Category: Its Monday What ARe You Reading

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Joanne’s best

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Updates have been made to the Reading Cafe Grab shelves!

Here is what I was doing this past week:

“Potato Marley” (When good vegetables… go bad)

Cloaked by Alex Flinn ( a modern fairy tale…)

ROOM by Emma Donoghue – revisted by my book club The Bookies (with fun food to go with the review!)

The Island Of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon (mmm hmmmm… same author as I read last week….)

The Painted Veil – Movie VS. Book (You will never guess who wins!  :razz:)

Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky (I liked it… and I didn’t…)

How Do You Choose What To Read Next?  (The question that haunts me…..)  😛

As for this next week… I am going to take it easy as there are a few books I would love to clean up on this week before I leave on Sunday for BEA.

The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw, and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Antonina and Jan Żabiński began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen “guests” hid inside the Żabińskis’ villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants —otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes— and keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

I know…. I said I was tired of war stories… and I am… but somehow I keep finding my way back to them.  My friend Heidi recommended this one a while ago and when I recently found it at my library on audio I thought I would give it a try. 

Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn’t know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband.

A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever.

This one has been on my shelf for far too long… I have started it and it does seem to take forever to get to the heart of the story but it seems to be picking up a bit now…

A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: “Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels–bring home for Emma.” To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959’s A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history.

This is our Faith N Fiction group read and I am just getting into it… it’s different from what I would choose for myself to read but think it will make for good discussion.

Adam March is a married father and successful businessman poised to become a CEO—that is, until the day his troubled past catches up with him. Soon Adam has lost his job, his family, and his house and is living in a lonely apartment working off his community-service sentence in a local men’s shelter. Adam’s story alternates with that of Chance, a former fighting pit bull who has escaped, lived on the streets, and is now back at the animal shelter. When circumstances require Adam to adopt and care for Chance, he comes to realize the joy and comfort of animal companionship.

Ok… this is the audio that is going on after I finish Their Eyes Were Watching God which should be yet this week.  When I chose this, I wanted something lighter after I looked at what I am currently putting my brain through from the looks of the books above.  I hope and pray that this dog does not die at the end…. Hey, it was either this or Bossy Pants by Tina Fey.

That’s my week – it is mostly audio as that I can listen to while doing other things (like packing!) I hope to get around to all of you this week and see what you are reading so please be sure to link up your Monday What Are You Reading here below where it says “click here”.  And yes, there will be a post next week as well… I am not leaving for the cities until Sunday evening and will be available throughout the plane rides to catch up on what you are all reading 😀

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Jesse from Elle Lit.

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Updates have been made to the Reading Cafe Grab shelves!

I know I am coming in late on posting this Sunday night.  I have been cleaning all day which may sound weird for Mother’s Day…. but really I have been so excited to dig into some spring cleaning.  I cleaned up a spare bedroom,painted a bathroom, dusted all furniture, hung new shower curtain, two loads of laundry, cleaned kitchen, vacuumed all carpets, cleaned entryway, shampooed all carpets. 

Basically…. I smell like a combo of cleaning supplies.  I am pretty sure I am sanitized.  😛

BUT – lets talk books as that is what we are really here for right?  My week was not impressive…. I really don’t know what happened but here is my meager offerings:

The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs (a perfect Mothers Day read!)

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (wowza…. I was pretty impressed with this one!)

Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon (spooky good!)

I also finished The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg – (about time I know!!!)

And that is it!  True story…. I tanked out this week. 😀

So… here is my cautious plan for this week:

A deeply moving story by a survivor of the commercial sex industry who has devoted her career to activism and helping other young girls escape “the life”

At thirteen, Rachel Lloyd found herself caught up in a world of pain and abuse, struggling to survive as a child with no responsible adults to support her. Vulnerable yet tough, she eventually ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. It took time and incredible resilience, but with the help of a local church community, she broke free of her pimp and her past.

Three years later, Lloyd arrived in the United States to work with adult women in the sex industry and soon founded her own nonprofit—GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services—to meet the needs of other girls with her history. She also earned her GED and won full scholarships to college and a graduate program. Today Lloyd is executive director of GEMS in New York City and has turned it into one of the nation’s most groundbreaking nonprofit organizations.

I am really excited to read this one!  This book sounds like it is a great fit for me!

