Tonight, three of my friends and I are going to the Pink Concert in Fargo North Dakota. Ahhh… yes, my first time out of Minnesota for 2014. SCORE! 🙂
We have tickets to the 7:30 show.
We think. 😉
I am a little leery about Pink at this time.
Last February, we also had tickets to Pink. She was going to be in Minneapolis. We had purchased our tickets through a friend who was buying a group of tickets. We purchased them in November 2012 and we were EXCITED!
A couple of days before we were supposed to go we discovered we never had tickets. 😯 The girl who has purchased them did so through a ticket venue that had actually over sold. They had called to tell her she did not have tickets and say they left a message which she never received. The ticket cost was on her husbands credit card and when they cancelled the charge he did not tell her. She was curious why they had not come by mail so had called and that is how we found out we did not have tickets.
THEN….
In November of this last year she was going to be in Fargo North Dakota. Again we purchased tickets… and 3 days before the concert she had a throat condition that her Dr made her cancel her tour dates for a week. We were cancelled. 😯
So…..
This is the rescheduled date tonight. I am happy to be hanging out with my friends… but after having been shut down twice… you can probably understand my paranoia 😀 . We leave town in about an hour. If nothing else it will be an adventure… and if you remember… my word for the year is Embrace. 😉
Have a great day – I will be back tomorrow afternoon. There are posts still coming. If you have any concert stories to share… I would love to hear them. 😀
Strong single parent Kate Baron has had no problem raising her daughter Amelia on her own. Amelia, even now at the age of 15, has always been a fairly easy laid back kind of girl. She didn’t get in trouble or hang out with the wrong crowds, she had few close friends but by choice not because she couldn’t have them. She gets good grades, Amelia’s easiness made it possible for Kate to pursue and be successful as a litigation Lawyer in a good firm.
So when Kate received the call from the Private School her daughter attended saying that she had been caught cheating, Kate is floored. Amelia had never done anything like this before and there must be some mistake. When Kate arrives at the school she is hit with an even bigger shock, Amelia had went to the roof of the school and jumped to her death.
Suddenly Kate is caught up in a whirlwind of emotion and pain. What had she missed? Where did she go wrong? The police have ruled it a suicide. Then Kate receives a text.
Amelia didn’t jump.
Now Kate is searching for the truth. Looking through her daughters emails, texts, and Facebook posts, Kate uncovers what everyone had missed, and she discovers a daughter she never really knew at all.
Why did I want to read this book? This book was chosen for our January Bookies read. When it was nominated, the synopsis was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. I had to read this book.
Reconstructing Amelia is a YA style read with a lime twist. It has a bit of a zing to it that makes it different from any YA I have read before. That zing is both surprisingly good and a bit bitter at the same time.
It is hard for me to put a rating on this book. On the one hand, I have always appreciated books that surprise me and this one did indeed do that. I liked Amelia. I liked the setting of the Private School. On the other hand, I had a hard time keeping in mind that Amelia was 15. It felt as the protagonist role was written for an older girl… 17 or 18. That may be just me.
Reconstructing Amelia is a good read. If you enjoy YA reads with modern-day and realistic teen dealings, this will be a good fit for you. I can see this as a movie.
Because my head is full of questions, I am wheeling out the Spoiler Button. All DOT certified for 2014… here we go.
I had a delivery of a table I sold on a Facebook site to a town 30 minutes away. ETA: 7:00 am. After loading the HEAVY marble-topped table into my car and cursing myself for thinking this was a good idea to meet up this early for the entire 30 minute drive (yes – that’s A LOT of cursing…) I arrived at the exact minute of 7:00 am where I met up with the delightful (not even being sarcastic) buyer who took the table off my hands and I purchase a coffee and drive back to town a little less annoyed with myself than I was previously.
Now I am wide awake having purchased coffee at the gas station we met up at (don’t dis gas station coffee – some of the best coffee is there 🙂 )and came home to prep for the Friends meeting at the Library at 9 am while I made another cup and now as I load up my car with everything I need for the meeting I make the third cup of coffee to go with me while I write this post.
