On my bookshelf

Here are the books I have read over the past few weeks…

Safe Haven
By: Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks has to be one of my favorite authors.  Yes the books are pretty much the same, love story, predictable at times, but still always a great read.  I read Safe Haven when it came out, but with the release of the movie coming (this week actually on Feb 14) I wanted to reread the book.  The books are always better than the movies in my opinion but I still enjoy the movies.  While rereading this movie there were a couple parts of the book that I had forgotten about and I still enjoyed reading it for the second time.  It was hard to not picture Julianne Hough and Josh Duhmael as the main characters though.  You know how you create the characters in your head and what they look like, well these two are not what I pictured for Katie and Alex.  If you haven’t read this book I definitely recommend it and I will be going to see the movie so I will let you know what I think.  If you like a good love story then any Nicholas Sparks book will do the trick.

Girls in White Dresses

By: Jennifer Close

I have seen this book browsing through Target and bookstore and finally downloaded it on my kindle and read it.  This is a book that I could really relate to.  The book is about a group of girls and there life after college.  What its like when the first of your friends gets married, and then another, and others who are no where near close to getting married.  Life after college is the time where you really find yourself, find a career, or start to decide what you want to do with your life.  The book follows the girls through their adventures, girls trips, romances, going back home, moving, being broke, visiting their college campus, etc.  In the book they discuss how much they miss college and this is something I was just talking about with one of my friends the other day.  We didn’t know how good we had it in college.  Yeah it was a lot of work, all nighters studying, class, labs, etc etc but think about it, a place where all of your friends are in the same area and there is always an excuse for a party.  Now my college friends are all over the state or country for that matter and busy with our own lives that it is hard to get together that much.  Yeah it is nice to have a job and more money, but college was 4 great years. 

One of the characters in the book thinks all of her friends have a plan and direction and she doesn’t really know what she wants and I could relate to her in some ways.  I know what I want career wise, it just took me a little while to get there.  I am the only one of my college friends that is still in grad school and not working in a full time career.  When I graduated from undergrad I worked for two years before starting grad school.  I don’t regret it; I learned a lot working for two years and gained experience but sometimes wish I was on the same page as everyone else.  My friends work M-F set schedules and mine is all over the place.  I have class in the evenings, work retail all different hours including the weekend and it is hard for some friends to remember that I am not free on the weekends like they are.  Enough of my rant, I am enjoying grad school but excited to be done in a year and get a job as a school counselor.  I would recommend the book J