Book Journey

Fog Island Mountains by Michelle Bailat-Jones

Published on November 18, 2014November 18, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)10 Comments

Fog Island Mountains (Kirishima mountain range) are located beneath the volcanic area in Southern Japan. As a big typhoon is preparing to roll in the residents of Komachi prepare for the storm as well. Alec Chester is one of these residents. He has lived in this area for 40 years and has recently been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. With the storm on the verge of erupting, Alec’s wife Kanae disappears into the stormy weather struggling with the realities of her husbands diagnosis.

Narrated by Komachi’s oldest resident and told in Japanese kitsune folktale tradition; Fog Island Mountains is a story of grief, acceptance and healing.

Fog Island Mountain is an interesting read involving a couple (Alec and Kanae) as they deal with the approaching storm in their area as well as the approaching storm in their life. The story is told by an outside narrator, which was not totally new for me, but not usual so this took me awhile to get into the flow of this writing style.

Beautifully written, narrator Jennifer Ikeda was a smooth narrator to listen to. I enjoyed the feeling of Japan that surrounded the book giving me a bonus dose of the culture as well as an interesting read.

Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 6 hours and 2 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: November 4, 2014

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on November 16, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)50 Comments

Hey there! Welcome to It’s Monday, What Are You Reading!

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. Fair warning… this meme tends to add to your reading list! 😉

So I am still in a hotel room in Florida. It has been a long time of hard work, long hours, and swelting sun. Of course my hubby, who I just talked to back in Minnesota says it is 3 degrees there today so he is sure within a day of my return I will be whining to come back to Florida. I have assured him that he is wrong. I will hold my head up and deal with the snow and freezing temps just to be home with my hubby, my dogs, reliable internet and oh my gosh – my own bed!!! I may not get up for days… 😉 I am on schedule to go back to Minnesota on Thursday.

So as far as reading goes, it is still light. I am usually too tired to read, however I have managed some audio this past week as t works great to have the ear bids in while working in the bee yard. Here is what I posted:

No Man’s Land by Aasif Mandi

Hop Skip Jump – its ready to order!

Bedbugs by Ben Winters (yup… Bedbugs)

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain – oh wow! How have I missed this author?

He’s Gone by Deb Caletti

The first of the readalong posts is up with giveaway: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Not too bad for working 10 – 14 hour days. 🙂

So this week will be much of the same. A little audio, and maybe a book on the way home on the plane… but by the weekend… I hope to be curled up in my Minnesota home with great books and delicious coffee and my puppies! 🙂

For My Ears

Dear Anna, What I have to tell you is difficult to write, but I know it will be far more difficult for you to hear, and I’m so sorry.

The unfinished letter is the only clue Tara and Emerson have to the reason behind their close friend Noelle’s suicide. Everything they knew about Noelle – her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her friends and family – described a woman who embraced life. Yet there was so much they didn’t know.

With the discovery of the letter and its heartbreaking secret, Noelle’s friends begin to uncover the truth about this complex woman who touched each of their lives – and the life of a desperate stranger – with love and betrayal, compassion and deceit.

“I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger…” writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up “1922”, the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife Arlette proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In “Big Driver”, soon to be a major Lifetime movie starring Maria Bello, a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger is along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face to face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

“Fair Extension”, the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Harry Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

In April 1992, a young man named Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness, where he survived for more than 100 days before perishing in an abandoned bus. For over 20 years his story has captivated millions, and yet only one person knew the truth behind his remarkable journey – until now.

Through a tumultuous childhood, the McCandless siblings clung to each other amidst a chaotic home life, forming a lifelong bond and an unbreakable trust. So when Chris abandoned nearly all of his possessions, cut off all family ties, and forged an anonymous existence on the road, Carine understood what drew Chris away from all he had known. Having to face her own truth and surmount some crushing obstacles in the absence of her beloved brother, Carine drew strength from his constant presence while forging ahead on her own unique journey.

A powerful and deeply personal story, The Wild Truth is both a revelatory glimpse into the life of Chris McCandless and the inspirational tale of one woman’s resilience in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.

For My Eyes

The year is AE3, 3 years after the Event. Within the walls of Meritropolis, 50,000 inhabitants live in fear, ruled by the brutal System that assigns each citizen a merit score that dictates whether they live or die. Those with the highest scores thrive, while those with the lowest are subject to the most unforgiving punishment–to be thrust outside the city gates, thrown to the terrifying hybrid creatures that exist beyond.

