Book Journey

Morning Meanderings… Funny Facebook Happenings

Published on March 8, 2013March 8, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)5 Comments

Good Morning Friends of Book Journey! Do not be afraid! I come in peace and with coffee. 😛

What a great week I have been having. I am accomplishing much, feeling good, working out, and digging my way through preparations for the Spring book sale at the Library, camp registrations for Camp Benedict, organizing paperwork, using Luminosity to keep sharp….

about the only thing that is lacking, is my reading. Hopefully I can get that back in the mix too… Book club is next Tuesday – I need to read that book this weekend 😀

So, for fun I thought I would share with a friend of mines post on Facebook last night:

Just for fun I thought I’d try to walk with a swagger. Dang. Blew out a knee. (Guess it’s a lot harder than ‘they’ make it look!)

Thats true! She did! 😛 I laughed…then I felt bad. But she is ok, and laughing at herself as well. She posted this morning the link to the commercial she was watching that made her try it:

Hee hee. SO my suggestion was that no one should swagger unless taking swagger lessons at their local gym and of course… stretching first. 😀

I’m off. I have a fun and busy morning and early afternoon. Lots of good things going on. Hope your Friday is wonderful 😀

Morning Meanderings… Happy Birthday Mater!

Published on March 6, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)21 Comments

Good morning! Today is all about Mater! Recently when looking at his papers he came with from the vet, I noted that he was born on March 6. I made a note not to forget that. 😀

Mater came on our radar last July when my Navy son was home and had a friend who worked at a Vet near by and told him the story of Mater. Mater was an abused puppy part beagle part basset hound who had a serious surgery at 10 weeks old because his owners were giving him alcohol. After the surgery, Mater was placed in a foster home where he fell out of the back of a movie truck and broke his shoulder and had another surgery.

Hearing his story my heart went out to this little dog. They were looking to find him a good home and were interviewing people. I was told that many people had tried to get him and were denied. They wanted to make sure whoever adopted him would provide him a “forever home”.

That third week on July, after an hour interview with the vet and three hours of waiting by the phone, we were told he was ours.

**He fit right in…. played until he would fall asleep with bones still in his mouth.**

**He grew fast – but made best friends with Sammy.**

Happy Birthday Mater!

Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Published on March 5, 2013March 5, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)4 Comments

13 years after Cannie’s debut in Good In Bed, she is back in full size humor and still working on her weight, her Physician husband Peter’s sudden desire to have another baby, and planning her daughter Joy’s bar Mitzvah (without the spaghetti strapped “way too adult” looking dress Joy has chosen for herself.) Oh yes, there is also that writing career she is supposed to be working on…. well, lets put a pin in that….

When Joy discovers her mothers highly verbal and descriptive novel she wrote years before, Joy feels she has stumbled on all her mothers secrets, including the grandfather Joy feels she has never had the opportunity to get to know and blames her mother for the distance between them. Joy now 13, and self-conscious and rebellious all rolled into one, makes her mother’s life more interesting by her sneaking off to see her biological father, skipping school, and reconnecting with her grandfather.

For both Cannie and Joy, this is a season of growing up and learning truths.

I am still a little confused about why this book was called Certain Girls. I must have missed something. Entirely possible. 😀 Jennifer Weiner is often a hit or a miss for me, yet I enjoy reading her characters and her wit so I keep coming back.

In Certain Girls I was able to revisit Cannie Shapiro and see where her life has gone since the ending of Good In Bed left her with a premature baby. If you read my review of Good In Bed you will realize that I did not love the book, but I did like it. Obviously enough to see where Cannie’s life has gone, a rare treat that we as readers do not always get, to see where the characters we have come to know are in their fiction lives years later. Kind of a “where are they now?” look into their life, fictitious as it is.

I liked Cannie better in this book. She seemed more sure of herself. I think the real win for this one was the voice of Joy… typical teenager, self-conscious about her hearing aids (due to her premature birth), feeling that her mom still treats her like a baby, and wanting to know more about the missing people connected to her through family blood.

Over all, this one was just ok. The ending was…. anger enducing. I can’t explain it. It just felt… disappointing. Frustrating. Like I had traveled far and then was thrown over a cliff. I expected something more, and that again, could be just me.

