Tag: its monday what are you reading

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.

Niina at For The Love Of Reading

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

Wow, how did it get to be Monday already?   I think I had a good reading and blogging week… but the week was hindered when Thursday evening I became sick and remained that way through the weekend.  I am still sniffling now but had a good nap today and am hopeful that this is the end of it and I can get back on schedule tomorrow.  My workouts have suffered, but my reading has not as when not wanting to move…. I can always read.  😀

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (I am so glad I read this!  I really LOVED it!!!)

 

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer (a book I have been meaning to read for years – an audio that really amazed me – true story.)

The Condition by Jennifer Haigh (have you read Haigh yet?  You need to!)

 

Never Eighteen by Megan Bostic (debut author this year and a great read!!!!)

One For The Money – Book and Movie review (I read the books YEARS ago, seen the movie on Saturday!)

 

I also finished Crescendo and The Fixer Upper on audio and watched Into The Wild the movie and have reviews yet to post on both of these.  I am in the process of listening to Silence which is the final and follow up book to Crescendo.

So this week hubby will be working out of town which for a wild girl like me means….

more books.  😛 

I already peeked this afternoon to see what I was up for this week and am excited to share with you the plan:

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back?

In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King – who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer – takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a 35-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away: a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life – like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963 – turning on a dime.

Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession – to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world – of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading, eventually of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful – and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

I started this one a couple days ago… it is a 30+ hour audio so thought I had better get started!  So far?  Loving it!

 

 

 

Frances, a Chinese-American student at an academically competitive school in San Francisco, has always had it drilled into her to be obedient to her mother and to be a straight-A student so that she can go to Med school. But is being a doctor what she wants? It has never even occurred to Frances to question her own feelings and desires until she accidentally winds up in speech class and finds herself with a hidden talent. Does she dare to challenge the mother who has sacrificed everything for her?

I found this at my library…. thought it sounded good!

In LIFE IS A TRIP: The Transformative Magic of Travel, Santa-Fe based travel writer Judith Fein describes many such in-betweens. For her, the most mundane moments are often turning points, when a trip can turn into a catharsis, where plans are thrown out and intuition takes over. Fein loves to take herself off the beaten path and then wait to see what happens. Her collection of essays is not so much about an intrepid traveler as a spiritual searcher, someone willing to travel to the ends of the Earth to find answers.

I started this one this afternoon and am enjoying the funny short travel stories…

Ben and Rose secretly wish their lives were different. Ben longs for the father he has never known. Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing.

Set fifty years apart, these two independent stories–Ben’s told in words, Rose’s in pictures–weave back and forth with mesmerizing symmetry. How they unfold and ultimately intertwine will surprise you, challenge you, and leave you breathless with wonder

I must be into “BIG ADVENTURES” as this baby is over 600 pages.  But – this was going to be my first book of the year and got pushed back.  Now it is time.

I think that is more than enough for this week – but it should be a fun week to read!  I am hoping to get around to many of you to see what you are reading as well!  Please add your link below where it says “Click Here” and stop in and see a few of the other readers who have linked up as well.  You never know where your next great read may come from!  😀

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and for those of you who are mainly YA, MG, and Childrens book readers…. be sure add your link here as well:

 

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.

Hardcover Feedback

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

Well, the week wasn’t all that I had hoped book wise.  I actually had a FULL week of long work hours and evening plans every single night Monday thru Friday.  So busy in fact, I hardly made it around to see any of your posts. I had little book time until these last couple of days which has been wonderful.

Henry’s Sisters by Cathy Lamb (our book club read, a lot of good food…. and a little bra burning…)

Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie (audio and GOOD audio!)

 

52 Small Changes by Brett Blumenthal ( a wonderful book for making changes for the good)

 

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (good, but not great and left me hanging…)

 

at Team Kickin’ It:

Weekly Check In

 

When Its Hard To Find Time To Work Out

 

52 Small Changes – the book and The CHALLENGE

 

The week was skimpy but I have plans for this next one.  While I will have evening events Monday and Wednesday and possibly Thursday… I should get a little time during the week, late evenings and over the weekend. 

