ChelsReads: My Summer Reading List

Now I'm not going to lie, all of the summaries of these books came directly from Amazon, but I wanted to make sure that I did them justice. Now that it's officially summer time, I at least feel  like I have more time to read and relax. As a result, I have a pretty big list of things I want to read which I wanted to share my planned reading list for Summer 2015.

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon

The third book in the Outlander series, I've already started this book and I'm at least 60% of the way through it right now. But I added it to the list because it's a loooooong book and I've been reviewing the books in the series as I've been reading them, so expect a ChelsReads book review when I'm finished.

The Summary

Their passionate encounter happened long ago by whatever measurement Claire Randall took. Two decades before, she had traveled back in time and into the arms of a gallant eighteenth-century Scot named Jamie Fraser. Then she returned to her own century to bear his child, believing him dead in the tragic battle of Culloden. Yet his memory has never lessened its hold on her... and her body still cries out for him in her dreams.

Then Claire discovers that Jamie survived. Torn between returning to him and staying with their daughter in her own era, Claire must choose her destiny. And as time and space come full circle, she must find the courage to face the passion and pain awaiting her...the deadly intrigues raging in a divided Scotland... and the daring voyage into the dark unknown that can reunite—or forever doom—her timeless love.

The Dude and the Zen Master by Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman

Another book I've started and not finished, I'm at least close though. So far, it's really good. I'm not super into new-agey literature but I do love The Big Lebowski (also Jeff Bridges. Apparently my grandma used to babysit him when his dad was filming Sea Hunt) so when I saw this in a bookstore in Healdsburg on my birthday, I immediately ordered it on Amazon for half price. The idea that The Dude is somehow some kind of spiritual guru is a wildly interesting concept to me so I couldn't resist. This will be another ChelsReads post when I'm finished with it.

The Summary

Zen Master Bernie Glassman compares Jeff Bridges’s iconic role in The Big Lebowski to a Lamed-Vavnik: one of the men in Jewish mysticism who are “simple and unassuming,” and “so good that on account of them God lets the world go on.” Jeff puts it another way. “The wonderful thing about the Dude is that he’d always rather hug it out than slug it out.”

For more than a decade, Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges and his Buddhist teacher, renowned Roshi Bernie Glassman, have been close friends. Inspiring and often hilarious, The Dude and the Zen Master captures their freewheeling dialogue and remarkable humanism in a book that reminds us of the importance of doing good in a difficult world.

What I was Doing While You were Breeding: A Memoir by Kristin Newman

I really can't remember who recommended this but I know I saw it on Instagram and was intrigued. As someone who's never been 100% into the married with kids life and also 100% interested in traveling the world, this completely appealed to me. It's going to be the perfect summertime read for me, I think.

Kristin Newman spent much of her twenties and thirties buying dresses to wear to her friends' weddings and baby showers. Not ready to settle down and in need of an escape from her fast-paced job as a sitcom writer, Kristin instead traveled the world, often alone, for several weeks each year. In addition to falling madly in love with the planet, Kristin fell for many attractive locals, men who could provide the emotional connection she wanted without costing her the freedom she desperately needed. 

Kristin introduces readers to the Israeli bartenders, Finnish poker players, sexy Bedouins, and Argentinean priests who helped her transform into "Kristin-Adjacent" on the road–a slower, softer, and, yes, sluttier version of herself at home. Equal parts laugh-out-loud storytelling, candid reflection, and wanderlust-inspiring travel tales, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is a compelling debut that will have readers rushing to renew their passports.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner

Chelsea, didn't you talk about this in a favorites post like two years ago? Yes, yes inquiring readers, I did. At that point, I'd read the first few chapters and really did like the book. However, I got sidetracked and never got around to finishing it which means that I'll be finishing it up this summer. 

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children about two years ago and saw the second book at Sam's Club one day while shopping for snacks. Needless to say after loving the first novel as much as I did, I can't wait to give this one a try. 

