Category: Its Monday What ARe You Reading

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:

 

Beth at Free Spirit Books!!!!

 

This week was a pretty busy one and I did not get a whole lot of reading done.  After back to back retreats (through Wednesday afternoon, I picked up my College Son Justin in Mankato on Friday morning to bring him back home for the weekend.  He had broken his right foot and it unable to drive for 6 weeks.  As long as I was hanging out alone all weekend I though he could join me…. we have watched many many episodes of LOST. 😛

Then I was going to take Justin home this afternoon and we got hit with a major snow storm – about 7 inches fell here in Brainerd Minnesota over about 4 hours time and we were in, and still are a Severe Storm Warning.  So instead, we stayed here and I am taking him back to Mankato in the morning, about a 3+ hour drive….

Here is what I did review this past week:

The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Peaches For Father Francis by Joanne Harris

Eat and Run by Scott Jurek

Giveaway:  SHRED Revolutionary Diet by Ian K Smith MD

 

I did get a few things done. 😀  This week and weekend I should have a little time to read, Book Club is on Tuesday.  Here is what I hope to fit in this week, which will mainly be audio as I have a few books I hope to finish:

A riveting historical narrative of the shocking events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the follow-up to mega-bestselling author Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln.

More than a million readers have thrilled to Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln, the page-turning work of nonfiction about the shocking assassination that changed the course of American history. Now the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor; recounts in gripping detail the brutal murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy–and how a sequence of gunshots on a Dallas afternoon not only killed a beloved president but also sent the nation into the cataclysmic division of the Vietnam War and its culture-changing aftermath.

In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it’s there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey’s strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women’s shared past – and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.

In the 1980s, Elton John saw friend after friend, loved one after loved one, perish needlessly from AIDS. In the midst of the plague, he befriended Ryan White, a young Indiana boy ostracized by his town and his school because of the HIV infection he had contracted from a blood transfusion. Ryan’s inspiring life and devastating death led Elton to two realizations: His own life was a mess. And he had to do something to help stop the AIDS crisis.

Since then, Elton has dedicated himself to overcoming the plague and the stigma of AIDS. He has done this through the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised and donated $275 million to date to fighting the disease worldwide.

Love Is the Cure is Elton’s personal account of his life during the AIDS epidemic, including stories of his close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. With powerful conviction and emotional force, Elton conveys the personal toll AIDS has taken on his life – and his infinite determination to stop its spread.

As preparations for her daughter Joy’s bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie’s world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception — the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Cannie’s husband surprises her by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider their history, their future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Thats whats on the agenda….. audio audio!  How about you?  What does this second week of February bring your way in books?   Please add your link to where it says “click here” below.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:Kacy from Meandering

Kacy from Meandering Home!!!!

 

Well I did not mean to be MIA this weekend.  I was at a Board Member/ Leadership Retreat for Camp Benedict and I was half way there on Friday when I realized that my laptop was still at home.  So, you didn’t hear from me this weekend.  And then I got home and was exhausted.  We stayed up until 2:00 am on Friday and I was up after 1:00 am on Saturday, enjoying the company of some awesome people.

 

Before I left, here is what I did accomplish book wise this week:

 

The Chocolate War – book VS. Movie

 

Audio Books – Abridged and Unabridged, whats the difference?

 

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard (the true story of the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard)

 

January Recap, with link up for those of you participating in the WHERE Are You Reading challenge

 

Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah

 

Kick Off to the 12K Challenge!

 

 

I have a couple more reviews to write yet and I hardly read at all this weekend.

 

For this week I will be reading:

August 18-20, 1955: Three terrifying days and nights still remembered with awe in the Delaware River valley. Record-breaking rainfall from hurricanes Connie and Diane abruptly ended a withering drought, but the relief was short-lived. It was soon overshadowed by terror and destruction that tore away bridges and ripped houses from their foundations.

