2019 Reading Challenge Criteria: A book published posthumously.
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
This book did not fit any of my challenge criteria.
On a grey London day, Esme’s world crumbles around her when she loses her glitzy job on a top TV programme, her gorgeous, city-slicker boyfriend and her stunning apartment, all in one fell swoop just before Christmas.
Esme is forced suddenly to move back to her sleepy home town of Sandchester, and despite the snow blanketing the roof and the fairy lights that twinkle in her rustic little cottage, everything is looking bleak. That is until she reconnects with an old crush and finds herself unexpectedly getting swept away.
Thanksgiving isn’t a big deal in Ireland. We keep the massive turkey until Christmas Day. But, we have got some of the traditions of the holiday on this side of the Atlantic – mainly Black Friday.
So, if we Irish can save a few bob on Kindles every November, surely I can take the Thanksgiving Book Tag? I found it over on Heather’s blog, and it’s a lovely way to celebrate Thanksgiving with none of the turkey coma.
This book did not fit any of my challenge criteria.
Meet Rachel Walsh. She has a pair of size 8 feet and such a fondness for recreational drugs that her family has forked out the cash for a spell in Cloisters – Dublin’s answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She’s only agreed to her incarceration because she’s heard that rehab is wall-to-wall jacuzzis, gymnasiums and rock stars going tepid turkey – and it’s about time she had a holiday. Continue reading
This book did not fit into any of my challenge criteria.
In her unmissable debut, actress and screenwriter Ruth Jones shows us the dangers of trying to recapture that which was once lost and failing to realise the beauty of what we already have.
‘We spend most of our lives wishing we were somewhere else or someone else, or looking forward or harping back. Always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. But it never is. It’s still grass. Just a different patch of it, that’s all.’
The past has a habit of tracking us down. And tripping us up.
When Kate was twenty-two, she had an intense and passionate affair with a married man, Callum, which ended in heartbreak. Kate thought she’d never get over it.
Image via Goodreads
