Category: Its Monday What ARe You Reading

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

Hey all 🙂  Today is my birthday and I have had a wonderful weekend with both my sons and hubby.  I went out to eat a couple times, bought a book, played WII, went to a movie, and learned to levitate…. 

No kidding – my son helped me create this:

I know right?  Is that not fun?  We also did one for him:

Fun! Seriously! 

Here is what I posted this past week:

Labor Day By Joyce Maynard

Bookies – Pre Labor Day Movie Get Together pics!

Labor Day Movie Review

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (oh ha ha… don’t miss this!)

The Literary Blog Hop is going on now and I have a fun giveaway and a BONUS birthday giveaway as well 😀

And for what I am listening to/reading this week:

I do not think I will have new audio this week from the two I listed last week 🙂

Reading:

Tracing the historic arc of Lincoln’s life from his picaresque days as a gangly young lawyer in Sangamon County, Illinois, through his improbable marriage to Kentucky belle Mary Todd, to his 1865 visit to war-shattered Richmond only days before his assassination, I Am Abraham hews closely to the familiar Lincoln saga. Charyn seamlessly braids historical figures such as Mrs. Keckley—the former slave, who became the First Lady’s dressmaker and confidante—and the swaggering and almost treasonous General McClellan with a parade of fictional extras: wise-cracking knaves, conniving hangers-on, speculators, scheming Senators, and even patriotic whores.

We encounter the renegade Rebel soldiers who flanked the District in tattered uniforms and cardboard shoes, living in a no-man’s-land between North and South; as well as the Northern deserters, young men all, with sunken, hollowed faces, sitting in the punishing sun, waiting for their rendezvous with the firing squad; and the black recruits, whom Lincoln’s own generals wanted to discard, but who play a pivotal role in winning the Civil War. At the center of this grand pageant is always Lincoln himself, clad in a green shawl, pacing the White House halls in the darkest hours of America’s bloodiest war.

Gettin’ my Lincoln on.

Nobody really believes in a curse. Until you know the people who disappear. Too much coincidence, you look for reason. Too much death, you grasp for something to blame. Carson pulled Delaney out and he died on the side of the road with her mouth pressed to his. Her air in his body. Troy. She told the cops it was suicide. Didn’t matter. The lake released her and grabbed another. But when Decker’s father dies in a pool of spilled water on their kitchen floor, all Decker can feel is a slow burning rage. Because he knows that Delaney knew that his dad was going to die. She knew and backed out of his house and never said a word. Falcon Lake still has a hold on them both, and Decker can’t forgive Delaney until he knows why.

My birthday gift from Justin 😀

That’s my week!  How is yours looking?  Please add your link to Monday What Are You Reading below where it says click here.

 

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

Second day into February and I feel like I blinked and missed last week!  I had big plans for kicking off my half marathon training starting February 1, but instead, I have hardly left the house this weekend other than the grocery store and church.  On the bright side, just today I secured two of the four authors I am looking for to be a part of Wine and Words 2014 which feels good!  😀  I will announce them later this week, tomorrow evening I have our Annual Friends Of The Library board meeting and I need to announce to them first.

As far as what was posted… here is what I had:

The In-Between Hours by Barbara Claypole White

The Roses Underneath by C J Yetmen   (seriously amazing)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline…. yes again.  Stop it.  Its amazing.  Read my review 😀

My dog sledding experience in Duluth Minnesota (with video of my ride!)

Runners World CookBook – it is not just for runners the food is healthy and tasty!

As for this week, I think I am going to stay low.  I have several books (yup..several) going that I have changes up, read a little of something else and now I need to finish them.  Yes, they are good… I am just kind of all over the board this past week.  However… I will be needing me some audio this week and for that I choose:

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history – Doom and Quake – until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry – a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative.

My love for Wil Wheaton’s narration continues….

 

 

Recently, The New Yorker published chef Anthony Bourdain’s shocking, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” Bourdain spared no one’s appetite in this tell-all about what happens behind the kitchen door.

Now, the author uses the same “take-no-prisoners” attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable audiobook, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From his first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown, from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable.

Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You’ll beg the chef for more, please.

I have listened to him before and he is quick wit, dry, and funny…

That’s it audio goals and a book clean up so hopefully by this time next week I can start fresh 😀  What are you reading this week?  What did you read last week?  Book lovers want to know!  Please add your link to your It’s Monday What Are You Reading where it says click here.

 

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

I am late I know … I know.  I was gone this weekend at our cabin and came straight form Finland Minnesota to a work retreat in Crosslake Minnesota.  A 5 hour road trip and a long snowy drive…  there is a lot more to this day (including a locksmith) but I will save that for later this week.

