Book Journey

Irish Eyes by Mary Kay Andrews

Published on March 16, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)5 Comments

Ex Atlanta Cop, Callahan Garrity, sometimes wonders why she gave it all up to be owner of the House Mouse, a house cleaning service to those with means in the Georgia area. Then, when she finds herself at the scene of a liquor store crime that involves the shooting of one of her dear friends who is also a cop… she remembers why…

the job just isn’t worth your life.

Yet, when Callahan does not see the police taking the direction they should in the case, Callahan can not help but let old instincts take over. As she puts her nose where it doesn’t belong, things get a little dangerous…

This was my first Callahan Garrity book and probably won’t be my last. With a little whimsy of a cozy mystery (the House Mouse workers and Callahan’s own mother keep the book light and fun), and a small likelihood to Janet Evanovich, this book was a treat to read.

One thing I liked about this protagonist is that she is tough, a little rough around the edges (she can drink with the best of the boys), and she doesn’t give up. She does not take on the ditzy female role that other books like it tend to and I appreciated that.

A fun quick listen (I went for this one on audio!) that I thoroughly enjoyed enough to explore more of these books.

1aa — This book filled my Georgia requirement!

Morning Meanderings… Off The Grid, Books and Runs

Published on March 16, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)10 Comments

Good morning! I did not mean to fall off the grid this past week but I apparently did. Yes I have books to share, and happenings and all that stuff but running out the door in the morning and not back until night has taken its toll… This week I hope will be better. 😀 With the spring book sale this week I will have plenty to talk about.

Yesterday, if I would have been home my Saturday snapshot would have been this:

Yesterday my friend Wendy and I ran a 7k in Minneapolis called the Get Lucky. This was my second time running this one and Wendy’s first. The weather was fair, around the 20’s – much better that last years cold and windy jaunt.

12,000 people were at this run. No kidding! Another 3,000 were in St Paul doing a half marathon at the same time. I love how big these runs and fun events have become. I think last year it was about 7,000.

I was not home last weekend so this book pic is the accumulation of two weeks of literary fun that has come to my home:

I should have posts later today and throughout the week of reviews, the book sale and… another run next Saturday night called the Glow Baby Glow! (Kind of excited about that one!)

Bookies Review and Fun: The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Published on March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)16 Comments

A few days ago I read and reviewed for the first time, The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. This week, our book club The Bookies had the opportunity to discuss it.

On a scale of 1 – 5 (5 being the highest) the book rated mainly between 3.5 and 4. The girls all agreed that they enjoyed the book. While it was not one of those “WOW” that blew me away reads, it was an overall pleasant read with a nice mix of mid 60’s southern culture, and fats about honey and bees.

We discussed Lily’s home life situation with her father, and the loss of her mother. We discussed the culture of the 60’s in South Carolina and what that meant at the time for a white girl to live among an African-American family. (This still shocks me that this was really, not so long ago….)

Of course, we themed food and I found a fun little website called Book Menus that had a list of ALL the food in The Secret Life Of Bees. Seriously, how cool is that? We had pulled pork sandwiches and I made ham. One of the girls had coleslaw and added peaches to it (delicious!) as peaches play a role in this book. We had a pineapple strawberry upside down cake, orangeade, AND….

we had to try the coke and salted peanuts together like the y had in the book:

March cokew peanuts — **Bookies, trying the coke with salted peanuts as Lily and August loved in the book, Secret Life Of Bees**

Why is this a great book for book clubs?

The Secret Life Of Bees brings out some good discussion topics such as abuse, the loss of a mother and women who stand in as “mothers” in our lives. There is also the topic of racial hatred and relationships among those of different backgrounds and color. The book brings with it wonderful southern foods to try as well.

Morning Meanderings… What Makes A Book Club Work

Published on March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)17 Comments

Yes, it is about that time of month again when I talk book club. I can’t help it. I love that group of girls so! Tuesday evening while we sat around chatting before the review with plates full of food from the book ‘The Secret Life of Bees” and salted peanuts in coke (more on that later….), one of the girls said something that really touched my heart.

