its monday what are you reading – Page 12

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 24, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)56 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.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Charlotte!!!!

What a week! I spent much of last weekend and the first part of the week sick, then went right into the three day Friends Of The Library book sale which was a lot of fun but a lot of work too. Today has been my first kick back and relax day in over a week and I took full advantage… put books away in the book room, listened to audio, read a bit, and yes.. I had a nap. 😀

Here are the posts that did go up this past week:

The First Warm Evening Of The Year by Jamie M Saul (wow!)

March With Me by Rosalie Turner (a fictional story around the non fictional Children’s March of 1963.)

Book sale recap and a chance for you to win one of my finds!

I haven’t accomplished much for this past week and seem to be deep into the audio books I have going so lets see.. what is next:

Six years have passed since Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for…but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for almost two decades, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found, or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart, who lied to him, soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on a carefully constructed fiction.

OOH – if you have not read Coben you are missing out, I may finish this one tonight!

The closing of the grand old Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna, who go there one last time for cocktails. But even more poignant—and curious—is a striking young woman in elegant attire and dark glasses, alone there and waiting in vain. Two days later, police detective Milo Sturgis comes seeking his psychologist comrade’s insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex’s shock, the brutalized victim is the same beautiful woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne at the Fauborg may have been her last. But when a sordid revelation finally cracks the case open, the secrets that spill out could make Alex and Milo’s best efforts to close this crime not just impossible but fatal.

I picked this one up at the book sale this week.

There is probably more but I have spent too much time writing this post so I am going to move on. 😀 How about you – what are you reading and how is your reading this time of year? Add your post to the line below where it says click here.

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 17, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)31 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Tanya at Mom’s Small Victories!!!!

Well I was pretty much absent this week. I wasn’t planning on being absent but working hard and playing hard usually means something has to give and unfortunately this past week it was this space here. Bookclub was last Tuesday, Wednesday I was working out with friends, Thursday was wine and horduerves with my cousins, and I was gone over the weekend doing a 7k In the cities and I took my laptop with me but had little time to be on it. Hope fully this upcoming week will be a better turn out. Here is what I did manage to post this week:

The Tale Of Lucia Grandi by Susan Speranza

BIG News from here!

Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli (Bookies Review!)

That’s all 😀 This week I am at the Pink concert Tuesday evening (I know.. I know.. so mature of me 😛 ) and then I am helping at the Library book sale Thursday – Saturday so I am going to hope to get in a little reading:

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.
So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Women-to-women relationships in the workplace are . . . complicated. When they’re good, they’re great. But when they’re bad, they can ruin your day, your week—even your year.

Packed with proven advice from two of today’s leading experts in workplace relationships, this one-of-a-kind guide gives women the tools they need to navigate difficult situations unique to women-to-women relationships—whether with a boss, a colleague, a client, or an employee.

Have you dealt with a woman in the workplace who:

“Accidentally” excludes you from important meetings?

Seems intent on taking you down professionally?

Gossips about you with other coworkers?

Makes you look bad by missing deadlines?

Forms a “pack” of mean girls to make your life miserable?

Mean Girls at Work isn’t just about surviving difficult situations. It’s about transforming a toxic relationship into one that benefits and supports both of you.

This book is also for women who engage in mean behavior . . . but don’t know it. After all, who hasn’t gossiped about a female coworker? Who hasn’t rolled her eyes in the presence of a woman she doesn’t like? Who hasn’t scanned another woman head to toe—which is just a nonverbal way of saying, “You’ve just been judged”? The authors provide invaluable advice to the more subtle ways of being mean—even if they’re not intended.

For the record – I do not work with a mean girl… I work with an awesome girl…. I just think the book sounds interesting 😀

I want to read more than this, but I am going to keep it low this week. How about you – what are you reading and how is your reading this time of year? Add your post to the line below where it says click here.

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 10, 2013March 10, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)55 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Lexie at Unconventional Book Views !!!!

It was a pretty fair week, I was typically busy but did get in a little reading time. Here is what I accomplished this last week:

Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Mater’s Birthday! One year old – rescued from abuse and amazing he was able to have a first birthday!