Anyhoo… this past week was not a big reading week.  With a game night, an author event, and planning to leave for the weekend.. her is what I did manage to post this past week:

The Wrong Girl by Hank Philippi Ryan

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich

Author event with Wendy Webb

Captain Phillips Movie Review

 

I don’t have a really big plan for this week.  I will be at this retreat until Tuesday afternoon and then possibly going to an author event Tuesday night.  Life will slow down after that, the rest of the week being mellow. I am too tired to come up with a real reading plan here…I can say I have this going on:

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.  

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. 
 
A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

Ok… this is a gratuitous listen… I listened to this audio a couple of years ago and it still ranks as one of my favorite all time audio books.  If you have not read or listened to this book and you are a product of the 80’s… YOU MUST listen to this audio.

They live among us.

They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers.

They change.

When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is.

Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero.

Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy.

So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge…and the battle for humanity will begin.

Minnesota author I have been hearing good things about. 😉

I am sure more will hit the radar as the week goes on.. 😀

SO what are you reading this last week of January?  Please add your It’s MOnday link below where it says “click here”

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

Well another week into the New Year.  How ya’ all doin’?  I have been reading right along.  I had a pretty low key weekend (YAY!) so put in some reading time and finished an audiobook.  Here is what I posted this past week:

Playing St. Barbara by Marian Szczepanski

Labor Day Book Party with Movie Anticipation

Then Again by Diane Keaton

Bookies Review Of Reconstructing Amelia

Recap Of The PINK Concert I went to Last Weekend w/ pics

Weekend Cooking – My First Attempt AT Hibachi

What Makes A Good Book – Book Club Worthy?

The Broken Path by Cami Chechetts (a light audiobook on the possibilities of moving on)

 

A pretty fair week, here is what is on tap this week:

For my ears:

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup is a memoir of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped, sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before the American Civil War. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, DC, as well as describing at length cotton cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.

 

 

David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother’s wedding. He mops his sister’s floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn’t it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives — a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

 

 

For My Eyes:

When Eve Petworth writes to Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cookery and food. Their friendship blossoms against the backdrop of Jackson’s colorful, but ultimately unsatisfying, love life and Eve’s tense relationship with her soon-to-be married daughter. As each of them offers, from behind the veils of semi-anonymity and distance, wise and increasingly affectionate counsel to the other, they both begin to confront their problems and plan a celebratory meeting in Paris–a meeting that Eve fears can never happen.

 

 

Holly Brennan used food to comfort herself through her husband’s illness and death. Now she’s alone at age thirty-two. And she weighs more than she ever has. When fate throws her in the path of Logan Montgomery, personal trainer to pro athletes, and he offers to train her, Holly concludes it must be a sign. Much as she dreads the thought of working out, Holly knows she needs to put on her big girl panties and see if she can sweat out some of her grief.
 

 
Soon, the easy intimacy and playful banter of their training sessions lead Logan and Holly to most intense and steamy workouts. But can Holly and Logan go the distance as a couple now that she’s met her goals—and other men are noticing?

It should be a good week!  I am excited about the books i have going.  How about you?  What have you read this past week?  Whats coming up this week?  Please add your link to your Monday What Are You Reading post below so we can see what everyone is reading 😀

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

Wow… 2nd week of January already put to bed!  It was a fast week and a full one and I am happy to be home from North Dakota as of late today after going to see PINK in concert.  *sigh*  I will never look at concerts the same way again.

As busy as this past week was I did manage to put some posts up:

Flowers In The Attic by V C Andrews (a re-read of a book I read about 30 years ago….. eep!)

Longbourn by Jo Baker (not the Downton Abbey read I was looking for…)

Looking for the 2014 Authors For Wine and Words (Please pass this post on if you have connections 🙂  )

Book Club People… How Do You Choose Your Books?  ( its fun to see the different ways book clubs pick the books they read!)

I need your help with a BLIND DATE!  (join in the fun – there is a gift card going to one lucky commenter)

Reconstructing Amelia by Kim McCreight (our book club pick for January – my thoughts befre the group review 😉

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion ( a great audio listen!)

What Book Are You Afraid of?  Freshly posted… I am looking for your thoughts 😉

So pretty fair week I think!  😀  Here is what I am sinking my eyes and ears into this week!

Eyes:

The secrets, struggles, and self-redemption of a Depression-era coal miner’s wife and three daughters play out against a turbulent historical backdrop of Ku Klux Klan intimidation and the 1933 Pennsylvania Mine War. Their intertwined lives eerily mirror the 7th century legend of St. Barbara, patroness of miners, reenacted annually in the town pageant. Tested by scandal, heartbreak, and tragedy, each woman will write her own courageous ending to St. Barbara’s story.