From the river’s headwaters in the Catskills and through the Poconos, excessive runoff surged down steep slopes and through valleys on both sides of the river. Tributaries swelled unbelievably, some rising thirty feet in fifteen minutes. Eventually, they all poured into the Delaware, transforming the usually placid waters into a raging, uncontrollable beast.

Mountain resorts were inundated, leaving cars upended in swimming pools. Entire summer camps were washed away. More than 400 children were evacuated by helicopter from island camps in a tense, unprecedented operation.

In the end, nearly a hundred people were dead and hundreds more homeless. Dozens were missing, some ripped–still sleeping–from their beds in the middle of the night. Victims’’ bodies were still being recovered thirty years later — some were never found.

Devastation on the Delaware follows the true stories of survivors and eyewitnesses to bring these events to chilling life. More than 100 historical photos and a dozen maps illustrate this narrative nonfiction account of a tragic event that changed life in the Delaware Valley forever.

This is our book club read for February.

 

 

 

McNees lightly imagines the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women has enjoyed generations-long success. The story begins with a 20-year-old Louisa unhappily moving with her family from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where her Transcendentalist philosopher father pursues a life sans material pleasure. Louisa, meanwhile, plans on saving enough money to return to Boston and pursue a career as a writer. Then she meets the handsome and charming Joseph Singer, who stirs up strong emotions in Louisa. Not wanting to admit that she is attracted to him, Louisa responds to Joseph with defensiveness and anger until, of course, she can no longer deny her feelings and becomes torn between her desires and her dreams.

I have been wanting to read this one for awhile!

MacKayla “Mac” Lane is a small-town southern girl living a life of suntans and shopping. All that changes when her sister dies in Ireland and a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone raises disturbing questions about the nature of her sister’s death. Mac follows the lead to Dublin and the strange life her sister led, on to the darkly dangerous book-dealer Jericho Barrons, and a burgeoning war with deadly Fae that humankind doesn’t even realize has begun. Time-travel-romance maven Moning reshapes her Celtic lore for a radically different and engaging new dark fantasy series. Mac’s first-person narrative is more than point of view; it’s a true recounting of how a sheltered young girl grows to accept the role fate has dealt her.

Picked this one up from audible.com.

Few pastors or Christian writers have dared to approach the subject of how proper eating and an active lifestyle can affect how we serve God. Author Gary Thomas does just that. And he reaches all the way back to the apostle Paul, who wrote that we need to prime our bodies to become, ‘an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.’ To illustrate the body/soul correlation, Thomas presents engaging and diverse stories that include a young mom who got fit through volleyball and reaped spiritual rewards in her marriage, a 300-pound pastor who realized his obesity was eroding his ministry impact, and a woman who gained the spiritual strength to survive a contentious divorce by training for a marathon. In every instance, Thomas makes a direct connection between the physical challenge and its spiritual consequence. This book is a must read for anyone seeking new and compelling motivation for strengthening their bodies and fortifying their souls.

We are reading this one as a staff for my work. 

I leave tomorrow morning for a staff retreat yes that is two retreats in a row.  I will be back home on Wednesday early afternoon but I do plan this time to remember my laptop 😀

What are you reading this week?  Please add your link to where it says “click here” below.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

 

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:

Holly Mueller!!!!

I had an AMAZING blog week!  I am pretty sure I posted every day and almost had a review every day as well, thanks to the cabin weekend that left me with five books read but not reviewed.  It feel so good to be back on track and enjoying blogging and reviewing again.  I even got out his week and visited quite a few blogs too.  I love that.

 

Here is what I posted this week:

 

The Murder Of The Century by Paul Collins

 

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans (Lenore’s (from Presenting Lenore) apocalyptic novel ROCKS! 

 

The Midwife’s Tale by Sam Thomas (wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!)

 

Born This Way by Paul Vitaglanio (creator of the Born This Way blog/website)

 

Will To Murder by Gail Feichtinger (The true crime stories behind the Glensheen Mansion murders)

 

Ashes by Ilsa Bick (great dystopian YA… or is it called Apocalyptic now?)

 

The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker (looking for a great audio and/or a great read – here you go!)

