books on tap: anglophile

Where did September go? I feel like it was just Labor Day. What happened?
 
Okay, so we went on a cruise to Alaska for a week. Then we went to North Carolina for a weekend to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday and to meet our new niece. So I do know where September went :) It also went with these books. With the exception of the first and last "new" books I've read, they're all books that take place in England (and/or feature English characters). Now this is making me want to go back to London and have high tea at Dawaat. Crap.
 
Anyway. If you're looking for a great book, check out one of the below.
 
xoxo,
E

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Windfall, by Jennifer E. Smith. Alice, an orphan, has been in love with her best friend Teddy forever. So on his 18th birthday, she buys him a lottery ticket as a joke - and it's a winner. Suddenly, their friendship is on the rocks as Teddy navigates fame and a huge fortune. This was cute and I didn't dislike it, but it could have more depth to it. I mostly just kept reading to find out what happened. 3/5 stars.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, by J.K. Rowling. If you've seen the movie (which I haven't), there's probably not much I can tell you about this. The story is about Newt Scamander (played by the oh-so-attractive Eddie Redmayne) and his beloved magical creatures in New York City. It's a little background to a textbook that shows up at Hogwarts in the HP series. This is a screenplay, so it's a little hard to read at times. I wish JK would quit writing screenplays and do more novels instead, but this was still good. Now I guess I need to see the movie. 4/5 stars.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir*, by Jennifer Ryan. After the men leave a small English town to fight in WWII, the women decide to start a female-only choir. While the book does detail their various singing gigs, it's told through diaries, letters, and stories of the women about their lives in general. Several different characters are featured and woven together well, but I couldn't seem to really connect with any of the characters. There's no urgency to the story at all. I wasn't anxiously flipping the pages to find out what happened. The stories are good, but they lack the oomph I was looking for. Still, a good book for anyone who likes British books, WWII fiction, and/or a slower pace. 3/5 stars.
 
*I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.

Reading People, by Anne Bogel. I've always been fascinated by personality tests and quizzes (Myers Briggs ISTJ, represent!), but this book takes it a step further by taking common personality tests and showing you how to utilize the information to better understand yourself and those around you. I really wanted to like this book, and I did -- but I didn't. Bogel's writing is very clear and easy to read, with lots of personal anecdotes to clarify her points. But the book mostly seemed like a brief collection of several personality tests, with descriptions of the types. There's no new information you couldn't get from studying each test individually, and in some cases you could get more information by researching each test individually. I'm conflicted on this one, so... 3/5 stars.

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this month's re-reads

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