Fall Reading Challenge: Update #3

I apologize to those of you who are anxiously awaiting a certain post; I’m sorry to say that you will have to wait a little longer.  I want to give that post the attention and time it deserves.

In the meantime…

I recently finished the third book in my fall reading challenge.  (As I mentioned, it can take me a long time to get through a book due to lack of time, and this is why I don’t usually set reading challenges for myself.)

Everything We Ever Wanted by Sara Shepard was a good read, although not quite what I expected.  I have a bad habit (for a librarian) to choose (at least at first) my books based on the covers.  And often I wrongly create a storyline of my own based on the cover.  If I like a cover enough, I add the book to my booklist without reading the synopsis.  This is a very bad thing.  Sometimes I end up wasting my time on books with great covers but which contain bad stories and/or bad writing, such as the case with the Twilight saga (sorry Twilight fans—I tried, I really did, but I just hated the first three and a half books, I gave up and read the Wikipedia entry [spoiler alert!] on how it ends).

Anyway, back to the point at hand.

I thought the Shepard book would be more of a love story based on its cover.  And I suppose one part of it is in a way, but not in an obvious way.  The story is about one family—the assumptions each member has for another and the reality each comes to learn about the others (much like my assumptions and realities of book covers).  The ending was a little anticlimactic, and if you like endings to be tied into a neat and precise little bow, you might feel a bit unsatisfied by this book’s ending.  There’s not a lot of action or heavy-duty drama, but there are a lot of emotions and dealing with the past and how it affects the present.  And in the end, there are still some unresolved (at least to the reader) issues.

As for my challenge in general, I have finished three books.  The others I did not get to.  I shall save them for next fall.

I am currently re-reading The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon.  It still amazes me how this simple story can speak such volumes to me.

What are you currently reading that is a “must-read”?