 

 

I was right!  Look at that!!!  What a great week!  Seriously I feel like a rock star and I am not tapped out yet, I have another book and an audio almost ready for review!

 

 

So what is new for this week?

On the day her daughter leaves for college, Anne Colwater’s husband of twenty years announces he wants a divorce. Her roles of wife and mother suddenly gone, Annie retreats to her childhood home of Mystic, Washington, to heal. There she finds her old friend Nick, suddenly widowed and unable to cope with his emotionally scarred young daughter, Izzie. Annie agrees to look after Izzie, and soon finds herself caring for both father and daughter with a joy and passion she never expected – and she finds her love returned with a fervor she had never even hoped for. But love is never simple, and it is not until Annie learns a hard lesson from her own grown daughter that she finds the strength to claim the happiness she has earned.

I started this one yesterday and so far…. hmmmm…

In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.

For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.

On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim, I simply survived an intolerable situation. A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it.

On a recent trip to Wal-Mart I found this true story written by Jaycee Dugard regarding her 18 year abduction.  I have started it and WOW, it is painfully real and intense.

 

 

 

 

In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.

The events leading up to the most notorious crime of the twentieth century are almost as shocking as the assassination itself. Killing Kennedy chronicles both the heroism and deceit of Camelot, bringing history to life in ways that will profoundly move the reader. This may well be the most talked about book of the year.

My kitchen audio should be complete in the next couple days and this one is next up.

 

 

 

 

 In her forties – a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role – Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world.  In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas.  Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.

   Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.

   The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen.  They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down.  Through it all runs the story of Aikman’s own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again.  In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.

I was excited to see this was a true story!  I love women friendships and I am excited to read about this group who supported one another.

 

 

 

I am really excited about my reading and listening this week.  How about you?  What great things have you read or listened to this week?  Whats up for this upcoming week?  Share your It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading by linking below where it says click here. 

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

 

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:

Laurel Rain Snow!!!!

 

Oh my gosh… first of all I had no intention of going “dark” over the weekend.  I was at the cabin which has no internet but I drove to the cafe in town about 10 miles away so I could write a Saturday post, put up some pics and write a review.  Well, my battery is very bad on this laptop and only goes for about an hour without being plugged in (super annoying… really).  So….. I almost finish the first post when it runs out and shuts off.  So…. I was not about to go back to the cabin, charge up and drive in again so I call it a fail for the weekend – but what a treat for this week because….

I read 5 books this weekend!!!  Yes 5!!!!  WOW that feels good…. and some good ones too so watch for come pretty exciting reviews coming up this week!  Gushers…. really… and thinkers too. 🙂 

So before ,y weekend away my week was going pretty awesome too… here is what I did get posted:

Between The lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer (SOOOOOO good!)

 

Mad River by John Sanford (my first Sanford…and in audio!)

 

GONE by Randy Wayne White (audio review)

 

I finally finally finally posted my super fun fitness challenge for 2013.  Oh yes readers…. we can be super cool readers… and be fit!  It;s true! 😀  Please check it out 😀

 

 

It feels soooo good to be reading again!  From this weekend you can also add Level 2, The Midwife’s Tale, Born This Way, Will To Murder and Where God Finds You.  All to be reviewed soon.

As for whats next…. well….

 

It could happen tomorrow . . .
 
An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.
Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.

For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

EEP right?  I started this one this morning and it is so far…. delicious!

 

 

 

 

Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohaus—the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night—and one of the food world’s brightest and most controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own.  

Eddie grew up in theme-park America, on a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac in suburban Orlando, raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) hustlers and hysterics from Taiwan. While his father improbably launched a series of successful seafood and steak restaurants, Eddie burned his way through American culture, defying every “model minority” stereotype along the way. He obsessed over football, fought the all-American boys who called him a chink, partied like a gremlin, sold drugs with his crew, and idolized Tupac. His anchor through it all was food—from making Southern ribs with the Haitian cooks in his dad’s restaurant to preparing traditional meals in his mother’s kitchen to haunting the midnight markets of Taipei when he was shipped off to the homeland. After misadventures as an unlikely lawyer, street fashion renegade, and stand-up comic, Eddie finally threw everything he loved—past and present, family and food—into his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the shards of global culture he’d melded into his own identity.

