They're just so pretty!!!

Hi guys! Should you judge a book by it's cover? The answer is yes...yes you should. At least I love pretty covers! My roommate Mary knows that I am a sucker for pretty covers and often texts me pictures of her finds! I saw these on Pinterest and looked into them because they are gorgeous and I think Barnes and Noble is BRILLIANT in making these books the way they are! It's called the leatherbound classics collection and they average about $18! So if you all want to get me a Christmas present...BAM! There you go! ;D Okay without further ado...here were some of my favorite leatherbound classics!

Sherlock Holmes

Aesops Fables

Arabian Nights

Peter Pan

Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Count of Monte Cristo

Seven Novels of Jane Austen

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Swiss Family Robinson

The Bronte Sisters collection

A Christmas Caorl

Hans Christen Anderson Fairy Tales

Grimm's Fairy Tales

Pride and Prejudice

The Complete works of William Shakespeare

Jane Eyre

The Iliad and the Odssey

And their beautiful spines! 

Seriously! So gorgeous!!! Big fat kisses!

Book Burger Tag

Hi ya'll! Instead of writing a blog I made myself a book hamburger video for you all! It made me a bit hungry...for knowledge! Take a looksy! Much love!

My Story-Elizabeth Smart

"It's funny, some of the things that I remember, many of the details forever burned in my mind. It's as if I can still smell the air, hear the mountain leaves rustle above me, feel the fabric of the veil that Brian David Mitchell stretched across my face. I can picture every detail of my surroundings: the tent, the washbasin, the oppressive dugout full of spiders and mice. I can feel the cut of the steel cable wrapped so tightly around my ankle, the scorch of the summer heat lifting off the side of the hill, the swaying of the Greyhound bus as we fled to California. I remember so many overwhelming feelings and emotions. Terror that is utterly indescribable, even to this day. Embarrassment and shame so deep, I felt as if my very worth had been tossed upon the ground. Despair. Starving hunger. Fatigue and thirst and a nakedness that bares on to the bones. Intruding hands. Pain and burning. The leering look of his dark eyes. A deep longing for my family. A heartbreaking yearning to go home. Looking back, I realized that at one point, early on the morning of the first day, something had changed inside me. After I had been raped and brutalized, there was something new inside my soul. There was a burning now inside me, a fierce determination that no matter what I had to do, I was going to live! I also discovered something that is harder to imagine, and much more difficult to explain. Sometime during the first couple of days, I realized that I wasn't alone. There were others there beside me, unseen but not unfelt. Sometimes I could picture them beside me, reaching for my hand. And that is on of the reasons I am still alive."

 I'm going to be perfectly honest with you-this book is going to be HARD for me to review! I will tell you right now if you aren't comfortable with the issue of rape skip this one. Elizabeth Smart is about a year older than I am. I remember when she was taken because it scared me! She was a girl about my age and only lived an hour away from me! It was very real and very close to home. Her kidnapping was everywhere on billboards and in the media. I remember it was summer and one night I went around shutting all of the windows because I was freaked out about someone coming through the screens and taking me. So to read this book period made me a little apprehensive! I will admit that reading it did scare me! Elizabeth didn't sugar coat her experience at all. She tells about being taken from her home at knife point and dragged up into the mountains. There she became the "second wife" to a psychopath and his psychopath wife. Essentially she talks about becoming a slave to Wanda Barzee and a sex toy for Brian David Mitchell for her nine months of captivity. She talks about the horror of being cabled to a tree and being able to her rescuers and not being able to call out for help. She rehashes each horror and terrifying situation with complete honesty. Had the story been only these facts I think I might have abandoned it for simply not being able to handle the sadness of it all. BUT Elizabeth Smart also weaves another tale throughout the story. It's a story about faith and tender mercies. It's a tale about gratitude and forgiveness and some seriously big miracles. I felt her spirit radiating through the pages almost as if it was reaching out and saying that even in the darkest times there is light. As a person she is truly inspiring! 

"Life is a journey for us all. We all face trials. We all have ups and downs. All of us are human. But we are also the masters of our fate. We are the ones who decide how we are going to react to life. Yes, I could have decided to allow myself to be handicapped by what happened to me. But I decided very early that I only had one life and that I wasn't going to waste it. As of this writing, I am twenty-five years old. I have been alive for 307 months. Nine of those months have been very good. I have been happy. I have been very blessed. Who knows how many more months I have to live? But even if I died tomorrow, nine out of 307 seems like pretty good odds."

"I also believe in faith. Faith in a loving and kind Heavenly Father who will always care about me. Faith that my worth will never be diminished. Faith that God knows how I feel and that I can depend on him to help me through it all. I believe that God not only suffered for me, but that He will make everything up to me in His own time and His own way. That gives me the peace I need to feel like justice will win out in the end."

Bookish Pet Peeves

I don't usually like to complain or advocate complaining but this was really really fun! You will discover just how much of a book nerd I am! :D I hope you enjoy my second ever VLOG!!!!! 

What are some of your pet peeves? :) 

Let's hear it for the unique...

I don't know why but lately I've LOVED characters that are absolutely original and unique. Girls that march to their own drum and are completely true to themselves. The girls that should be celebrated more often but get pushed aside for being a bit quirky! So I picked two books where I think the quirky girl rains supreme and I LOVE it! 

First-Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

"Once upon a time, there was a girl who talked to the moon. And she was mysterious and she was perfect, in that way that girls who talk to moons are. In the house next door, there lived a boy. And the boy watched the girl grow more and more perfect, more and more beautiful with each passing year. He watched her watch the moon. And he began to wonder if the moon would help him unravel the mystery of the beautiful girl. So the boy looked into the sky. But he couldn't concentrate on the moon. He was too distracted by the stars. One day, the boy had to move away. He couldn't bring the girl with him, so he brought the stars. When he'd look out his window at night, he would start with one. One star. And the boy would make a wish on it, and the wish would be her name. At the sound of her name, a second star would appear. And then he'd wish her name again, and the stars would double into four. And four became eight, and eight became sixteen, and so on, in the greatest mathematical equation the universe had ever seen. And by the time an hour had passed, the sky would be filled with so many stars that it would wake the neighbors. People wondered who'd turned on the floodlights. The boy did. By thinking about the girl."

I loved this book! I loved the main character! She's got spunk! She talks to the moon and wears wigs and Chucks and sequins! She has two dads and her cats name is Heavens to Betsy! I also loved Cricket. He was the cutest guy on the planet! I'd date him! One thought I had is Stephanie Perkins is an expert at building the right kind and amount of tension in her books. I felt like I do when watching the Kiera Knightley Pride and Prejudice and they fight in the rain and they almost kiss! And you scream at the TV because you just want him to grab her but he doesn't! That is this book to a tee!

"The moon is fat, but half of her is missing. A ruler-straight line divides her dark side from her light. Autumn is coming. For as long as I can remember, I've talked to the moon. Asked her for guidance. There's something deeply spiritual about her pale glow, her cratered surface, her waxing and waning. She wears a new dress every evening, yet she's always herself. And she's always there."

Second- Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, hallways hum “Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’s heart with one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. Until they are not. Leo urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her - normal. Can I please be Stargirl?! 

"She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew."







Two girls that are themselves. Go read! So what do you say...today...