I seem to have put myself into a habit of sleeping a little later and then bustling around getting ready for work…. GAH. I don’t like that. The craziness of life, scheduling, etc has come to a point where I feel I am in overdrive for 15+ hours a day…. crash and do it again.
What is suffering?
sleep patterns
work out priorities
probably me 😛
I am working on this… and this morning felt a little more to the norm than it has in a while. I actually got up with time to spare. It went like this:
Up, let dogs out, get ready while listening to The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian on my IPOD.
COFFEE is ready and I sit at my Laptop (Asus) and pop up my emails. FAVORITE morning email has clearly become the Shelf Awareness newsletter that pops into my email box each weekday morning at 7 am. Seriously, if you are a book lover and are not subscribed to this newsletter; do so now (there is a link to it on my right side bar). Not only does it has info on hot books, but also authors (not all hot but authors just the same…. ha ha), giveaways, bookstores, and more. I love reading it!
Second cup of COFFEE (hello caffeine my constant friend!) while listening to the audio in my CD player in the kitchen. Just started We The Animals by Justin Torres this morning.
Now – out the door with COFFEE Cup (also my traveling friend), a can of soup for lunch, and now in my jeep listening to Snow Flower And The Secret Fan by Lisa See.
Work today, which I am normally off on Fridays but our office manager is on vacation this week and I offered to cover her Friday shift since I took a bonus day off last week for the girls weekend. 😀 Should be a quiet day in the office and then…. after three….
Who doesn’t like a big juicy steak from a world-famous restaurant such as New York’s Lombardo Steak House. The place is famous for their menu, the clientele…. and now the gruesome murder of a mob lawyer.
In the restaurant at the time of the murder is reporter Nick Daniels, conducting the interview of a lifetime with a legendary bad boy of baseball. Nick is shocked and shaken as the hit-man slips through all the activity without a hint of who he may be. When Nick realizes he actually has a key piece of evidence on his recorder, he proceeds to investigate the case himself despite dangerous warnings for him to back off.
New York’s Lombardo’s Steak House is famous for three reasons–the menu, the clientele, and now, the gruesome murder of an infamous mob lawyer. Effortlessly, the assassin slips through the police’s fingers, and his absence sparks a blaze of accusations about who ordered the hit.
As Nick continues to get closer to the truth… the truth becomes closer to him as well… first with his friends… and then even closer when they go after his family.
Chapter 2,489 ….. ha ha…. a little inside Patterson humor…. 😉
It is nothing new to hear me rave about a James Patterson audio. I have enjoyed many of his audio books immensely, especially the Mike Bennett Series he writes with Michael Ledwidge: Step On A Crack, Run For Your Life, Worst Case,and most recently Tick Tock. These books are filled with action, amazing narration, and honestly not gruesome as some of writing can be.
For all of the above reasons… I was excited to get my hands on Don’t Blink. And then…. I dont know what happened. I must have blinked.
The story line was kind of all over. I never felt I knew enough about Nick Daniels to care about him. He may as well have been named Joe Blow. He goes after a case that causes many (MANY) people to get killed. Friends, people trying to help him… suddenly it feels as though I am just read leaping from one attack to another… he barely gets out of one jam and then there is another and then anaother… and then when you think “whew… it’s over!”…
there is another.
In the end for me it was all a little too much…. enough plot here for two books. I didn’t really feel any connections to anyone and it actually became work to follow what was going on and who was after him now…
maybe I did blink and somehow missed the point, but that is my take on this one. Not a hate… just not a love. 😀
Good morning.:D Sorry about the lack of “me” yesterday. I just did not have any time whatsoever. Tuesday night I wound up going to a Women’s charity event that I had forgotten I had agreed to go to months ago… while I went grumbling all the way and felt it went on later than I had hoped… I really did have a good time.
Between that event and the fact that our 15-year-old shih-tsu has been having some heart wrenching breathing troubles at night… my sleep has been odd and sporadic. I woke up yesterday morning after a pretty much sleepless night worrying about our dog, on ly to discover it was 7:30 am and I work at 8:00 am…
Uhhh yeah… no morning post. When I came home in the after noon from work and had a book review post to write I instead fell asleep in the recliner. GAH.
A couple of weeks ago I was selected to be a judge in the Inspy Awards under the mystery/thriller genre. I am so excited to be a part of this! The five books I need to read and review are:
Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand, Bethany House, July, 2010
I am pretty excited (oops I said that already!) and hope that if you enjoy faith driven reads you will check out the entire list of books up for nomination at the Inspy site. You can also see the other judges there .