The plan?

Doc Hendley never set out to be a hero. In 2004, Hendley-a small- town bartender- launched a series of wine-tasting events to raise funds for clean-water projects and to bring awareness to the world’s freshwater crisis. He planned to donate the proceeds through traditional channels, but instead found himself traveling to one of the world’s most dangerous hot spots: Darfur, Sudan.

There, Doc witnessed a government-sponsored genocide where the number-one weapon wasn’t bullets-it was water. The Janjaweed terrorists had figured out that shooting up a bladder containing 10,000 liters of water, or dumping rotting corpses into a primary water source is remarkably efficient for the purposes of mass extermination. With limited funds, Doc realized that he couldn’t build new wells costing $10,000 a pop, but he could hire local workers to restore a damaged well for a mere $50 each. He’d found his mission. Today, Doc and Wine to Water continue to help stricken peoples repair and maintain water- containment systems in places like Darfur, Cambodia, Uganda, and Haiti.

Doc is a regular, rough-and-tumble guy who loves booze, music, and his Harley- but he also wanted to help. Wine to Water is a gripping story about braving tribal warfare and natural disasters and encountering fascinating characters in far-flung regions of the world. It is also an authoritative account of a global crisis and an inspirational tale that proves how ordinary people can improve the world.

This book is seriously right up my alley and I can not wait to read and chat with you about it!

 

 

 

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . .

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Ok… we will see on this one.  It may be a genre stretch but I LOVE this cover!

The noise between Patch and Nora is gone. They’ve overcome the secrets riddled in Patch’s dark past…bridged two irreconcilable worlds…faced heart-wrenching tests of betrayal, loyalty and trust…and all for a love that will transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Armed with nothing but their absolute faith in one another, Patch and Nora enter a desperate fight to stop a villain who holds the power to shatter everything they’ve worked for—and their love—forever.

While still listening to the second in this series, Crescendo, Reagan from Miss Remmers Reviews raved to me about the third book. Silence…. so…. onward we go! 😀

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men’s Journal, retraces McCandless’s ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father.

A book I have wanted to read for years… and never had.  Until now.

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and for those who read mainly YA, Middle Grade, and Childrens books, be sure to add your link to the MG version as well here:

Coming in a little late today – I got caught up in the previous post tonight and well…. yeah.  😀

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.

Lydia from The Lost Entwife

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

I did not accomplish all I had hoped I would this past week.  Even with the week off I spent a lot of time writing, not so much reading – and I was gone with friends over the weekend crafting at our cabin.  That said – here is what did happen…

Divergent by Veronica Roth (First book of the year!!!  And it is a good one!)

Introducing …. a new blog with a different focus:  Team Kickin It!  (Stop by and say hello!)

 

Folly Beach by Dorthea Benton Frank ( good beach read!)

 

Boo by Rene Gutteridge (fun audio that oddly gave me Twilight flashbacks of Bella’s dad….)

 

Cook Yourself Thin Faster by Lauren Deen  (good recipes – easy and fast to make and low cal too!)

 

My How Book Blogging Has Changed... (my thoughts on some not so positive changes to the book blogging community over the past year)

 

This week I have some catching up to do… and a busy week ahead – work, evening commitments and Navy Son is home for a couple weeks!  SSQQUUEEE!!!!

I do have a few things planned though…

Whether as New Year’s resolutions, birthday wishes, or daily promises, most everyone vows at some point to make a major life change. But change is easier said than done, especially when it comes to better managing our wellness amidst the chaos of everyday living. Fortunately, wellness coach and award-winning writer Brett Blumenthal has devised a way to inspire and motivate her readers to live healthier and make positive changes in their lives. Although Blumenthal’s method is not a quick fix, it is a surprisingly simple one: make one small change per week, for fifty-two weeks, and at the end of a year, you’ll be happier and healthier. After all, it is the small changes that are the most realistic, instead of trying to overhaul your lifestyle all at once. 52 Small Changes addresses all areas of wellbeing, including nutrition, exercise, stress management, mental wellness, and even the health of one’s home environment. By guiding readers through these changes at an easy, manageable pace, Blumenthal provides an engaging roadmap to lasting results and “a happier, healthier you.”

