Article: Best Books For Your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s And 60s

The article includes some good books that I’ll be adding to my TBR List (some are already in it).  🙂

Summer Reads: Best Books For Your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s And 60s

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“Just like our lives can often be divided into chapters, there are also different books that can define each decade.

In your 20s, you’re exploring the world and figuring out who you are and who you want to be with, while your 30s may be time to start thinking about that first home…”

Click here to read the full article.

 

Book Recommendation: “Heart: A School-boy’s Journal” by Edmundo de Amicis

Heart

The first time I read this book I think I was about 7 or 8 years old, I remember the beautiful hardcover edition my parents bought me (that I re-read several times).
To this day this book keeps a special place in my heart.

Here’s the book description for the English version (as appears in Amazon):

Written following the Italian war for independence by a sub-lieutenant who had fought in the siege of Rome in 1870, Heart is the fictional diary of a boy’s third year in a Turin municipal school. It was written to foster juvenile appreciation of the new found Italian national unity, which the author had fought for in the recent war. The book is often highly emotional, even sentimental, but gives a vivid picture of urban Italian life at that time. A master, introducing a new pupil, tells the class, “Remember well what I am going to say. That this fact might come to pass–that a Calabrian boy might find himself at home in Turin, and that a boy of Turin might be in his own home in Calabria, our country has struggled for fifty years, and thirty thousand Italians have died.”
The novel became internationally popular, and has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Edmundo de Amicis (1846-1908) established a reputation as a writer in various genres after his experience as a soldier.

This is a book I absolutely love (with amazing characters and beautifully written) that, if you haven’t read yet, I recommend adding to your Reading List.

Note: Is important to mention that the author’s name can be found also written as “Edmondo” (depending on the language).

Book Review: The Guardians by Jennifer Raygoza

The Guardians

Book Description (from Goodreads):

The Guardians is a compelling tale focused on love, pain and sacrifice. The battle of good versus evil. The question is who will win.

Gianna Botticelli is the daughter to a Los Angeles Mafia boss. Although content working for her father, she mentally struggles with her mother’s death—and life choices after her passing. But everything she knows will change when she meets the sexy, mysterious Caleb.

Who is he? What is he? How does he know things? Gianna finds herself struggling with her feelings for him—and the sacrifices she will have to make as Caleb introduces her to a world unknown. Will she have to sacrifice herself to save everyone and everything?

Sexy and entertaining, this book is for mature vampire lovers. I challenge you not to fall in love with Gianna and Caleb.

WARNING: This book contains violence, adult language, and passionate love scenes.

Book Review:

This book follows to Gianna who works for the “family business” with her father (a Mafia’s boss) and her brother.

I have to say that I found interesting that the protagonist of the story was a strong, determined and independent woman (not the typical “damsel in distress”) and she really knew how to deal with the men who work for her father.

There was some characters that I really loved, one of them was Caleb (with that air of mystery) and the other one was Maddie (she was sweet and nice).

As the book progresses we see that this is not just a paranormal romance story, there are some twists, there’s a war between good and evil and Gianna has a rol in it.

The story has some good elements in it: romance, action, an underground world, also the fact that the vampires are portrayed in an interesting way (I won’t give any spoilers here).

This book is around 115 pages long (I finished reading it in one day) and I would have loved it to be a bit longer (that way I could had learned more about some characters). I’m not sure if this book is part of a Series, if so, probably some of the answers to my questions are in the next book.

Overall this is a quick and entertaining read that I think will appeal to fans of paranormal romance.

Book Review: The Lightbearers by Nora M. Garcia

The Lightbearers

Book Description (from Goodreads):

THE LIGHTBEARERS is the story of an ancient Egyptian King and Queen, Akhenaton and Nefertiti, who have been reincarnating together for the past 3300 years. They have been entrusted with the mission of The Lightbearers, whose responsibility is to be guardians of the human race and to enlighten any whose path they cross. Through reincarnation, during each of their lifetimes, they strive to overcome violence, greed and injustice and in each lifetime they leave pockets of individuals with whom they have shared their secrets of life and death. They have also been ascribed with the powers of telepathy, astral projection and psycho kinesis. They are highly evolved and highly enlightened.

Discovery of their innate mystical powers is facilitated by the assistance of an alien being who introduces them to the mission of the Lightbearer. Through a series of flashbacks two of their previous lifetimes are revealed beginning in Ancient Egypt and including 17th century France where they switched genders.

The story unfolds in the 21st century where Jean Crystal, Nefertiti’s incarnate, has been kidnapped by Dr. Natas, whose plan for world domination has been temporarily disrupted by Jean and her husband George, Akhenaten’s incarnate. Jean and George have discovered a secret about Dr. Natas experimental school, a school completely computerized and robotized.

Jean is held captive on a laboratory table by a motion sensitive laser directed toward her central nervous system. Not realizing this, upon awakening from a narcotic sleep induced by the doctor, she attempts to move and is suddenly wracked by a mind numbing pain. The more she moves the more pain she receives. By astrally projecting herself she is able to overcome the pain and investigate her circumstances. George has already been assassinated and while awaiting her own demise, George pays Jean a visit in the lab, assuring her of their eternal vow to each other. Jean is very shortly, thereafter, assassinated. Upon the joyful reunion of their spirits on Petite Terre, a tiny island just off the Normandy Province of France, Jean and George plan their return. While it is possible to determine their gender and the time in which they return, they cannot predetermine their identities. They must pick a place, a time and a signal by which they can find and identify each other in their subsequent lifetime. In this particular lifetime, their favorite song was “Imagine” by John Lennon and so on the first Monday of October, 2024 at 12 noon, they decide to meet outside the computer science building on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. She will find him sitting under a tree near the building with a guitar strumming “Imagine”.

Their reunion takes place 20 years later, albeit not without a hitch. Together they set out to rescue the United States from Dr. Natas’s well-placed plans, he has already begun to execute.

Book Review:

Reincarnation, astral projection, telepathy, robots and romance, are some of the elements that make The Lightbearers a very interesting and captivating story.

The protagonists of this story are Jean and George, two Lightbearers with some special powers who have been together through different lives and times and are trying to fulfill its mission of helping humanity (although this is not an easy task for them!). The author did a nice job making these two characters really likable and interesting.

The book starts with Jean (in the contemporary times), who is in the hands of the evil genius Dr. Natas, owner of Alpha Beta Corporation and creator of a school that uses robots instead of humans (He is a true villain, dark and very manipulative, who won’t stop until he gets what he wants).
There are some unexpected twists and turns involving some of the secondary characters (I won’t give any spoilers here), but all of them contribute to make the story even more interesting.

With a mix of science fiction, action, romance and supernatural aspects, this is an entertaining book (well written and with good characters), that I really enjoyed, kept my attention until the end and I will surely recommend.

Photography: Cute Bookmarks for good Books.

Last year in Barnes & Noble, I bought a bookmark with the image of Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (one of my favorite movies) and I absolutely loved it, since then I started collecting bookmarks.

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In our wedding anniversary my husband gave me one of Hello Kitty (I’d been always a Hello Kitty’s fan).

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Today I found these three (on sale for around $.60 usd each) to add to my collection:

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