In one more crazy thought for the day… remember when I lost Monsters Of Men? Then I blogged about where I found Monsters Of Men? Well…. when I blogged about it, I put the book back where I had found it so I could take the picture for the post. THEN… I spent yesterday looking for the book AGAIN. Guess where it was? Yes – back on the shelf where I put it for the picture.
Step right up and don’t push… you will all get a chance to enter. The Night Circus is a mysterious Circus that opens only at night. It comes with no warning, and leaves the same way… but if you are lucky enough to catch it you are in for the time of your life. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves.
While attendees rave about the never-ending tents filled with amazing sights to see, what they do not see is the underlining workings of the circus. Celia, who has been raised with the circus since a child is running the Night Circus as a competition that even she does not quite understand… her opponent… could be anyone, friend or foe… she is unsure…. all Celia does know is that she must continue to work bigger and better in this mysterious game as she will soon find out – the stakes are quite high.
(push play above for a little review theme music)
The Night Circus first came to my attention at BEA this past May during a dinner with bloggers and publishers. The conversation at my end of the table was centered around a book, this book, that I had never heard of. “…as big as Harry Potter,” fell on my ears and that was enough of a sell for me. After all, have I not spent hours and hours of reading and looking for a book, a series, that has touched my life as much as Harry Potter and come up empty?
I searched the Book Expo the next day but the word was out… and all advanced copies of Night Circus were gone. I left with a promise from the publisher that they would send me a copy and yes, a couple of weeks after the expo, a lovely black and white striped circus wrapped book arrived in my mailbox. I did not remove the wrapping for the next several months… savoring the anticipation.
I started the book in print… while reading heard about Jim Dale narrating the audio version (Jim Dale also narrated the Harry Potter books) and purchased the audio version from audible.com to finish out the book.
First off know this… Celia is not the main character. Nor are the twins that are talked about frequently throughout the story – Widget and Poppet. No. The main character is indeed the circus itself. If ever life was breathed into a place, an object… this is it. The circus lives and breathes just as much as I do as I write this review.
The beauty of this book that I think could align it with the Potter books is the immense detail… carousels do not only go round and round… but beyond. Tea pots come to a boil on cue and tea is poured free hand from them. Celia wears a dress that changes color to compliment whatever the person she is talking to is wearing…a particular visual I loved were the trees that have poems running down the trunks.
At times story lines may appear unrelated…. but just wait as this is the real magic of the novel…. when it does come together there is a bit of magic to it all for the reader… I referred to it as a party for my mind.
While the book at first may appear to be all cotton candy and caramel apples…. you will quickly discover it is indeed a tightrope walk of event after event… each carefully placed to make the circus function as it does and one misstep…
could bring it all down.
Did it touch me as much as the Harry Potter books? No… but I have a lot of history with Harry. I have heard the buzz that the Movie rights have been purchased and that does excite me as I believe this read would make a visual feast. I will certainly be in line early to get my ticket.
Good morning COFFEE people! 😛 Ok, ok, none coffee people too but really I figured only coffee people are up at the crack of dawn like we are all hopped up on caffeine….
(maybe…. that’s just me…)
On Thursday morning of this past week I was tearing through my home looking for my copy of Patrick Ness’ Monsters Of Men book to take to the cabin with me. This search was to no avail and left me imaging all sorts of fates for the lost book:
1. I had it on the table during our recent book club book sale and someone snatched it up for $1.00
2. I used it for a prop to put my camera on during banned book week
3. I had it is my car and somehow it fell out
4. Last week Joey from the magazine article was over for a picture of the library and when I was straightening up, I placed the book in with the others (in this case…. forever lost…. ha ha)
5. Clearly someone broke into my home and stole it
So yesterday afternoon when I came home from work I wanted to read a bit but did not want to start the book club book… no I wanted my Monsters Of Men. I did another search and then in the library I looked up where I keep all of my have read and am keeping book sets and there it was!
AHHHHHH!!!!
Crazy that I found it where it really should have been all along. 😛
This is not the first book I have lost…. last year I lost ROOM in mid-read which was awful. Does this ever happen to you? (I am secretly hoping it does so I am not alone in my bookish insanity….) 😀
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.
I don’t know why I thought this past week was going to be a lighter one as I was so so WRONG. Last Monday I had a busy day working and cleaning, Tuesday was book club Wednesday was a long long day as I stayed late at work to get finished up with projects and went right from work to a volunteer position with students and arrived home around 8:30 pm EXHAUSTED. Thursday got up at 5 am – packed, fueled car, bought groceries, went to the post office, the re-store, the library and left town at 10″30 am for the cabin arriving back home from a crafting girls weekend at 9 pm on Saturday, Sunday morning church, prepped for a baby shower, helped with the shower, ran to pick up hoggie buns for dinner at our small groups home, went to the group and came back home at 8:00 pm to watch Amazing Race and write this post.