I haven’t looked at this one yet but I am excited to check it out!

After her boss is caught in a political scandal, fledgling Washington lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left broke, unemployed, and homeless. out of options, she reluctantly accepts her father’s offer to help turn birdsong—the fading Victorian mansion he recently inherited in Guthrie, Georgia—into a real estate cash cow. but birdsong turns out to be a moldering Pepto-bismol-pink dump with duct-taped windows, a driveway full of junk, and a grumpy distant relation who’s claiming squatter’s rights. Stuck in a tiny town where everyone seems to know her business, Dempsey grits her teeth and rolls up her sleeves, and begins her journey back to the last place she ever expected: home.

Mary Kay Andrews is a hoot – I look forward to listening to this one!

In the midseventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of “why I did stand-up and why I walked away.”

Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been awriter. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times — the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

I loved Steve Martin as a kid!  Had to give this one a try 🙂

 

 

 

I’ve experienced a lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you’ll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I’ve put together for you in this book. I think you’ll find I’ve left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I’m saying is, let us begin, shall we?

A Christmas gift!  Cant wait to read!

 

 

Thats the week!  What does your week look like?  I would love to see what you are reading!  Add your link below to where it says click here! 

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For those who enjoy reading Childrens, Middle Grade and YA – check in at this link as well:

First off – Happy New Year!  I hope all of you have had a wonderful time this last holiday week of Christmas to New Years…. and now today, here we all are in 2012.  I am glad to have you here celebrating with me 🙂

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.

Lori from Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

**Please note one change for 2012… if you are in Canada or out of the US and win the comment contest here, I will send you the $5 Amazon gift card to use on any Amazon purchase.  It has just become too pricey to mail the books out of the states.  If you are out of the US and have a US address I can send the book to for you, that would work. 😀

Again, Happy New Year!  I have spent pretty much all of today reading my first book of the year, Divergent and loving it.  I was hoping to have the review up today but I am still about 60 pages from finishing so it will go up Monday late afternoon instead.  I actually have several great reads lined up for the week and I have the week off so I am looking forward to some wonderful writing time and reading too!  😀 

Here is what was true of this past week:

The Black Shard by Victoria Simcox with a signed GIVEAWAY!

 

My 2011 recap of the best and the worst of each month

 

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (2nd in the World As We Knew It trilogy)

My final book/audio counts for 2011

 

The 2011 WHERE Are You Reading Counts are in and I posted my map and a link for others who participated as well.

 

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer (yet to be reviewed)

 

Winter Bone by Daniel Woodrell (yet to be reviewed)

 

I am planning on doing a giveaway a day here this week and todays was posted this morning, you can still enter by going to the post and letting me know what your first book of the year is going to be.

 

I am actually really excited about the books and audio I have going on this week to kick off the new year, and a new crisp and clean 2012 Reading map!  Here is what is happening:

One choice can transform you. Pass initiation. Do not fail! Thrilling urban dystopian fiction debut from exciting young author. In sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior’s world, society is divided into five factions — Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent) — each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue, in the attempt to form a “perfect society.” At the age of sixteen, teens must choose the faction to which they will devote their lives. On her Choosing Day, Beatrice renames herself Tris, rejects her family’s group, and chooses another faction. After surviving a brutal initiation, Tris finds romance with a super-hot boy, but also discovers unrest and growing conflict in their seemingly “perfect society.” To survive and save those they love, they must use their strengths to uncover the truths about their identities, their families, and the order of their society itself.

Currently reading and should finish tonight… I have pretty much read this non stop all day (errr… except for the two hour nap I had… 😳 )

 

Happy day after Christmas!