Morning Meanderings… Ahhhh… March In Minnesota

Published on March 5, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Good morning! Less than two weeks out from my first 7K of the year and I wake to this:

Two days ago it was melting like the wicked witch of the west, now it is back in full force. It started snowing yesterday afternoon just lightly, by the time I got out of the gym at 6:30 pm it had a good two inches on the ground and now…

well..

now I wait for the sun. 😀

I have no big book news to report as I ran around all day yesterday and by the time I stopped moving it was 8 pm and after trying to do a little blogging and a little tv watching, I gave up and was in bed by 10:30. Hopefully today I will get a little time to dig into beautiful Creatures, and a little audio too.

I am curious, friends in other places – how is your spring coming along?

It;’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)37 Comments

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

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

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

Escape With Dollycas!!!

Not a bad week here. Thanks to last weekends “audi-thon” while I painted, I feel a little ahead an still have three books to review. Here is what happened here last week:

The Sky Is Everywhere b Jandy Nelson Oh LOVED THIS!

The Shining By Stephen King (Its worth it to see the picture of me in the big glasses!)

The BIG Painting Project – check out what I did last weekend

A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson (Sooooo good!)

February Recap

Crazy Book Pitches! (Oh yeah there are some doosys out there!)

For this week I have planned:

A small boy, a cruel city, and the incredible dogs who save him.

Based on a true story!

When Ivan’s mother disappears, he’s abandoned on the streets of Moscow, with little chance to make it through the harsh winter. But help comes in an unexpected form: Ivan is adopted by a pack of dogs, and the dogs quickly become more than just his street companions: They become his family. Soon Ivan, who used to love reading fairytales, is practically living in one, as he and his pack roam the city and countryside, using their wits to find food and shelter, dodging danger, begging for coins. But Ivan can’t stay hidden from the world of people forever. When help is finally offered to him, will he be able to accept it? Will he even want to?

A heart-pounding tale of survival and a moving look at what makes us human.

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

I am listening to something in my jeep too but cant think of the title and really don’t want to go out there right now so ummm… yeah. 😀 What are you reading this week? Please add you link below where it says click here. I would love to see your posts!

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

Is It Just Me or Are Some Book Pitches Getting a Little Crazy?

Published on March 3, 2013March 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)36 Comments

As book bloggers, book reviewers, book chatters… whatever you want to call us, it seems if you do this any amount of time you will get book pitches. A book pitch is when an author or publisher or book tour company emails you and gives you the synopsis of the book hoping that you will like what you see and agree to read and review it.

Oh…. if only it were that easy! I have a separate email for all my book related email due to the fact that at times it can really be overwhelming when you are receiving many pitches in a day and you are trying to pick out what you would like to read and then review.

Lately, I have seen a new type of book coming through my email and I curious about what you think about these. What I am referring to is a book that starts out sounding interesting, say the book is about a college graduate, (ok, so far so good) and she is on her way to intern as an assassin under her uncles care (ummm… ok, different but I am still reading)… she is taking with her the household pet, a duck named Killer, and hopefully leaving behind the guy who makes her heart skip a beat, Jamal the tap dancing Eskimo who only speaks in haiku (and… I’m out.)

It is like they start out sounding like they have potential and by the time I am done reading the synopsis my eyes are wide in disbelief and I can not believe how far-fetched the book being pitched has become. I mean, seriously??? Does this sell? Is it just me who can’t stretch that far? I mean, I don’t know maybe I am missing out, these are not all coming from self published authors either but Publishing houses.

I wouldn’t even bring this up if it was a one time email but I have had a few of these recently… good start to the book synopsis and then it is like they went all Jerry Springer on me and I am wondering if there is a “baby daddy” involved and looking over my shoulder for tattooed tutu wearing midget’s playing banjo’s.

My point here…. is it me? Are you receiving these as well?

Thoughts? Please share. 😛

February Recap

Published on March 3, 2013March 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)22 Comments

February to me felt a little quick and not as awesome as my January was. It seemed between the back to back retreats in the beginning of the month, my new re-dedication to the gym, taking care of college son and his broken foot for a long weekend and handling all household things while Al (hubby) was gone for three weeks… took a toll on my reading.

Still… thankfully to the awesomeness of audio books, I can report something fairly decent:

Eat and Run by Scott Jurek

Peaches for Father Francis by Joanne Harris

Love Is The Cure by Elton John

Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Conner McNees

A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Devastation On The Delaware by Mary Shafer

The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by Davis Wroblewski

On Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah

That’s my month of reading. I think March will be better, it already feels like it is. 😀 Maybe it is the sunlight and melting snow that is making me optimistic. 😀

Here is the link to my Where I Have Been Reading Progress page and here is the link to my reading map… both fun ways to track books. 😀

SO how are you doing so far this year? Are you ahead of last year? Behind? Do you feel your reading style has changed over the past year?

