Book Journey

Morning Meanderings… Sunday Salon

Published on March 18, 2012March 18, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)32 Comments

Good morning!

Normally on Sundays I talk about the past week and show you what books have come in to my home, either for review…or self inflicted.

Today, this morning, however… I am in Fargo Minnesota finishing up a girls weekend and my books that came in… are back in Brainerd and I can not recall what they are well enough to share them at this time.

However… I can share my week. Typical week this past week but a fun one. Monday I have a lot of people over and that was fun and my house has not been more clean in quite a while. 😀 Tuesday was book club which is always fun, even when I am not overly thrilled with the book. Wednesday I did not have my usual volunteer commitments as it is spring break so instead I came home and watched Survivor and Modern Family with my hubby….. no crazy over committed evenings are the best. Thursday I worked and prepped for the weekend, and Friday after running around to the gym and to the grocery store….

left for Fargo with three friends.

Ok… let me clarify. Fargo is nothing like the terrible movie called…. ummm…. errrr…. Fargo.

IN the movie, people talk with a “you betcha” and a lot of “ayyyyy” and “oh ok”. I do not talk like that. The movie is probably number one for making me angry…. all time. 😀 Hated it. Really I did.

What Fargo is actually is a fun town to shop in, great restaurants and about three hours from my home. It is a jaunt… yes, but occasionally a fun trip to make. Last time we came here was three years ago. So we shopped, and we ate, and we watched a movie. Good times. 😀

Soon we will pack up and head towards home. I have a floor hockey game at 4 pm today.

Life is full, but good.

What does your Sunday look like? Any plans?

Morning Meanderings… Feast or Famine

Published on March 16, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)19 Comments

Good morning! 😀
The last few days when I get up and come into the kitchen to make coffee and read emails, I reach for the cd player to push play as per habit and…

crickets.

My kitchen cd player is one of the three audio spots I have and as of this past week I have had no audio to put in it.

THAT is so weird. 😯

It just happened that all good audio I have listened to and returned to the library. All the poor ones have also been returned. I have several I am waiting for but none were in yet. A quiet kitchen is odd… a couple of times I pulled the IPOD home out of my bedroom so I could listen to that audio while in the kitchen/living area but that was a pain and then that one was never where I needed it to be.

Yesterday I stopped at the library thinking I had a book that I had requested in. I did not. Instead I had 4 audio books…. delicious audio books…. all waiting for me in a row with my name on them.

The famine is over.

Dont they look good? A nice mix to listen to over the next couple of weeks! 😀

Today, well, this morning, I am off to the gym. Then I am coming home and preparing to go to Fargo (yes, like in the movie but not scary like that…. trust me!) for the weekend with a few girlfriends. Laptop is coming with so I plan on popping in when I can and updating. Minnesota is breaking all sorts of weather records here and word is we may reach 80 degrees this weekend. It is March. In Minnesota. That is INSANE. In a good way 😀

Morning Meanderings… Not Always The Sharpest Tool In The Shed

Published on March 15, 2012March 15, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)28 Comments

Good morning! Yesterday it was almost 70 degrees in Central Minnesota! I stared out the window as often as I could while at work yesterday. I was like a kid who could not wait to get outside! Right after work I ran home, grabbed my roller blades from the garage and my dog from the house.

Yup. You read that right. Ever since we lost Elmo in October Bailey (our shih-tsu) has not been the same. He mopes around, he has put on weight. AL and I are both very busy and don’t spend a lot of time with him except in the evenings, and that is usually not active time but “come and lay down by me while I read or watch TV” time.

SO…. I felt guilty just running to grab my blades and leaving… and in my head, I pictured a happy Bailey trotting ahead of my while I bladed.

What was I thinking?

So I get to the trail. I strap on my modern-day fanny pack thing… yes, I am THAT cool…. with my water bottle, a place to hold keys and cell phone and gum. Necessities. Bailey waits patiently in the jeep while I put on my blades and then put a retractable walking leash on him and off we go!

What I did not think about:

Bailey is 13.

He has very short legs.

He is overweight.

We have never done this before.

Bailey was not ahead of me as I bladed he was behind. He trotted but I had to go very slow. I got my heart rate all the way up to an exhilarating 113. I know… I know… “Slow down before you pass out!” 😛

The original goal was to go up to the 2 mile marker to check to see if the trail was clear for biking. I instead went to the one mile marker, and for over half of it I bladed while carrying Bailey. Heart rate while carrying Bailey: 144.

