Morning Meanderings… The total ugly truth of what happens when I host a chocolate giveaway

Published on October 17, 2010October 18, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)44 Comments

Good Morning! I am still in the hotel in Minneapolis, but barely. I am packed and ready to go out the door as soon as this post goes up. However – first something totally random.

A confession.

You may remember that during BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week) a few weeks ago I did a giveaway a day for the event. The giveaways were for a few of my favorite things (yes, yes… cue the music…). I did a giveaway with a large bar of Lindor Truffles. Mmmmm hmmm…… Lindor Truffles.

Anyway, my winner and I were chatting last week and I had to apologize for the delay in my shipping as well as explain what happened.

I …

uh…..

ate her prize.

……

Twice. 🙄

Yes. I ate the first one…. bought a second one, that night ate that one…. and when I bought the third I had the mailing package ready to go so I could purchase it and pop it in the bag and then the post office without having any time alone at all with the chocolate.

I guess that’s what happens when you try to give away your favorite things. 😳

Yesterday I had a blast hanging out with different Book Bloggers. Reagan from Miss Remmer’s Reviews and I started our morning at a wonderful coffee shop by the event and met us with Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, Ash from English Major’s Junk Food, and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. We had fun talking books and blogs before we walked over to the big event.

So much fun! Right away Alea found herself in line for a book signing with Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I have never read any of these books, but found the price to be right so purchased the first book. SQQUUEE!!!

As the day went on I had the chance to talk to a few other authors I have read/and or reviewed. I seen Colin Sokolowski, author of The Accidental Adult. I didn’t get a chance to get a picture with him, but I did have a chance to talk to him about his book and how it was going.

Here are other connections I made throughout the day.

JOhn Betcher, author of The Missing Element

For lunch, Joanne from Jo Jo Loves To Read was able to join us. We also met up with Liz from Consumed By Books and she was a new blog for me to check out, which I spent time on last night thinking it was brilliant.

I hope you check out all of these amazing bloggers I linked to here this morning. We had so much fun.

I will post later when I get home about the panel! Saving that one for a separate post 😀

Morning Meanderings… Coffee Before I Go Out For Coffee

Published on October 16, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)35 Comments

Good Morning from the Twin Cities! I am in our hotel room with Reagan (Miss Remmer’s Reviews) HELLO PEOPLE!!!!!

(If you had any idea how many times I repeated HELLO PEOPLE and waved to my computer screen while trying to think of what to write next….. ) 😛

ANYWAY…

Last night Reagan and I met up with Joanne from Jo Jo Love’s To Read along with her lovely daughter, and Michelle from Red Headed Book Child. We ate at a lovely restaurant called Caio Bella and had a great discussion around books, and blogging, and whatever else we could think of. What a blast! Thanks girls! That was so fun!!!

Today… errrr… now, we are off to coffee to find Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness and Ash from English Majors Junk Food and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. Then…. the Book Festival! WOO HOO!!!!

Morning Meanderings… LATE!

Published on October 15, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

GAH! I mean… morning! I have been packing this morning and getting ready to leave for the cities right after work. This means instead of planning my morning time with you, I have spent it finding my camera charger, a sweater, something casual, something nice…. GAH!

HOWEVER – before I run out the door to the gym I wanted to stop, have a half of cup of coffee (yes – that is unheard of I know!) and share with you this event going on right now:

I stumbled on to this and unfortunately have not had a lot of time to explore it so I can not tell you all lot about it, however I can give you the website so if you care to you can check it out. It sounds interesting to me. It is called The Novel: Live!

That’s my time. I will try to stop in on Twitter tonight once I am in the hotel room and settled in the cities. Twitter ID: bookjourney

I will give updates throughout the weekend of whats happening at the festival.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Published on October 14, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)33 Comments

The Bell Jar is told from the perspective of Esther Greenwood. You would think she had the perfect life… young, beautiful, talented, successful… yet she is deeply troubled and sinking fast. She starts with a painful month in New York after she won a contest to be Junior Editor on a magazine. What most girls her age would be fascinated to win, Esther only found it troubling. She has a troubled relationship with her mother, and with a boy she dates on again and off again, but really finds she can not commit to anything -including life itself.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A bell jar is a piece of laboratory equipment similar in shape to a bell. It can be manufactured out of a variety of materials, ranging from glass to different types of metals. A bell jar is placed on a base which is vented to a hose fitting, which can be connected via a hose to a vacuum pump. By pumping the air out of the bell jar, a vacuum is formed.

I read this with my book club for our annual October Classic read. I love that we commit to a classic every year and good or bad, the discussions over a classic are always pretty fantastic. When we reviewed this on Tuesday, I was not done with the read and I blew a chance to really analyze this book with my group. I finished this a couple of days after.

I had read up on Sylvia Plath’s life prior to this book and was extremely fascinated by how much this book parallels her life. While the book is about a deep depression, I did not find it depressing. The start of the book is her time in New York and the last third is while she is in a Mental Hospital. As one of the girls in our book club stated, as Esther finds herself deeper in her depression and break down – the writing becomes even more beautiful.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

While not the easiest read, I think it is an important one. As I flip between the pages of information I have on Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar’s Esther Greenwood… I can’t help but think how much of this book is Sylvia’s story.

