::beach:reads::

Not having a particularly good start to the day...well, it's not bad, but TGIF! That's all I gotta say. When I am down in the dumps you know what makes me feel better??.....

Books books books. 

Books can change your life.

How I love books! Nothing makes me happier then reading books, shopping for books, flipping through books, reading reviews on books...just...anything about books! But if you have been following this blog for a while, you will know that I am *obsessed* with books. Definitely one of my passions is reading, other then writing, animals, health and fitness. :)

There is always something to read, and I have spent the bulk of my Summer reading many books...anything from Stephen King to Cassandra Clare and then my regular old school books or recently a book on mindful meditation. You just can't run out of good books! 

You may have noticed my taste in books is completely random and all over the map. I have yet to find a blog that shares their top picks on what books to purchase and read! So therefore I am going to show you what hot new books are out there that I am itching to get my hands on and what I think you should be taking with you to the beach with this last month of Summer on the horizon. 

What are you currently reading? Let me know! 

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson - $14.43 CAD

A YA book that sounds interesting enough to me! :)

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.

The Kiss of Deception is the first book in Mary E. Pearson's Remnant Chronicles.

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire - $23.99 CAD
This book is up there in the YA genre with good reviews, thought I would give it a try - a book that (for once) has nothing to do with fantasy or sci-fi. ;) LOL.

Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn't drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand. 

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh - $19.44 CAD

I always seem to pick thorugh the same author's books over and over. It's always Dean, or Harlen or Stephen King...so am trying to venture out and read something completely different...this book popped up on my Amazon "FOR YOU!" list...so thought, why the heck not. I would like to give this a read and see if I found a new author. :) 
The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family’s influence, Lucy—darkly beautiful as her mother was—is always thought of by those around her as her mother’s daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls—the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t save—and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri’s death.
 
What Lucy discovers is a secret that pervades the secluded Missouri hills, and beyond that horrific revelation is a more personal one concerning what happened to her mother more than a decade earlier.
 
The Weight of Blood is an urgent look at the dark side of a bucolic landscape beyond the arm of the law, where a person can easily disappear without a trace. Laura McHugh proves herself a masterly storyteller who has created a harsh and tangled terrain as alive and unforgettable as the characters who inhabit it. Her mesmerizing debut is a compelling exploration of the meaning of family: the sacrifices we make, the secrets we keep, and the lengths to which we will go to protect the ones we love.

The New Rules of Lifting for Women by Lou Schuler w/ Cassandra Forsythe & Alwyn Cosgrove - $14.44 CAD

I just recently joined the gym and even though I have been at the gym before I still feel like a complete newbie! I don't know where to start and the internet is chock-full of information that I don't know if it's real, good information or not. So why not grab a book that many trainers and bodybuilders swear by? So this one is definitely at the top of my list. :)

 In The New Rules of Lifting for Women, fitness experts and authors Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove continue their wildly popular New Rules of Lifting series with a comprehensive strength training, conditioning, and nutrition plan specifically designed to help women reap the benefits of weightlifting. Along with women’s fitness expert Cassandra Forsythe, they show how stepping off the treadmill and into the weight room can help women get the body they want.

Contrary to popular belief, weight training will not cause women to “bulk up,” but rather will create the properly conditioned muscles that will in turn increase metabolism and promote weight loss, and give women a lean, healthy look. The New Rules of Lifting for Women includes six months’ worth of progressively challenging workouts that strip fat while increasing strength and building lean, head-turning muscle—all in two to three hours a week. The authors also provide an easy-to-use, customizable nutrition program that shows you how much to eat to reach your goals.

The New Rules of Lifting for Women provides a strengthand conditioning regimen to help every woman discover her most lean, strong, and beautiful self. 

The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond - $20.05

Love watching Ree Drummond on the Food Network and by flipping through her book she shares a tun of delicious recipes that look super simple to make and look hearty and delicious. :)

Paula Deen meets Erma Bombeck in The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond’s spirited, homespun cookbook. Drummond colorfully traces her transition from city life to ranch wife through recipes, photos, and pithy commentary based on her popular, award-winning blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, and whips up delicious, satisfying meals for cowboys and cowgirls alike made from simple, widely available ingredients. The Pioneer Woman Cooks—and with these “Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl,” she pleases the palate and tickles the funny bone at the same time. 

The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD by Jon Hershfield and Tom Corboy - $16.89

I feel like I have some miniature obsessive compulsive tendencies so am quite curious what this book is all about that everyone is raving over. Not only that, but this will also help further my studies with regards to mental health and nutrition + spirituality (in mindfulness). Who knows, I might pick up a few tidbits along the way. I have such an eclectic taste in books and want to learn and read about anything and everything. OCD is something that interests me, among a variety of other things, so this would be one of those books that would be an educational read and help me along in school especially since CBT is used in this and I have shared some 'psychology' books in the past as well. 

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These last four books, I just threw in here....I used to read this religiously every single year. They were mine and my Sister's Hallowe'en books that we would read at night time because these books are glow-in-the-dark! I am not sure where they went to. But I have been looking for copies of these everywhere. Unfortunately they aren't sold through Amazon...but I am still on the hunt for them ~ seems impossible to find though. Just reminds me of when I was little...and who knows, maybe if my Sister or myself have kids in the future then the kidlets can read these books themselves. :) 

  

 There you have it, some books that are on my obsessed-with-books wishlist. ;) 
Now here are a few that I have read that you should read too!!

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King was quite a good read! You can get this book on Amazon (CAD) for $18.

And City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare for $14.99 - the last installment - book six - of The Mortal Instruments, nooooo!!! It's almost done! :( I am in the middle of the book right now and so far it's not a bad read although I would preferred a bit more...action? Plot twists? But so far it's rather...meh. But I'm still enjoying it and wondering what's going to happen in the last book. :)  

The links to the two books are here - where you can read the background on them. 

http://www.amazon.ca/Mr-Mercedes-Novel-Stephen-King/dp/1476754454/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_har?ie=UTF8&qid=1406902411&sr=8-1&keywords=mr+mercedes

http://www.amazon.ca/City-Heavenly-Fire-Cassandra-Clare/dp/1481426303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406902887&sr=8-1&keywords=city+of+heavenly+fire

Happy Reading!

-S.*