I haven’t felt inspired to write all day today. That’s weirdly sad. I mean, before I went on this writing spree at the end of March, I sometimes didn’t write for nearly a week and now I’m feeling disappointed at not having a topic to write about by morning. I did get my writing mojo back in late afternoon. I’m joining in with Bookish (And
Not So Bookish) Thoughts. I think Christine of Bookishly Boisterous intended this as a meme anyway, so I can join in.
I finally finished Wonder by R.J. Palacio yesterday. I originally wanted to write a proper review, but can’t without it probably containing spoilers. So be warned.
Let me say this book had my feelings all over the place. I was triggered by Via’s feeling like everything was about Auggie. This resonates with how my sister felt about growing up with me. I felt tears of joy when reading Miranda’s part, because she showed such pure love to August. Then at the end, when everything is fine and everyone sticks up for August, I felt a pang of jealousy. I mean, my school was welcoming too, but mostly so they could pat themselves on the back for having accepted a blind student. I ended up giving the book a 4-star rating because of these mixed feelings.
Now I’m reading Wink by Rob Harrell. It’s a bit of a similar themed book, but so far not as evocative.
I also downloaded Rules for Being a Girl by Candace Bushnell and Katie Cotugno. I saw it on Rebecca of BookishlyRebecca’s Goodreads, which was linked to her blog. I’m probably going to link my Goodreads here too.
I’m also further digging into The Empath’s Survival Guide by Judith Orloff. I’m beginning to think I may be just a highly sensitive emotional mess, not an empath. However, it’s still an interesting read.
In other news, yesterday was a truly great day for my blog stats. Not that I care much about them, but then again sometimes I do. I am truly loving being able to interact with all my readers. I can’t believe how for years I rarely replied to comments. I believed at the time that my stats would be screwed if half the comments were mine. Well, whatever. I apparently cared more about my numbers then than about genuine connections, which is weird at best.
How is your (reading) life going?
A Multitude of Musings 
There is this small friendship library box by the post office and I got a Reader’s Digest condensed book from it the other day. It has John Grisham and Michael Palmer books in it. When my hypomania dies down, maybe I will be more calm and focused to read. 🙂
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That’d sure be great! I’m glad you picked something up to read already.
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I stopped to see if they had anything for Spook but this time, I was winner winner chicken dinner 😉
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We haven’t been reading a lot here, some, but not a lot. We’re in the reading slump and we’re finding it hard to concentrate!
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Oh that’s hard! I hope you find your focus soon.
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I really loved Wonder, as I’ve already mentioned to you, and since you wrote about reading it earlier, I felt strongly like re-reading it so I did a while ago. It also makes me feel a bit strange about some bits of it, still, I decided to give it 5 stars on Goodreads anyway because of the general feel and that, overall, I think the author did a great job of describing what it’s like to live with a disability, and spreading awareness via books like this and portraying it in them is a very good and effective way of doing it, I believe, if someone knows how to do it right.
Some of the things in Via’s narrative made me think of my brother, who also felt like this about me as a kid and it has impacted his childhood strongly.
Miranda sounds like such a great person, but it felt a bit unrealistically positive to me that a girl who is so much older and just his sister’s friend, would be so spontaneous and attached to a child with a very apparent disability that puts most people off so very much. I mean of course it isn’t impossible, but just not very likely to happen even in real life.
Auggie’s school experience was also quite glaringly different from mine with mainstream schools, of course people were welcoming and nice (after all, here they always receive some additional money for admitting a disabled student so it pays off) and I was not bullied by other students at all unlike August, but the ending, with everyone being on his side and so kind to him, and with the prize he got, didn’t feel realistic, I feel like in reality he’d have to be super lucky for such things to happen in a normal school that was not specially prepared for accepting disabled students, especially that his condition was very rare and very visible.
But the overall feel of the book is great.
I think it’s a cool idea to have GoodReads linked with your blog, I’ve done that too even though I’m not very socially active on Goodreads at all and don’t post reviews there so I don’t get much traffic either from Goodreads to my blog or from my blog to Goodreads, but I just wanted to keep my readers up to date with what I’m reading in case they’d like to know, rather than generate a lot of traffic about which on Goodreads I don’t care at all.
Congrats about your stats getting high up, I don’t care about stats overly either but when I sometimes do look at them out of curiosity, it’s always nice to see them go up. 🙂
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Thanks so much for your comment! Yes, I’l link my Goodreads now. I’m so glad I’m not the only one who had these feelings about reading Wonder.
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I love reading, Astrid. The books you speak of sound interesting. I’ll need to check them out. I love characters who make me care what happens to them. Right now, I’m reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Believe it or not, I haven’t read the Potter series. I don’t have a lot of time to read. I usually read at night, after a day of writing and family activities. All best to you!
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I haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books either, so you’re not alone. Thanks for stopping by!
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