The book first published in January if 1961, and Sylvia Plath committed suicide in February of 1963. It was first published under the name of Victoria Lucas. The novel was not published under Sylvia’s name until 1967 and not published in the United States until 1971 per the wishes of Plath’s mother and husband.

Why Was The Bell Jar Banned?

The Bell Jar has been challenged because it openly rejects traditional marriage and motherhood. It has also been challenged for it’s characters discussion of sexuality.

I purchased this book at the local fall library sale

Morning Meanderings… I present to you these questions…

Published on October 14, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)31 Comments

G’ Mornin’! We are here again! This week has flown by so quickly! I had such great plans of what I would get done earlier this week and now…. here it is Thursday and between work, work outs, and meetings…. yeah. I pretty much have accomplished nothing.

Tomorrow after work I leave for the cities to meet up with Reagan (Miss Remmer’s Reviews) and throughout the weekend, 5 other book bloggers from around the area. That will be fun. We will all be at the Twin Cities Book Festival and just yesterday I received questions from the panel I will be on:

1. What do you see as the biggest change to reading and books of the last 5 years? Please name one good and one bad.

2. Based on that, what is the biggest challenge to what you do each day as a books professional/avid hobbyist?

3. What needs to change for the book business to be all it can be?

4. How do you personally decide what to read next? What is your “reading strategy?”

There are great questions and I would to hear your take on these if you have any. I am excited and nervous to be on this panel. I know it will be a lot of fun and I am hopeful that all the book bloggers I am with have a chance to meet some incredible authors and publishers.

I have to run… this cold, or virus, or whatever I have going on has run me down to the point I am sleeping later and not having as much time in the morning as I usually do to hang out and enjoy that extra cup of coffee. 😛

Have an awesome day everyone!

😀

Are You In A Book Club? Why or Why Not?

Published on October 13, 2010October 13, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)60 Comments

It’s no secret I love talking books. And I am betting that many of you are the same way. I like to read books, discuss books, search out new books…

Well… you get my point. 😛

As per my earlier post today, ♥ I LOVE MY BOOK CLUB ♥. We have met for ten years and I have met some incredible women through this group who have stretched me into authors and books that I never dreamed I would read… or enjoy…. and have!

For me, it started with my desire to know the people I worked with better. I had worked the same job foe 10 years and found it sad that many of us knew nothing about each other, other than what department we worked in and maybe what we ate for lunch.

So… the book club idea came to be.

To this day this is one of my favorite books of all time.

I posted a note on the time clock – chose a book (Dance Upon The Air by Nora Roberts), put a time and place and waited. No one said boo to me about it.

I felt like an idiot.

The day of the meeting I showed up at the designated restaurant pretty much planning to drink a diet coke by myself and go home. Then two ladies showed up. We had a blast. And the next month, another one came. And before too long we were 8 and then we grew again to 12, and now we are at 18.

What brings me to this topic today is that I have been blessed by this great group of women and wish everyone had the opportunity to be in a book club. It’s not always easy and with growth we did have growing pains (where to meet as we outgrew spaces, how to keep everyone focused on the book at hand – I am a real stickler that we do discuss the book!) All of us have worked together to bring “more to a group”. By more I mean – we try to bring pictures of events described in books, we discuss the author, we have an annual Queen Event, a Christmas Party, and an October Classic Read. We potluck themes to go with the books, and we do a Year In Review handout every January of the past year, what we read and the funny, or real moments we had. We vote for the best book pick of the year… and the worst.

My questions to you are:

Are you involved in a book club? Why or why not?

Is it online or off-line (or both!)

If you are, what do you do to keep everyone engaged?

Would you be interested in a group that shares book club ideas (ie. fun things to do around certain books, how to get a book club started, how to get the group engaged…)

Morning Meanderings… Have I Mentioned Lately That I Love My Book Club?

Published on October 13, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)28 Comments

Good Morning! Wednesday already can you even believe it? I feel like the days are flying by and now I am only two days out from going to the Twin Cities for the Book Festival and Book Blogger Meet Up! WOW! I will talk more on that yet this week 🙂

Last night my book club met and reviewed The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Every October we read a Classic and this year we thought it would be fun to wear old-time hats. My search went on after work yesterday where my goal was to go for the whole look. We have two great second-hand stores in town and my first stop found me the best shoes for the look – in fact they looked a lot like the shoes on the book cover which to me was “SQQQQUUUUEEEEE” worthy.