She said that she loved our book club and had to tell us why. She had been in a book club before that just did not work. She said that the group would have a book they would read but some would read it, most would not. The group would gather and have wine and talk and rarely get to the book. There was no one who brought questions to the group about the book or kept a discussion on track.

It’s no secret I love my book club. We have such an amazing group of ladies who each bring something to add to the group. They are willing to dig in and discuss the hard topics, and laugh about the fun stuff.

It’s not always easy pulling off a book club night, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I love planning the food around the book and it has stretched me to make new things and try different cultures. Each book, even before I open that first page has me thinking, “what will I learn? How can I implement that into the meeting? What foods will me encounter? What music?” Where can I get a skeleton?” (Ok just kidding on that last one… at least so far 😉 )

I love doing the extras for book club. I love to fully experience the book. Bookies has come a long way in our almost 13 years. I wouldn’t trade a moment.

Next book up…. A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra….

Oh the possibilities.

The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Published on March 11, 2014March 11, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)14 Comments

14-year-old Lily Owens has little memories of her mother. The one memory she does carry, is that she is responsible for her mom’s death. Her father, T. Ray, is distant and both physically and verbally abusive. When Lily finds a town written on the back of an image of a black Madonna that belonged to her mother, Lily and her friend Rosaleen decide to leave on a search for clues to who Lily’s mom was.

When Lily finds a product in a store called Black Madonna honey, the same black Madonna that is in the picture that was her mother’s, she is directed to the home of the creator of this honey. Lily meets the three Boatwright sisters, April, May, and June, three black women who harvest honey. Lily feels strongly there is a connection between these women and her mother, and plans to stay until she can find out, knowing that back home her father is just learning that she is gone and his anger for her betrayal will fuel him forward to find her.

The Secret Life Of Bees is a warm southern read which if it carried a scent I believe it would smell like bread right out of the oven with fresh honey dripping down thick slices with a background aroma of lilac and clover. This book gives me flashes of that warm feeling I had when I read Beth Hoffman’s Cee-Cee Honeycutt.

I was actually a little surprised how much I enjoyed this book/audio. I do not know what held me back from it all of these years as I clearly know now that I was missing out. Lily is a delightful protagonist. She has been forced to grow up quickly in a world without her mom and a dad who has no idea to be anything but angry.

I can’t think of anything I’d rather have more than somebody lovin’ me.”
― Lily Owens, The Secret Life of Bees

Narrated by Jenna Lamia, who also narrates in The Help, and both of Beth Hoffman’s books as well, the audio flows smoothly as Jenna has no trouble taking on the young voices of Lily and Rosaleen, as well as switching it up to the older Boatwright sisters.

If you have not yet treated yourself to The Secret Life Of Bees I encourage you to do so. You are in for a sweet experience.

Now…. I get to watch the movie!

1aa — The Secret Life Of Bees filled South Carolina for this challenge

Morning Meanderings… Book Club and Office Shenanigans

Published on March 11, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)8 Comments

Good morning happy Tuesday and all that it will bring! Tonight is Bookies book club so I am *SUPER* excited about that! We are reviewing The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Yes, surprisingly most of us had never read it, including myself. I listened to it on audio and am excited to report that it was a wonderful narration! My review of the book will go up later today and tomorrow I will share the Bookies thoughts and the book club goodies we added to the review. 😀

That takes me to my office….

When I went into the office on Monday this was by one of my co-workers desks:

We are in a building where there are many businesses. This actually belongs to the yarn lady downstairs from us. I am guessing that maybe she left her items in the hallway over the weekend and someone picked them up and brought them up to us so no one stole them or knocked them over. When I sent this picture to my co-worker (who does not work until Wednesday) with a “?” he responded that he left a ransom note for the yarn lady to come and get them.