But for one High Score, conforming to the System just isn’t an option. Seventeen-year-old Charley has a brother to avenge. And nothing–not even a totalitarian military or dangerous science–is going to stop him.

Where humankind has pushed nature and morals to the extreme, Charley is amongst the chosen few tasked with exploring the boundaries, forcing him to look deep into his very being to discern right from wrong. But as he and his friends learn more about the frightening forces that threaten destruction both without and within the gates, Meritropolis reveals complexities they couldn’t possibly have bargained for…

That’s the plan. Have you read any of these? What are you planning? Please add your link to your own Its Monday What Are You Reading below where it says click here:

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For those of you who read mainly children and middle grade books, please also feel free to add your link here:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling (HP Readalong w/giveaways!)

Published on November 16, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)20 Comments

This is the cover of the book I read from. This is the 20 year anniversary edition of The Sorcerer’s Stone. I picked this one up in New York at the Harry Potter Exhibit

This is the first book from our Harry Potter Re-Readalong (not too late to join in!)

I wish I could remember exactly when I read this book for the first time. I believe it was sometime around when the first movie came out in 2001. I remember wanting to know what my sons were reading. Little did I know that I was about to read the book that would set off something in me that would lead to:

1. Owning all the books in paperback and hardcover

2. Owning all the books in audio (fantastic by the way – both narrators Jim Dale and Stephen Fry – wow!)

3. Owning several Harry Potter Board Games including HP Scene It

4. Going to the Harry Potter Exhibit with Reagan (Miss Remmer’s Reviews) while in New York

5. A different year dragging Cindy from Cindy’s Love Of Books to Potted Potter in New York. (For the record she had not read the books which made her even more of a trooper to attend with me and she loved it!)

6. Going to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios three times in the past three years with my son who is into it just as much as I am.

7. Of course seeing and owning all the movies. 😉

8. Early acceptance into Pottermore

My ticket to the HP Exhibit which I keep in my book as a book mark

I love this first book. There is so much going on here not only within the book but the fact that the book exists at all. If you have ever read or listened to anything about JK Rowlings start with this book it is fascinating stuff. She was turned down again and again publishing houses stating that no one would want to read about children that had magic skills and misbehaved in school. Bloomsbury was the publisher that said yes (hazah to them!!!) and this book – opened up doors to change the publishing world forever…

HP and The Sorcerer’s Stone is fun to re-read as there is so much I pick up on now that I have read all the books. I feel like I pick up something new each time I read it and I have to smile at the sheer brilliance of how the books tie in so well together. JK did not know at the point of book one that there would be seven books – but they sure read like she knew exactly where she was going.

The short synopsis (just because I like writing about it)… Harry Potter is raised by his aunt and uncle after being left in their care upon the death of his parents. Harry is treated very poorly as an unwanted intruder in their lives and sleeps in a small space under the staircase. As he approaches his eleventh birthday he finds out that things are not exactly as he had been told all of these years. His parents actually come from a magical background and Harry is about to be introduced to his first year of school at Hogwarts.

Harry can not believe his luck as of which he had none before. He has a little help from Hagrid in picking up the supplies he will need and then he is on the train to Hogwarts where he meets Ron Weasly and Hermione Granger, two students who little does Harry know – will become lifelong friends, something he has not had before.

Of course all is not smooth sailing for our young Harry. We also learn about he-who-shall-not-be-named (Good old Volde!) and his role in Harry’s parents deaths as well as Harry’s scar. For years no one has heard from him but things are about to change and of course Harry would be the main focus of HWSNBN return.

This is the original drawing of Snape as JK first pictures him. This picture is in my book.

I am going to believe that most of you reading this post have read this book or at the very least, have heard of the Harry Potter phenomenon. I seriously have to smile when I think of how this series has held on – now being one of the biggest attractions at Universal Studios Orlando, so big in fact they just added on in 2014 a whole new amazing section that actually goes into the next park! I wrote about that here.

I adore this amazing book filled with magic and messages of good… just listen to Dumbledore’s quotes throughout the book and the series – these are amazing life lessons:

“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help.”
Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want… whatever we want…”
“Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly.
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

“To the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure’.”

Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone is just the beginning. If you have never read the series, I invite you to join our group now. If you have read it many years ago, you are also welcome to join in the fun. The giveaways are available to those signed up for the readalong, so come on in. In fact out first giveaway is posted by Donna at Writer’s Side Up for a set of cool bookmarks.

I am looking forward to the next book!