Recent college grad Rhonda Farr witnesses a child abduction in front of a convenience store in Pike’s Crossing, Vt. Ernestine Ernie Florucci willingly leaves her mother’s car because her six-foot-tall abductor is wearing a rabbit suit. Rhonda remembers her best friend Lizzy’s father entertaining her and Lizzy in a rabbit costume in 1993, and vanishing soon after. Three years later, Lizzy disappeared en route to high school. Guilt over her inability to stop Ernie’s abduction spurs Rhonda to join the search for the girl. She recalls the summer that Lizzy’s older brother, Peter, had them all perform Peter Pan, which was a great success, but there were dark secrets beneath the makeshift stage.

Ok… the cover did not bother me until… now.  Now its a little creepy… I think it is the frog.

I have my eye on a couple more but am going to keep it at that just to see where I land.  😀  I should be finishing up some audio this week too but I have no idea what is next…. maybe after peeking at your Monday What Are You reading posts I will know…. 😀

Please add your Monday link below to where it says click here.  I can’t wait to see what you are reading!  😀

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Puss Reboots from A Book Review A Day

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Updates have been made to the Reading Cafe Grab shelves!

What a week…. I feel 1,000 percent better with my back and back to my old ways of reading, roller blading, biking, and kick boxing (actually I go back to kick boxing tomorrow).  I did get in some good reading time – not as much as I would have liked but I have had such a nice reading run as of late that I just thirst for more booktime 😉

Here is what  last week looked like:

The Lost Girls by Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, Amanda Pressner, and Sheila DeChantal ok….. not me … but a girl can wish 😀

The Lincoln Lawyer by Matthew Connelly – yes to the book – yes to the movie 😛

Where She Went by Gayle Forman – sequel to If I Stay

Harry Potter – My History and a new movie trailer too!

Review of Cloaked by Alex Finn and a giveaway too!  (You have this week yet to sign up for the free book!)

What Good Is God by Philip Yancey (our Faith N Fiction group review – LOVE YANCEY!)

What Is With Me And All The Berg Books….  ( the answer to why so frequently I have Berg on tap :razz:)

I have a couple of audio ending here shortly and I am looking forward to pressing on from there… here is what looks like will happen this week:

Clara’s relationship with Christian is intense from the start, and like nothing she’s ever experienced before. But what starts as devotion quickly becomes obsession, and it’s almost too late before Clara realizes how far gone Christian is–and what he’s willing to do to make her stay.

Now Clara has left the city—and Christian—behind. No one back home has any idea where she is, but she still struggles to shake off her fear. She knows Christian won’t let her go that easily, and that no matter how far she runs, it may not be far enough….

Ok like…. everyone is reading this!  Seriously…a round the blogs this is popping up so I had to see what is happening here with Deb Caletti!

It’s really going to happen. They said it would, but this is quicker than anyone thought. Everyone has to die. We all know it. With only a few months of life left, sixteen-year-old Tessa knows it better than most. She’s made a list, though ten things she wants to do before she dies. Number one is sex. Starting tonight. But getting what you want isn’t easy. And getting what you want doesn’t always give you what you need. And sometimes the most unexpected things become important.

I found this on my weekend adventures to the library.  I know nothing about this author or the book other than the synopsis.  Sounds like a perfect way to get into a read.

In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way–he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary.

I read and reviewed ROOM last year.  It is on my list for this week because my book club will be reading it for our May 10 meeting and I need a little refresher course.  If you have not experienced ROOM…. you need to and hopefully my book club review will light a fire to make that happen….  paperback edition comes out on May 18.

It took only one look for Genna Hastings to make up her mind about her new next-door neighbor, J. J. Hennessy. She knew his type all too well: Jared Jay Hennessy was tall and handsome, a man who thought he was God’s gift to women. From the pink flamingos dotting his front yard to the all-night boozy barbecues, he threatened to disrupt Genna’s peaceful summer off from teaching. But beneath his carefree smile and teasing nature, J.J. was a man as serious about the future as he was about Genna. He’d come to this quiet Connecticut town to change his life, and he challenged Genna to help him become Mr. Right. It was a challenge she knew she’d be smart to refuse . . . and one J.J. knew she couldn’t resist.