There were other people on the trail and many had dogs. The dogs loved Bailey. Tails wagging they approached him big and small. Bailey froze like he was stuffed. One pup was 9 weeks old. Bailey was a statue.

*sigh*

Oh well… the good news is the trail is clear and that means my bike is going to get the tires checked and then I am hitting the trail first chance I get…. yes, without Bailey. I think maybe, he is more of an indoor dog. 😀

I was talking with my friend Wendy last night and as I told her the blading story I said “I don’t even know if I can blog about this. It doesn’t seen real that so much crazy stuff can happen to one person. But then again… I suppose if you tend to bring on crazy…. things are going to happen. 😀

Enjoy your day – today promises to be lovely as well. I wish I had time to hit the trail again, and maybe I will after work. I have some things to do tonight and early tomorrow to get ready for a weekend out-of-town with friends.

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson (with The Bookies book club)

Published on March 14, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

Every day when Christine wakes up she wonders who the man is sleeping next to her. She does not recognize herself in the mirror. Every day her husband Ben patiently tells her who she is, what has happened, and how long it has been. And it has been a long time.

Christine, as is explained to her, is amnesiac, the result of a serious and mysterious accident. At the urging of her doctor, Christine is encouraged to write in a journal every day to help jog her memory of what has been happening in her life. One morning as she goes to read her journal and see who she is she opens it to find one big header:

Do not trust Ben.

What does that mean? Why would she not trust this patient man who has stood by her patiently day after day as she tries to remember. And then slowly, very slowly Christine with the help of the journal and her doctor, starts to see glimpses of a past that does not coincide with what she is being told by those she trusts the most. And for that matter, can she even trust who she has told herself she is?

Word on the street is Before I go To Sleep will be a movie. I would love to see this as a movie, I think it would translate to the screen in a big way that would keep your heart racing until the end!

Mmmmm hmmmm…. I know right? Twisty and turny synopsis? Well it is a twisty and turny book! This book through my emotional meter out the window. As it opens, I think Ben is amazing, how patient to repeat the same thing to the woman he dearly loves day after day. Then…. I don’t like Ben… I have my reasons. 😀 And then… Oh Ben, you are awesome.

See what I mean? And it’s not just with Ben. As Christine learns more about herself, it is still like reading a book through a veil, you never quite see her clearly enough to say you know her. At the time of the reading, that annoyed me that I could not quite get a grasp on her. Now in hindsight, I wonder if that is not just a brilliant move by this new author…. after all why should I see Christine clearly when she can not see herself that way?

In the end for me, I was still frustrated… the twists the turns, I felt were too many… I was exhausted trying to keep up and annoyed with all the characters. Yes… all of them.

But – know this … I am in the minority.

Not only have I read raving reviews on this book, it was also our March book club pick for the Bookies. I was excited to not only read this for the TLC book tour, but to also include the opinions of a group of fantastic girls that LOVE books and discuss them well.

And so the Bookies reviewed. Out of the 12 of us in the room, only a couple struggled with the book the way I did. For the most part they loved the ups and downs and ins and outs never knowing… thinking you know… then realizing you know nothing. On a scale of 1 to 5, the book pulled in a strong 4 average.

And of course, if the Bookies do a house meeting… we have FOOD.

Check out Angie’s review of this book at By Book Or By Crook… Angie is in our book club and had a fantastic time with the book and wrote an amazing review!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for allowing me

to read this book before I went to sleep 😀

this beautiful life by Helen Schulman

Published on March 13, 2012April 8, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)13 Comments

Jake Bergamot is your typical fifteen year old. Scratch that… Jake’s life might be better than average. He lives with both parents who are still in love and married. He has a little sister who is adopted from China. He lives in a nice home in a nice neighborhood and has great friends.

Then one evening after returning home from a party and barely turning down one girls advances, but yes, still turning her down. He turns on his computer and sees that this 8th grade girl, Daisy, has sent him a sexually explicit video, a dance of sorts. Stunned and not sure what to think of this, he forwards the video to his best friend… who of course, sends it on to his friends, and so on and so on…

Within hours the video has gone viral and Jake and his family’s life have been turned upside down. Jake is suspended from school and the students either look at him as a hero (the jocks, the rockers, the stoners) or as a real loser (the preppy girls – and most importantly the girl Jake really likes, Audrey).

Jake’s dad is asked to take a leave from his job just until things settle down, after all who wants to make business deals with the father of a son who is involved in a sex scandal. Sex scandal? All Jake has done is pushed forward on an email…

Jake’s mom takes to avoiding the public. She can’t handle the whispers and instead finds herself in her home day and night, not changing out of her sleep clothes, and really not doing much of anything other than surfing the net on her laptop to see where the story of her son is falling next.

Where will it stop? Will Jake’s momentary lapse of good judgement destroy his family in a world that is all too hung up on media and social networking?

When I initially read the synopsis of this book I knew I wanted to read it. After all, social media is HUGE, and as much as I love being able to Tweet something funny, post a status update on Facebook of where I am having dinner and with who, and texting my friend to meet me at the gym… it also scares me a bit too…. how much is TMI? How desensitized are we becoming when everything and anything is fair game to post for the world to see?

This Beautiful Life started slow for me… I picked it up. I put it down. I picked it up again. The beginning was confusing, didn’t seem to flow and I found myself back tracking to fully understand who these two kids were, why would you name your kid Coco and was she adopted? Did I miss that, oh no – here it is, further in.

And then suddenly, I broke through the books barriers and I was in. I followed Jake to the party, I seen what happened… I understood what happened… and I was with him when he got the email. I even understood why he passes it on… really what 15 year old boy wouldn’t, even if it was for a second opinion from a friend?

For the most part I liked the book and it felt real to me. The few things that stood out that caused me trouble were occasionally it seemed like the narration wondered off into an over described scene that didn’t flow or an odd parental flashback, and I really never felt Coco was a developed character so not really sure why she was there. At times, I forgot about her as the story mainly centers around Jake and his parents.

I feel the book had wonderful potential and hits on an all to real subject. In fact there is a line on page 112 that really made me think..

“Is there an operative shame factor? Or has the internet killed all that? I mean, if everything that’s private goes public, is it still humiliating?”

The ending wrapped up suddenly and quickly. This is a book I will think on for awhile, but I dont have a strong feeling on it now, one way or another. There are parts I thought were extremely well done, and other parts that dont seem complete.

Amazon Review

Goodreads Rating

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for allowing to explore This Beautiful Life

Morning Meanderings… And This Is Why I Stayed Up Until 1 in the morning…

Published on March 13, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Good morning. 🙂

Ok.. this is what happened. Life… as you know… has been busy. On Sunday I cleaned house and ran errands and pretty much kept on my feet all day. Monday I went to work at 8 am and came home at 4, dusted and vacuumed, made banana bread and had about twenty people over at 6 pm for a group discussion until 8:30 pm. Picked up the dishes, cleaned up a bit and sat down to finish my book club book for tonights review…

and then proceeded to check emails on my personal and book accounts. Responded to a few. Went on Facebook and wrote a few things and played a game (or two) of Battle Tetris. Answered comments on the posts… ate a piece of fish. And then… at 10:20 pm I started reading…. (um…. I had a good 200 pages to go….) 😯

So am I there yet? Not quite but I will make it…. what am I reading?

Have a good day everyone I am off to work and then book club tonight. I have a review coming up this afternoon that you will not want to miss 😀

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 11, 2012March 11, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)58 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.

This past weeks winner:

Lori from Escape with Dollycas

**PS I am a little (ok a lot) late on getting winners out as of late. I hope to get all packages out this week.

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

I am feeling pretty awesome right now. It was a perfect weekend. Saturday I was a slug… I literally stayed in the recliner most of the day, wrote a couple reviews, read an entire book, napped, and we ordered in for dinner and watched a movie.

Sunday, had church, went to the gym, came home and cleaned my entire kitchen, took apart the dish washer, cleaned it all out and put it back together, dusted, swept, mopped, cleaned bathrooms, jumped back on My Fitness Pal, and then had floor hockey. PRODUCTIVE? Yes. 😀

So now lets see how this past week went:

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver (hoo yeah! Read it!)

Pandemonium – SPOILER PAGE! If you have read it, here we can talk about it! You know, about the thing… and the thing, and oh yeah – the THING!

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory (fantastic!)

The Eyre Report #3 (my update on the reading of Jane Eyre)

The Flight Of Gemma Hardy by Margaret Livesey (a little funny that I did not recall going into this book that it is a more modern version of Jane Eyre 😀

Ice by Linda Howard (Yes, occasionally a snarky review is in order.. and here it is) 😯

DNF: Great House… by disc two I was so lost I put it away.

All in all, I think a pretty impressive week :D. I feel pretty good about what I got done, a mix of books and audio. Going into this week here is the plan, knowing I have a busy start to the week and then a girls weekend coming up on Friday…. so it will be a light one:

Katniss Everdeen’s adventures may have come to an end, but her story continues to blaze in the hearts of millions worldwide.

In The Girl Who Was on Fire, thirteen YA authors take you back to Panem with moving, dark, and funny pieces on Katniss, the Games, Gale and Peeta, reality TV, survival, and more. From the trilogy’s darker themes of violence and social control to fashion and weaponry, the collection’s exploration of the Hunger Games reveals exactly how rich, and how perilous, protagonist Katniss’ world really is.

• How does the way the Games affect the brain explain Haymitch’s drinking, Annie’s distraction, and Wiress’ speech problems?
• What does the rebellion have in common with the War on Terror?
• Why isn’t the answer to “Peeta or Gale?” as interesting as the question itself?
• What should Panem have learned from the fates of other hedonistic societies throughout history—and what can we?

Doesnt this sound like fun? I figure with a little over a week out from the movie this would be a great read!

Newlywed Caitlin Shetterly and her husband, Dan Davis, two hardworking freelancers, began their lives together in 2008 by pursuing a lifelong, shared dream of leaving Maine and going West. At first, California was the land of plenty. Quickly, though, the recession landed, and a surprise pregnancy that was also surprisingly rough made Caitlin too sick to work. By December, every job Dan had lined up had been canceled, and though he pounded the pavement, from shop to shop and from bar to bar, he could not find any work at all. By March 2009, every cent of the couple’s savings had been spent.

So, a year after they’d set out with big plans, Caitlin and Dan packed up again, this time with a baby on board, to make their way home to move in with Caitlin’s mother. As they drove, Caitlin blogged about their situation and created audio diaries for NPR’s Weekend Edition–and received an astounding response. From all across the country, listeners offered help, opening their hearts and their homes. And when the young family arrived back in rural Maine and squeezed into Caitlin’s mother’s small saltbox house, Caitlin learned that the bonds of family run deeper than any tug to roam, and that, with love, she and Dan could hold their dreams in sight, wherever they were.

Made for You and Me captures the irrepressible spirit and quiet perseverance of one small family–and offers to share that strength with any reader willing to make the journey.

This one has sat way too long waiting on… me. 😀

Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidently hits and kills a girl on a dark, country road. For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, connect and disconnect and reconnect with each other and their victim. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest tragedies and joys of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect.

I am about half way through this one and hmmmm…. I dont know yet.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much.But the sisters soon discover that everything they’ve been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected.

This one has such a fun title! This is up next after Carry The One.

SO that is the plan and I do hope it is doable. I have another book I want to read too that I put up on this meme two weeks ago and still have not gotten to it.

I now want to know what you are reading! There was a time I used to get around to read and comment on all your posts but with the additional hours at work and working a full day on Mondays now it makes it hard to do so… in the next few weeks I will go back to my regular hours and then I can get back to more comments. 😀 In the mean time please leave a comment on this post and I will be sure to get around to all of you who do (I just love to chat books!!!)

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Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Published on March 11, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

*This review may contain possible unintentional spoilers to the first book, Delirium.

pandemonium is set six months after the first book in this trilogy, Delirium. In a brief recap, Lena was due to receive her procedure that eliminates deliria (feelings of love). Living in a controlled Dystopian society, the government believes that deliria (love) is just messy and people are better off with out it When Lena meets Alex, a boy her own age who had managed to avoid having the procedure done, Lena starts to have second thoughts and a plan is made to escape with Alex.

Now, six months later, pandemonium opens with Lena having survived (barely) to make it to the Wild’s where a small community has formed of those who have not had “the cure”. Outcasts, Intruders as they are called. Lena now has to learn to live in a very different manner and it is going to take all her strength and determination to make a go at this new type of life.

Thrown back and forth between this new world, and the one she came from Lena feels she is living a double life…. which however holds the real Lena’s heart?

**Lauren Oliver and I in New York in 2010 (and bonus sssqqquuueeee for Lauren mentioning the Javits Center many times in Pandemonium, which is where BEA is held!)**

Ahhh…. pandemonium how I have waited for you! It has been almost a year since I had plunged head first into Delirium which left me with a huge cliffhanger that I wanted to know what would happen next! Pandemonium did not disappoint, taking off right from where Delirium left off I learned quickly that author Lauren Oliver has no problem making the hard choices when it comes to what characters will carry on. Shocked at first (but pleasantly so) by the direction that the book went… I found the more I read I read, the harder it was to put down.

