe’s dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn’t the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn’t the only part of Zoe’s life in Michigan that’s off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day.
Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises–and that perfection may be even better when it’s just a little off center.
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl – Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.
She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction.
Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town.
But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own.
When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule–but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her–even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known,
Thirteen-year-old Annabelle struggles in school, no matter how hard she tries. But as soon as she dives into the pool, she’s unstoppable. She’s the fastest girl on the middle school swim team, and when she’s asked to join the high school team over the summer, everything changes.
Suddenly, she’s got new friends, and a high school boy starts treating her like she’s somebody special—and Annabelle thinks she’ll finally stand out in a good way. She’ll do anything to fit in and help the team make it to the Labor Day Invitational, even if it means blowing off her old friends.
But after a prank goes wrong, Annabelle is abandoned by the older boy and can’t swim. Who is she without the one thing she’s good at? Heartwarming and relatable, Up for Air is a story about where we find our self-worth.
Do not let a mop sit overnight in water. Fix things before they get too big for fixing. Custodial wisdom: Mattie Breen writes it all down.
She has just one week to convince Uncle Potluck to take her on as his custodial apprentice at Mitchell P. Anderson Elementary School. One week until school starts and she has to be the new girl again. But if she can be Uncle Potluck’s apprentice, she’ll have important work to do during lunch and recess. Work that will keep her safely away from the other fifth graders.
But when her custodial wisdom goes all wrong, Mattie’s plan comes crashing down. And only then does she begin to see how one small, brave act can lead to a friend who is hound dog true.
WANTED: Maid for the most popular kids in 8th grade.
Cleaning up after the in-crowd gets Rachel all the best dirt.
Rachel can’t believe she has to give up her Saturdays to scrubbing other people’s toilets. So. Gross. But she kinda, sorta stole $287.22 from her college fund that she’s got to pay back ASAP or her mom will ground her for life. Which is even worse than working for her mother’s new cleaning business. Maybe. After all, becoming a maid is definitely not going to help her already loser-ish reputation.
But Rachel picks up more than smelly socks on the job. As maid to some of the most popular kids in school, Rachel suddenly has all the dirt on the 8th grade in-crowd. Her formerly boring diary is now filled with juicy secrets. And when her crush offers to pay her to spy on his girlfriend, Rachel has to decide if she’s willing to get her hands dirty…
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it’s different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Do you have a favorite middle grade book that I have missed? What would be a great addition to this list book recommendations for a tween reader? Let us chat.
I terribly miss meeting my book club and hanging out with friends, thanks to 2020, again! But that has not stopped us from reading books together as a club (and then argue over a Zoom meet) and buddy reads. Since we discovered several gems this year, here is my list of best books for your books club.
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say.
Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.
When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of
Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned–from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren–an enigmatic artist and single mother–who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony– a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies.
Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb…
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band’s album Aurora came to define the rock ‘n’ roll era of the late seventies, and an entire generation of girls wanted to grow up to be Daisy. But no one knows the reason behind the group’s split on the night of their final concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979 . . . until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ‘n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
With almost 25% of the countries in the world have imposed a lock down due to the Corona virus pandemic, staying in seems the only way to go. And that might be a bit too convenient for us bookworms, right? If you were one of those introverts, you would have preferred to stay in with a cuppa.
For others staying in might be hard and can quickly become too much. But when there is literally no other safe way to get away from it, why not make the best use of the downtime?
Things to do without leaving the house
So, let us talk about the things to do inside the house during the lock down time aka “don’t leave your house if you value it” time, shall we?
3. Try one of the virtual museum tours if you are into culture and art. Museums of Amsterdam, London,South Koreaand even the Vaticanat your fingertips.
4. Learn a new language or more realistically, learn to say hello in different languages. Duolingo might interest you!
5. Can you name all the countries in the world. Learn with the World Geography games site.
6. Now you got all the time, and there is no excuse to not do those at home workouts. Keep fit!
9. Bring out those board games and play with your family or friends, whoever is around.
Clean up around the house
1. Do a fashion show and try every one of your dress. Discard or donate anything that do not fit or “spark joy”, Marie Kondo style.