Not my normal type of read but I found this at the library and I am interest in this book by Tami Hoag as 1) she is a Minnesota author and 2) she usually writes good mysteries…. nothing like this…. so we will see 😛

In the fall of 2002, 41-year-old Kate Cypher, a divorced Seattle school nurse, returns to New Hope, the decaying Vermont hippie commune where she grew up, to visit her elderly mother, Jean, who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. Kate has avoided New Hope since the grizzly, unsolved murder of her fifth-grade friend, Del Griswold, 31 years earlier. Kate fears she betrayed Del, a free-spirited farm girl. Did her betrayal cause Del’s death? Who killed Del? Another local girl is murdered in a similar manner at the time of Kate’s return. Could the killer be loose again? Meanwhile, Jean appears to be possessed with Del’s spirit and may have the answers to these questions. As Kate investigates, she learns stunning truths about many events and people from her youth.

Oh yeah….. this one I have been waiting for!  This is for a blog tour this Tuesday. 

So that’s my week… I am a little heavy on the audio as I will get in a bonus 6 hours when I drive to the bike ride in the cities next Saturday morning. 

I am excited to see what you are reading this week!  I hope to get around to all of you so be sure to link up below where it says “click here”  have a super reading week!

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Dollycas from Dollycas’s Thoughts

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Updates have been made to the Reading Cafe Grab shelves!

Due to a crazy pinched nerve in my back that slowly took me out of the game this week… I managed a LOT of reading time.  I made it through books over the past four days that I have been wanting to get to for awhile.  And those I have not posted yet I do have the reviews written so really…. I feel GOOD!

Here is the week in review:  (dim the lights please)

Book Bloggers Beware!!! (my trips to the chiropractor this week led me to a discovery and this could happen to you too!)

Massacre At Mountain Meadows (audio on a real massacre in the 1800’s….)

My Girls Weekend and Rick Springfield concert

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen (My first Dessen and not my last that is for sure!)

Hate List by Jennifer Brown (I do not know what took me so long to read this… everyone told me too… and WOW)

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (oh …. wow.)

I also read and reviewed CLOAKED by Alex Flinn and I will link to that when it shows up on the Fairy Tale Fortnight site.

I have more book reviews written just not posted yet.  Going into this next week there should be a pretty steady flow.  😀  Here is my plan for the week:

After a thrilling trip to South America, Jen, Holly, and Amanda, three Manhattanites in their mid-twenties, decide to climb off the career ladder for a year to travel the world. Inspired by The Flame Trees of Thika, Jen has always longed to see Kenya, while Holly wants to study yoga in an ashram in India. Amanda has dreams of pursuing a career as a freelance travel writer, but when she takes time out from their adventures to work on articles, it grates on the nerves of Jen, who is hoping to truly immerse herself in their surroundings. Though the three encounter snafus on the way—Holly initially finds the rigors of the ashram disheartening, the girls find themselves trapped in a car with a frightening taxi driver in Vietnam—there are many rewards on the journey, most notably when the three friends organize a group of Kenyan girls to perform a play about an influential Kenyan woman. For those with similar wanderlust, Jen, Holly and Amanda’s lively accounts make for the ideal armchair journey.

Blog tour this Tuesday….. grab your hat – we are going on an adventure!  😀

For everyone who has received an invitation to their high-school reunion and broken out in a cold, clammy sweat, Berg nails the experience: the dread that morphs into downright fear; the bouts of self-doubt that coalesce into prolonged periods of self-loathing; the internal inventory that comes up short in the bragging-rights column. Of course, there’s just as much potential for life-affirming and life-altering revelations. Glory days can be relived, damaged reputations repaired, lapsed friendships restored, lost loves rekindled. As Dorothy, Pete, Mary Alice, Candy, and Lester consider returning to Clear Springs for their fortieth high-school reunion, each contemplates the chance for redemption and revenge, renewal and retribution. Ultimately, they are then surprised to discover how much they have yet to learn about human nature and their own capacity for joy and forgiveness.

This is the WORDSHAKER on line book group read and I am so late on this it is embarrassing to even post it (I am the host of this on line group and really should be hung up by my toe nails and force fed orange peels….)

Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston’s masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published — perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.

This one is new to me…. I am drawn to it… I dont know why.

AND… another audio but it is a mystery to me… I have several requested at the Library, just depends on what comes in first 😀

So there it is … the plan 😀  I am super excited to see what your plan for this week is 😀  Please add your Monday What Are You Reading post to the Linky below and I as well as others will come and check out what you are reading 🙂  I love this part of my week!  😀

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Shirley from My Bookshelf

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

I felt like I had a pretty good week this past week… had some wonderful audio times periods and even a couple good reading evenings. It felt good to have some time to actually get into a book!

