Making Up For Monday: Changing Minds

It's time for Making Up For Monday! This is a weekly meme hosted by me that asks some fun literary questions. Feel free to play along!

This week's question:  Have you ever read a book that changed your opinion on a topic?

One of the reasons I love reading so much is that I learn, grow and have the chance of having my opinion changed. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen.

The biggest example of this is Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. 

This book made me WANT to donate my body to science after I die. Read it and tell me if it doesn't change your mind. 

What about you?  What book changed your mind? 

Top Ten Books You Would Classify As ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS from the past 3 years

It's time again for The Broke and The Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday.

This weeks theme was: Top Ten Books You Would Classify As ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS from the past 3 years

This was an easy list for me because I just used my Goodreads ratings.  Here we go! 


1. Shadow of the Wind by Carolas Ruiz Zafon:

2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens:

3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee:

4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro:

5. The Screwtape Letter by C. S. Lewis:

6. Stardust by Neil Gaiman: 

7. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson:

8. Playing The Enemy by John Carlin: 

9. Calico Joe by John Grisham: 

10. Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick:

Making Up For Monday: Banning Bans

It's time for Making Up For Monday! This is a weekly meme hosted by me that asks some fun literary questions. Feel free to play along!

This week's question: How do you feel about banned books?

How does any reader feel about banned books?  Does anyone really agree with it? I was given free reign of the library as a kid, so I was exposed to a lot of things that weren't allowed in our school library. My parents were wonderful about letting me read whatever I wanted without filtering me in any way. I don't think I was ever "corrupted" by a book. There were a few books I thought were beyond my comfort zone that I learned to stray away from, but for the most part, I read what I wanted. 

Besides, some of the best books I have ever read were once banned. The reasons books are banned are so silly to me, that I don't even think twice about them. 

Banning a book for the use of the "n-word" when it deals with racism and slavery of the past is so silly to me. It's historically accurate and I am not one who thinks we should sugar coat the past. We learn from the past, in all its faults and stumbles. Sugar coating it doesn't help us learn from it. 

Also banning any books with "magic" because it's satanic is beyond laughable. I can't even respond to that one. 

The truth is, if you ban a book, I am far more likely to read it.  So go ahead I say, keep trying to ban books.  I'll just keep reading them!