COFFEE
I need the COFFEE as then I need to come home to meet someone here at 11:00 am, then back to town to do bank stuff, post office stuff, pick up dinner stuff, and prep everything I need to leave town tomorrow morning for Fargo for the Pink Concert. Yes, Fargo like in the movie…and yes, a LOT of Fargo was filmed where I live in Brainerd.
No we do not talk like that.
Does the movie annoy the crap out of me? YES.
And that is not the coffee talking.
Do you think I am rambling because of the coffee? Probably.
In bookish news – I finished *happy dance* the Book Club Book, Reconstructing Amelia. I think I will post my review today when I get home from said activities. 😀
Its Friday everyone. Cheers to you! Whats on your weekend agenda?
Hi everyone! For February at our local library we are putting up a ♥ Blind Date Display.♥ I am pretty excited about the concept, which is to take people out of their comfort reading zone and try a new genre or a new author. We will have a whole display up of books wrapped in brown paper with only the scan code uncovered for check out. Other than that you have no idea what you are checking out to read. We will put a little “singles ad” on the outside of each book so they have a little idea about who they will be dating…. for instance:
If this book were wrapped up and on the shelf the singles ad may read… “I am overly sweet and predictable, but people tend to love those qualities about me.”
I am VERY excited about this!
This afternoon I will be going in and setting up the window at the library to let people know about this and encourage them from February 1st – 15th to come in and check out a blind date. 🙂 Once they return the “date” they will have an opportunity to the end of February to fill out a little “Rate Your Date” survey with fun questions like, “Would you date this author again?” “How was your date as a whole, did you find you had things in common? ” Stuff like that.
Here is where YOU come in. 🙂
I am working on compiling a list of books for the library staff that would make for great dates. As we will be pulling these books off the shelf we do not want to use the uber popular books that are hot right now, but instead books that may expand the reader. You know, the favorites of your past. A book that might make the reader, “Go wow! I have truly been missing out!”
My challenge to you that I hope you will accept is to leave in the comments titles of books that you think would fit this “blind date” event. I will enter each person who responds with a book title between now and January 17th into a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card. IF you can also give me a fun singles ad to go with the book you suggest you will receive two entries. 😀 We want to have enough books to keep filling the shelf we set up as they are checked out. I will be encouraging my book club to go in and give it a try as well. 🙂
So there it is. I was working on ideas at home and then thought, who better than to ask the readers what books would make for great blind dates?
Thanks in advance! I so look forward to what books you will come up with!
Recently I was reading an awesome post of Elizabeth’s at Silvers Reviews and she was talking about book club books. She was saying that her book club puts book choices for a year in to a bowl and each month they draw out of the bowl and choose their next read. She said this kept people from becoming hurt if their book was not chosen as everyone has a title in the bowl.
For us (The Bookies!) We have had a tried and true system that I really enjoy since we began in 2001. We encourage each person to bring a book suggestions with them to the group. When it is time to pick we go around and everyone who brought a suggestion gets a chance to give a little description of the book. We ask that it follows this criteria:
It should be a newer release (unless it is classic month) as there are 18 of us and we have to find copies
It can be paperback or hard cover as long as it is under $15
If you can share where to find it and at what cost that is a plus (such as “the library has 4 copies in book and also an audio version” or “Target currently has this one for $8.99 and there are about 12 copies available.”
When the nominees are in we go around the room and we each have two votes. The two votes stems back to when we were a very small group and we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings; the two vote thing sticks to this day. 🙂
The book with the most votes is what we read for the next month. In the event of a tie, the decision goes to the Queen (oh and that is another post entirely….hee hee)
I like our system as we are not eliminating the possibility of choosing a book that just came out or to our attention.
If you are in a book club or reading group, how do you choose what you will be reading? It seems like every one I talk to has a different way of doing it and I am fascinated by all the ideas out there.