Here is how last week shaped up for me:

The Priest’s Graveyard by Ted Dekker:  If you have not read Dekker, you need to and this would be a good one to start with 🙂

Heart Of Deception by ML Malcolm: This sequel is smoking and I am bummed I didn’t read the first book in this series….

The Sandalwood Tree by ElleNewmark:  Book review and book tour – a treasure for the imagination!

Sunday at Tiffany’s by James Patterson: Our Bookies book club read for April and our book review (of course there is food!)

Little Princes by Conor Grennan:  This book is one of the best books I have read this year!  WOW WOW – DOUBLE WOW!

Open House by Elizabeth Berg – audio review:  Berg puts together a story of divorce, despair, and making new life

Yeah… it was a book tour heavy week but for the most part I had the tour books read before this week.  I also had book club this week which was FUN and this weekend seen Rick Springfield in concert… but more on that later this week 😀

This week is a meeting heavy week early on but Thursday and Friday are looking good and then being Easter weekend the only big thing on my agenda is the big “YAY” Justin is coming home for Easter!  That said here is what I plan to read this week:

In the three years since the tragic accident Mia barely survived in If I Stay, she and high school ex-boyfriend Adam have lived separate lives on opposite coasts. But then Adam, now the dissatisfied front man of popular LA-based band Collateral Damage, stops over in New York City for one night before kicking off the European leg of his tour. It happens to be the same evening that Mia, now well on her way to becoming a renowned cellist, is performing at Carnegie Hall. Adam buys a ticket, planning to slip in and out, but Mia spots him and for the first time in years they’re face-to-face with each other and their shared past. Over the course of one evening, as Adam and Mia traverse the city’s streets, they relive the four days Mia spent in the intensive care unit as well as her departure to Juilliard and from the life she knew.

Yeah – like I need another New York read but after having read If I Stay for book club I have to admit I am curious as to where she went.  😉

Shallow, poorly educated Kitty marries the passionate and intellectual Walter Fane and has an affair with a career politician, Charles Townsend, assistant colonial secretary of Hong Kong. When Walter discovers the relationship, he compels Kitty to accompany him to a cholera-infested region of mainland China, where she finds limited happiness working with children at a convent. But when Walter dies, she is forced to leave China and return to England. Generally abandoned, she grasps desperately for the affection of her one remaining relative, her long-ignored father. In the end, in sharp, unexamined contrast to her own behavior patterns, she asserts that her unborn daughter will grow up to be an independent woman.

I suspect I will finish the Meadow Massacre this week so this is what is going on my IPOD next.  I picked this one up on sale at audible.com, hoping it is a good one!

During the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, three young women, members of a conservative, pious Catholic family, who had become committed to the revolutionary overthrow of the regime, were ambushed and assassinated as they drove back from visiting their jailed husbands. Thus martyred, the Mirabal sisters have become mythical figures in their country, where they are known as las mariposas (the butterflies), from their underground code names. Herself a native of the Dominican Republic, Alvarez ( How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents ) has fictionalized their story in a narrative that starts slowly but builds to a gripping intensity. Each of the girls–Patria, Minerva and Maria Terese (Mate) Mirabal–speaks in her own voice, beginning in their girlhood in the 1940s; their surviving sister, Dede, frames the narrative with her own tale of suffering and dedication to their memory. To differentiate their personalities and the ways they came to acquire revolutionary fervor, Alvarez takes the risk of describing their early lives in leisurely detail, somewhat slowing the narrative momentum. In particular, the giddy, childish diary entries of Mate, the youngest, may seem irritatingly mundane at first, but in time Mate’s heroism becomes the most moving of all, as the sisters endure the arrests of their husbands, their own imprisonment and the inexorable progress of Trujillo’s revenge. Alvarez captures the terrorized atmosphere of a police state, in which people live under the sword of terrible fear and atrocities cannot be acknowledged. As the sisters’ energetic fervor turns to anguish, Alvarez conveys their courage and their desperation, and the full import of their tragedy.

Wow right?  I think this one will take some concentration!

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers – they’re all on Mickey Haller’s client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it’s about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it’s even about justice.

A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney’s dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career. Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal – this time to save his own life.

