Favourites from 2012

One of my favourite things to do with a little spare time is to read.  Unfortunately, I often let other things get in the way - watching TV and surfing the internet to name a few - and find myself taking a little longer than it should to get through a book.  I usually spend at least 15 - 20 minutes reading before I go to bed, and, by doing that, I managed to read 20 books last year.  Not as many as I've read in previous years, but not too bad.  This year, I want to make an effort to turn the TV off and read more...we'll see how that goes!

For now, I thought I would share my 3 favourite reads from 2012...

1. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This book was recommended to me by my boss.  We seem to have a similar taste in novels, so when she first mentioned it, I added it to my list of books to read.  But, she also recommended it to a summer student working in our office, and she read it over a weekend and came back and told me not to wait - that I should read it right away.  They were right, this was an amazing book!

2. Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

I first saw this book on the shelves at a Target, as one of their 'Recommended Reads'; I've always enjoyed these suggestions, so I made note of it and bought it for my eReader a few weeks later.  I enjoyed this book so much, I ended up recommending it to my boss - and she was really impressed with it as well.

3. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

This book was the most recent read for a book club that I'm part of.  I had the date for our book club meeting mixed up (I thought I had an extra week to read), so the day of the book club arrived and I was only about a third of the way through the book....oooops!  But, I sat down after church on a Sunday and figured I would read as much as I could.  I ended up staying on the couch all afternoon and evening because once I got into it, I couldn't put it down.  I ended up finishing the book about 20 minutes before I had to leave for book club; the discussion at book club was great, and the other 8 girls all really enjoyed the book too!

I didn't want to try to summarize these books for you, that's what GoodReads or Amazon are for, but I did want to give you the titles and authors so you could check them out for yourself!  If you end up reading any of these books, let me know what you think.