Greetings my fellow lovers of the written word!

While it has not been as long between posts, I still apologize for the delay. This time finals and graduating college are to blame, so it's as good an excuse as any I suppose. Now that higher education is no longer taking up so much of my time, I should be fairly regular in posting.

That being said, let's step away from the reviews for a moment and focus on something that many of us book fiends face: the ever-daunting reading list. Maybe it's just me, but it never seems as if I can make a dent in my reading list. If anything, it seems to grow exponentially longer every time I look at it.

When I was younger, I would religiously comb through the library and my local bookstores with a notebook and pen in hand, writing down any title I deemed interesting. Well, let's just say the number of lists became overwhelming, until this year I finally decided to condense them all into one comprehensive list. It's still in progress currently, but I am now somewhere around 5,700 titles, with probably at least another 2,000 still waiting to be added. Now I can hear some of your jaws hitting the ground, or your heads shaking, thinking I'm crazy. (Which may be true, but that's another story for a different kind of blog haha). 

While some people may think it's ridiculous, my opinion is that it is a continuous goal, a challenge I can keep pursuing as long as new and engaging titles are hitting the shelves, (and let's face it, that's always going to be the case). So what's a bookworm to do? It doesn't matter what pace you go at, how few or how many books are on that list, what matters is how satisfied you are with the amount and range of reading you're doing. Some readers are more selective about what they want to spend their time on, while others, like me, read quite the varied range.

Some organizational tips, while not the most thrilling topic, can be very useful. I generally keep a running note on my phone of titles I may see or hear about, and type in there for future reference until I have access to my full list. With the majority of the population having smartphones, this is such an easy thing to do. Another hint I might suggest? Keeping your list in alphabetical order by author's last name. It keeps series together, and makes it easy to prevent having the same title multiple times on a list. It's pretty simple.

And if you want to make a list for yourself, but don't know where to start? Two of my favorite resources have always been Pinterest and Goodreads.com. They are endless resources for finding books that interest you. When you finally want to start tackling that list, there's even a website that randomizes it for you if you so choose, (but I know I'm a super mega-nerd, so maybe that's just something I would do). The website is easy to remember, since the domain name is literally random.org, but hey, I'm not complaining. 

On a final note, my current choice of book is the Coal Harbour series by Polly Horvath. They're quick and simple reads, but there's nothing wrong with revisiting childhood and the YA section we all loved (and maybe secretly still do).

As always, happy reading my friends!

With the multiple disasters having befallen humanity as of late, between the riots in Baltimore and the earthquake in Nepal, we are always surrounded by reminders of the endurance of the human spirit. We are always fascinated with stories of survival against the odds, for we cannot imagine what we would be capable of were we to be put in a similar situation. In that tradition, Elizabeth Fama's debut novel deals with one young girl's struggle to make it back home to her family.

A young girl named Emily lives with her parents who are doctors in Sumatra, and like any regular thirteen year old, acts out against her feelings of being misplaced and ignored. So she runs away to join her uncle on another island and hops aboard an overcrowded ferry, only to be tossed with 400 other people into the ocean when the vessel tips over and sinks. The majority of the book then chronicles her struggle to stay alive while waiting to be rescued.

While based on true events, sometimes bits of the story feel far-fetched and are hard to believe, more so in the thought process of the character than the events themselves. At one point while floating in the ocean, the reader finds Emily contemplating serious philosophical topics such as the conflict between science and religion. While the ideas she espouses are intriguing, it still gave me pause. Realistically speaking, is this what a young girl would be thinking of while attempting to survive the dangers of the ocean? While the boredom factor of floating in the open water alone is obvious, one would think her mind would wander to more age-appropriate and likely topics. This made me disconnect from Emily as a character, which is a shame, since I assume the intent of the author was to try and establish a connection and relatable quality between Emily and the reader.

Another trait that stood out throughout the course of the story was the scope of Emily's resourcefulness. One has to wonder if even an adult could be capable of her strength and ingenuity if placed in the same predicament. The difficulty of determining that is that most readers, if any, will be able to use personal experience to determine that. It is impossible to determine what anyone has the potential to do when we are faced with no other choice.

The writing is engaging and keeps the reader cheering for Emily to pull through. The simple language is sometimes blunt when dealing with the some of the difficult choices and images she experiences, so that one may cringe or shudder when imagining it for themselves, yet still retains some hope.

In short, I would recommend this as a quick and interesting read, but I would take the realism of the text with a grain of salt.