September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom. Like its predecessor, this second novel in the Peculiar Children series blends thrilling fantasy with vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer

I'm not going to lie, I came across this book by accident when I was looking for Blue Tattoo the book about Olive Oatman on my local library's website, but being that I love all things piratical, I decided that this was going to definitely be worth a read. 

Life as a ship's boy aboard HMS Dolphin is a dream come true for Jacky Faber. Gone are the days of scavenging for food and fighting for survival on the streets of eighteenth-century London. Instead, Jacky is becoming a skilled and respected sailor as the crew pursues pirates on the high seas.

There's only one problem: Jacky is a girl. And she will have to use every bit of her spirit, wit, and courage to keep the crew from discovering her secret. This could be the adventure of her life--if only she doesn't get caught. . . .

I figure this will take me through the summer and at that point, I'll have a whole new reading list. What are you planning to read this summer? 

ChelsReads: Dragonfly in Amber

Hey guys, been a while, hasn't it? 2015 so far has been a little nuts and I haven't had time to just sit down and blog for a while. But I finally (I mean, seriously, I bought the book the second we got in the door from Disneyland in January) finished the second book in the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber and I thought I would share it with you.

The second book of the series followed Claire and Jamie's time leading up to the second Scottish Uprising and the battle at Culloden Moor. I don't want to spoil too much, in case anyone out there wants to read it, but the story spans Europe, from Paris back to Scotland and I think that it was a great  second foray into their story. At the end of Outlander, we were in France where Jamie was recovering. From there, we move to Paris and traverse the social scene of a time where the Jacobite movement was still taking off. To be totally honest, it's kind of insane how all over the place the story was and I can't believe it was all one book. 

Apart from some minor discrepancies between the first book and the second, overall it was a great read. In fact, I wasn't originally planning to continue with the series after finishing Dragonfly in Amber (honestly, as good as it was, it's a looooong read and I was told that the subsequent books don't get really good again until the 5th or 6th stories) but I finished the book and had to find out what happened next so I downloaded Voyager. 

I'm hoping that now that I'm working a different (and much better) job that I'll have more time to post both here and on the food blog that I work on with my friend. And yes, I know how many times I've said that, but this time I'm actually planning to make it work. This is going to be a big year and I can't wait to share it with you. 

ChelsReads: Outlander

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ! Alright guys, I have a confession to make, I have officially jumped on the Outlander Bandwagon. One of my good friends, Jill, has been reading the books since she was 13 and told me about the TV series months  ago but I didn't pay a ton of attention because I don't have Starz and I'd never heard of the books, much less read them. 

All these months later, after binging on all 7 seasons of 30 Rock, I was in desperate need of something else to watch. That something turned out to be Outlander. The first episode is still available on Starz for free if you want to check it out. I can't even pretend that I behaved like a normal person in regards to this show. I watched the first eight episodes in one day and then watched them all again the next day because I had fallen asleep during one of the episodes and missed everything.

The show just won a 2015 People's Choice Award for favorite Cable Sci-Fi show, beating out Game of Thrones (another favorite of mine) and Walking Dead for the title. If that isn't evidence enough that they're doing something great, I don't know what else to tell you, really. It's a great group of actors who I think have done a tremendous job bringing this amazing story to life. Plus, Sam Heughan is no slouch to look at either. 

After watching it twice though, I couldn't possibly wait until April to find out what was coming next, could I? No, I couldn't. So, I bought it in the Kindle store on Amazon and started in. The book is sooooooo good! I read it the entire time I was on the plane down to Southern California, every spare minute that we weren't doing anything, and all the way back up the state in the car. Needless to say I was addicted. So addicted in fact that when we got home, the first thing I did was buy the second book to download on my Kindle immediately after walking through the door. It's that good.

For those of you who were also living under a rock for the last 15 years or so, Outlander follows main character Claire Randall as she goes on a second honeymoon to Scotland with her husband, Frank after they both come home from World War II. After spending most of the 8 years of their marriage apart, they're trying to get things back on track while Frank, a historian, also tries to trace his family tree. Without giving too much away, Claire is magically transported from 1945 Inverness, Scotland into the wilds of 1743 Highland Scotland, complete with kilted men and English redcoats. 