The Dogs Of Winter by Bobbie Pyron

Two Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt

Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah

Not too bad a week but I do need to pick up my reading again. This week I am reading:

In Warsaw in 1939, a boy wanders the streets and survives by stealing what food he can. He knows nothing of his background: Is he a Jew? A Gypsy? Was he ever called something other than Stopthief? Befriended by a band of orphaned Jewish boys, he begins to share their sleeping quarters. He understands very little of what is happening. When the Nazi “Jackboots” march into the town, he greets them happily, admires their shiny boots and tanks, and hopes he can join their ranks someday. He eventually adopts a name, Misha, and a family, that of his friend Janina Milgrom, a girl he meets while stealing food in her comfortable neighborhood. When the Milgroms are forced to move into the newly created ghetto, Misha cheerfully accompanies them. There, he is one of the few small enough to slip through holes in the wall to smuggle in food. By the time trains come to take the ghetto’s residents away, Misha realizes what many adults do not-that the passengers won’t be going to the resettlement villages at the journey’s end.

Our book club read for March.

Alcott’s story begins with the four March girls—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—sitting in their living room, lamenting their poverty. The girls decide that they will each buy themselves a present in order to brighten their Christmas. Soon, however, they change their minds and decide that instead of buying presents for themselves, they will buy presents for their mother, Marmee…

You know the story… this is a read along over at Fizzy Thoughts for March.

When someone you love vanishes without a trace, how far would you go to get them back?
For ex-FBI profiler Pierce Quincy, it’s the beginning of his worst nightmare: a car abandoned on a desolate stretch of Oregon highway, engine running, purse on the driver’s seat. And his estranged wife, Rainie Conner, gone, leaving no clue to her fate.

Did one of the ghosts from Rainie’s troubled past finally catch up with her? Or could her disappearance be the result of one of the cases they’d been working–a particularly vicious double homicide or the possible abuse of a deeply disturbed child Rainie took too close to heart? Together with his daughter, FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, Pierce is battling the local authorities, racing against time, and frantically searching for answers to all the questions he’s been afraid to ask.

One man knows what happened that night. Adopting the alias of a killer caught eighty years before, he has already contacted the press. His terms are clear: he wants money, he wants power, he wants celebrity. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, Rainie will be gone for good.

Sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, it’s still not enough.
As the clock winds down on a terrifying deadline, Pierce plunges headlong into the most desperate hunt of his life, into the shattering search for a killer, a lethal truth, and for the love of his life, who may forever be…gone.

That’s whats on for this week. What are you reading? Add your post to the line below where it says click here.

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It;’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on March 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)37 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Escape With Dollycas!!!

Not a bad week here. Thanks to last weekends “audi-thon” while I painted, I feel a little ahead an still have three books to review. Here is what happened here last week:

The Sky Is Everywhere b Jandy Nelson Oh LOVED THIS!

The Shining By Stephen King (Its worth it to see the picture of me in the big glasses!)

The BIG Painting Project – check out what I did last weekend

A Grown Up Kind Of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson (Sooooo good!)

February Recap

Crazy Book Pitches! (Oh yeah there are some doosys out there!)

For this week I have planned:

A small boy, a cruel city, and the incredible dogs who save him.

Based on a true story!

When Ivan’s mother disappears, he’s abandoned on the streets of Moscow, with little chance to make it through the harsh winter. But help comes in an unexpected form: Ivan is adopted by a pack of dogs, and the dogs quickly become more than just his street companions: They become his family. Soon Ivan, who used to love reading fairytales, is practically living in one, as he and his pack roam the city and countryside, using their wits to find food and shelter, dodging danger, begging for coins. But Ivan can’t stay hidden from the world of people forever. When help is finally offered to him, will he be able to accept it? Will he even want to?

A heart-pounding tale of survival and a moving look at what makes us human.

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

I am listening to something in my jeep too but cant think of the title and really don’t want to go out there right now so ummm… yeah. 😀 What are you reading this week? Please add you link below where it says click here. I would love to see your posts!

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on February 24, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)52 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

POGUE !!!!

Well another week has gone by and while my list of accomplishments is much… my reading is not. However… after paining for 12 hours over the weekend I am thrilled to say I have devoured quite a bit of audio – finished two and almost done with a third. 😛

SO here is what I did manage to post this past week:

The Lost Summer by Louisa May Alcott (Soooooo good!)

Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes (Fans of Gone Girl, you much check this one out!!!)

Love Is The Cure by Elton John (fantastic information on the continued fight against AIDS)

Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly (Superb!)

One book, three audio. Thanks goodness for audio! 😛 For this week I have going:

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life – and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two. Toby was Bailey’s boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie’s own. Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they’re the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can’t collide without the whole wide world exploding.

I have books to finish and not really sure at this time where I will go from here so I am going to leave at this, but want to say I am currently listening to The Sky Is Everywhere and LOVING it so if you know any more books like this one let me know because I am flying through it. 😀

What are you reading this week? Please add you link below where it says click here. I would love to see your posts!

