Hey everyone!!! How’s your week going? I’m getting pretty pumped up because tomorrow is my last day of class! Yes… I have class on a Friday. Party foul, I know. But it’s a make up day for when we got Martin Luther King Jr. off, so I have to go… Luckily, only 2 of my teachers are making up class (normally it would be like a whole looooong Monday! AH!) so I can’t be too upset about it.
The scary part? This means my first final is in less than a week! For those of you who put my personal life in your own calendars (which I assume is everyone), I have a final Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of next week. AHHHHH. But then I get to go home! YAAAAYY. Haha can you tell it’s thursday? Losing my mind! Speaking of, it’s time to get on to Thursday Thoughts, as well as a quick book review!
1. I am IN LOVE with this blog! Everyday “J” posts different outfits she’s put together, with the outfit’s inspiration and several places where you can find similar items of clothing for really reasonable prices! She’s really giving me some great ideas – now if only I had some money…
2. Am I some kind of crazy person (okay yes) or does everyone check the weather a million times a day? Seriously. Despite the fact that I rarely trust it’s forecast, weather.com and I are BFFs. Fo reals. Speaking of, if I believed the forecast, then my 10 miler is going to be pretty chilly, and um, Chicago? Really? I need some spring. Where did that 70 degree weather go?
3. I’m a huge fan of inspirational quotes from pinterest (if you hadn’t noticed already), however, I read a great post by Ashley at My Food N Fitness Diaries about listening to your body. She mentions in the post how the healthy living blogging community can often create this vision of an “ideal” person in our minds. There are so many fitness quotes, images and mantras out there (and on pinterest) that tell you to be perfect, never quite, push through the pain.
Honestly, this is just TOO MUCH. I’m definitely stepping back and re-evaluating why I do the things I do as well as priorities in life. Yes, it’s important to be healthy and fit, and yes I enjoy pushing myself a little further and improving, but there’s a limit when it comes to putting your body, and mind, in jeopardy to achieve this “ideal.”
4. My friend Bailey sent this to me. I about died of laughter. Anything Hunger Games related will make finals so much better. Feel free to send me pictures of Peeta…
5. Remember how on last week’s Thursday Thought’s I requested that strawberry cake for when my finals are over? Well I want the outside to look like this. Please and thank you.
6. I have a NON DISTOPIA book review for you! AHHHH!!! Anyone else shocked? Well thanks to Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers, I’ve gotten out of my rut! But, I have to be honest. I still have 100 pages left…. I just couldn’t finish it in time for book club day! That does, however, mean that I managed to read 450 pages in 3 days on top of school work – it was a great studying-procrastination tool. But hey, it was historical, aka educational!
The book for this month was called the Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.
You know one page in that this book is going to be interested based on the narrator: death. That’s right, “Death” tells the story of the book thief. The novel is set in Nazi Germany, so you can imagine there are a lot of people dying, and Death is hard at work. However, amongst all his work, he keeps coming across the Book Thief, and tells her story.
The Book Thief is a little girl, Liesel Meminger, who moves in with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa, in a somewhat impoverished neighborhood, and then her parents take in a young Jewish man, allowing him to live in their basement. She immediately befriends this man, Max, who is about 24, because they both wake every night with nightmares of their past.
Liesel is termed the Book Thief by both Death and her best friend and neighbor, Rudy Steiner, because she manages to steal a few books throughout the story. She begins the novel not knowing how to read and is slowly taught by her foster father, and immediately falls in love with the written word.
Although I haven’t finished the novel, so far I have really enjoyed it. It’s definitely different from what I’ve been reading, but it made me realize how much I miss historical fiction. It’s so interesting to see WWII unfold itself through the eyes of Death and through the perspective of a little German girl. The novel itself is also written in a very unusual manner, with random inserts explaining things (you’ll see when you read it), as well as some pages depicting paintings or written stories by Max, the young Jewish man. It has really kept me interested and I can’t wait to finish the last 100 pages. The author has a great way of depicting the character’s emotions in a way that you can really feel their depth, each character has been well developed and you feel like you know and understand them, even the ones on the edges of the story.
If you enjoy historical fiction I think this would be a great book to pick up. It may seem intimidating due to it’s length, but it’s really fast to get through if you take some time to sit down with it.
What are you reading right now?
What do you think about all these fitness mantras?