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.

Deb Nance

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas/Holiday/Weekend.  I sure did. College Son has been all ours all weekend and that’s rare and nice.  We watched movies, are WAY too much and had a great time. I thought I would put this post up last night like I usually do… but honestly – I just took a day off from the internet and the blog and being unplugged ….

was nice.  😀

As for what I read and accomplished this past week:

 

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

Pumpkin Rolls recipe (so good!!!)

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (this time on audio!)  – a little recap before the movie comes out!

 

The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman with giveaway!

 

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell (not reviewed yet)

Two challenges hosted here – its not to late 😀  : 

The 2012 WHERE Are You Reading Challenge (Map out where your books are from)

The 2012 Dystopia Challenge (care to give it a try?  :D)

 

I did not get as much book time in as I had hoped but plenty of audio while cooking cleaning, gift wrapping, and tree assembly 😀

So this week I am hoping to clean up several books I have lying around that I would like to clean up before we go in to the new year.  Because next week…. next week I am treating myself to a week of books I have waited too long to read!

However – I am adding a little audio to my week and here is what is either playing now… or playing soon:

 

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.

MarthaE from Martha’s Bookshelf

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

What a great week!  I read and I listened to audio and well, for the first time in a long time I pretty much made it through everything I said I was going to read and listen to!  😀

My awesome week looked like this:

Bennys Angel by Laura Allen Nonemaker (A cute little story about Believing!)

 

Hometown Girl by Mariah Stewart (book tour and sweet read)

 

Bookies Book Club Christmas Party!

 

The Christmas Wedding by James Patterson (Bookies book club review and my threats to take out a character)  😯

 

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch (wonderful audio memoir)

 

The first of my Secret BOOK Santa Gifts!

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night by Mark Haddon (oh, is that what the fuss was about all those years ago?  LOVED IT!

 

I Am Ready To Answer Your Questions (opened up the blog to all your questions… and oh what fun questions were asked!  😛 )

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer  (what would you do if life as you knew it ended today?  Fantastic read!)

 

Responses to your questions (you asked, I answered… on books, on life, on balance, on crazy things, and my dream spot!)

 

Maman’s Home Sick Pie by Donia Bijan ( a delicious read with a couple of recipes for you!)

 

See?  Told you I had a great week!  😛  My audio time was awesome and my evenings were not as heavy this week so I got in some good reading time too!

Now – this week I thought I would have a little fun with my reading… tis the season and all that 😀

Every year at Christmastime, Marnie and her twelve closest girlfriends gather in the evening with batches of beautifully wrapped homemade cookies. Everyone has to bring a dessert and a bottle of wine, but this year, it’s their stories that are especially important. Marnie’s oldest daughter has a risky pregnancy. Jeannie’s father is having an affair with her best friend. Taylor’s life is in financial freefall. Rosie’s husband doesn’t want children, and she has to decide, very soon, the fate of her marriage.

On this evening, at least, they can feel as a group the impulses of sisterly love and conflict, the passion and hopefulness of a new romance, the betrayal and disillusionment some relationships bring, the joys and fears of motherhood, the agony of losing a child, and above all, the love they have for one another. As Marnie says, the Christmas Cookie Club, if it’s anything, is a reminder of delight.

This is the perfect week to read this one!  Afterwards I am going to give my copy away 😀

All She Wants For Christmas Is…

If Amber Taylor doesn’t find a way home for Christmas, her mother is definitely going to disown her. Unfortunately, there’s no way she can afford to buy a plane ticket on her paltry salary. Luckily the universe obviously has her back. Why else would a single, drop-dead gorgeous actor suddenly show up on her doorstep and offer to drive her cross-country for the holidays?