*Readalongers be sure to link up your Sorcerer’s Stone post here. House points for participants comments on HP posts that are linked as well as the post itself.

He’s Gone by Deb Caletti

Published on November 15, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)15 Comments

Dani Keller wakes up on her houseboat with a wine hangover from the previous nights get together with her husband. When she reaches over the bed for her husband Ian, she finds he is not there. When she looks around she finds he is nowhere in the houseboat but his car is still parked out on the landing. Feeling he may has went out for coffee and scones she awaits his return. When day turns to night and Ian is not answering his cell phone her annoyance turns to worry. As the days start to pass and the police become involved Dani searches her foggy memory of the night of the party. Did something happen she can not recall? Is there something in their life together that has led up to this?

I love the synopsis of this book. Coming off of The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain I was geared up for more like that. There are things that I did enjoy about this read but some I found not fitting as well. Lets start with what I liked. The characters are well developed. I liked Dani and I enjoyed the background story of her relationship with Ian, how it began and what they did to be together as well as the complications of that decision. It felt like there was almost a life lesson in there. I enjoyed her daughter and her mother (who on audio reminded me a lot of Grandma Mazur from the Stephanie Plum series… just a funny older lady). These two characters provided a level ground for Dani.

What I didn’t like is what actually happened felt obvious to me from the beginning even though the author gives us plenty of venues to create doubt and possibilities. There seemed to be a lot of things that should have been done in an investigation such as this but were not.

If you can let go of reality, the book is a fine read. I don’t mean to sound harsh as I did enjoy it and was curious as to what had actually happened all the way through the read. Author Deb Caletti creates a mystery around love and betrayal that will keep you guessing.

Morning Meanderings… Perpetually TIRED

Published on November 14, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)14 Comments

Good morning from IHOP. I am back in a booth shaking things up today by not only having coffee and an English muffin… but today I added oatmeal too. Yeah… that’s way I roll… crazy and unpredictable… watch out. 😉

I am tired. Bone tired. I have not had a day of nothingness since October 29th before I left for my Florida trip with my son. I work all day in the bee yard and yesterday I rode along with my friend Amanda 3 1/2 hours to where the bees are going to pick up the rental car and bring it back to the hotel 3 1/2 hours back. I wilted into bed around midnight.

I ache. My hands hurt from lifting bee frames all day and the tiny stings they endure. My back hurts from leaning over the hives. My head hurts from the sun glare.

I dream. I dream of bees. I see them when I close my eyes and not in a creepy Amityville horror way with the flies but they are just there. And Queen bees I see them too… I cant wait to dream of normal stuff like unicorns or space monkeys.

Today I am on my way back to the bee yard. We really have today and tomorrow to finish this part up so I am anticipate another long day. I will be listening to audio today (He’s Gone by Deb Caletti). I am getting a bit of a Gone Girl vibe but we will see where this is going.

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

Published on November 13, 2014March 30, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)26 Comments

Ok seriously… how have I missed out on this amazing author? ~Sheila

Riley MacPherson was only two years only when her older teenage sister Lisa committed suicide. Although Riley was too young to really remember Lisa, who was on her way to Julliard as a very gifted musician, Riley does know this was about the time her family fell apart. Her mother battled with depression and eventually cancer takes her from them. Her father acts as though nothing has happened at all and refuses to discuss it. Riley’s older brother Danny begins to pull away from the family and continues to be estranged even into his adult life.

Riley, now in her 20’s returns to her childhood home after her father’s passing to take care of the family properties. Through encounters with different local people and finding in her father’s home – evidence leads to the fact that Lisa may not have committed suicide after all…

and if that is true….

What happened? And where is she now? Is she alive?

The Silent Sister absolutely blew me away. So good in fact that I flipped through web pages of this authors other books and while I recognized covers, I feel as though I have read none of her other books. BIG MISTAKE on my part.

The Silent Sister is an excellent take on how far a family will actually go to protect one of their own. While perhaps well-meaning – the MacPherson’s are the definition of dysfunctional. Hidden agendas and secrets from one another leave the two remaining MacPherson children (Riley and Danny) left with a twisted mess that only tangles more as the story goes on. While one might say the plot is too entangled, too messed up – it is that what takes this read to the next level. Let’s face it – we live in a twisted messed up world.

When we practice to deceive…

I loved this book! I listened to it on audio and the amazing Susan Bennett narrated very well. Alternating chapters come in to play as you start to fill in the whole twisted tale.

Absolutely read or listen to this one. This book rates as one of the best I have read in 2014.

