Miss Lowe's Book Nook

Finals week is fast approaching! So what have I been doing? Reading a book that has absolutely nothing to do with any of my classes! Today I finished Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman. It was, shall we say, enlightening. I've always been fascinated by the brain. It's three pounds of mushy pinkness floating around in a bone bowl, but it somehow controls our bodies, understands science, creates worlds out of ink and paint, and stores obscene amounts of information. I always end up in awe of God's handiwork when I learn more about the complexities of our squishy control centers! Eagleman is certainly very knowledgeable. He focuses on the brain as the center for thinking rather than giving us a tour of the specific parts and their functions. His case is this: our consciousness is actually only a tiny, miniscule part of our brains, and the rest is out of our control. Most of what we think we think, is actually thought and processed in deeper parts of ...

Hello all! Hope your days are lovely. This isn't really going to be like my normal blog posts. It's more my thoughts concerning one particular character- Hermione Granger. If you don't know who that is, I have two questions for you. 1. Have you been living under a rock for roughly 15 years? 2. Seriously how do you not know the brightest witch of our age? Well, on with it! I first started reading J. K. Rowling's epic saga in third grade. I was already a fairly advanced reader and devoured books like mad, but those books I read so voraciously that I had books 1-6 read in less than 4 months. (Book 7 didn't come out until after 4th grade.) Not bad for a 9-year-old. These books were like drugs to my young mind. I had never read anything like them before. Somehow, an entire world fit inside the pages and then leapt into my head. And there was one character that has always stuck with me, through half a dozen more readings of the series. Hermione Granger. To underst...

Sometimes you pick up a book and it just seems to fit perfectly in your hand and you open up to that first page and the words form pictures in your head from the first sentence. That's how you know you've found an excellent book, and I found one this weekend. I had heard loads of buzz about A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, so when I spotted it in Barnes & Noble, I had to take a peek. It hooked me so much that I actually stood there in the bookstore reading the first twelve pages. I bought it, and read another fifty pages that night. After that, I had to physically make myself read it more slowly and still finished it yesterday. It's one of the best mysteries with the best characters that I've read in a long while. If you're familiar with the old Sherlock Holmes series at all, you'll love this quirky and exciting retelling. One of the main characters and narrator is Jamie Watson, the however-many-greats-grandson of the famous Watson. (Yes, in th...

Wowzers it's been a while! Honestly, I got addicted to crossword puzzles so I put down my books for a while. But I'm back at it! The book I just finished is of a different breed than most others that I've written about. It's nonfiction, for one, and for another, it's aimed at a more adult audience. The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner was an excellent read and it sparked a lot of introspection and deep thoughts on my end. When I found this book, I was trawling the "World & Cultures" section of the public library, in search of a book about traveling, as my wanderlust had kicked up but I was stuck here in Nebraska. The sky blue binding caught my eye at first, but the tagline was what made me pluck it from the shelf: "One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World". I was intrigued by the concept of a self-proclaimed glass-half-empty sort of guy traversing the globe in search of happiness. I consider myself a relatively sunshine...

Last week on vacation with my grandparents, I had plenty of time to read. I finished the third book in The Naturals series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. This one is titled All In and it definitely lives up to the name! We pick back up soon after the last book finished. Our protagonist, Cassie, is home for Christmas with her family when her father comes home early, bearing news- there's been a major break in her mother's case after five years of nothing. But as soon as Cassie learns this, she and the other Naturals are thrown into a new case in Las Vegas. A serial killer is on the loose, and the only links between victims are the numbers written on their wrists. In the world of casinos and poker, we learn more about Sloane's past, as well as Cassie's. Insane twists and thrilling chases are commonplace. All In is a read that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the last sentence. The twist at the end made me literally put down the book and gasp in surprise....

Winter break is such a good time to get some reading done! On a long car ride this past month, I reread one of my favorite love stories- The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. For a shorter novel (less than 300 pages) it packs a lot of punch. Our main character is Hadley, a teenage girl from the Northeast flying to London for her dad's marriage- to the woman he left her mother for. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the trip to the airport, Hadley ends up being a mere four minutes late for her flight, and misses it. They put her on the next plane, three hours later, and because of that, her whole world changes. I've been a fan of Smith for a while now. She is an excellent writer of love stories. This book is actually what introduced me to her. With its short but complex plot, it pulls you in and doesn't let go until the last page. Another thing to note is Smith's unique writing style. She writes in present tense, but in third perso...

Oh, Thanksgiving break! A great time to catch up on reading. I just breezed through Denton Little's Death Date  by Lance Rubin. It was not at all what I expected, and I was pleasantly surprised! Imagine a world in which you knew the exact day you were going to die. In Denton's world, that's exactly what it's like. When you're born, they take a bit of your hair and blood and do some scientific mumbo-jumbo and boom, they can figure out the day the Grim Reaper is going to come knocking on your door. Denton is what they an "early"- he's slated to die before he turns 21. Before he graduates high school, in fact, on the day of senior prom. He has been living his life as normally as he can, going to school and being an average joe. Two nights before his "death date", his average streak is shattered. After an alcohol-blurred night, things get weird. Strange people show up. Odd things start happening. Denton's death date is nothing like he imagi...