Kristy R. Langstraat-Bolte

So how we got this next book is very interesting! The first week in October, my dad, Kathryn and I went to Wisconsin Dells. We stayed at a hotel we’ve never stayed at before, it was in downtown Dells and called Blackhawk. Of course one night while swimming Kathryn made friends with 2 kids. The played for hours but I had gone back to the room to do some stuff. When tons of time had passed and my dad and Kathryn hadn’t come back I went back to the pool to check on them! My dad was talking to the mom of the 2 kids. The kids and Kathryn liked each other so much the mom had written all her info down so that Kathryn and them could connect on kids messenger! So sometime after we got back I contacted the mom and we got our kids connected. Then one day on her facebook page I see that she has written a book! So my dad and I get the book and read it! My dad read it first, and he loved it, so then I read it, and I also loved it! Seriously, this was a first time published author, and this book is so good, such a fast read, and it’s a really unique story you don’t hear about all the time! So I highly recommend this book! It is called Chateau Merlot and her name is Kari Pohar. Give it a read!!!

This book was called Elvis In Vegas: How The King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show by Richard Zoglin. It was definitely an interesting book and I enjoyed it very much, but not because it was an Elvis book, surprisingly enough it wasn’t even about Elvis all that much! It was more about the full history of how Las Vegas became Las Vegas, and how and when the hotels were built and about the other entertainers like the Rat Pack! Like I said, super interesting, just not what I was expecting, but I still really enjoyed it!!

So we actually read this book when Kathryn was at Haskin for the One School One Book program, but she had checked it out from her library, so we read it again! It was called The Adventures of a South Pole Pig by Chris Kurtz. I decided that since I am reading her chapter books at night before bed, that I need to count it as my books of 500 before 50 so here we go! It was a good book, a little sad here and there, but pretty interesting!

This was another Elvis book called Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him by Alanna Nash. I really enjoyed this one because it’s his same story only this time and talked about every single woman he ever dated, hooked up with or was a girlfriend of his, and it talked about it from their perspective! It was really interesting. I don’t think I will ever tire reading about Elvis, so it’s fun that every book I’ve read has been from a different point of view, but in the end they are really all the same!

Even though this is technically a small kids book, A Little Golden Book to be exact. It was a book that I purchased for myself, even though I did read it to Kathryn! It’s because it’s called Disney Figment! Figment is my all time favorite Disney character (after Dumbo as a child) so when I saw this book I had to have it! Again, I may have liked it more than Kathryn, LOL…..

So this book was a chapter book that I read to Kathryn many nights before her bedtime. A chapter a night, so figured I should include it, seeing as I am the one who read it! It’s called The Wish List: The Worst Fairy Godmother Ever! I think sometimes Kathryn may have gotten bored, but I really enjoyed it and couldn’t wait to see what would happen! A fun, cute little story for sure!

This book was called The War Orphan by Anna Stuart! It was another Holocaust book but it was a little bit different. Yes the characters were in Auschwitz, but it was more about what happened after they were liberated when a mother and daughter were separated, and the daughter had to try to move on, while the mother was doing everything in her power to find and be reunited with her daughter. I don’t want to say what happened, but it was a very moving book, and an amazing look at what Jews went through even after the war was over. In a way for them it wasn’t over, even though all other people got to just go back to their lives, almost like nothing had even been happening!

It took me quite a while to read this next book, but because it wasn’t good but because it was super long and also I just haven’t had the time to read like I sometimes do! But I loved this book because it was another Elvis book! It’s called Elvis and the Memphis Mafia by Alanna Nash! These were the guys who were closest to Elvis and therefore knew so much about him!!! It was so interesting, and I just love learning new things about Elvis that I didn’t know. I think I know everything and then I find there are still so many things to learn!

Kathryn is reading this book in her 3rd grade class, so I decided to get a copy and also read it! Obviously, it was a super fast read for me, but it was still good! It’s called The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill. It’s about a 1 room schoolhouse in Alaska and they get teachers from the states but because the environment is so hard, teachers don’t last more than 1 year if that much, until Miss Agnes! They are reading this book because we just went and saw a 1 room schoolhouse during their field trip to Naper Settlement!

My dad read this book and told me that I should read it also. It was called The Spare by Prince Harry! I know my mom would have loved this book as she loved Princess Diana and everything to do with the Royal Family. I was a little surprise my dad was interested in it. But this book was AMAZING!!! It was so interesting and exciting to get to read all the littler tidbits and secrets of the Royal Family! It was also pretty sad how things are, and definitely makes me glad I never actually married Prince William, even though that was definitely a dream of mine as a little girl! I definitely recommend this book!

This book was called Elvis: The Biography by Jerry Hopkins and it was a real book and it had 412 pages! I did not think I would be able to read this whole book, but I did! I love Elvis so much that it was no problem reading this! This book was literally his whole entire life! I definitely learned some new things I didn’t know! This just helped fuel my obsession for Elvis even more!!!

I found this book in my bedroom at Bensenville. I’m sure I read it years ago when I was younger, but decided to read it again! It’s called Sabrina, The Teenage Witch: Good Switch, Bad Switch by David Cody Weiss and Bobbi JG Weiss. This was one of my all time favorite TV shows back in the day!!!! I love Salem, the black cat!

This book was called Destined to Die Young by Sally A. Hoedel, it was of course, another book on Elvis Presley! It discussed in detail his health history and his families health history, to show that even without his drug addiction, he would still have died young, just as many of his family members, including his mom, did. Although he may have been here longer without the drugs and his rigorous performance schedule, but we can thank the fake Colonel Parker for taking away Elvis way too early, in my opinion!

This book was called The Midwife of Auschwitz by Anna Stuart. This was so good as I know a LOT about Auschwitz but I did not know that thousands of babies were actually born in Birkenau! Unfortunately made were killed or didn’t make it, but some did! Very good book!