Wow right?  Reading this one for a tour 🙂

With death only a heartbeat away, Gene and the remaining humans must find a way to survive long enough to escape the hungry predators chasing them through the night.  But they’re not the only things following Gene.  He’s haunted by Ashley June who he left behind, and his burgeoning feelings for Sissy, the human girl at his side.

Their escape takes them to a refuge of humans living high in the mountains.  Gene and his friends think they’re finally safe, but not everything here is as it seems.  And before long, Gene must ask himself if the new world they’ve entered is just as evil as the one they left behind.  As their enemies close in on them and push Gene and Sissy closer, one thing becomes painfully clear: all they have is each other…if they can stay alive.

I have put off reading this one for too long!

Ears:

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.
 
So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years.
 

I enjoy Diane as an actress and I heard (Florinda!) that this was a good one. 

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Ursula’s world is in turmoil, facing the unspeakable evil of the two greatest wars in history. What power and force can one woman exert over the fate of civilization — if only she has the chance?

Well.. that sounds interesting!

Thats the plan.. How about you – what did you read this last week?  What do you plan to read this week?  Add your What Are You Reading Post to the link below and check out the other links as well 🙂

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

A pretty decent week – not for reading, no I have yet to finish a book in 2014, but for ringing in a New Year with friends, and running my first 5K of the year, I feel accomplished.  🙂  Here is what I did post this week:

Movie Review:  JOBS

The Readers of The New Year – great pics of the bloggers you may know!

Day Two… Nine Bloggers Reading (the rest of the pictures of the bloggers reading into the New Year)

Someone Else’s Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

1st 5k Of The Year on January 1st!!!!  The Polar Dash pictures!

Where Were You When Dumbledore Died?  (I am fascinated about the fictional moments we remember forever)

My One Little Word for 2014 (choosing  a word for the year to own and be… awesome!)

 

For this week, I am still finishing up on the books I posted last week, I hope to start:

 

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical – most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent – and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don’s Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie – and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

I want to post books as well but the truth is I have three I am working on this week, the same ones I mentioned last week so I am going to leave it at that. 🙂

I would love to know what you are reading this first week of January!  Please add your What Are You Reading post below where it says click her.

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

**Quick note:  Oh my gosh!  I wrote this Sunday evening after a long day and getting home late from hanging with friends.  I wrote it, posted it (so I thought) and went to bed.  I did not notice until I came home after my 12 hour shift today that it never posted.  Good grief….  🙂

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

Quite the week here of last minute shopping, get togethers with friends, planning and yes.. even late card writing.  Books have not been an option, thank you God so much for audio or I would really have nothing to say.  Here is what I posted this week:

The Anti Prom by Andy McDonald

The KOBO has arrived!

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 

Platform 21 by T R Patrick

Red Hill by Jamie McGuire (how do I keep missing out on these great authors?)

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (oh my word me head is still reeling from this amazing book)

The Twelve by Justin Cronin (read many months ago, finally putting the post up!)

So it has been a good week.  Not sure how this week will fare, I work two back to back 12 hour shifts the next two days but then have Wednesday – the weekend off.  Maybe that will lead to reading time…. ooh I hope so!

SO for this week here is what is currently happening:

Does a respected adoption agency have a frightening secret? Tipped off by a determined ex-colleague on a desperate quest to find her birth mother, Boston newspaper reporter Jane Ryland begins to suspect that the agency is engaging in the ultimate betrayal—reuniting birth parents with the wrong children.

For detective Jake Brogan and his partner, a young woman’s brutal murder seems a sadly predictable case of domestic violence, one that results in two toddlers being shuttled into the foster care system. Then Jake finds an empty cradle at the murder scene. Where is the baby who should have been sleeping there?

Jane and Jake are soon on a trail full of twists and turns that takes them deep into the heart of a foster care system in crisis and threatens to blow the lid off an adoption agency scandal. When the threatening phone calls start, Jane knows she is on the right track…but with both a killer at large and an infant missing, time is running out….

EEP -right?

1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.
 
At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

Another one I dont know how it escaped me!

I think that is all I am going to put up here.  I am not sure what (or if) I will be reading this week, it will be a surprise to me as well. 🙂

I am curious as to what you will be reading!  Please add your link to where it says click here below and hopefully some of us will be over to check it out 🙂

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

I hope everyone had a good week.  I did!  We had book club this week, and I am finally getting into the Christmas mood… which is typical for me… it takes me a while to get there 😉

Here is what I posted this week:

Ladies Night by Mary Kay Andrews

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

The Bookies Christmas Party

Pain Parties Work by Elizabeth Winder (The Sylvia Plath Story)

An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatfield

When I Practice To Deceive by Ann Rule (“Meh” of the week)

Homemade Caramels – a recipe for you (oh… and for me too!)

also these challenges coming up:

WHAT Are You Reading Challenge 2014

Bucket List Challenge 2014

First Book Of The Year 2014

It feels good to be an active blogger again!  😀  So for this week I am cruising right along into these:

 

For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone means fighting for tomorrow is an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can’t remember what it’s like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda’s biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals.