I seen this movie a few weeks back and yeah.. this is a little backwards but I was so enthralled by the movie…. I am interested in seeing what I really missed. 

I am thinking this is more than enough to keep me busy and out of trouble!  I am excited to see what you have been reading!  be sure to add your link to your What Are You Reading post below and I will do my best to stop by and see you.  😀

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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.

Laurel from Laurel Rain Snow

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

Coming off a readathon weekend is always exciting as there are books galore in the Monday posts and I am so excited to get around and see what everyone is reading!  😀

I had a great week of getting in some good reading… but I was not the best review writer and have many I am going to work on over the next few days – but seriously…. so worth the wait 😀

Here was my week:

Good Bye to Sookie Stackhouse  (Review of Dead Before Dark)- my adventures into this series was short-lived…. Sookie and I have agreed to disagree and I have shown her the door.

A BEA (Book Expo America) Scholorship Opportunity – hurry and check this out – you could win a chance to go!  😛

What is your most treasured book? I love the comments that are shared here about the book(s) on your shelves that you cherish the most and why…. mine is one I can not even read.

Little Princes by Connor Grennan – review this week

Sunday at Tiffany’s by James Patterson – Bookies Book Club read and review coming on Wednesday

Open House by Elizabeth Berg – review this week

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen (my first Dessen!!!) review this week

Hate List by Jennifer Brown – review this week

So…. this weeks looks like it will be strong for reviews – thank you to the Dewey read-a-thon… always a great time to work on catching up and reading – and I LOVE that we all stop and read all over the world for this event 🙂

So… moving forward this week… what’s on deck?

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

I am in the mood for some Hobbit – no idea what brought this on other than the fact that I have not read these books in years and as I was looking for new audio this week… I felt this one may be fun.

The search for God in the midst of horror, disaster, and loss has confounded believers for centuries. How does belief actually matter in the lives of those who suffer? Yancey, popular journalist and public speaker, travels the world and attempts to make some theological sense of the hurting people and devastated places he observes, from Virginia Tech to Mumbai.

This is for our Faith In Fiction group read and I have read and enjoyed Yancey in the past (In fact I taught a class on Grace for a couple of years based off one of his books, What’s So Amazing About Grace.)

Teenaged Johnny works as a cobbler in his mother’s shoe repair shop in a posh hotel in South Beach. He spends his days with his friend Meg and designs his own line of shoes while dreaming of wealth to free his family from the confines of poverty. Unexpectedly, the striking Princess Victoriana of Aloria comes to the swanky Miami hotel for a royal visit. The super-hot partying princess pleads for Johnny’s help in finding her missing brother, and offers of money and a royal marriage convince him to take her seriously-even when she explains that the prince has been turned into a frog. With the aid of a magical cloak and some headphones that allow him to hear animals speak, Johnny embarks on a journey wherein he encounters talking swans, a fox named Todd, and two angry giants. When he lands in hot water with an evil witch bent on destroying him, Meg comes to his rescue. The pair journey from South Beach to Key West, to Europe, and to Manhattan; and in the end, Johnny finds wealth, fame, and true love.

Ok… LOL…. I know…. this one if for The Fairy Tale Fortnight that is coming up and hosted by Misty, The Book Rat) and Ashley from Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing… more on that coming soon… 😉

 

 

 

Two abandoned souls are on the hunt for one powerful man. Soon, their paths will cross and lead to one twisted fate.

Danny Hansen is a Bosnian immigrant who came to America with hopes of escaping haunted memories of a tragic war that took his mother’s life. Now he’s a priest who lives by a law of love and compassion. It is powerful men and hypocrites who abide by legal law but eschew the law of love that most incense Danny. As an avenging angel, he believes it is his duty to show them the error of their ways, at any cost.

Renee Gilmore is the frail and helpless victim of one such powerful man. Having escaped his clutches, she now lives only to satisfy justice by destroying him, regardless of whom she must become in that pursuit.

But when Danny and Renee’s paths become inexorably entangled things go very, very badly and neither of them may make it out of this hunt alive.

Judge not, or you too will be judged.

 

This one is for a blog tour on Tuesday…. Dekker has been hit or miss the last few years… I am curious where this one will land.

I need another audio to start too…. but will wait and see what comes in from the library.  😀

So that’s about it.  I am looking forward to what you are reading as now that I have cleaned up my library books… I am itching to check out more.  Add your What Are You Reading Post to the linky below and I as well as others will be able to come and check out your post and add to our own reading lists…. that I am sure.  😀

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Happy reading!!!

