Sunday, August 28, 2016

MRS by Noa Grey

Title: MRS
Author: Noa Grey
Publication Date: August 16, 2016
Length: 271 pages

After advice columnist Hope Jackson dies, women everywhere are struggling to figure out their relationship and life problems without her guidance. MRS tells the stories of three such women: Mims, whose daughter died of suicide and whose husband has been distant ever since; Rory, who just lost her job and her boyfriend in the same day; and Sarah, whose husband is in jail and whose kids seem to hate her.

Each of these women goes through huge changes over the course of the book, rediscovering themselves as they search for solutions to their problems. I really enjoyed the hope and optimism in this story; even as bad things happen to the characters they seem to be constanting growing and moving towards achieving happiness in their lives.

I was expecting the characters' lives to be a little more intertwined, based on the summary (which actually uses the phrase "intertwined lives"). They actually don't even know each other, though they each have indirect connections to each other through mutual friends, and the ending does tie them together a bit more. It was really almost like reading three separate stories and jumping between them. However, I did like reading each of the stories involved, and really felt for Mims, Rory, and Sarah.

4 stars.

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Reading Through Dewey Decimal: An Ongoing Personal Challenge




I started working at a library as a shelver in 2015, and I constantly see books on the shelves that I want to read. Working there makes me want to read about every subject and learn all kinds of new things. So I got the idea to read a book from every division of the Dewey Decimal Classification system!

The DDC splits information up into 10 classes (eg. the 200s are Religion, the 400s are Language, etc.), which are further divided into 100 divisions (eg. the 180s are Ancient, Medieval, and Eastern Philosophy, the 660s are Chemical Engineering, etc.). The 040s are unassigned, which leaves 99 divisions to read from.

I don't read anywhere near 99 non-fiction* books in a year (I don't know if I've read 99 non-fiction books in my life...), so this will be an ongoing challenge with no real deadline.

(* Note: Technically the DDC covers fiction, too, but I'm sticking to the non-fiction section of the library, since they don't use Dewey Decimal for fiction. There is, however, fiction in the non-fiction section, mainly in the 800s (Literature). So some fiction may be included in this challenge.)

This is just a personal challenge I'm doing, but if you're doing something similar please let me know in the comments below! I'll be curious to see what people find to read, particularly in areas that aren't in one's normal areas of interest.

I will be tracking my progress on the Reading Dewey page of this blog.