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on February 17, 2013February 17, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)49 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Moms Small Victories !!!!

I have not been around much this week… work and evening activities have kept me busy which is good, but have also kept me away from writing reviews. Here is what little I put up this week:

Devastation On The Delaware by Mary Shafer – SO GOOD!!!

Wow. That is it. 😯 I have reviews to write and I have been listening to a lot of audio so there is that. 😀

For this next week I have started a few new things:

Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. “Flip a coin,” she thought,” those were my chances of survival.” First, Christa fought to stop her sister’s downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.

Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani’s account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.

There were no surprises in Gatlin County.
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

That’s about it. Lots of books to catch up on. What are you reading this week? Please add you link below where it says click here. I would love to see your posts!

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on February 10, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)36 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Beth at Free Spirit Books!!!!

This week was a pretty busy one and I did not get a whole lot of reading done. After back to back retreats (through Wednesday afternoon, I picked up my College Son Justin in Mankato on Friday morning to bring him back home for the weekend. He had broken his right foot and it unable to drive for 6 weeks. As long as I was hanging out alone all weekend I though he could join me…. we have watched many many episodes of LOST. 😛

Then I was going to take Justin home this afternoon and we got hit with a major snow storm – about 7 inches fell here in Brainerd Minnesota over about 4 hours time and we were in, and still are a Severe Storm Warning. So instead, we stayed here and I am taking him back to Mankato in the morning, about a 3+ hour drive….

Here is what I did review this past week:

The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Peaches For Father Francis by Joanne Harris

Eat and Run by Scott Jurek

Giveaway: SHRED Revolutionary Diet by Ian K Smith MD

I did get a few things done. 😀 This week and weekend I should have a little time to read, Book Club is on Tuesday. Here is what I hope to fit in this week, which will mainly be audio as I have a few books I hope to finish:

A riveting historical narrative of the shocking events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the follow-up to mega-bestselling author Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln.

More than a million readers have thrilled to Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln, the page-turning work of nonfiction about the shocking assassination that changed the course of American history. Now the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor; recounts in gripping detail the brutal murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy–and how a sequence of gunshots on a Dallas afternoon not only killed a beloved president but also sent the nation into the cataclysmic division of the Vietnam War and its culture-changing aftermath.

In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb-spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood-is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it’s there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey’s strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women’s shared past – and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.

In the 1980s, Elton John saw friend after friend, loved one after loved one, perish needlessly from AIDS. In the midst of the plague, he befriended Ryan White, a young Indiana boy ostracized by his town and his school because of the HIV infection he had contracted from a blood transfusion. Ryan’s inspiring life and devastating death led Elton to two realizations: His own life was a mess. And he had to do something to help stop the AIDS crisis.

Since then, Elton has dedicated himself to overcoming the plague and the stigma of AIDS. He has done this through the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised and donated $275 million to date to fighting the disease worldwide.

Love Is the Cure is Elton’s personal account of his life during the AIDS epidemic, including stories of his close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. With powerful conviction and emotional force, Elton conveys the personal toll AIDS has taken on his life – and his infinite determination to stop its spread.

As preparations for her daughter Joy’s bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie’s world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception — the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Cannie’s husband surprises her by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider their history, their future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Thats whats on the agenda….. audio audio! How about you? What does this second week of February bring your way in books? Please add your link to where it says “click here” below.

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It’s Monday What Are You Reading?

Published on February 3, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)59 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:Kacy from Meandering

Kacy from Meandering Home!!!!

Well I did not mean to be MIA this weekend. I was at a Board Member/ Leadership Retreat for Camp Benedict and I was half way there on Friday when I realized that my laptop was still at home. So, you didn’t hear from me this weekend. And then I got home and was exhausted. We stayed up until 2:00 am on Friday and I was up after 1:00 am on Saturday, enjoying the company of some awesome people.

Before I left, here is what I did accomplish book wise this week:

The Chocolate War – book VS. Movie

Audio Books – Abridged and Unabridged, whats the difference?

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard (the true story of the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard)

January Recap, with link up for those of you participating in the WHERE Are You Reading challenge

Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah

Kick Off to the 12K Challenge!

I have a couple more reviews to write yet and I hardly read at all this weekend.

For this week I will be reading:

August 18-20, 1955: Three terrifying days and nights still remembered with awe in the Delaware River valley. Record-breaking rainfall from hurricanes Connie and Diane abruptly ended a withering drought, but the relief was short-lived. It was soon overshadowed by terror and destruction that tore away bridges and ripped houses from their foundations.