Well….

by Tuesday this is what happened:

“Miss Mabel” as I have come to call the mannequin bust, has been moved onto the said co workers chair now and has taken over his desk. Surprisingly… I had nothing to do with this one, although I am a little annoyed that I did not think of it (stupid head cold!).

Final thoughts this morning, well… err…. I mean for this post. Hopefully not final thoughts for the morning as I am on my way into work and that would leave me much like Miss Mabel… just sitting there…. 😉 Anyhoo…. final POST thoughts, we had a 53 degree day yesterday here in Minnesota. Seriously – a heat wave. Doors and windows were open and spirits lifted. It is supposed to remain in the 30’s all week.

Hazah!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 9, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)57 Comments

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 just came back home late this afternoon from Detroit Lkes, Minnesota. My friend Sara had a timeshare for the weekend and invited a few of us to go hang out. We shopped on Saturday in Fargo, North Dakota, went out to eat and watched a couple good movies, It was a great weekend.

Here is what I posted last week:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell (Rowell is an author to keep your eye on!)

Summer -Cation Event (Thanks everyone who brought me a little sunshine!) The winner of my giveaway is:

Lois of You,Me and A Cup Of Tea

*winner chosen using random.org

Pretty light week for me. I am hoping to have a better week this week. I am digging in to some good ones:

For my Ears:

Three teens, three stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the worlds of the teens begin to tilt.

Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year and decides to keep the baby?

Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing his life, too, will be shortened?

Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She’s also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set.

When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy’s Day party, one of her best friends is shot. Callahan and her House Mouse cleaning crew dive into the investigation—only to discover that her old friend might have been working both sides of the law as an accomplice in a string of robberies. It will take every trick they’ve got to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding an Irish police organization and prove that the case is more than it seems.

For my eyes

It’s a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she’s ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and who she hasn’t seen in 18 years.

Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable.

As the body count mounts and Kat’s hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved—her former fiancé, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there.

I still have some reads to clean up from last week and just finishing the book club book that we will be reviewing on Tuesday. Looking forward to what you are reading this week! Please add your link to where it says “click here” an share what you read this past week and what you will be reading this week.

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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!

Summer-Cation Event with Giveaways!

Published on March 7, 2014March 7, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)31 Comments

Happy Summer-Cation! As I mentioned last weekend on the blog, I just need to do something SUNNY! I decided to host a last minute “let’s talk about something shiny” (THE SUN!) event where others were and are invited to join me to post something about a summery event, a giveaway, summer plans, WHATEVER as long as no snow or cold is involved.

I repeat….

No Snow and NO Cold can be mentioned in your posts. 😀

(What I just said there doesn’t count as I really have not started my post yet….. )

Ok… so thank you to the few of you who jumped on board and said Yes! I will chat sunshine with you!

Here is one of my FAVORITE summer pics from last year. This is from the Lakes Jam and there is so much to like about this pic.

I am with my good friend Amy
LOOK how tan we are!
No jackets or sweaters 😉
Crabby photo bomber in the back

Thinking of the warm weather things to come makes me happy… bike rides and runs, reading on the deck, New York the end of May…. all good stuff. 🙂

For my post today, I wanted to do a giveaway of one of my all time favorite reads and book club discussions, The Summer House by Jude Deveroux. It also makes me happy the word “summer” is in the title.

This giveaway will stay up through the weekend and I will announce the winner when I post Tuesday’s Morning Meanderings. To enter, leave a comment telling me something that you are looking forward to this summer.

As I was not the best planner and executor of this event, I am going to set up a linky for others to add their summer posts and giveaways for this Summer-Cation event (if I already had you on my radar and you have posted already this morning I will add your link for you)

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I am going to Detroit Lakes this afternoon for the weekend. My friend has a time share and I am looking forward to hanging out with friends, maybe watching a movie and playing some board games. It’s not summer there… but it is a start of doing something! 🙂

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Published on March 6, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

Lincoln O’Neil would not have applied for the job of “Internet Security Officer” if he would have known it was going to be this.