When I read Anthony Bodain’s book I loved it… I just love food memoirs… so here I go again… 🙂

 

 

 

 

The compelling tale of a girl who must save a group of bonobos–and herself–from a violent coup.

The Congo is a dangerous place, even for people who are trying to do good.

When one girl has to follow her mother to her sanctuary for bonobos, she’s not thrilled to be there. It’s her mother’s passion, and she’d rather have nothing to do with it. But when revolution breaks out and their sanctuary is attacked, she must rescue the bonobos and hide in the jungle. Together, they will fight to keep safe, to eat, and to survive.

I hear Eliot read a part of his book in New York this past June and I was sold.  I knew then I had to read this book.

 

 

That’s my week!  I am wondering what you are reading these days 🙂  Please add your link below where it says click here so myself and others can some and see what you are reading.  I am curious if you too are getting in good reading this time of year or if this is a slower time for you to read.  😀  You never know where that next great read may come from….

 

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

 

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:

 

Angie S!!!!

 

It was a fairly decent week, I feel like I am Stella… and I am starting to get my grove back.  😛  What does that mean?  It means, I am enjoying books again!  Not that I didn’t enjoy books, but that I didn’t have time to enjoy books if that makes sense.  I am coming off a HUGE busy season and books while logged to read… were not. 

Finally… I am reading again.  SO what happened here this past week:

 

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (I felt it was a must read in my lifetime… see if I was right.  😀 )

 

In The Belly Of Jonah by Sandra Brannon (Our book club read and oooohhhh so much fun – check out what the author sent us for our review!)

 

 

Gods In Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson.   *Audio book lovers, do not pass on this one!!!!*

 

 

Not too bad this week.  I actually had some book time and with Monday and Tuesday off this week (YAY!!!) that should continue.  Here is what is on tap:

 

What happens when happily ever after…isn’t?

     Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.

     And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.

     Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

 

 

 

 

On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.
 
The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives
headlong into the era’s most baffling murder mystery. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Reenactments of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio–a hard-luck cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor–all raced to solve the crime.
 
What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim whom the police couldn’t identify with certainty, and who the defense claimed wasn’t even dead. The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale–a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.

I have no idea how this got on my IPOD.  Do I download it?  I can’t recall but I am listening to it…

 

 

 

In the isolated Cape Cod village of Prospect, the Gilly sisters are as different as can be. Jo, a fierce and quiet loner, is devoted to the mysteries of her family’s salt farm, while Claire is popular, pretty, and yearns to flee the salt at any cost. But the Gilly land hides a dark legacy that proves impossible to escape. Although the community half-suspects the Gilly sisters might be witches, it doesn’t stop Whit Turner, the town’s wealthiest bachelor, from forcing his way into their lives. It’s Jo who first steals Whit’s heart, but it is Claire–heartbroken over her high school sweetheart–who marries him.

Years later, estranged from her family, Claire finds herself thrust back onto the farm with the last person she would have chosen: her husband’s pregnant mistress. Suddenly, alliances change, old loves return, and new battle lines are drawn. What the Gilly sisters learn about each other, the land around them, and the power of the salt, will not only change each of their lives forever, it will also alter Gilly history for good.

OOH,  doesn’t this sound good?

So that’s my reading plan and I am THRILLED about it.  I also want to see what you are reading this week!  Please add your What Are You Reading link below where it says click here and then others can come and see what you are reading as well.  You never know where that next great read may come from….

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

 

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Ok…. a few housekeeping things.  First, I was missing last Sunday and that was just crazy…. I forgot to write the post.  😯  Yes my first week of January was incredibly busy and I have been so tired… an I just forgot.  Three years of doing this meme (this is actually the 170th time I have done this meme), and never once forgot, not even while I was in Honduras.  I still can’t believe I forgot.  😛

Secondly, for those of you who have won the giveaway on this meme recently you have probably noticed I am extremely slow at getting the books to you.  Life again…. so going into this new year I want to tweak how I do this giveaway – I am no longer going to do the books giveaway as it is just too much work to keep up on and not fair to you to have to wait on me.  Instead, each week will be a chance to win a $5 gift card to Amazon that I will email to you. 

