A Simple Love of Reading

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Goodbye My Friends, I Will Miss You One and All…

As you might have seen a few weeks ago, I am unfortunately shutting down A Simple Love of Reading.

At the end of October my husband was rushed to a Toronto, ON., hospital for an emergency craniotomy. What initially began as a severe headache quickly took a turn for the worse. There was severe swelling and a blood clot the size of a grapefruit in his brain. The surgery was a complete success, but now we had to find out WHY there was such a severe bleed in his brain. Two weeks later we found out.

It’s cancer. It's stage 4. And it’s not curable. Because there were no outward signs of the disease, the tumors spread and just kept growing. I’m grateful that we found the tumors when we did, because we could have lost him without warning. Now we at least have a few more years.

Thankfully we live in Canada and have a lot of options when it comes to healthcare. In fact we are on a clinical trial that specifically targets my husband’s type of cancer. And there have even been patients that live up to five years longer than they were originally given. That gives us five more years together as a family.

So, it is with a heavy heart on the anniversary of when I began A Simple Love of Reading, that I say goodbye to all of my readers here on the blog. My attention needs to be on my family right now, and although blogging doesn’t take up THAT much time in my life…Every moment spent with my husband and our children is now precious to me.

Thank you for being a follower and putting up with me for as long as you have!! Keep reading my friends and know that I’m still around somewhere with a book in my hands too.

Summer Vacation 2014

P.S. I will be keeping my Twitter and Tumblr accounts active if you are interested in following me there.

Monday, December 29, 2014

I Made It!!

View Books

Hope everyone else had a great reading year as well!!

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours, hope your Holidays are filled with love and wonder!

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

On the First Day of Christmas...

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the story of how he and his best friend, Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.

To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.

Monday, December 22, 2014

On the Second Day of Christmas...

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own.

Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over? The Impossible Knife of Memory is Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest: compelling, surprising, and impossible to put down.

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Sundays with Sarah - Goodbye Edition

To find out more about Sarah and this feature go here.

Greetings one and all.

It has been a while since I made my last entry on A Simple Love of Reading.

Alas, though, as some things begin, so too must they end. And it brings a heavy heart to all that this will officially be my last post on Amy's blog. For some time I have contributed my thoughts, tastes and experiences with the readers here and have had a great time being able to share those with you all.

As the New Year approaches so too comes a fresh beginning and new chapter in my life. In the New Year, I will be starting my own personal website which will showcase recipes, reviews and more for those who wish to follow my site.

There will be lots of changes in the New Year for us all. As I must leave, so too I know a close friend will follow.

2014 has been a year, for most, to be tragic at times and triumphant for others. We all struggle with events, friends who come and friends who go…family and even changes that affect those around us.

We must all remember that despite things that begin and those that end, one thing will always remain...things will go on.

So I must say my final goodbyes to all readers here and to wish you all a better future.

Take care everyone, and remember…

Keep Moving Forward.

Sincerely,

Saturday, December 20, 2014

On the Third Day of Christmas...

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.

Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.

In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naïve to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the Summer Solstice celebration.

That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.