It's a must-read if you're someone like me who enjoys historical fiction. I'll warn you there are romance-y bits, but it isn't annoying or over graphic like some romance novels have a tendency to be. Definitely worth the $1.99 on the Kindle store if you have one, and if not, check out your local used bookstore. They should have the whole series for relatively cheap. Or hit Barnes and Noble for your set if you're so inclined.

If you enjoy these posts, you're in luck. Jill also started me on the PopSugar 2015 Reading Challenge,  which encompasses 50 different books with different requirements, such as, "a book set in another land" or "a book that was published the year you were born". It'll definitely be fun to expand my literary horizons a bit...once I've figured out how to incorporate the entire Outlander series onto the list ;) 

ChelsReads: The Cousins O'Dwyer Series by Nora Roberts

As mentioned in my November Favorites post, I recently started (and devoured) the Cousins O'Dwyer series by Nora Roberts over my Thanksgiving holiday and couldn't put the books down even after I came back home. These were my first Nora Roberts books, at least that I've read. As I mentioned in my favorites post, there was a Lifetime Movie Series based on her books running around the time I graduated in 2009. As a girl with her own (very) Irish roots, I have a tendency to gravitate toward anything based in the "mother land" but even more so because of the magical component of this series. When I read the description of the first book on Amazon, I immediately clicked the Buy button, but sort of forgot about it until headed down to Fort Bragg.

The series opens in the 13th century with a powerful witch, Sorcha, and her three children: Brannaugh (Bran-ugh), Eamon (Ay-mon), and Teagan. Threatened by a dark sorcerer named Cabhan (Ca-van), who covets not only her great power but her incredible beauty, Sorcha must stop him to keep him away from her children. To keep them safe, Sorcha sends them to live with her cousins, The O'Dwyers, hidden from Cabhan. 

In preparing for what she knows will be her final showdown, she gives her power to her children, creating within them the power of "The Three." While each of them is magically powerful on their own, they are nigh unstoppable when working together. When he comes for her, Sorcha attempts to destroy him, using the last bit of power that she has to poison him but for some unforeseeable reason, he isn't completely destroyed. With her last breath, she curses Cabhan, and all that come from him, to be ended by her bloodline, whether her children or another Three thousands of years later. 

Flash forward to spring of 2013 and the first book of the series, Dark Witch, when petite, blonde Iona Shehan moves from America to Ireland in hopes of finding her destiny and her roots with her cousins, Branna and Connor O'Dwyer. I won't lie to you, the first chapter or so of the book based in Iona's perception are a little hard to get through. I'm not sure if it's because she's so scattered, having been uprooted from her previous life, or if I wasn't used to Roberts' writing style yet, but I wasn't too sure about the book at the beginning. However, once it progressed, I was all in and definitely couldn't put it down. 

Without giving too much away, because I really can't recommend the read more, and want you to find out for yourselves. The current "Three", Iona and her cousins are, as the generations that have come before them, charged with destroying Cabhan once and for all and the three books detail their exploits in trying to do so after Iona makes her way to Ireland and completes the circle. Along the way, because they're Nora Roberts books, everyone falls in love in one way or another and there's a great sense of family, both blood-related and chosen, interwoven throughout the series which I greatly enjoyed. 

If I'm completely honest with you, the second book, Shadow Spell, was my favorite (which is weird for me in trilogies because the second book is almost always filler-y fluff) because I found that I related so much more to Connor O'Dwyer than I did to either one of the women (Roberts centered each of the books around one of the three cousins and how they felt about the whole deal as the drama unfolded). Connor just has such an easy way about him; he's quick and funny and cares about everyone close to him. While I really enjoyed the first book (or I wouldn't have downloaded the entire series before I even left Fort Bragg), it was definitely the second book that made me fall in love with the cousins and the series as a whole. 

While I read the books on my Kindle (they retail on Amazon for $2.50/book in the Kindle format), you can find these books all over and I wholeheartedly recommend reading them if magic is up your alley. 

Cheers! 

Stay tuned for a recipe from the books over on Eat.Drink.Adventure later this week!