However, my first stop had nothing for vintage hats. SO…. I hit the second stop (one of my faves) and they had MANY vintage hats. So I grabbed a couple of dresses and about five hats and of to the dressing room I went. I left with the hat you will see in the pictures and a dress that you will not. The dress was so awesome – black with a pick trim and lace around the bottom, it would have been perfect but was a size to small. It was so cute and I can use it in the future and was such a low price that I could not pass it up (plus now it is an inventive!). Maybe with a little luck by Halloween we can see that dress! Or, err….. shortly after. 😛

We had a wonderful meeting and good food. The way we choose our books for our next read is that we each are allowed to nominate one book. Then we go around and we each get two votes and the book that receives the most votes wins. This was our nominations:

The Boticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato

The Butterfly Garden by Chip St. Clair

The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel

The Wishing Trees by John Shors

Rough Country by John Sanford

Everything is Beautiful by Katherine Center

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Help by Katherine Stockett

I know right? Look at that selection! It was so hard to choose! A few of these are currently on my shelf to be read! The winning vote went to The Boticelli Secret. That will be our November Bookies book club read.

I am off to work and then Group Power and tonight a planning meeting for Honduras. It’s hard to believe out trip is really only about 6 weeks out.

I will leave you with a couple of pics from last night. This is not the entire book club, just the ones who wore hats.

Have a super Wednesday everyone! 😀

Noah’s Castle by John Rowe Townsend

Published on October 12, 2010October 12, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)11 Comments

There are rumors of hardships to come in England and Norman Mortimer’s is not the type of man who just sits around and waits for things to happen. He is a man of action and forward thinking. Anticipating the worst, Norman moves his family from their lovely home to an old drafty castle looking home, a fortress really. He secretly starts spending a lot of time in the basement with his son Geoff, hammering away at something that his wife and his other three children Nessie, Barry, and Ellen know nothing about. Later it is discovered that Norman has built shelves all along the basement walls and has stock piled canned good and food staples. He plans ahead by purchasing clothes for his children in larger sizes to accommodate growth. In Norman’s plan, his family will be able to survive whatever hardships come their way and he will protect them and their home from the outside world.

But can such a plan work? As the times get hard, and food is being rationed and stores are closing and people are starving…. what are the moral realities here?

Well hello dystopian fiction!

Days after I have finished this book I am still questioning how I felt about it. I started out finding it slow and immediately taking a string dislike to Norman as a father and especially as a husband. His lack of including his wife in any of his decisions and how he treated her as a possession without an opinion rubbed me the wrong way.

Early on in the book I sat it down and went on to a different read.

This past weekend I picked the book up again during the read-a-thon and found to my surprise that I was getting into the story line. As England took the predicted economy turn, I had to wonder was Norman a genius or a control freak? Or both? I especially liked Norman’s son Barry who seemed to have a good head on his shoulder’s and cared about others outside his home as families were literally starving to death.

What was interesting is that this book was originally published in 1975 and recently re-published. While there were parts of the book I enjoyed reading and found interesting, the ending felt unfinished to me and I found I had many questions unanswered. I closed the final page with out a solid feeling about the book that still has not really left me.

I found on-line that apparently there once was a TV series of Noah’s castle that is out on DVD.

I also found this ring tone for Noah’s Castle which is supposed to have been taken off the ending theme song.

I received my copy for review of this book from October Mist Publishing

Morning Meanderings…. Now That’s Classic!

Published on October 12, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)24 Comments

Morning. I am feeling a little ill. I am hoping to shake it as I work today, and have book club tonight. Every October we read a classic and this years pick is Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. We are all suppose to wear an old-time hat in honor of the classics, but I am really hoping I can pull off a whole classic ensemble. As of this moment however, I do not even have a hat. 😛

“Hello?”

“This is procrastination calling. Congratulations! You are our number one customer!”

*sigh*

I love that our book club likes to take things to the next level and it makes for great memories of our discussions and our year-end reviews. I must be a team player.

Today after work I will take a buzz through a local thrift store and see if they have anything that inspires me. If I could come up with something like this I would be thrilled:

Ok I am out of here. Have a super day and hopefully tomorrow I will feel awesome and have something way more intelligent (or at least funny) to say. 😛

SPEAK the movie

Published on October 11, 2010October 11, 2010 by Sheila (Book Journey)23 Comments

After a blurred trauma over the summer, Melinda enters high school a selective mute. Struggling with school, friends, and family, she tells the dark tale of her experiences, and why she has chosen not to speak.

During Banned Books week I had the opportunity to review the book SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book was brought to my attention during the big hype about the recent controversy surrounding the book and its status as a banned and challenged book. I read the book and found it to be very well and tastefully done.

While doing a little research on the book I was surprised to discover it had also been a movie. Surprise #2 was that the lead role of Melinda was played by non other than Kristen Stewart (you may know her better as Bella in the Twilight movies). I was instantly fascinated with this early role for Kristen as well as the movie itself.

Thank goodness for the miracle that is Netflix. I was able to find the movie that was released in 2004.

I appreciated the movie as much as I appreciated the book. Again, I was brought to the brink as I relived the books harder parts through the screen. Kristen Stewart does well in this role being at first silent with fear and later, able to SPEAK of what has happened to her. I found this movie to a wonderful companion to the book and highly recommend this to those who have had the opportunity to read this heartfelt book of a young girl’s life after rape.