A Happily Ever After…

Hunky Scott Cardoza was everything Amber desired in a boyfriend–except that he definitely had heartbreaker written all over him, which is why Amber promised herself that their road trip was going to be anything but romantic. Yet being cooped up in a tiny car for three days with the man of her dreams was turning out to be quite a challenge. Good things rules were meant to be broken…

Ok, a little out of my genre style but I picked this up at the library sale this fall and it is Christmas related… sort of… I think… maybe… 😯

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In addition, if you are a reviewer of Middle Grade or children’s books… be sure to link to the Picture books to YA version of Monday, What Are You Reading here as well:

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.

Paula at Community Book Stop

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

It is a balmy 44 degrees here in Minnesota and we are snow-less.  I could not be any more thrilled.  Hate cold.  Hate snow.

This past week has been nice with a few sprinkles of snow that did not stick.  As far as my reading adventures, here is what happened on the blog:

The 2012 WHERE Are You Reading Challenge sign up is ready.  LOVE this challeneg and I hoep you will join in the fun!

Book Coveting for 2012 (come on…. everyone is doing it!)  😛

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (a fascinating journey set in 179 1 centered around a tobacco plantation and the African American “help” that work the land and the kitchen.

Read Dystopia 2012 Challenge (In my new found appreciation for Dystopia reads, I am offering up a challenge with giveaways that is not too big and should be a lot of fun.  Come on!  Join me!  :razz:)

Ok, thats a little embarrassing that I only posted one review for this past week.  😯  I have another written and ready to go, I have two that I will be finishing in the next day or two, and I have a tour on Tuesday as well as book club review on Wednesday so this next week will look a lot better reading wise.  😛

Here is what is new for this next week:

Life was always just about perfect for Brooke Madison Bowers. She was the prettiest, most popular girl in small-town St. Dennis, Maryland, a prom queen, local pageant star, and the pride and joy of her loving parents. She even married the man of her dreams. But the promise of happily ever after fell to pieces when her husband was killed while serving in Iraq. Brokenhearted and longing for the solace of better days, she returns to the idyllic world of St. Dennis, and the familiar comfort of the family farm. Surrounded by her loving family and friends, she’s determined to build a new life, complete with her own cupcake bakery. She’s equally determined never to fall in love again.

For Jesse Enright, life has been a challenge. A fourth-generation attorney, he’s spent his life fighting to escape the shadow of his irresponsible father. Now he’s moved to St. Dennis to run the family law practice, and he’s ready to find the right girl, get married, and settle down. But his carefully laid plans go out the window when he meets Brooke and finds himself caught between the unbreakable law of attraction and Brooke’s resolve to go her way alone—despite the undeniable feelings Jesse stirs in her. But just like catching lightning in a bottle, is it possible to fall head-over-heels, heart-and-soul in love all over again?

On tour – see my review this coming Tuesday!

In the summer of 1974, a fourteen-year-old girl in Dolton, Illinois, had a dream. A dream to become an actress, like her idols Ron Howard and Vicki Lawrence. But it was a long way from the South Side of Chicago to Hollywood, and it didn’t help that she’d recently dropped out of the school play, The Ugly Duckling. Or that the Hollywood casting directors she wrote to replied that “professional training was a requirement.”

But the funny thing is, it all came true. Through a series of Happy Accidents, Jane Lynch created an improbable–and hilarious–path to success. In those early years, despite her dreams, she was also consumed with anxiety, feeling out of place in both her body and her family. To deal with her worries about her sexuality, she escaped in positive ways–such as joining a high school chorus not unlike the one in Glee–but also found destructive outlets. She started drinking almost every night her freshman year of high school and developed a mean and judgmental streak that turned her into a real-life Sue Sylvester.

Then, at thirty-one, she started to get her life together. She was finally able to embrace her sexuality, come out to her parents, and quit drinking for good. Soon after, a Frosted Flakes commercial and a chance meeting in a coffee shop led to a role in the Christopher Guest movie Best in Show, which helped her get cast in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Similar coincidences and chance meetings led to roles in movies starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, and even Meryl Streep in 2009’s Julie & Julia. Then, of course, came the two lucky accidents that truly changed her life. Getting lost in a hotel led to an introduction to her future wife, Lara. Then, a series she’d signed up for abruptly got canceled, making it possible for her to take the role of Sue Sylvester in Glee, which made her a megastar.