Please share here how your book club picks its books 😀
Good morning! Wednesday! This is exciting and anxiety causing all at the same time. The slow part of my week is over. Now every evening through Sunday I have something going on. Good stuff – a couple of dinners with friends and a concert… but when I look at it as a whole – it’s a lot. I am now in one day at a time mode 😀
For those of you who have been with me for a long time here, you are probably well aware of our Literary event we had here in Brainerd last fall called Wine and Words. It was an amazing fundraiser for our local Friends group of the library and it was a huge success. For our first year out of the gate we had hoped to have 100 people attend and we had close to 180. We had 5 amazing authors: Sarah Pekkanen, Sandra Brannan,William Kent Krueger, Wendy Webb and Lorna Landvik. It was incredible and we raised more money than we had intended.
So that is good. 🙂
We are set to do this again on August 22nd, 2014. I have already confirmed my wine guy “yeah Mark!!!” to donate all the wine, and I just dropped off the contract with the Arrowwood Lodge yesterday afternoon…. now… I need authors.
I have put a few feelers out, one that reads this blog often (you know who you are!) I would LOVE to have. I am looking for two out-of-state authors who have a few books under their belt and may be a recognizable name – as well as a couple Minnesota authors. We offer our authors an amazing room at the Lodge (seriously talk to any of them from last year – the rooms are incredible!) as well as their dinner. Myself and my co-chair of the event stay over night at the Lodge as well so we can spend as much time as we can with the authors. I am saying this out loud here hoping that if anyone has a connection, idea, or suggestion – either put it in the comments here or email me at journeythroughbooks@gmail.com.
We are going to have 200 people this year. I know this because we feel we will sell out and that is about all that room can hold comfortably with the silent auction and the wine guy (*waves to Mark again!*)
I think it would be amazing if I could find amazing authors through the help of my readership here. Feel free to pass the word on. 🙂 I would love to have the authors planned and in place by March.
Much like Downton Abbey, Longbourn gives us a look at what happens downstairs in the kitchens, and maids and footman’s quarters of the Bennet household (the Bennet’s of Pride and Prejudice). From the housemaids Sarah and Polly, to the Housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to the mysterious and handsome new footman named James Smith, there is just as much emotion and drama going on below the stairs as there is above.
In a modern world of many books taking a turn at the Pride and Prejudice classic (how can we ever forget Pride and Prejudice and Zombies???), it is almost with a sign of relief that I entered into this audio book knowing that I was entering the Bennet household zombie, vampire, and sea monster free.
As a big fan of the Downton Abbey Series (insert *sigh* here) and seeing many positive things said about the book, I eagerly downloaded this one to my phone. I am, as many are, fascinated that we as a society are not only intrigued with the rich and famous of the world, but also with the goings on of those who work for them. It is like a whole new era of potential rewriting.
Narrator Emma Fielding executed a wonderful flow to the book. Her voice was smooth and engaging.
Overall, I am going to be in the minority on this one. Perhaps my feelings are based on the fact that I have never read Pride and Prejudice in its entirety (I know, I know.. put the torched down! I am working on it!) I found Longbourn to be a bit drawn out and not as action packed as I had hoped – instead it was more of a slowly drawn out romance read, strongly leaning on a few main characters instead of the household. Romance reads have never been my thing. Longbourn does have its moments. My favorites are when the staff engage with the characters we know from Pride and Prejudice. I am sure if I had read P & P I would have connected more with the happenings.
I may have chosen the wrong time to listen to it, my mind tended to wander during the audio and it did not hold me for whatever reason. In this case, it may have served better to have read the book.
I do, as I mentioned, realize I am in the minority on this one, and as I do in any review that was not as favorable as I had intended, I offer to you reviews from bloggers I trust who had other opinions on Longbourn:
Good morning and happy Tuesday! Today is my first day back to work for the week and I am ready. It was fun having an extra day off but really…. I need to get moving 😀
Two things this morning – one is that Gautami Tripathi from India and from the blog Everything Distils Into Reading, sent in her picture of her book of the year yesterday and here it is:
If you have never checked out her blog, you should. I enjoy reading her posts. 😀
Secondly… and reason for the CREEPY title of this post, did you see I posted my review last night of Flowers In The Attic? A re-read for me probably from 25+ years ago. It was a fun adventure back into the attic.
