It's been a while imaginatorium

    I shall admit it's been quite a while since the last bout of imaginatorium. With an onslaught of busyness, my time for reading and posting seemed to slip away. But the month of July has allowed for a renewed fervor for books. But while I was missing from posting and from my normal amount of novel consumption, I did happen to read a few noteworthy works.
     Although I attempted to read some of the books that had been on the New York Times Bestseller's List within the last year or so, I only ended up reading two of them. One was excellent and I very much so recommend it. The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern was one of the most tantalizing books I've read in a while. There was just magic and mystery that surrounded the book. It was wonderfully creative and her characters were fabulous. The story follows two dueling magicians who do not know that they are in a duel with one another. Their competition takes place in and around a Night Circus, a circus, that as the name suggests, only opens at night and sweeps into the town without much warning. Brilliantly written, the imagery of the night circus itself is just magical. It definitely became one of my favorite books and I can't wait to read it again.
    I also read the Curious Case of the Dog in Nighttime by Mark Haddon. It follows an autistic boy who comes across his neighbor's dead dog and decides he is going to discover who killed the dog. Because he's autistic and doesn't know how to tell lies everything is written very factually from his point of view. At first, the book was quite interesting in the style of writing and how true to form the character was written. However, about half way through, I just kind of felt like I was done reading it. It got to a point where the pedanticness of the novel got a bit tedious. But I appreciated the book all the same.
    Within the time of not much reading, I did read a few inspirational books which were excellent and challenging. The first was The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson, Crazy Love by Francis Chan and The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. It was nice to take a break from straight fiction and read more autobiographical and academic works. All three, I definitely recommend as well.

    As the month of July has already allowed for more of a break and for the opportunity to dive into some books, I promise the posts will become more regular. The theme of this month is books set either during war or at least in foreign countries who have in recent years been war torn.

The Night Circus- Erin Morgenstern
The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime- Mark Haddon
The Circle Maker- Mark Batterson
Crazy Love- Francis Chan
The Insanity of God- Nik Ripken