Morning Meanderings… MN GIve To The Max Day and HP Hook Up Link

Published on November 13, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)3 Comments

Good morning! I am still in Florida working away with long hours and exhausted sleep. We are working hard to get done and get home and I am all about that – even if it freezing and lots of snow in Minnesota. I miss my hubby, my puppies, my bed 🙂

Today is GIVEMN day where you can link up a non profit charity and of course I am promoting our library. I am not sure if this is a thing for all states or not – I suspect it probably is. Anyhoo – here is our Library link and our goal: Brainerd Public Library Give MN

For the HP Readalongers… the link for your first review is up and if you have not found it yet – add your thoughts here. I need to catch up on House Points so please watch for that soon. Remember you earn points by writing posts and also by commenting on posts.

It is not to late to sign up to join this readalong that started in November and will go to March 2015. Check out all things about this here.

I am off to work for the day. We are still splitting hives. Hope to finish this part in the next few days here so we can get all the bees delivered, queened, and fed.

Bedbugs by Ben Winters

Published on November 12, 2014November 12, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)19 Comments

Susan and Alex Wendt believe they found the perfect apartment. Top floor, two bedroom brownstone recently renovated. It is close to a park for their daughter Emma and the price is one they can not pass up. The old widowed landlady is short of a full deck but harmless.

Shortly after moving in Susan starts to notice that some things are just not right. First it is the mysterious lifted floor board that they did not notice when they moved in… then it is the strange smell in the spare room… then it is the bites. Susan wakes up with bite marks on her that are consistent with bedbugs… oddly it is only Susan that is being bitten. Alex and Emma are fine. The house is checked twice by an exterminator with no finding…

so if not bed bugs what is it?

I have wanted to read this book since it came out in 2011. I liked the mysterious cover, and the fact that author Ben Winters also wrote Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters, this seemed like it could be a fun read.

It was.

And creepy too.

I enjoyed this read! I learned a bit about bedbugs and while the book is a bit creepy it is leveled out with other interactions to keep it from going full on itchy!

The narration of Elisabeth Rodgers is good. She does a great Emma! You route for this family while at the same time there is enough suspicion to go around to keep you guessing as to what is really happening. I am glad I finally fit this one in!

Like a little creepy? A little edgy? Something that would make a good movie? Give Bedbugs a try!

Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 6 hours and 54 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: September 6, 2011

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Quirk Books (September 6, 2011)

Morning Meanderings… Back To The IHOP

Published on November 12, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Good Morning. Since Donna from Writer’s Side Up likes hat I am in IHOP every morning… thought I would take a picture. 🙂 Here are my discoveries about 4 am IHOP:

1. A lady that works the early shift at IHOP, also works at the hotel I am staying at. She is very nice.

2. Some people… should not dress themselves.

3. When a man walked in this morning wearing all camo from head to toe (and no not a hunter)…. I wanted to say, “Oh! I almost didn’t see you there!” But refrained as I thought he may not get it. 😉

4. 50’s music. I did not know that was an IHOP thing. I like it. Wish I had packed my poodle skirt.

5. I wish I had an IHOP attached to my house at home. I would go there every morning… coffee and an English muffin. Life would be so simple…

Getting ready for work this morning… or more honestly… I am ready for work just caffeinating myself for another 11 hour + day. I am tired. I have not had a day to myself since October 19th, before vacation with my son. That is a lot of days of being “ON”. As an introvert that takes its tole. I am spent. 🙂

Hop Skip Jump – Order This Book Today and pick it up for FREE!

Published on November 11, 2014 by Sheila (Book Journey)2 Comments

I posted a couple of days ago that I was reading this book.I signed up as one of 75 blogs to chat up this book. If you know me (and I hope if you read Book Journey you feel as though you do 😉 ) you know that if I can find a way to make something fun – that is the way I am going to go.

Today, November 11th, if you order the book you will receive a $15 ecard which will cover more than the cost of the book. Use this link to learn more about that! There is also a quiz you can take on that page to see

The 75 techniques in this book will guide you to be more playful and productive as you move through three vital phases of the manifestation process: dreaming (Hop), experimenting (Skip), and taking action (Jump). Discover your Play Personality and learn how to use it to create more experiences in which work feels like play, and struggle gives way to momentum, ease, and joy.

Includes a FREE downloadable Productivity Pack

Read it and want to chat about it?

Twitter: @hopskipjumpbook as well as @ArtellaLand.

Facebook: Hop Skip Jump