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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 dop 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.

Lori Chandler from Book Blog Stuff

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

Another busy week of not as much reading as I had hoped but this weekend I seemed to break through the rut and picked up a book that I am having trouble putting down…. (stay tune this week for a passionate review of Little Princes).  Here is what was accomplished this past week in posts:

Movie Review:  Limitless (I ♥ Limitless)

In Defense Of Patterson (I roll out an unplanned discussion of my feelings about James Patterson and all he writes)

Probably the stupidest thing I have done so far in 2011….

 

What I Learned at BEA (a recap of my first time at BEA – Book Expo America last year for those who are new to attending)

March Recap and for those of you doing the WHERE Are You Reading Challenge a linky is set up for you to do an update post…. I hope you are having as much fun with this as I am 😀

Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth Scott (I know every book we read can not be a win and this one would be one of those rare books I read that I just do not like…. my review…. leaves a few scorch marks)

You might look at this list and say “wow Sheila – you were busy this past week!” but look again… this is not book reviews… this is me… chatting… books, movies, BEA, authors…. not that that is a bad thing… I love to mix it up… but seriousness…. one book completed.  ONE.   It really is the loneliest number.

However…. clear skies ahead friends… this week… I am meeting free.  This may not seem huge, but to me it is so HUGE.  I can not remember the last time I had a week of no:  classes, book club, committees, commitments to do dinners with friends or relatives…… no seriously if I threw a rock into my week trying to hit a meeting… it would sail clean through.  😛

So that said… here is my reading goal this week after I clear up a couple from the library that must go back before I am blogging from jail….

At the end of their junior year, Valerie Leftman’s boyfriend pulls a gun in the Commons, leaving six students and a teacher dead and many others wounded. Valerie is hit by a bullet in the leg trying to stop him, just before he ends his own life. Until that point, Valerie had no idea that the “hate list” that she and Nick created would be used to target victims in a vengeful shooting spree. For her, the list of tormentors was a way to ease the pain of being bullied and an outlet against the constant fighting between her parents. Although the police investigation reveals that Valerie had nothing to do with the actual shootings, many people in her community, including her parents, have a hard time believing that she is not at fault, too. With the help of a patient and insightful therapist, Valerie bravely returns to school after the summer to face the challenges before her.

I am so interested in this book and it has been on my table since I bought it, not wanting to shelf it in fear of it being lost to the shelves for far too long!

Whether teenaged or octogenarian, Berg’s heroines brave the emotional landmines underlying domestic scenes (from holiday dinner parties to visiting family), navigate the slippery slope of constant dieting and address the process of aging. The title story features an unnamed, insouciant narrator who flees from a Weight Watchers meeting and allows herself to indulge her most fattening food cravings. In Full Count, an introspective army brat begins to decipher what she looks like to others. The wistful and nostalgic Rain features a woman reminiscing about a good friend who dropped his successful corporate life to live closer to nature.

I started this one this week and well… hmmm…. it’s a bit…. weird.  So far its about food – and a lot of it… but it carries a high Amazon rating and it is part of the Berg trek so onward…. 🙂

On September 11, 1857, more than 120 men, women and children traveling from Arkansas to California were butchered by Mormon militiamen and Paiute Indians at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. This study of the tragedy, by three LDS historians, utilizes previously unavailable archival documents to answer the question, How could basically good people commit such a terrible atrocity? The authors find responsibility almost everywhere: in the escalating tensions between the federal government and Mormon authorities, in the 19th-century American culture of violence, in the barbarism of the emigrants and in the unchecked hunger for vengeance the Mormon militiamen felt toward Americans who had opposed their faith.

I found this title on audible.com and it will be next up on my IPOD once Sookie Stackhouse and I have said our good byes (oh that will be a fun review too…)

 

Honestly I am exhausted…. I worked the Home Show Concessions all weekend starting this past Friday, 10 hours a day.  Tonight we finished up and cleaned up around 5:30 PM (Sunday) and as much fun as it is – stick a fork in me… I am done.  That said, I am finishing up this post (Sunday evening) and closing my lap top…. instead of starting the meme visits tonight as I usually do, I will read a little and go to bed.  I took tomorrow off from work so I will have lots of time to catch up on what all of you are reading on Monday – be sure to link your post below!  😀

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It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  D  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 receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Jennifer from Rundpinne

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Yes, I am behind again on my mailing of books – they are going out this week… 😀

Here is what I accomplished this past week:

Jimmy by Robert Whitlow (incredible (but underdeveloped) audio about a young handicapped boy with huge faith

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese (Bookies book and food review – awesome book, AMAZING food – and I added recipes!)