That said – here is what I managed for this past week:
Click on the pic for the Bookies Book Club Classic Month dress up and Pride and Prejudice reviewClick on the pic to see what we did girls weekend
That is it. That was my week. Just this afternoon I finished Night Circus and will review in the next day, and I can not seem to find my copy of Monsters Of Men… so frustrating! 😯
I plan to work on this week:
Rather than a devastatingly beautiful femme fatale, Cleopatra, according to Schiff, was a shrewd power broker who knew how to use her manifold gifts—wealth, power, and intelligence—to negotiate advantageous political deals and military alliances. Though long on facts and short on myth, this stellar biography is still a page-turner; in fact, because this portrait is grounded so thoroughly in historical context, it is even more extraordinary than the more fanciful legend. Cleopatra emerges as a groundbreaking female leader, relying on her wits, determination, and political acumen rather than sex appeal to astutely wield her power in order to get the job done.
*My book club chose this book for our November read. I will be in Honduras during our next review so I want to get a head start on this one so I can leave my thoughts with them. 😀
The witches of Bethel, New Hampshire are decidedly of the sinister variety—albeit more likely to sell real estate and wear stylish leather skirts than fly around on brooms and don pointy hats. Beneath the town’s charming rural surface of gingerbread Victorians, maple sugar houses, and fiery foliage lurks a conspiracy of evil reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” How evil? Suffice it to say that when somebody drops by to welcome newcomers to the neighborhood with a plate of vegan brownies, they should think twice before taking the first bite.
*I am in the mood for a spooky read and this one entered today!
Lily at 80 reflects on her life, beginning with her daughter days in 19th-century rural China. Foot-binding was practiced by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu, their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her, they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan. When war comes, Lily is separated from her husband and children. She survives the winter helped by Snow Flower’s husband, a lowly butcher, until she is reunited with her family. As the years pass, the women’s relationship changes; Lily grows more powerful in her community, bitter, and harder, until at last she breaks her bond with Snow Flower. They are not reunited until Lily tries to make the dying Snow Flower’s last days comfortable.
*I have never read See’s writing but have heard great things… I was excited to find this one on sale on Amazon!
In the spring of 1865, the bloody saga of America’s Civil War finally comes to an end after a series of increasingly harrowing battles. President Abraham Lincoln’s generous terms for Robert E. Lee’s surrender are devised to fulfill Lincoln’s dream of healing a divided nation, with the former Confederates allowed to reintegrate into American society. But one man and his band of murderous accomplices, perhaps reaching into the highest ranks of the U.S. government, are not appeased.In the midst of the patriotic celebrations in Washington D.C., John Wilkes Booth—charismatic ladies’ man and impenitent racist—murders Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. A furious manhunt ensues and Booth immediately becomes the country’s most wanted fugitive. Lafayette C. Baker, a smart but shifty New York detective and former Union spy, unravels the string of clues leading to Booth, while federal forces track his accomplices. The thrilling chase ends in a fiery shootout and a series of court-ordered executions—including that of the first woman ever executed by the U.S. government, Mary Surratt.
*I have always been fascinated with Abraham Lincoln, but have not really read a lot about him. I am excited to try this audio.
And of course if I could only find Monsters Of Men….
That’s my week…. all three of my audio should be turning over this week that’s why I have the line up for new audio. I am now excited to see what you are reading! Please add your What Are You Reading Link to the linky below where it says click here:
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I arrived back home from our girls craft weekend last night about 9:00 pm. I already have ran to Church this morning, have a baby shower I am helping with at 2:00 pm and a dinner commitment at 5 pm…. but had to pop in with an update 😀
We really had a good time over the last couple of days hanging out, laughing, and crafting. We actually crafted from noon on Friday until 10 pm at night – only stopping because we all agreed to shut down the activity and go watch a movie together. Of course we were back at it Saturday morning…
So much fun! I have never used a Cri-cut before but of course now… I want one. Thankfully Sara’s mom had about 30 of the Cri-cut cartridges so we were able tobe really creative – here is some of what we came up with in the end:
My first tile!
Sara's - love this!One of Amy'sOne of CindysCoasters by me 🙂
A tile I made for the cabin and 4 coastersMe, Sara, and CindyAmy, Sara, and Cindy
That was the weekend! Great time with the girls and were planning on doing it again in January after the craziness of the holidays. 😀
Reading was minimal – we were up talking until 2:30 in the morning on Friday night (Saturday morning really) … however I have finished Night Circus and hope to have that review up today. 😀
I am drinking tea this morning as I don’t want to make a whole pot of coffee. No, I am not sick. 😛
I am heading to the cabin in a few hours here for a girls crafting weekend – MUCH NEEDED GET AWAY!