Same opportunities apply as last time – comment on 10 or more of the links below and let me know in the comments to be entered into the drawing.  Occasionally I may offer a book I have read as well.

 

I haven’t posted much this past week… errr… two weeks, but this is what has happened here:

 

The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans

Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara

Forgotten by Catherine McKenzie

 

Sadly, this is the first year since I can remember that I did not have a first book of the year show up on January 1st.  In fact, I have not read a page in the last week.  I hope to correct that in the next two days as I have them off. 😀

Ok.. so here is what I am reading (starting to read) and listening to on audio:

 

All her life, Sara Gallagher has wondered about her birth parents. As an adopted child with two sisters who were born naturally to her parents, Sara did not have an ideal home life. The question of why she was given up for adoption has always haunted her. Finally, she is ready to take steps and to find closure. 

But some questions are better left unanswered.

After months of research, Sara locates her birth mother—only to be met with horror and rejection. Then she discovers the devastating truth: Her mother was the only victim ever to escape a killer who has been hunting women every summer for decades. But Sara soon realizes the only thing worse than finding out about her father is him finding out about her.

What if murder is in your blood?

This may very well be the first book of the year.  Apparently… my year starts on January 7th. 😀 

 

 

 

 

For 10 years Arlene has kept her promises, and God has kept His end of the bargain. Until now. When an old schoolmate from Possett turns up at Arlene’s door in Chicago asking questions about Jim Beverly, former quarterback and god of Possett High, Arlene’s break with her former hometown is forced to an end. At the same time, Burr, her long-time boyfriend, has raised an ultimatum: introduce him to her family or consider him gone. Arlene loves him dearly but knows her lily white (not to mention deeply racist)Southern Baptist family will not understand her relationship with an African American boyfriend. Reluctantly, Arlene bows to the pressure, and she and Burr embark on the long-avoided road trip back home. As Arlene digs through guilt and deception, her patched-together alibi begins to unravel, and she discovers how far she will go for love and a chance at redemption.

I started this one yesterday and I am enjoying it.

 

 

Both of these authors I read for the first time in 2012 and enjoyed their books.

Now… what are you reading this beginning of the new year?  Please add your What Are You Reading link below where it says click here and then others can come and see what you are reading as well.  You never know where that next great read may come from….

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

 

Last weeks winner: Martha E

Congratulations!  Please choose a book or bookish item from the Reading Cafe!

Happy Christmas everyone!  In light of the holidays upon us I am going to keep this short and sweet.  Here is what was posted this past week:

Ravens Heart by Jesse Blackadder  (Oh historical fiction – how I have missed you!)

 

14 By Peter Clines (a little our on my genre but I liked it!)

 

 

I have reviews to write yet but have spent most of my free time this week shopping and prepping for Christmas.  With College Son coming home tomorrow and being here for the week I am not committing to any massive reading, just finishing up what I have going and of course planning my first read of the year which is always a big deal to me. 

Speaking of the first of the year, there is still time to get in on the super fun Where Are You Reading Challenge. 🙂

SO please add your link to your Where Are You Reading below and I will try to pop in and say hi and see what you are reading. 

And to all of you who celebrate Christmas – Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas to you and yours!  😀

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

 

Last weeks winner: Shannon from I Run, Teach, Read!

Congratulations!  Please choose a book or bookish item from the Reading Cafe!

 

I had a great week and a busy weekend!  Here is what I posted this past week:

ZIP.

Yup.  I don’t know what happened – the week ran away with my laptop time.  😯  I got in a couple morning chats but that was it. 