Weekend Cooking:  Crock Pot Pizza Pasta (oh yeah…. I said it….  recipe is here!)

The Handmaid and The Carpenter – Elizabeth Berg comes through with this short audio about the courtship and marriage of Mary and Joseph

 

Dracula by Bram Stoker (mmm  hmmmm, first time :D)

It was not the successful reading week I had hoped for… I had plans to crack open a couple other books and it just did not happen.  So… I will try again this week.  😀

Here’s is what is hopefully brewing over here this week:

I am not even going to give you the synopsis on-line or from the back of the book because really – it does do this book justice.  Basically – Jane has an imaginary friend names Michael… Jane’s life as a child is a mess.  Her mothers ego and riches outshine everything and she really has little time for her slightly pudgy daughter – including forgetting her birthday.  Jane’s dad is barely in the picture showing up on major holidays but really having no clue as to who his daughter is and with his new wife and life… does not have the time to learn about her.

Jane’s only real friend…. isn’t real at all.  Michael is her constant companion, always there to encourage her, to laugh with her – to share life with her.  Jane adores waking every morning knowing she will “see” Michael again.

And then on Jane’s 9th birthday Michael tells her that it is time for him to go.  Heartbroken Jane begs for him to stay but Michael says that the rules are he can only stay until the 9th birthday.  He tells her not to worry thought as tomorrow she will wake up and not remember him…

Flash forward twenty years…. Jane now works for her mother in a large successful production company.  She has a loser for a boyfriend, and still battles self-esteem issues.  As Jane goes about her life writing and producing the play she always had hoped to, unfortunately with her mother’s money backing it up as well as her mothers opinions, Jane has no idea that she is being watched….

He can not believe it is her.  It has never worked this way before, but yes, he is sure it is her… her walk, the way she pushes her hair back… it has to be Jane.  Michael can not believe his luck.

Hmmm?  Sounds good doesn’t it?  This is our Book Club read for April and I am digging into it already and all I can say is so far – WHOA!  I am liking this!  😀

And really – this is pathetic… but I am not starting anything new beyond this as I have to catch up on the books I have said I was going to read for the past two weeks.  Truly…. I must 😀

HOWEVER – I am excited to see what you are reading!  Add your link to your post of It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading and I will try to get over and see you and encourage you to check out some of these posts as well – they are fun to read and you may just find a blog or two you want to follow.

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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 receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Kristin from Always With A Book

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

Here is a recap of what went down here this past week:

Snitch by Rene Gutteridge (book review and liking Rene Gutteridge a lot!)

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (book review and tour!)

Dream When You Are Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg (yup…. the Berg movement continues 😀 )

Weekend Cooking:  Chicken Nachos (mmmmmmm!)

Dewey Read A Thon is coming in April!

Minnesota and Surrounding Areas Book Blogger Get Togethers (in the area?  Well check this out!)

My week was busier than I thought and my reading suffered.  I am surprised as I thought I would have a great reading week but this was not the case.  I have a couple audio about to end so I can add whats next here – but other than that…. the books I am posting here are the same I said I would read the last week with one bonus exception:

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life — and one of her coworkers checks out. Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn’t such a bright idea. Sookie keeps to herself and doesn’t date much because of her “disability” to read minds. When she meets Bill, Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s the type of guy she’s waited for all of her life, but he has a disability, too–he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. When one of Sookie’s coworkers is killed, she fears she’s next.

Ok… seriously – don’t ask!  I want to try these books… I don’t know why.  I have never seen the HBO series true Blood.  This audio was on the sale pile at audible.com s here I go…. don’t even say that I don’t try new things 😀  LOL

Samantha’s husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany’s, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money.

To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember—and reclaim—the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.

Yup – onward with Berg.  😀

This one was on my list last week and I am half way through with review due for discussion Tuesday evening.  This book needs to be my focus over the next couple of days – so far I am really liking it.  Some said it was slow in the beginning but I did not think so at all.  Really interesting!