From the river’s headwaters in the Catskills and through the Poconos, excessive runoff surged down steep slopes and through valleys on both sides of the river. Tributaries swelled unbelievably, some rising thirty feet in fifteen minutes. Eventually, they all poured into the Delaware, transforming the usually placid waters into a raging, uncontrollable beast.

Mountain resorts were inundated, leaving cars upended in swimming pools. Entire summer camps were washed away. More than 400 children were evacuated by helicopter from island camps in a tense, unprecedented operation.

In the end, nearly a hundred people were dead and hundreds more homeless. Dozens were missing, some ripped–still sleeping–from their beds in the middle of the night. Victims’’ bodies were still being recovered thirty years later — some were never found.

Devastation on the Delaware follows the true stories of survivors and eyewitnesses to bring these events to chilling life. More than 100 historical photos and a dozen maps illustrate this narrative nonfiction account of a tragic event that changed life in the Delaware Valley forever.

This is our book club read for February.

McNees lightly imagines the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women has enjoyed generations-long success. The story begins with a 20-year-old Louisa unhappily moving with her family from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where her Transcendentalist philosopher father pursues a life sans material pleasure. Louisa, meanwhile, plans on saving enough money to return to Boston and pursue a career as a writer. Then she meets the handsome and charming Joseph Singer, who stirs up strong emotions in Louisa. Not wanting to admit that she is attracted to him, Louisa responds to Joseph with defensiveness and anger until, of course, she can no longer deny her feelings and becomes torn between her desires and her dreams.

I have been wanting to read this one for awhile!

MacKayla “Mac” Lane is a small-town southern girl living a life of suntans and shopping. All that changes when her sister dies in Ireland and a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone raises disturbing questions about the nature of her sister’s death. Mac follows the lead to Dublin and the strange life her sister led, on to the darkly dangerous book-dealer Jericho Barrons, and a burgeoning war with deadly Fae that humankind doesn’t even realize has begun. Time-travel-romance maven Moning reshapes her Celtic lore for a radically different and engaging new dark fantasy series. Mac’s first-person narrative is more than point of view; it’s a true recounting of how a sheltered young girl grows to accept the role fate has dealt her.

Picked this one up from audible.com.

Few pastors or Christian writers have dared to approach the subject of how proper eating and an active lifestyle can affect how we serve God. Author Gary Thomas does just that. And he reaches all the way back to the apostle Paul, who wrote that we need to prime our bodies to become, ‘an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.’ To illustrate the body/soul correlation, Thomas presents engaging and diverse stories that include a young mom who got fit through volleyball and reaped spiritual rewards in her marriage, a 300-pound pastor who realized his obesity was eroding his ministry impact, and a woman who gained the spiritual strength to survive a contentious divorce by training for a marathon. In every instance, Thomas makes a direct connection between the physical challenge and its spiritual consequence. This book is a must read for anyone seeking new and compelling motivation for strengthening their bodies and fortifying their souls.

We are reading this one as a staff for my work.

I leave tomorrow morning for a staff retreat yes that is two retreats in a row. I will be back home on Wednesday early afternoon but I do plan this time to remember my laptop 😀

What are you reading this week? Please add your link to where it says “click here” below.

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on January 27, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)70 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Holly Mueller!!!!

I had an AMAZING blog week! I am pretty sure I posted every day and almost had a review every day as well, thanks to the cabin weekend that left me with five books read but not reviewed. It feel so good to be back on track and enjoying blogging and reviewing again. I even got out his week and visited quite a few blogs too. I love that.

Here is what I posted this week:

The Murder Of The Century by Paul Collins

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans (Lenore’s (from Presenting Lenore) apocalyptic novel ROCKS!

The Midwife’s Tale by Sam Thomas (wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!)

Born This Way by Paul Vitaglanio (creator of the Born This Way blog/website)

Will To Murder by Gail Feichtinger (The true crime stories behind the Glensheen Mansion murders)

Ashes by Ilsa Bick (great dystopian YA… or is it called Apocalyptic now?)

The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker (looking for a great audio and/or a great read – here you go!)

I was right! Look at that!!! What a great week! Seriously I feel like a rock star and I am not tapped out yet, I have another book and an audio almost ready for review!

So what is new for this week?

On the day her daughter leaves for college, Anne Colwater’s husband of twenty years announces he wants a divorce. Her roles of wife and mother suddenly gone, Annie retreats to her childhood home of Mystic, Washington, to heal. There she finds her old friend Nick, suddenly widowed and unable to cope with his emotionally scarred young daughter, Izzie. Annie agrees to look after Izzie, and soon finds herself caring for both father and daughter with a joy and passion she never expected – and she finds her love returned with a fervor she had never even hoped for. But love is never simple, and it is not until Annie learns a hard lesson from her own grown daughter that she finds the strength to claim the happiness she has earned.