Morning Meanderings… Check Out These New Books (SSSQQQUUUEEEEE!!!!!)

Published on March 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)14 Comments

Good morning! *Big sip of COFFEE*

I would have posted a little earlier but I got into the time suck of Facebook Home Page. You know the one, where all your friends post and you can just scroll down and see what is happening in the lives of those you know…. in recap here is what I learned:

Grade schooler suspended from school for having a pop tart shaped like a gun

My friend’s daughter started her first job

Reagan (Miss Remmers Reviews) posted a picture of how much sugar is in the different beverages we drink (Hello water!)

Our friends and a co-worker are currently in Hawaii with family (*jealous!*)

A friends mom is at an Autism Walk at Ridgedale Mall today

Coffee is on at my church! 😛

A guy I graduated with just was hired by Prince! Yes, Prince the musician!

Alyce (At home with books) is packed to move and celebrating her birthday by flashlight… no idea where the matches are 😀

Trish Collins is jonesing for Girl Scout Cookies

Hunger Games asks what talent do we have to become a victor…. ummmm…

A girl I graduated with is going off… about something I have no idea really…

My friend Lori once again posted pictures about abused pets … so sad.

My friend Belinda posted about how it is ok to be who you are. YES! 😀

My friend Ryan looks like he had a fun time bowling with friends last night.

Anyhoo… you get it… Facebook is fascinating but wow can you blow a lot of time hanging out there 😀

Back on track, here are the books that came into the house this week (a lot more than last week!)

The top two books Milkweed (for Book Club) and Confessions Of A Prairie Bitch (for giggles) are purchased by me. The rest are for review and there are some exciting titles here! Can’t wait to dig in!

My Sunday will consist of church, the working out at the YMCA with my cousin, working on writing up a story about my aunt for a magazine, and later a movie with my hubby – his pick this time. It is going to be a good day. 😀

A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

Published on March 2, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)8 Comments

Fifteen year old Mosey Slocumb wants to be like other girls her age. She wants to have close girl friends, she wants to date boys, and she wants to have a mom and a dad who love her to the core.

But none of this seems to be in the cards for her.

Mosey lives with her grandmother “Big” Virginia who feels that something bad happens every fifteen years. Why she had her own daughter, Mosey’s mom, Liza, when she was 15. Liza in turn had Mosey at 15 and when Liza turned 30 she has a massive stroke, that seems to carry a lot of mystery around it.

Then as if life is not mixed up enough, while a pool is being put in for Liza’s therapy a small box of infant bones is found during the dig and life takes yet another spin…

Whose bones are they and who holds the secret to that answer?

This is my third book/audio by Joshilyn Jackson. I have listened to Gods In Alabama, and Backseat Saints. All three of these audio books are narrated by the author and if you are an audio book person you are going to love her narration. If you are new to audio, these books would be wonderful starters as she is a captivating read.

A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty is a bit different from the previous two books I read. Because of Mosely’s age and occasional first person narration of the book, you could almost call this a YA read. Almost. Big is also a first person narrator of the book and Liza comes in as a third person narration, mainly recalling the past and what she wishes she could change. The result of this style of writing is impressive as you are hearing from the three generations of women with only 15 years between each of them.

I found the story line engaging but occasionally hard to keep track of the present and the past that were being discussed by the current narrator, you really had to pay attention to the perspective that the story was being told from, Mosely’s being the easiest to follow as she has a younger tone and voice.

Over all, I am once again thrilled with the creativity of Joshilyn Jackson, while this is not my favorite of hers that I have listened to, I am glad I spent time with it and look forward to reading/listening to her again.

Morning Meanderings… The BIG Painting Project

Published on March 2, 2013March 2, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)46 Comments

Squeaking in late today. I got up and hit the gym and then went and set the new March window at the Library. Then picked up a few groceries so I would not have to leave the house again today.. unless I want to… unless Al and I go to a movie… you know, something fun 😀

Last week I painted the downstairs of our house and I had said I would post the pictures today for Saturday Snapshot, so here they are:

A fun fact I found out last week, painting burns 320 calories an hour. This explains why after a day of painting we are a little stiff the next day. 😀
Check out more Saturday Snapshots at Alyce’s At Home With Books.