Donated by Books 4 Life Utrecht.

Books 4 Life: A secondhand bookshop for charity

Books 4 Life is a bookshop which raises money by selling second hand books. The Books 4 Life shop Utrecht is located in the centre of Utrecht: near the Jacobi church, at St. Jacobsstraat 275. This street begins at the crossroad between the Bijenkorf and C&A, close to the central station.

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Waterwoman is the story of two sisters, growing up on an island off the coast of Virginia. Annie Revels, a tall, insecure woman and her sister, Rebecca, who is beautiful and desired. Initially these women live in a simple country style house and carry out their duties at home such as collecting vegetables for dinner and washing clothes, but terrible mistakes lead to jealousy and antagonism, which tears the girls' friendship and almost strips them of all that they have together.

This story is about change and he sacrifices made for family. Despite her wishes, Annie, takes over the challenge of household chores when her grandmother passes away due to a chain of severe heart attacks. Annie has always dreamed of being a waterwoman and working on the sea. As her father is a waterman, she is privileged on occasions to accompany her father at sea and learn the basics of the profession. Annie then thinks when her father dies as a result of an unfortunate fishing tragedy, that she must provide the money for the family. While her sister remains at home caring for their mother and doing the household chores, Annie, takes over her father's profession and becomes a waterwoman.

Picked this up at today's meetup in Utrecht. It was so great to meet you! I'll be taking this back to the USA with me to read. Thanks for a great time! :D

I had plenty of time to read on the airplanes home from Amsterdam and the 2010 BookCrossing Convention. Melydia kept handing me books because I was exhausting my supply of things to read.

This is one of the books that I read. I found it to be a sad book and I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed in the way that it ended. The sibling rivalry was a painful topic and I am glad that I have never had to go through that (my brother and sister are much older than I am).

I don't know that this would be a book that I would recommend but I certainly wouldn't tell anyone that thought it looked interesting not to read it. It is a decent book with a good story line and I am glad I had the opportunity to read it and that I will get to track its journey as it moves onward.



This book was read for the 2010 Pages Read Challenge from the release challenge forum.

My goal is 40,000 pages and this book has a total of 256 pages that I am counting for this challenge. I have a total of 37 books read this year with 8553 pages read for the year and that is 21.383% of my 2010 goal.



This book was released for the 2010 Keep Them Moving Challenge from the release challenge forum.

This is release #13 for this challenge.

This took me an incredibly long time to read - not because it was hard to get into, but because it lived in my gym bag for reading on the stationary bike. Then I stopped going to the gym because I was too busy with the 2011 BookCrossing Convention, then a week later I tore up the ligaments and tendons in my ankle, thus ending my biking days for a long time. So the other day I decided to pull the poor thing out of my disused gym bag and actually finish it.

This is pretty much an atmospheric book, one you read for the setting more than the plot. It’s 1920 and Annie Revels’s father has just died, leaving her alone with her beautiful younger sister and ailing mother. They live on a small island off the shore of Virginia where their father made their living as a waterman: harvesting and selling oysters and crabs. It’s a hard life, but one Annie takes to fairly quickly, donning her father’s old clothes and doing everything herself. When she meets a man who sees her as an attractive woman for the first time in her life, everything changes. Not a whole lot happens, really. It’s kind of a sad tale, but not really because I never formed any real attachment to the characters. My personal fascination with the first two decades of the 20th century was mostly what kept me interested, as the descriptions of that kind of life at the time were quite detailed. In the end, I’d count this book as one that passed the time, but not one I’ll remember in a year.

Brought to the BCinDC meetup. It did not come home with me, but I don't know if someone picked it up or if it was left on the bookshelves at Potbelly or at the Crystal City Sheraton OBCZ across the street.

I picked this one up at the BCinDC meetup in Arlington and finished reading it last night. It's interesting especially for the setting - a small (fictional) island off the Eastern Shore of Virginia during the first two decades of the 20th century - and for the family dynamics. But while I could sympathize with the main character, I never felt as close to her as I wanted to. Still, there is a lot about this book that is appealing. I did enjoy reading it.

Unfortunately, the ending was puzzling, and not very satisfying. The love triangle between the two sisters and the man they both sleep with is never really resolved in a way that forces the characters to admit to what they've done and work out a solution or at least come to some kind of closure. It seemed that the author couldn't decide how her characters would do that, so she avoided the problem by killing off some characters instead.

On a table in the hotel lobby.