#sevendaybookchallange

[spotlitstranger]

Day Two- Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

Six different stories that build on each other, stopping at their pinnacle, and starting the next story until they converge with the final story, then each story falling back in on the previous story. As hard as it is to explain, it's just as hard to read but once you figure out the skeleton on the story, it's one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read. Each story is written in the dialect of its time, the final story being set in a prehistoric future where a variant pidgen of English is spoken.

This story showed me what good writing and good planning could be, that sometimes knowing the skeleton of your story ahead of time could lead to something that means so much more than you could have anticipated. I still love writing, even though I don't do it nearly as much as I used to, and books like this are why I love doing it.

[spotlitstranger]

I want to do the Facebook seven books, seven days challenge but I also want to talk about each of the books I love, thus breaking the rules. So I'll do it here, and I'll be picking novels that aren't necessarily bestsellers (I love Harry Potter, but it's on everyone's favorites list).

Day One- The Tea Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly

The plotline of this book is something akin to a bad romance book, however for a long time this was my number one favorite book. The main character faces some pretty insane challenges and each time somehow finds the strength and resilience to fight them and I draw so much inspiration from it, even though it is a bit over-the-top at times. Once a year, usually in February, I'll go back and re-read this thousand page behemoth of a novel to remind myself that sometimes, shit happens and you have to keep your shit together to fight it.