I thought I would have time, apparently I didn’t.  To show you that I have been doing something with my time, this is what I was doing this weekend:

That’s me this past Saturday, working on my gun safety training class and permit.  It was exhilarating, fun, scary, and I passed. 😀

The two above pictures are my project today – I am making coasters for my book club.  We have our Christmas Party on Tuesday and I am looking forward to hanging out with some of my favorite people. 😀

As far as what I am reading this week, I have to finish the book club book, The Christmas List.  Then I am starting:

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.

I am really looking forward to this book!

 

 

 

A dominant force in the sport of ultrarunning, Scott Jurek is a seven-time winner of the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run and a two-time winner of the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley. Eat & Run offers an inspirational account of Jurek’s life as a runner and vegan. Regaling listeners with jaw-dropping tales of endurance, Jurek also delivers sound science and practical advice – as well as his favorite plant-based recipes.

I am enjoying this one.  I love books on fitness, endurance and making it happen. 

With a meeting tomorrow, Book Club on Tuesday, Student helping on Wednesday a meeting at my house on Thursday – I think this is all I am putting on my to read.

What are you reading this week?  Please add your link below to where it says click here.  I am excited to see what you are reading… holiday books, award winners, cozies…. whats on your “to read” this week.  😛

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

 

Last weeks winner: West Virginia Red Reads!

Congratulations!  Please choose a book or bookish item from the Reading Cafe!

I just came back home this afternoon from a WONDERFUL weekend at the cabin.  My friend Laura and I went and crafted the weekend away.  I made a new project that I LOVED (more on that later).  We watched movies, crafted and are delicious food…. it was a lot of fun.

This past week here is what went on here at Book Journey:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (I highly recommend this book/audio!)

The Quilter’s Homecoming by Jennifer Chiaverini (what an interesting book!)

 

2013 WHERE Are You Reading Challenge is posted!  😀  Sign up and join in

the fun!

 

 

This week while I am finishing up One Second After on audio, and The Forgotten Road in book format, I will be also working on:

 

Once Grace and Sam have found each other, they know they must fight to stay together. For Sam, this means a reckoning with his werewolf past. For Grace, it means facing a future that is less and less certain.

the loss.
Into their world comes a new wolf named Cole, whose past is full of hurt and danger. He is wrestling with his own demons, embracing the life of a wolf while denying the ties of a human.

the linger.
For Grace, Sam, and Cole, life is a constant struggle between two forces–wolf and human–with love baring its two sides as well. It is harrowing and euphoric, freeing and entrapping, enticing and alarming. As their world falls apart, love is what lingers. But will it be enough?

Yes – I read this one a couple years ago – but I just found it on audio for a very good price so here we go again 😀  And its set in Minnesota which I need on my map 😀

 

 

On the day her daughter leaves for college, Anne Colwater’s husband of twenty years announces he wants a divorce. Her roles of wife and mother suddenly gone, Annie retreats to her childhood home of Mystic, Washington, to heal. There she finds her old friend Nick, suddenly widowed and unable to cope with his emotionally scarred young daughter, Izzie. Annie agrees to look after Izzie, and soon finds herself caring for both father and daughter with a joy and passion she never expected – and she finds her love returned with a fervor she had never even hoped for. But love is never simple, and it is not until Annie learns a hard lesson from her own grown daughter that she finds the strength to claim the happiness she has earned.

Another sale audio… a short one, a little over two hours.

Bonnie and Clyde, they thought. And what’s-his-name, the sidekick. Three teenagers with dead-end lives, and chips on their shoulders, and guns.

The first person they killed was a highway patrolman. The second was a woman during a robbery. Then, hell, why not keep on going? As their crime spree cuts a swath through rural Minnesota, some of it captured on the killers’ cell phones and sent to a local television station, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers joins the growing army of cops trying to run them down. But even he doesn’t realize what’s about to happen next.

 

Would you believe I have never read John Sanford?  It’s true!

So that is what I will be working on this week between life and work.  I am excited to see what you will be reading!  😀  Please add your what are you reading link below where it says click here:

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

 

and those of you who read mainly children’s through YA reads – please also link your post here: