Morning Meanderings… What Crazy People Do on Thanksgiving

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)39 Comments

Good morning…

Or for me….

that would be good night.  😀

Yesterday was a super fab day.  Our youngest College son came home and spent the entire day with us, eating too much good food… watching movies, and playing board games.

Turkey!

Then….

at 9:30 pm… we headed out into the cold Minnesota night to do what only crazy people do… hit the sales.  This is only my second time doing this and as I sit now in my recliner with sand filled eyes… I remember why I have not made this a yearly must.

It’s cold.  There is a TON of crazy people in the area I live in. The crowds.  The pushing.  The crabbies. The lines.  Did I mention it’s cold?  😯

BUT…

it is also crazy fun and Walmart at 10 pm Thursday night was hilarious.  We could not even park in the super center parking lot… instead we parked across the highway at JC Penney’s and walked over. 

The people were pushy to say the least and the crowds were probably “fire marshall worthy”… I found none of the items that were on my list as I could not get through the people.  My son Justin found a few movies and a board game.

check out lines at Wal-Mart Thursday night
Wal-Mart parking lot Thursday night

Then we went to Target…. also crazy but in a different way.  They did not open their doors until midnight so at 11:30 pm we found our way to the back of the line that then wrapped around the front of the building.  All I can say is thank God there was no snow or wind… I don’t think I could handle it. 

Target at 11:30 pm last night. We were in line around the corner from the front side of the building.

When we did get to go in – kudos to Target for having a plan.  They had people directing traffic, aisles taped off to keep us from getting grid locked and I went right to the movie sections without feeling I was taking my life into my own hands.  We left Target with movie purchases and a new IPOD home for me.  That was happy shopping.

We swing in, and quickly out, of Best Buy.  They are just too congested in their set up anyway to be able to do Black Friday right.  While I did pick up a movie I would have liked to have – I would rather pay full price for it on a different day then wait over an hour (I am sure) in their crazy long line.

We were home by 1:20 am… and I was in bed by 1:45 am.

It’s not over.

I was up at 5 am, waking Justin and we were out the door by 5:15 am to go the Mennards sale.  Mennard’s had the one thing I really wanted and my husband was buying it for me for Christmas… but it was my job to face the crazies and go and get it.  Not a problem for someone just as crazy.  😛

This time we were again in a line probably farther back then we were a few short hours prior at Target.  Again we were thankful for no snow.  It was cold… and I wished I was in Florida for Black Friday shopping… but it was doable.

And….

it paid off.  I get the Cricut machine I had wanted for $119.  I picked up several cartridges for $12.99 each.  Justin and I had fun, it wasn’t too crazy and we were back home by 7:15 am.  He is already back in bed… later we will go do lunch.  I am writing this post and going to catch a couple of hours of sleep myself. 

SSSQQQUUUEEE!!!!! My very own Cricut! (and assorted goodies)
The cartridges I picked up for the Cricut.... which... needs a name......

The weekend will be much quieter and I am excited to catch up on a few reviews and checking out the blog world to see what you are all up too.

Anyone else crazy enough to pull off the sales?  Oh please share the stories!  😛

Morning Meanderings… Oh… Seriously?

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)42 Comments

 

Good Morning And Happy Thanksgiving. 

I feel like a grub monkey.  😛

I have no idea what a grub monkey is, but if there was a picture of one in the dictionary… I am pretty sure it would look like me right now.  😯

 

ANYWAY…. yesterday I received some sad news that kept me away from the house until late.  In fact, by the time I did come home I was so emotionally exhausted that I curled up on the couch and was asleep by 8:30 pm and slept on the couch all night long.

This morning… I feel grubby… you know… like you feel when you have been camping in that hot plastic tent and you wake up feeling… microwaved?  Yeah… that’s me right now.  (Sorry about the visual :razz:)

And now as I sit here typing I am looking at my kitchen table… which is laughable and I think… picture worthy.

 

 

 

I think tomorrow morning… I will show you what my table and kitchen looked like AFTER I prepped for Thanksgiving.  😛

So what accompanies during this prep today?  Ready Player One on audio and I am LOVING it. 

Even in this mess, I am thankful for family and friendships and the combination of friends who are like family.  ♥  I am thankful for my home and my job.  I am thankful for the pets in my life… past and present.  I am thankful for my health.  I am thankful for this little corner of the internet that I call my blog home and for all of you who visit and make me smile.  I am thankful for the opportunities that present themselves every day – big or small, they make me who I am.

Have an awesome Thanksgiving everyone.  

 

 

Morning Meanderings… A Couple of Cool Happenings…

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)14 Comments

Happy Wednesday!

Life happenings (yes again!) are going to keep this short and to the point today… BUT

I have to mention two kind of fun things as we go into this Thanksgiving weekend:

1.  I am being featured over at Alyce’s At Home With Books today where I am talking abut my love/hate relationship with Anita Shreve.  Please take a moment today and go check that out.  😛

2.  My review of One Perfect Day by Lorraine Snelling came out in Her Voice magazine yesterday.  I am on page 30 and 31.

I have to run… but plan to be back later with a review and yet this week with a list of bookish holiday gifts that I love and I think you will too.  😀

2.  My review of

Morning Meanderings… Whats Happening In Books

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)17 Comments

Good morning.

Every Monday as I am perusing The Monday What Are You Reading posts I almost consistently leave these posts with a book (or two.. or three) added to me already impossibly massive TBR (To Be Read).  AND each week I think I should rat out these bloggers who make my TBR grow to a dangerously tippy pile because they described a book so well and made it sound so appealing… I could not pass it up.

If I ever have a book related injury… those who have added to me TBR (oh you know who you are) are fully to blame.  😛

SO this week I came almost unscathed from the Monday posts except for one. 

Christina from Reading Extensively caught me in a book trap when she talked about Anne Ursu’s book Breadcrumbs.

Now I may have been able to pass on this cover… but what I could not pass on was Christina’s description…

“I wasn’t sure if I’d like this at first since I don’t care for the original fairy tale but this retelling was very nicely done and I loved all the references to Narnia, Harry Potter, and other books.”

Seriously… I am a big sucker for book references in other books.

In other bookish moments I have just survived (barely) the assassination of Lincoln (Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly) and the hunt is now on for John Wilkes Booth.  AND Bod Owens has just encountered the man who killed his entire family (The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman).  AND my real life friend Eric Crabtree is sharing another account of his stint in the Air Force Base Hospital in Iraq in 2006 (A Captains Journal).

Where are your books taking you?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)74 Comments

Hello and welcome to another fun addition of 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!

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

Well… I am not sure what happened this past week.  I expected… more.  I thought I would easily whip through several books I had going but that was not the case.  I ad a meeting Monday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night.  And honestly – this weekend…. I slept a lot.  :zzz:

So here is what I did post (mainly items I had finished while I was away two weeks ago):

A List Of Odd Things (with pictures) that happened while I was in Honduras

Bookies Book Club thoughts on Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (*With a picture of our very own Cleopatra!)

Monsters Of Men by Patrick Ness (my long awaited review of the last book in the best series I have read this year!)

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale (you may have seen the movie but the audio is so much better!!!)

Season To Taste by Molly Birnbaum (the true and triumphant story of a want to be chef who lost her sense of taste and smell in an accident)

Ok… now that I look at the list… maybe it wasn’t so bad… what I reviewed was pretty awesome.  So while I did not get a lot of reading done, I did write some good reviews.  😀

I am still finishing the two audio from last week and should have reviews up soon… as well as a couple of books from last week too.

As far as what is new for this week:

Tuesdays at Castle Glower are Princess Celie’s favorite days. That’s because on Tuesdays the castle adds a new room, a turret, or sometimes even an entire wing. No one ever knows what the castle will do next, and no one-other than Celie, that is-takes the time to map out the new additions. But when King and Queen Glower are ambushed and their fate is unknown, it’s up to Celie, with her secret knowledge of the castle’s never-ending twists and turns, to protect their home and save their kingdom.

Yup… goin’ a little middle grade…. 😀

Arriving in the mail over a period of weeks are taunting letters that end with a simple declaration, “Think of any number…picture it…now see how well I know your secrets.”  Amazingly, those who comply find that the letter writer has predicted their random choice exactly.  For Dave Gurney, just retired as the NYPD’s top homicide investigator and forging a new life with his wife, Madeleine, in upstate New York, the letters are oddities that begin as a diverting puzzle but quickly ignite a massive serial murder investigation.

What police are confronted with is a completely baffling killer, one who is fond of rhymes filled with threats and warnings, whose attention to detail is unprecedented, and who has an uncanny knack for disappearing into thin air.  Even more disturbing, the scale of his ambition seems to widen as events unfold.

From BEA this past May…

Janessa McNeil’s husband, Dr. Brock McNeil, a researcher and professor at Stanford University’s Department of Medicine, specializes in tick-borne diseases—especially Lyme. For years he has insisted that Chronic Lyme Disease doesn’t exist. Even as patients across the country are getting sicker, the committee Brock chairs is about to announce its latest findings—which will further seal the door shut for Lyme treatment.  

One embittered man sets out to prove Dr. McNeil wrong by giving him a close-up view of the very disease he denies. The man infects Janessa with Lyme, then states his demand: convince her husband to publicly reverse his stand on Lyme—or their young daughter will be next. 

But Janessa’s marriage is already rocky. She’s so sick she can hardly move or think. And her husband denies she has Lyme at all. 

Reading this one for the INSPY awards…

In one terrifying moment, Dynah Carey’s perfect life is shattered by rape, her future irrevocably altered by an unwanted pregnancy, and her doting family torn apart. Her seemingly rock-solid faith is pushed to the limits as she faces the most momentous choice of her life–to embrace or to end the untimely life within her.

One I have been meaning to read forever…

Maybe that’s a lofty plan but there it is. 😀  Now I want to know what you are reading this holiday week!  Is this a big reading week for you with the long weekend, or is it a lite reading week due to big plans?  I am excited to see what you are reading so please add your link below where it says “click here”

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Season To Taste by Molly Birnbaum

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

Molly Birnbaum had a mission.  She wanted to be a chef.  Che spent her days working in Boston alongside a well-known chef, and her nights reading cookbooks ans studying food in preparation for her entrance to the Culinary Institute of America.

While taking a quick morning jog, all her dreams came to an end when she was hit by a car.  The accident broke her pelvis,  fractured her skull, tore her knee up, and destroyed her sense of taste and smell.

Her bones would heal in time… but her sense of smell and taste?  That was another story.  How could Molly become the chef she wanted to be if she did not have her sense of taste and smell?  Molly quickly sank into a depression.

Then Molly made a choice not to sit back and let this destroy her.  By researching and working with experts, Season To Taste is a story of triumph and overcoming enormous obstacles.

I read and reviewed this book as part of Weekend Cooking, found at Beth Fish Reads.

 

 

 

Molly Birnbaun: Recipient of the Politzer Traveling Fellowship In Arts and Culture from Columbia's Graduation School of Journalism. Her work also appeared in the New York Times and Art News Magazine.

 

I read a couple of reviews on this book a while back and loved the sound of it.  Being a foodie, and finding myself more and more fascinated with non fiction… I was sold on knowing more. 

Molly tells an amazing story of a dream to be a chef and how in the blink of an eye, that dream was shattered.  Most of us would probably have given up there and moved on to something more doable, but not Molly.  Molly instead works hard to find out why she has lost her sense of smell and taste and that is really what makes this book a page turner.

As Molly describes food attached to memory, even my mouth watered at her descriptions of dark chocolate and bean scents wafting from coffee shops, sweet pastry’s and good seasoned spaghetti.  I could not imagine putting these items into my mouth and sensing nothing but texture…

The research of smell and taste also intrigued me.  On page 89 it was discussed how if we are eating something and we become sick our brain is programmed to remember that, making that taste and smell associate with the sickness.  I can personally account for that.  As a teen, I loved coconut… all things coconut.  Then one eventing I remember clearly that I was babysitting and eating coconut right out of the bag (like you buy for baking).  I had a flu bug that night and wound up throwing up … well… coconut.  To this day – I can’t eat anything with coconut in it.

Molly’s journey from the accident to her strong desire to cook and bake causing her to learn all she can about scent and taste was an amazing one.  Not only did I learn through this book much about how our senses work… but also about food, food that made me long to try some of Molly’s specialties this coming week.

Molly had a way about talking about food (as I think all good chefs do) that make you long for what they are describing…. I soon found myself making mental notes to pick up asparagus and fresh Parisian, longing for baked sweet potatoes, and lightly sautéed chicken breasts with mushrooms and wine.

Foodies beware… this book will make you hungry.  You want to know about Molly Birnbaum?  Check her out at her popular food blog:  My Madeleine.

 

I purchased this book from Amazon

Morning Meanderings… Expect An Avalanche

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)18 Comments

 

Good morning. 

Its funny… it is early, but I am already running late.  GAH.  How does that happen?  I need to be out of the house in 18 minutes…. I think that would be pushing it… but I will see what I can do.  😛

I am on the verge of finishing two audio books and three book books… all within the next day or two… does this happen to anyone else?

Seriously it feels like I have nothing to review and then wham!  I am overloaded in reviews.  I also have a review to do of the movie Atlas Shrugs (seriously… this is a review I am not looking forward to…)

As for today… I have a late breakfast with my friend Wendy and then back home to do a little reading and keep my weekend at a nice low blip.  I am looking forward to this afternoon as being quiet and feel that will cause me to go into tomorrow well rested and ready to go into Thanksgiving week.  (How did it get to be Thanksgiving already?)

I suppose this will be a crazy week for some of you, but for us… not so much.  We do not have a lot of family and our son Justin will be coming home (YAY!!!) but Brad will be in Jacksonville Florida (Navy) until his leave in January. 

Our holiday get togethers usually mean movies, board games, and food.  It works for us.  😛

Ok… I am off.  I will be back this afternoon with a review and later with the What Are You Reading post. 

Enjoy your Sunday.

 

 

Morning Meanderings… Saturday Thoughts

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)52 Comments

 

Good morning.  Life as of late has been…

a learning experience.

I would like to say that it has been hard…. and that would be true… but I also have to admit that I am learning through this…. and growing through this… in positive ways.

One thing that has been made abundantly clear this past week is that I am not alone.  People everywhere are dealing with pain and while it is not the same as mine – it is just as real and just as painful to each person.

 

On a lighter note… I am having a pretty low key weekend here and loving it.  Yesterday, I didnt even leave the house.  Cleaned a little, slept a little, and caught up on some much needed down time after a fairly busy week and returning from Honduras last weekend. 

Today, for Saturday Snapshot I thought I would post a few more of the pics from my week in Honduras:

Steps up the side of a mountain

 

Bird of Paradise against a building

 

 

We seen this at a restaurant we stopped at

 

 

Alyce from At Home With Books hosts this meme.  Stop over and see what others are posting for Saturday Snapshots!

Morning Meanderings… Breaking Dawn at breaking dawn

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Good morning.

I am a tad bit groggy this morning… but things are still doable.  😀  Last night I went with a couple good friends (*waves at Amy and Dee*) to go see the midnight showing of the Release of the Breaking Dawn movie.

So the question this morning (and the question earlier this morning as I drove home at 2:11 am…. ) was it worth it?

If I enjoy a book, I want to see the movie.  I know that many people disagree with me here and think a movie can spoil a book.  I don’t think so.  A movie – rarely lives up to the emotions and visions a book produces…. however, I personally find it interesting to see how a movie director would see the same scenes I read….

I really like the diversity in visions…. and occasionally – the movie vision can be outstanding.

So back to the question… was it worth it.  Yes, to the point that I would have wanted to see it anyway… no to the fact that while the movie was ok… it was not Harry Potter phenomenal (not that I thought it would be…) and in fact there are a couple of scenes that were down right cheesy.   (Que the talking wolf scene….)

BUT – to go hang out with friends… leaving my house at 11:10 pm to sit in a theater waiting for a movie to start at midnight, with good friends….

priceless. 

😛

Recommended?  Sure… it tells a story and if you have read the books and followed the movies so far, why not? 

Now, hopefully I can be somewhat productive today… I have books to mail, bills to pay, and a home that could use a little attention (this equals audio time!)  😀

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale (Fantastic!)

Published on by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Have you met Frank Abagnale…. err…. Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, or Robert Mojo?  They are all the same man.  AND not a fictional man either… but a con man of epic intelligence and a “no fear” attitude that brought him far.

During Franks great conning years he sweet talked his way into a pilots uniform and co piloted a Pan Am jet… this “Pan Am” masquerade brought him money, fame, and women from all over the world.  Frank also practiced law without a license and forged over $2.5 million dollars in checks – all before he was 21.

Abagnale lived a life of luxury and fantasy until the law caught up with him.  Now recognized as the nations leading authority on foul-play, Abagnale shares his incredible, occasionally hilarious true story of being a man with a mission. 

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

I seen the movie Catch Me If You Can many years ago, starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DeCaprio (as Frank Abagnale).  I really enjoyed the movie and knew it was based on a true story and that was that.
Then last month, Audible.com had one of their fabulous audio book sales I chose this one for $4.95.  Turns out, that was a great $5 buy!  As soon as I started listening, I knew I was in for a treat.  Narrator Barrett Whitener tells it like it is and I was quick to realize that this audio was going to be better, MUCH better, than the movie.
Told in great detail, Catch Me If You Can is Frank’s true retelling of his start during his teenage years as he had bigger dreams and wants than he had money.  His swindling career started with his own father (which he regrets to this day), and went as big as posing as a Pan Am Pilot and receiving all the perks that go with it. 
When you listen to how Frank makes things happen for himself you will be astounded how simply he gets away with things.  A few phone calls posing as reporters, students, and trainees, gets Frank the information he needs, a few questions to the right people finds him being fit for uniforms, receiving the tools to make forged licenses, and at one time – even flying on a fake passport.
Franks story is one that is both frightening (at how simple his forgeries are!) and astoundingly laughable (Franks escape off a plane through the toilet is certainly one I will not soon forget!).
If you are looking for an interesting and well narrated audio, look no further than Catch Me If You Can.  I find myself still talking to friends about this one! 

Goodreads Review

Audible review

The 2011 WHERE Are You Reading Map has been updated to include Catch Me If You Can
Purchased from audible.com