Top Ten Tuesday: Books I've Read So Far In 2013

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly features hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This one is going to be tough. Why? Because I've only read 24 books this year. Terrible, I know! But for like the first three months, I was in a reading funk. That means that really, I've read those 24 in the latter three months. My goal this year is 50. Anyway, I'm just going to list the absolute best books I've read so far this year. These are my top four and you should read them all!

 

What are the best books you've read so far this year? Tell me about them so I can add them to my TBR!

Monday's Book Spotlight

Last week, I read a book that has become a favorite. I mentioned on the blog last week and talked about it on Facebook and Twitter a little. This book has earned the place to be this week's spotlight. I was so happy to read a book featuring a hockey player and this doesn't disappoint in the least. Go on over to Amazon and order a copy!

A minor penalty that is not called until the offending team gains control of the puck. As long as the non-offending team maintains possession, the referee allows play to continue and signals a delayed penalty by raising his arm.

I’m Evan Mason, an NHL hockey player for the Chicago Blackhawks. I spend my nights roughing up two hundred pound defensemen and, at times, spend more time in the penalty box than I do on the ice.

That’s my job. 

One night changed everything I thought I once knew about my life on, and off, the ice.

A girl. 

A brutally beaten girl left to die in an alley.
I don’t know why or how but something made me stay that night after taking her to the hospital. I didn’t know her, nor did I have an obligation to stay but something inside of me rooted me there telling me I should stay. Saving a life is worth something. At least I thought so. And I wouldn’t have been me if I just simply left her there. 

Any man who put his heart and soul into a game of hockey couldn’t just walk away when someone needed them. She had no one else right now. The same guy who saw determination where there was desire, now saw hope where there was once despair.

I couldn’t leave. That wouldn’t be me. No, not a man that put all he had into something some called just a game. I couldn’t walk away from her holding onto life, weak and powerless to something she had no control over.

So I stayed. In a room full of family members praying for their loved ones to pull through, I prayed for a girl I didn’t know and had never met before, to have a beating heart. While others’ sorrows turned to grieving pain, I sat waiting on the words of the unknown.

No bond is stronger than the ones you’ll bleed for.

Lately

I wasn't going to have a third post this week, but then I got to thinking. Lately, I have been reading strictly ebooks. I haven't wanted to read a paperback at all. (Hopeless by Colleen Hoover is the exception and that was only after I read it in Kindle first.) Anyway, the urge to hold a book in my hands, smell that wonderful scent it has, and read a physical copy has been missing. I wondered if it would return because it has been that long since I've read that way. All I wanted to read was ebooks.

Until today.

I don't know what changed. Maybe it was the fact that I'm reading another book that I wish I was reading by paperback instead of Kindle. (I'm currently reading Delayed Penalty.) Maybe it was that I've finally grown tired of staring at a screen instead of paper. Maybe, and I'm pretty sure this is the true reason, but maybe it was because ebooks don't hold the same emotional attachment as paperbacks.