I have seen Jane Lynch in a couple movies, a a bit in GLEE.  I have been interested in her story and am currently listening to it on audio.

Kristina’s stay at summer horse camp is horrible to say the least, and it’s all because Hester and Davina are there as well, making her life miserable. When Hester’s cruel prank goes terribly wrong, it’s actually what sends the three girls back to the magical land of Bernovem. In Bernovem, Kristina is very excited to see her former friend, Prince Werrien. When he invites her to sail with him on his ship to his homeland Tezerel, putting it simply, Kristina can’t refuse.

Reunited with her gnome, dwarf, animal, fairy friends … and best of all, Werrien, things seem like they couldn’t get any better for Kristina. But when Werrien becomes fascinated with an unusual seeing stone, the ”Black Shard”, Kristina is haunted by a ghostlike old hag. Struggling against suspicion, guilt, illness, and ultimately the one who wants to possess her soul, Kristina will see it’s in her weakest moment that she will encounter more strength than she has ever known.

I read The Magic Warble by this author about a year ago and now have the opportunity to read this second book.

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive “theory of mind” by which most of us sense what’s going on in other people’s heads. When his neighbor’s poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents’ broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns (“4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don’t speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don’t eat my lunch and Take No Risks”).

Confession – my book club read this years ago and I could not get into it.  After sitting through the review while they all raved, I felt I missed something and have kept it on my shelf ever since.  Now I am going to try it in audio.

This may look like a heavy reading week but I am hoping not.  My Monday class has been cancelled this week, Tuesday is book club, Wednesday is helping with students, but Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are pretty open. 

 

Oh and one more thing, Teach Mentor Texts has asked and received my permission to start a MG (Middle Grade/ Childrens book version Of Its MOnday What Are You Reading.  If you or any bloggy friends you know review mainly MG or Childrens Books, they may wish to link up there as well as here:

SO what are you reading this mid December?  Does this time of year just get crazier so your reading becomes less, or as the weather turns cold and the days are shorter do you tend to read more?

Add your link to Its Monday!  What Are You Reading below where it says click here.  I would love to see what you are reading!  😀

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Happy December! 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.

shelleyrae @ Book’d Out!

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

I have to say…. my audio book time is saving me from putting up a goose egg in my reading for the week.  😀  Seriously, sitting down and reading time has been few and far between but audio has followed me throughout my day.  Here is what I put up this week:

The Killing Of Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly (Love Lincoln!)

 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (OH MY!!! BEST audio of the year!)

The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers (an author everyone should spend a little time with 😀 )

 

When Authors Attack (a flashback to a review that now, more experienced, I have some thoughts… 😀 )

 

 

This week I am working on the ISPY awards and have something every evening until Thursday.  That said, I need to finish the book club book this week and new to the table (and the cd player) are:

Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all–hope–in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

Who knew I would be such a dystopia fan?  My friend Amy talked this book up to me quite a while ago… its about time I enter this world!

 

 

 

Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event–an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex’s parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.
     With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.

I want to follow up with the above book, with the second in the series, in audio form!  I alredy have this checked out from the library!

 

 

 

 

In the year that has passed since a meteor collided with the moon, Miranda’s friends and neighbors have died, the landscape has frozen, and food has become increasingly scarce. The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for his future thwart their relationship. Then a devastating tornado hits, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.

… and with a little luck I will get into this third installment of the series in audio this week as well!  The audio is only about 6 hours. 

 

 

 

Thats the week – I am ready to check out yours!  Add your link to your Its Monday What Are You Reading post below where it says click here.

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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.

Lori from Escape With Dollycas!

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As far as what is new for this week:

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

Yup… goin’ a little middle grade…. 😀

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

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

From BEA this past May…

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

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

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

Reading this one for the INSPY awards…

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

One I have been meaning to read forever…

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

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