The past two weeks have been crazy busy, a lot of multi tasking day and night and this has been my “eye on the reward”. 😀
It will be me, Amy, Sara, and Cindy and we are doing words on tiles which excites me to no end! (I never seem to run out of words. We will be staying in having chili tomorrow night and fajitas on Saturday. We are probably heading back this way late Saturday evening.
For the most part I will be unplugged… no internet service at the cabin and since this is an “in house” event – I suspect I would be frowned upon if I were to sneak out in the morning to my usual coffee shop haunt to write posts. 😯
In my once organized world I would have had posts up and reviews, but I am caught up on reviews unless Don’t Blink on audio finishes up today while I run errands this morning and then I do not think I will have time to write it.
I was up at 5 am, packed, prepped a package that must (MUST!) go int the mail today, searching for my copy of Monsters and Men for the trip, next I am grocery shopping, post office, and I would like to make one more stop at the re-store for tiles – which my friends think is hilarious as I have a stock pile of tile… but, you know when they run out miles away from a store… I am going to up sell them 😀
Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have a houseful. Five children, all girls… well, women really, living in a home in Georgia England during the Regency period.
Of the five, Jane is the oldest and the beautiful one, Elizabeth is the fast tongued smart one, Mary is bookish, Kitty is immature and Lydia… oh Lydia is the wild one.
Mr. Bennett is a pretty well put together man especially considering how over the top his wife, Mrs. Bennett can be. Set firmly on doing all she can to help her daughters marry and marry well, Mrs. Bennett will stop short of nothing… even to the length of sending Jane by horse to visit Mr. Darcy during a rain storm in hopes that she would become ill and have to stay at his home until she is better.
Her plan… works to that extent… but not all is she had hoped. 😉
Elizabeth is the one who comes to Jane’s rescue, appalled at her own mothers behavior she nurses Jane back to health,avoiding as much as she can the man who annoys her so much, Mr. Darcy himself.
What follows is a story that is described as a comedy of sorts, of sisters and men in their lives, and really… Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
Maybe... I should watch the movie...
This is my first time reading Pride and Prejudice. My book club started a tradition many years ago that every October we would read a classic. Back then, I was not thrilled by the idea, now… I love it. This gives us all a chance to experience one of the greats… we do not always like them, but they have always been pretty fun to review.
My personal thoughts on the read were I really enjoyed it. While some in the group struggled with the language, I enjoyed figuring it out as I went. The words are different than we use them, and it was fun to see words used differently in sentences and while they were a mouthful to read.. they made sense.
As much as the Bookies loved Mr. Darcy, I was odd man out on this one. I realized he changes throughout the book… but his snottiness (hoo yeah I said it!)in the beginning especially towards Elizabeth rubbed me wrong and I still wasn’t over it at the close of the read. I know this is supposed to be one of the great love stories… and I agree it was a good read, I just didn’t really like Darcy. Yes I know I am in the minority… but remember I do not read romance reads. 😀
I did however really enjoy the book and am so happy to now be able to say I have read Pride and Prejudice! The Bookies had a good discussion over the book, the era, The Bennett’s, fun with the language, and overall it rated a 3.5 rating out of 5.
We did dress up as we like to do for our Classic read – hats were requested, but you could go further with the look if you wanted to.
I wanted to. 😀
Here are a few pics of our evening:
The Bookies in attendanceA little candid pencil shot while we were setting up for the picturesKaydi wore her grandmothers wedding dress!
The 2011 WHERE Are You Reading Map has been updated to include Pride and Prejudice
I purchased my copy of Pride and Prejudice at Barnes and Noble
I thought my week was going to be a bit more mellow. I was wrong… but in a good way. 😀 Monday was insane and Tuesday… well Tuesday was Book Club. 😀
If you are a regular reader of Book Journey, you certainly have heard me brag up the Bookies… well… fair warning… I am about to do it again. 😛
What is not to love about a book club that goes the extra mile? Puts a little “oomf” into the reviews with background information, printouts, and yeah… the occasional dress up too.
Last night we reviewed our October Classic pick: Pride and Prejudice. To spice the review up we encouraged everyone to wear hats, and for those who wanted to go the extra mile – dress the Regency period. Two of the gals that for sure were going to dress up with me wound up having to play in a kick ball tournament Tuesday night and unable to attend. I thought for sure I would be the only one who was really getting into the book….
Oh yea of little faith Sheila….
I walked into our restaurant we were meeting at and there were the Bookies, most in hats, and a few that dressed the full era. Ahhh…. I lobe my book club.
Here is a sample of whats to come… more pics will be up later today with my review and the Bookies review of Pride and Prejudice. (Next month we are reading Cleopatra… hmmm…… )
Book Journey 