I started this one yesterday and so far…. hmmmm…

In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.

For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.

On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim, I simply survived an intolerable situation. A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it.

On a recent trip to Wal-Mart I found this true story written by Jaycee Dugard regarding her 18 year abduction. I have started it and WOW, it is painfully real and intense.

In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.

The events leading up to the most notorious crime of the twentieth century are almost as shocking as the assassination itself. Killing Kennedy chronicles both the heroism and deceit of Camelot, bringing history to life in ways that will profoundly move the reader. This may well be the most talked about book of the year.

My kitchen audio should be complete in the next couple days and this one is next up.

In her forties – a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role – Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world. In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.

Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.

The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down. Through it all runs the story of Aikman’s own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.

I was excited to see this was a true story! I love women friendships and I am excited to read about this group who supported one another.

I am really excited about my reading and listening this week. How about you? What great things have you read or listened to this week? Whats up for this upcoming week? Share your It’s Monday! What Are You Reading by linking below where it says click here.

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well:

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on January 20, 2013January 20, 2013 by Sheila (Book Journey)65 Comments

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card. This past weeks winner is:

Laurel Rain Snow!!!!

Oh my gosh… first of all I had no intention of going “dark” over the weekend. I was at the cabin which has no internet but I drove to the cafe in town about 10 miles away so I could write a Saturday post, put up some pics and write a review. Well, my battery is very bad on this laptop and only goes for about an hour without being plugged in (super annoying… really). So….. I almost finish the first post when it runs out and shuts off. So…. I was not about to go back to the cabin, charge up and drive in again so I call it a fail for the weekend – but what a treat for this week because….

I read 5 books this weekend!!! Yes 5!!!! WOW that feels good…. and some good ones too so watch for come pretty exciting reviews coming up this week! Gushers…. really… and thinkers too. 🙂

So before ,y weekend away my week was going pretty awesome too… here is what I did get posted:

Between The lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer (SOOOOOO good!)

Mad River by John Sanford (my first Sanford…and in audio!)

GONE by Randy Wayne White (audio review)

I finally finally finally posted my super fun fitness challenge for 2013. Oh yes readers…. we can be super cool readers… and be fit! It;s true! 😀 Please check it out 😀

It feels soooo good to be reading again! From this weekend you can also add Level 2, The Midwife’s Tale, Born This Way, Will To Murder and Where God Finds You. All to be reviewed soon.

As for whats next…. well….

It could happen tomorrow . . .

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.
Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.

For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

EEP right? I started this one this morning and it is so far…. delicious!

Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohaus—the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night—and one of the food world’s brightest and most controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own.

Eddie grew up in theme-park America, on a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac in suburban Orlando, raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) hustlers and hysterics from Taiwan. While his father improbably launched a series of successful seafood and steak restaurants, Eddie burned his way through American culture, defying every “model minority” stereotype along the way. He obsessed over football, fought the all-American boys who called him a chink, partied like a gremlin, sold drugs with his crew, and idolized Tupac. His anchor through it all was food—from making Southern ribs with the Haitian cooks in his dad’s restaurant to preparing traditional meals in his mother’s kitchen to haunting the midnight markets of Taipei when he was shipped off to the homeland. After misadventures as an unlikely lawyer, street fashion renegade, and stand-up comic, Eddie finally threw everything he loved—past and present, family and food—into his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the shards of global culture he’d melded into his own identity.

When I read Anthony Bodain’s book I loved it… I just love food memoirs… so here I go again… 🙂

The compelling tale of a girl who must save a group of bonobos–and herself–from a violent coup.

The Congo is a dangerous place, even for people who are trying to do good.

When one girl has to follow her mother to her sanctuary for bonobos, she’s not thrilled to be there. It’s her mother’s passion, and she’d rather have nothing to do with it. But when revolution breaks out and their sanctuary is attacked, she must rescue the bonobos and hide in the jungle. Together, they will fight to keep safe, to eat, and to survive.

I hear Eliot read a part of his book in New York this past June and I was sold. I knew then I had to read this book.

That’s my week! I am wondering what you are reading these days 🙂 Please add your link below where it says click here so myself and others can some and see what you are reading. I am curious if you too are getting in good reading this time of year or if this is a slower time for you to read. 😀 You never know where that next great read may come from….

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)