This one is also from last weeks reading list and will go “live” right after I finish up Cutting For Stone.  😀  Cant wait!

And this one… *sigh* should have already been read but has not.  This is the Wordshaker read and for those of you who are participating this time around I am so sorry I am late on putting out discussion questions etc… I am just behind.  Period.   Trust me, it’s not you, its me… and I hope to bring us all up to speed soon.

That is the weeks plan…. The audio will be started this week and new audio is always exciting to me… I have two that will finish in the next couple days for review and a third that should be pretty close to being done if not this week than for sure early next week – depends on the car time 🙂

I hope you all have awesome books for me to drool over!   😛  Please add your own Monday Where Are You Reading post to the link below and I hope to stop by and see what you are reading!  😀

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WOO HOO!  Another week – and more books/audio to add to my “read list”!

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 receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Shirley  from My Bookshelf

Congratulations!  Please choose an item out of the PRIZE BOX and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

 

I am still kind of flying high from Saturdays Polar Plunge!  It was a much-anticipated (and feared) event.  That went off pretty slick and the friends I made and the memories – soooooo worth it.  😀

So let’s do a recap of what went down here this past week:

The Oracle Of Stamboul by Michael Daivd Lucas – fabulous taste of fantasy

Miss Scarlets School Of Patternless Sewing – book review and GIVEAWAY!

Rockin’ The Red Pumps (which I later fall in…. but that’s another story 😛)

Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez – Bookies book review for March!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (audio with Steve Fry – oooohhhhh so good!)

39 Clues by Rick Riordin (fantatsic adventure read for middle grade – and a bit of history too!)

Pictures from the Polar Plunge event ( oh yeah….. these are good memories!)

SO that was my week.  I took a couple extra audio along with me for my drive this weekend to Eden Prairie but alas, the one I am currently listening to is the one I listened to all the way there and all the way back.  Its good – so it was a great ride.

This week I am keeping it low as the first one of these I need to finish by next Tuesday and it is 600 + pages….

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

This was a “bonus read” for our book club that we are doing a food review a week from this Tuesday.  At 600+ pages I need to set page goals and work on completing this one this week 🙂

In a middle-class neighborhood of Iran’s sprawling capital city, 17-year-old Pasha Shahed spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, joking around one minute and asking burning questions about life the next. He also hides a secret love for his beautiful neighbor Zari, who has been betrothed since birth to another man. But the bliss of Pasha and Zari’s stolen time together is shattered when Pasha unwittingly acts as a beacon for the Shah’s secret police. The violent consequences awaken him to the reality of living under a powerful despot, and lead Zari to make a shocking choice…

This book has waited on me a LLLLOOOOOONNNNGGGGGGG time.  Now, thanks to my finding a second copy this past week at the Brainerd Library sale, I offered up a contest and this is the book my winner, Sarah E chose this book.  This means I will read this book, hopefully this week and then pass it on to her.  😀  Next week I will run this contest again as it will help me to get through my book piles!

 

 

Berg’s sweetly understated dramatization of the Nativity story casts Mary and Joseph as provincial teenagers who try to honor family tradition in spite of challenging circumstances. Alternating between the voices of the holy couple, Berg relates a romance that blossoms at the wedding of relatives between the 16-year-old carpenter from Nazareth and the comely 13-year-old girl originally from Sepphoris. Mary, dreamy and intractable, already entertains notions of miraculous circumstances surrounding her own birth to her barren mother, Anne. Joseph is instantly smitten and engenders the trust of both families for a betrothal, yet Mary holds back, cherishing a sense of greater destiny. Escaping a near rape by a Greek man by the river, Mary then receives the angel’s message that she will bear an extraordinary son, despite never having known a man; the sadly unwed Mary must return to Joseph, who repudiates her until he, too, is visited in a dream by an angel directing him on the honorable course. With Herod’s decree that everyone return to their hometowns to register for the census, Joseph and the near-term Mary set off on their arduous and momentous journey to Bethlehem.

 

On this one, lets say I am cautiously optimistic?  I am reading through Berg and when I picked this one up at the library I really had no idea what it was about.  When I read the back I was surprised – but interested.  This is a short 4 hour audio that I hope to get to later this week when my current one ends.

 

That is it for goals.  I am finishing up two that need to go back to the library soon so I will be working on those as well.  I really am looking forward to what you are reading this week and hope to get around to visiting your posts.  Please add your link below where it says “click here”

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