So, in addition to my RAS challenge I am also reading things on my Kindle and Nook devices. Some for book group, and some for just because. All of these books are worthwhile reading, so go ahead and enjoy one or all of them.

A few months ago Barnes and Noble emailed me to tell me I had three hours to spend $7.59. The only thing I could do was fire up my Nook and search for a book I wanted to read on it. (I don’t love my new Nook Glowlight — it feels cheap compared to my Kindle Paperwhite). I eventually chose The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I read it in two nights, staying up late to do so. My book group is now reading it — I am pretty sure they will be critical, but I don’t care. It was a fun read.

Shortly after the the Charleston, NC AME Church shooting a Facebook friend mentioned that she’d heard of the Charleston church and Denmark Vesey in a book by Sue Monk Kidd called The Invention of Wings. I’d read Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees a few years ago, so I knew she was a great writer, so I downloaded The Invention of Wings in Illinois, before we returned to Maryland and began reading it on the drive home. I finished it a couple of nights ago and when I read the author’s note was surprised to discover it was fact based. I knew Denmark Vesey was a real person and the church was real, but I didn’t realize that everything, including the two main characters, Sarah and her sister Nina, were really abolitionists and crusaders for women’s rights. I’m really glad I read this book. It was well written and I learned a lot.

For book group last month we read Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. While reading it I declared to anyone who would listen that it was the most well-written book I’d read in a long while. I still think so — and I am not the only person who does. I was at a dinner party and another guest (a professional writer herself) mentioned the book and said it was so well-written she wanted to go through the book and list all the verbs. All the Light We Cannot See is about a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives are connected and whose paths intersect near the end of World War II.