2. Clean up your media folder on your phone and PC. Delete those duplicates and let your phone breathe a bit.
3. Are you one of those oldies that still has music stored on your PC or even CDs? Welcome to 2020, clean that up! I bet Media Monkey is still going strong.
4. Match all your Tupperware lids to the containers. In addition, the desi version of this is pick all the polythene covers lying around the house and collect them in a huge one.
5. Make a budget and check your finance. We need to ride out this tough times!
6. Get your taxes done early this year! Even though the governments would probably move the deadlines to pay the taxes.
7. Also ,why not catch up on the 8 hours sleep or how much ever you want to finally?
8. Throw out your old and expired make up stuff and clean the vanity table.
Bookish things to do
1. Start by making a list of the books that you wanna read during the Corona virus shut down.
2. Write reviews on Goodreads for the books that you loved. Authors need you!
3. Clean up your Goodreads virtual shelves. Remove the ones that you no longer wish to read and remove duplicates.
4. And update your wishlist. Soon this will be over and you will be treating yourself with book hauls.
5. Pick up a classic that you have been dreading to start. Read 20 or 100 pages, as you choose, everyday and finish the mighty book. War and peace, anyone?
6. It is a good time to do those Bookstagram shoots that you have been postponing for a while.
7. Do a virtual book club meeting. Maybe with some chai. Or wine!
8. Join readathons and read with others to keep your mind distracted from everything else.
9. Finally, dust your book shelf, and those on your night stand, the coffee table, and pretty much everywhere else.
Tidy up your blog
1. Ensure your posts are all on brand. Do they follow the same color scheme and format?
2. Begin by cleaning up your tags and categories on your blog.
3. Next, add Alt text tag information to all the images in your posts.
4. Add a Pinterest sized image to all your posts, or at least the most visited ones.
5. In addition, once you have done adding one Pinterest image to the important posts, add one more Pinterest sized image to them and maybe hide them inside your post. Thank me when the traffic improves!
As many other bookworms I know I started obsessing about books right from my childhood. I can not remember how and when I started reading books in English, and as it is not my mother tongue the books that were available at home were very limited. This meant I had to make do with books that my much much older cousins had on their shelves.
But this also meant I never got to read books that were meant to be as a middle grader or a teen. I know it is not a big deal and I may have not lost much. That is what I thought until I read a few of those middle grader books that everyone loved but me.
Five Books I Wish I Had Read As A Middle Grader
Let us talk about some of those books, shall we?
5. A Wrinkle in time by Madeleine L’Engle
I didn’t read this book until I turned 27, and that might be the reason that I didn’t enjoy it at all. I kinda tried to ignore the strong religious undertone and even then the plot was kinda over simplified, character super unrelatable and dialogue repetitive.
4. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
When I started this book I never knew it was a middle grader book. Soon I was sucked into the period trouble and bigger bust goal of the twelve year old Margaret. I liked her relationship with God, but I was sad that I was not able to connect with the characters, again may be due to the age difference.
3. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
I am yet to find a reader saying they don’t like this one. I had to read this before I could watch the Netflix version starred by Neil Harris Patrick. In fact I didn’t even know about the book before I saw the ad for the show. Of course, I liked it but it was obvious that I was not among the target audience. I loved the show though.
2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
I was probably 25 and I enjoyed it enough to continue reading the series. I didn’t dislike it, rather it seemed to be again repetitive and sorta preachy. And that seems to be the theme for all the books of that age, I guess. Again I might have loved it if and when I was 8 – 10 years.
(Does anyone else think the Netflix version is too sad and less endearing?)
1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Oh I love Little Women and I am not gonna complain about it. Except for the fact that if I had met the March sisters especially Jo and Laurie when I were a pre teen, they would have been my heroes. Well that didn’t happen and I hate that I missed it.
I am kinda sure I would have loved these book if I read them when I was supposed to have read them. While I didn’t hate them, I could not fall in love with them and that maybe attributed to my ‘older’ age. Sigh. Well, I tried right?
Do you have any such regrets related to your reading choices? When did you start reading? Tell me some books that you missed reading when you were younger and did you regret reading them now? Let us chat.