I was sharing this read synopsis with a friend I had lunch with over the weekend. She had not ever read the book and I was sharing a few details that included the Grandmother calling the children something close to Devils Spawn but not quite. This led to me saying it in a very creepy voice over and over…. “Devils Spawn”. Then…. I thought it must be part of the post…
Well, it didn’t make the post, but I thought maybe it could make the morning meandering recap because if you have read the book (and even if you have not) – the grandparents are a few sandwiches short of a picnic….. awful people.
Nicknamed the Dresden Dolls for their fair complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes; Chris (14(, Cathy (12), and the twins Cory and Carrie (3), are adored by all who see them. When it comes to their parents, also tall, and gorgeous with that same blond hair and blue eyes they look like something out on a movie set.
Then one day a horrible accident rips through the family shattering their happiness. Their mother, who had no work skills outside of taking care of her children and home, is forced to do the unthinkable and ask her extremely wealthy parents for help. The older children soon learn that their mother had committed an unthinkable sin in the eyes of her father and he had disowned her years ago. While she works hard to restore her relationship with her father and be put back in his will, he must not know about the children. The children are placed in an upstairs bedroom that adjoins the attic out of the eyes of the servants and her father and asked to remain there for a few days while things are settled. The only one who knows they are there besides their mother is the grandmother who brings them food once every morning to last for the day.
But days tend to turn into weeks and weeks to months as the four children wait for the day they will be released from the room and given all the riches their mother has promised would come if only they were patient. Yet as the months turn in to years, and their mothers visits are less and less, the children, who in some cases are no longer children, realize they have only themselves to rely on for survival.
I read Flowers In The Attic back in probably my early teens. Originally released in 1979 I recall this book as being exciting and V C Andrews probably one of the few authors at the time that you could consider YA reading and that to a reader of my age at the time was something awesome.
When I agreed to review this book for the upcoming release of the Lifetime movie on January 18th, I was excited to revisit this story line. It is amazing what a difference a read can make from the eyes of a teenager, to reading it again as an adult.
In recent discussions with friends about the book, we laughed about how we loved the book as teens and how we thought it was some of todays YA that gets carried away with subjects that are a little heavy on the partying or the drug use considering the age of the reader the book is meant for…. however a little recap of Flowers In The Attic woke us up. In the early 80’s we were reading V C Andrews take on children being locked in an attic during a peek time of adolescence and definitely – although I dont think I thought too hard on it in my teens, a brother and sister that become way too close due to the circumstances they are held in.
The book, caught me again. At first I wasn’t sure in those first pages if I could bring back the feelings I had the first time I read through this one. Yet as I was caught up in the story line of bad parenting 101 coming down the generation pipeline I found myself reading late into the night wanting to know once again, how would they survive, what would happen to the twins, how did they stay sane confined to a room…. it was like reading it again for the first time.
I think perhaps this time, as a parent, my blood boiled a little more at the treatment of the children then it did all those years ago. Although I started out planning to read this book and leaving it at that, after finishing this one last night I know I will be searching out Petals In The Wind. Who knew that V C Andrews was the master of cliff hangers that make you have to read the next book in the series, just as well as many of our popular authors of today. Truly V C Andrews could still stand among the best of them.
Save the date! Mark your calendars for January 18th and the Lifetime premiere of Flowers In The Attic starring Heather Graham.
Did you know….
Flowers In The Attic (not surprisingly) hit the banned books list many times due to topics of incest?
There once were rumors that the book is part non fiction base on a situation of a relative to V C Andrews where a boy and his siblings were locked in an attic in order to ensure an inheritance.
Flowers In The Attic was my first book of 2014This book was mainly set in Virginia, where the grandparents home was.
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:
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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