Written in clever alternating chapters of then and now, you read this book in two different times, Lena’s time in the Wild’s from day one, and then an alternate later time where Lena…. well, you will just have to read that yourself. 😀

Highly enjoyable and oh snap if it does not leave me with my mouth hanging open and a smack to the head…. now I have to wait for that third book!

I do have some thoughts I want to share, so yup… I have fueled up and rolled out the Spoiler Button for those who have read this book and want to discuss it further, because…. I do want to talk about it. 🙂

Amazon Rating

Goodreads Review

I purchased this book from Amazon.com

Morning Meanderings…. Sunday Salon

Published on March 11, 2012March 11, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)18 Comments

Good morning. 🙂

What an over all pleasant week we have had here in central Minnesota. The temperature dipped early in the week but now has risen to the point that today I even had a window open. Bye Bye snow 😀

I only had a couple of evening commitments this past week which is way more doable for me than the every night thing so I feel a little more balanced which I am thrilled about. 😀

Friday evening we went out with my cousins and their hubbies which was fun. Saturday I decided to “unplug” from life and spent the day reading and a writing a couple of reviews. You know that feeling when you can sit and actually read an entire book, guilt free? I had one of those days and watch for my review of Pandemonium up later today. Now I am reading and finishing our book club read yet today.

Throughout the week a nice assortment of books have graced my doorstep:

The first 7 are books that came in for review and the last book, The Book Of Romance I purchased as in church we are studying The Song Of Solomon and using this book as well.

I am now working on a master calendar as to when I would like to review books… and trying to be more organized as to when they come in and when they are for sale to the public.

Today will be another pretty sweet day I think… I have floor hockey tonight, and house cleaning to do this afternoon as we are having people over tomorrow night. Tuesday is book club and I have prep to do for that yet too 🙂

Also in honor of “Springing Forward” with daylight savings time today I am hoping to commit to springing forward myself as well with a little plan… (more about that at Team Kickin It)

How is your Sunday going?

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Published on March 10, 2012 by Sheila (Book Journey)29 Comments

Elizabeth, a young widow of extraordinary beauty catches the eye of the “To Be Crowned” King Edward. When he tries to seduce her Elizabeth holds strong for as attracted to Edward as she is, she does not want to bring shame onto her family. Yet Edward can think of no other woman than Elizabeth so he marries her in secret to buy his time as to when he can announce this marriage to an ordinary girl, not one of royalty as his hand was promised….

fact mixes with fiction as the story unfolds of Elizabeth’s two sons and the mystery that surrounds them and the Tower of London to this day as an unsolved mystery, lost to the winds… and the sea.

1aaa — The Princes in the Tower is a term which refers to Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York. The two brothers were the only sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville alive at the time of their father's death. Sometime around 1483, it is assumed that they were murdered, although there is no proof of this theory other than their disappearance.

SO…. is it good to be King? Apparently. King Edward is constantly off in battle, hanging with the guys, and as time goes on women a plenty on the side.

AND if you ever thought to be a Queen would be sitting in the lap of luxury – spend a little time with this book. Elizabeth is constantly defending her household, at times sent into hiding for her and her children’s safety, and of course putting up with the Kings extra curricular activities.

I was first introduced to Philippa Gregory with The Other Boleyn Girl. I love love loved that book. In fact this was the first book our book club read and all agreed on that we enjoyed it very much. It was Philippa Gregory who first gave me the taste of historical fiction and I liked it. And I wanted more.

The White Queen was all I had hoped for… not only a fascinating fictional take of the interweaving of the life and times of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, but also Philippa’s magical touch of mixing the non fiction throughout. As I marveled at all the things that Queen Elizabeth did to ensure her childrens future as royalty… I had to wonder if her own ambitions would not be the death of them all….

Going into this read I was not aware of the true mystery lying within these pages… one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in English history.

On Amazon this audio is $12.81 currently and well worth it. The series, entitles The Cousins War continues with The Red Queen, which is about Margaret Beaufort and her founding of the greatest dynasty England has ever known, The Tudors. Before you groan about this being a trilogy, fear not, each book stands alone wonderfully and there was no cliff hanger at the end of White Queen, although I would like to continue on with these books/audio.

Highly engaging, Philippa Gregory herself says at the end of this book it is more fact than fiction.