Having accepted the position with images of putting his computer knowledge to work in tasks like fire walls and repairs. He was shocked to find himself working the night shift and basically reading the email exchanges between employees to make sure they were work related; and if they were not, writing up reports on them.

When Lincoln finds the conversations going on between two employees, Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder, he knows he should file a report. Instead, Lincoln finds himself absorbed in their conversations and can not bring himself to put a stop to it. Soon, he finds that he is looking forward to work just to see what the two girls will be talking about, and through the email exchanges, he finds that he is becoming attracted to Beth.

Now Lincoln is in a real pickle. He would love to meet Beth, but now he knows so many intimate and personal things about her, how can he?

Attachments is another fun read by Rainbow Rowell. Rainbow has a way with creating fun scenario’s with her protagonists. She did this in Fangirl, and in Eleanor and Park.

I enjoyed reading (quite honestly) the exchanges of the two girls Beth and Jennifer. Much like Lincoln, I too was captivated by their humor and some of the more serious topics they covered. I think that is exactly where Rainbow Rowell wanted her readers, right in the shoes of Lincoln.

It’s funny to say I “read their emails” as I listened to this one on audio. Perhaps that feeling that I was there is chalked up to the impressive narration of Laura Hamilton. She navigated through this book smoothly, easily giving each character their own voice.

Attachments, as all of Rainbow Rowell’s books that I have read/listened to at this time, are worth spending time with. Unique and fun.

My Cup Of The Grammys 2014

Published on March 5, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)7 Comments

Good morning! No idea how I fell off the face of the blog yesterday… but it happens…

and it happened to me. 🙂

(Probably because I was still out of coffee in the house and not thinking clearly….)

All is well today though – coffee is in my cup and the world is all shiny again.

On Sunday evening I watched the Oscars. I NEVER watch the Oscars. Oscars to me is something I recap the next day to see if there are any movies I should add to my “want to see” list. This year though some of the movies up for awards had caught my attention, Twelve Years A Slave, Gravity, and new to me but now on my radar as one I want to see, The Dallas Buyers Club. I also really appreciate Ellen and was curious how she would do up against the harshness of the Grammy press and movies that dealt with hard topics.

Fill up your coffee cup…. what I am about to write is my “One Cup Of Coffee” recap of the Oscars….. and go!

Ellen was wonderful, right from the start she was funny, mentioning the oldest person in the room (84)up for a Grammy and then repeating it loudly for her “I AM LETTING THEM KNOW YOU ARE UP FOR A GRAMMY”
AND Ellen was down to earth and that is really what I loved. She walked through the aisles instead of staying on stage. She announced actors while sitting in their seats. She was, well, Ellen.

This next person needs no introduction. However, if I do not introduce him, he will not know when to come out on stage. Please welcome, Brad Pitt.

And the speeches! There were some wonderful speeches. Jaret Ledo was the reason I googled Dallas Buyers Club and am not sure I had never heard of this movie, or probably more to the point, never heard what it was about.

And we can not forget Lupita Nyongo, who won for 12 Years A Slave and her speech brought tears to my eyes.

When Ellen had pizza delivered that was pretty sweet.
BUT I think the best moment was the Selfie pic, the pic that I am sure you heard by now…. broke Twitter. Tweeted and re-tweeted over 2 million times Ellen’s brilliant tweet broke the Twitter record (and caused Twitter to has technical errors)

Yes, the Oscars went long and there is some grumbling about that. I personally think Ellen made the whole event instead of a stuffy politely clap at the appropriate moments event, more of a fun party with friends celebrating each other.

The Grammy’s had 28.5 million viewers. It is said that it was a bigger turn out than the Friends finale. WHOA.

If you watched it count yourself in the numbers of seeing something pretty spectacular. If you missed it (you know watching Walking Dead, Amazing Race, or perhaps reading a good book…), try to catch some highlights on line. 😀

My cup is empty, time for a refill. Have an awesome day!