When reports of a widespread, deadly “outbreak” begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined. Recognizing they can’t outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy—an enemy who no longer remembers what it’s like to be human.

I smoked through this one in the last couple of days… review this week!

 

 

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

Just started this one this afternoon 😀

In Parkland (originally titled Four Days in November), author Vincent Bugliosi “has definitively explained the murder that recalibrated modern America” (Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times Book Review). Releasing this fall, the movie—starring Paul Giamatti, Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver, and Billy Bob Thornton—follows a group of individuals making split-second decisions after this incomprehensible event: the doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital, the chief of the Dallas Secret Service, the cameraman who captured what has become the most examined film in history, the FBI agents who had gunman Lee Harvey Oswald within their grasp, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson who had to take control of the country at a moment’s notice. Based on Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History—Parkland is the story of that day.

I started this last week and ooh… it is good!

Luke’s life is about to take a dangerous turn.
But first he has to die.

In the year 2052, high school sophomore Luke Gibson considers himself an average teenager in a world on the brink of monumental change. Joining his parents and sister, Laura, at the first World Energy Initiative Conference, he is among thousands gathered in a Denver arena to celebrate free renewable energy when a massive earthquake strikes killing everyone in the stadium. The last thing Luke sees before his death is a girl reaching out to him–a stranger whose face he remembers from his dreams.

The end, however, is not the end. Suddenly, inexplicably, Luke is back home in Ohio and everything is different. His sister is gone, the victim in an unsolved homicide years before. Angela, his mysterious dream girl, is here also, and the only person besides Luke who recalls the previous reality. And now their determination to uncover the truth about Laura’s murder and their transformed world is making them targets–forced to flee for their lives from a nameless shadow organization and a government seeking vengeance for an unthinkable act of terror–as they stand on the threshold of a dark conspiracy that threatens all humankind.

I am reading this one for a blog tour this week.

 

Beyond that I have a few books I have started but have yet to finish that I would like to work on cleaning up before year end.  How about you?  What are you reading this end of December?  I would love to know!  Please add your What Are You Reading link to the link below where it says click here:

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Hey there!  Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list!

It was a pretty great week!  I worked, I volunteered, I got things done. 😀  I posted yesterday that we had our Holiday Open House at the Library on Saturday and I put together a book tree.  I promised to post a pic earlier today and then I forgot so here it is now… Wala:

It was fun to put together but a lot more work (and books!) than I thought it would be.

I posted quite a few things this week too and that I feel is awesome… I so feel like i have my groove back!  “Hello Stella!”

The 2014 Bucket List Challenge (something a little different that I am excited about!)

WHERE Are You Reading Challenge 2014 ( I have hosted this challenge since 2011, it seems like the appropriate  challenge to go with our What are you reading meme.)  Check it out!

What Alice Forgot by Alice Moriarty (WOW!  I am loving this author!)

GONE by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (love this series!)

First Book Of The Year Group meme and YOU are invited!  😛

Holiday decorating at the library! 

The Coldest Girl In Cold Town by Holly Black (if there is a “meh” of the week… this is it.)

City Of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare (*sigh*  LOVE!)

As for what I will be reading this week:

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life–and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

Ok, this one sounds a little different to me but people are raving so in I go.  I started it today.

Brooke has been happily married to her college sweetheart for fifteen years. Even after the C-section, the dog poop, the stomach viruses and the coffee breath, Scott always winks at her in just the right moments. That is why, for her beloved, romantic, successful husband’s fortieth birthday, she is giving him pictures. Of herself. Naked.

Newlywed Samantha learns of her husband’s cheating heart when she finds the goods on his computer.

High-powered career woman Katherine works with heartbreaker Phillip, the man who hurt her early on in her career.          

Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine don’t know each other, but their stories are about to intertwine in ways no one could have imagined.

And all three are about to discover the power of friendship to conquer adversity, the satisfaction of unexpected delights, the incredible difference one human being can have on other lives–and that they have all they could ask for, as long as they have each other.

Doesn’t this sound fun? 

Four Days in November is an extraordinarily exciting, precise, and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is drawn from Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a huge and historic account of the event and all the conspiracy theories it spawned, by Vincent Bugliosi, famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter. For general readers, the carefully documented account presented in Four Days is utterly persuasive: Oswald did it and he acted alone.

OOh .. right?

I think that’s where I am at for the week.  I am excited to see what you are reading and or listening to.  Please add your It’s Monday What Are You Reading post to the link below where it says click here.

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