Tag: its monday what are you reading

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!

Well another week into the New Year.  How ya’ all doin’?  I have been reading right along.  I had a pretty low key weekend (YAY!) so put in some reading time and finished an audiobook.  Here is what I posted this past week:

Playing St. Barbara by Marian Szczepanski

Labor Day Book Party with Movie Anticipation

Then Again by Diane Keaton

Bookies Review Of Reconstructing Amelia

Recap Of The PINK Concert I went to Last Weekend w/ pics

Weekend Cooking – My First Attempt AT Hibachi

What Makes A Good Book – Book Club Worthy?

The Broken Path by Cami Chechetts (a light audiobook on the possibilities of moving on)

A pretty fair week, here is what is on tap this week:

For my ears:

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup is a memoir of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped, sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before the American Civil War. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, DC, as well as describing at length cotton cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.

David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother’s wedding. He mops his sister’s floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn’t it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives — a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

For My Eyes:

When Eve Petworth writes to Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cookery and food. Their friendship blossoms against the backdrop of Jackson’s colorful, but ultimately unsatisfying, love life and Eve’s tense relationship with her soon-to-be married daughter. As each of them offers, from behind the veils of semi-anonymity and distance, wise and increasingly affectionate counsel to the other, they both begin to confront their problems and plan a celebratory meeting in Paris–a meeting that Eve fears can never happen.

Holly Brennan used food to comfort herself through her husband’s illness and death. Now she’s alone at age thirty-two. And she weighs more than she ever has. When fate throws her in the path of Logan Montgomery, personal trainer to pro athletes, and he offers to train her, Holly concludes it must be a sign. Much as she dreads the thought of working out, Holly knows she needs to put on her big girl panties and see if she can sweat out some of her grief.
 

 
Soon, the easy intimacy and playful banter of their training sessions lead Logan and Holly to most intense and steamy workouts. But can Holly and Logan go the distance as a couple now that she’s met her goals—and other men are noticing?

It should be a good week!  I am excited about the books i have going.  How about you?  What have you read this past week?  Whats coming up this week?  Please add your link to your Monday What Are You Reading post below so we can see what everyone is reading 😀

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

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!

Wow… 2nd week of January already put to bed!  It was a fast week and a full one and I am happy to be home from North Dakota as of late today after going to see PINK in concert.  *sigh*  I will never look at concerts the same way again.

As busy as this past week was I did manage to put some posts up:

Flowers In The Attic by V C Andrews (a re-read of a book I read about 30 years ago….. eep!)

Longbourn by Jo Baker (not the Downton Abbey read I was looking for…)

Looking for the 2014 Authors For Wine and Words (Please pass this post on if you have connections 🙂  )

Book Club People… How Do You Choose Your Books?  ( its fun to see the different ways book clubs pick the books they read!)

I need your help with a BLIND DATE!  (join in the fun – there is a gift card going to one lucky commenter)

Reconstructing Amelia by Kim McCreight (our book club pick for January – my thoughts befre the group review 😉

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion ( a great audio listen!)

What Book Are You Afraid of?  Freshly posted… I am looking for your thoughts 😉

So pretty fair week I think!  😀  Here is what I am sinking my eyes and ears into this week!

Eyes:

The secrets, struggles, and self-redemption of a Depression-era coal miner’s wife and three daughters play out against a turbulent historical backdrop of Ku Klux Klan intimidation and the 1933 Pennsylvania Mine War. Their intertwined lives eerily mirror the 7th century legend of St. Barbara, patroness of miners, reenacted annually in the town pageant. Tested by scandal, heartbreak, and tragedy, each woman will write her own courageous ending to St. Barbara’s story.

Wow right?  Reading this one for a tour 🙂

With death only a heartbeat away, Gene and the remaining humans must find a way to survive long enough to escape the hungry predators chasing them through the night.  But they’re not the only things following Gene.  He’s haunted by Ashley June who he left behind, and his burgeoning feelings for Sissy, the human girl at his side.

Their escape takes them to a refuge of humans living high in the mountains.  Gene and his friends think they’re finally safe, but not everything here is as it seems.  And before long, Gene must ask himself if the new world they’ve entered is just as evil as the one they left behind.  As their enemies close in on them and push Gene and Sissy closer, one thing becomes painfully clear: all they have is each other…if they can stay alive.

I have put off reading this one for too long!

Ears:

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.
 
So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years.
 

I enjoy Diane as an actress and I heard (Florinda!) that this was a good one. 

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Ursula’s world is in turmoil, facing the unspeakable evil of the two greatest wars in history. What power and force can one woman exert over the fate of civilization — if only she has the chance?

Well.. that sounds interesting!

Thats the plan.. How about you – what did you read this last week?  What do you plan to read this week?  Add your What Are You Reading Post to the link below and check out the other links as well 🙂

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

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!

A pretty decent week – not for reading, no I have yet to finish a book in 2014, but for ringing in a New Year with friends, and running my first 5K of the year, I feel accomplished.  🙂  Here is what I did post this week:

Movie Review:  JOBS

The Readers of The New Year – great pics of the bloggers you may know!

Day Two… Nine Bloggers Reading (the rest of the pictures of the bloggers reading into the New Year)

Someone Else’s Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

1st 5k Of The Year on January 1st!!!!  The Polar Dash pictures!

Where Were You When Dumbledore Died?  (I am fascinated about the fictional moments we remember forever)

My One Little Word for 2014 (choosing  a word for the year to own and be… awesome!)

For this week, I am still finishing up on the books I posted last week, I hope to start:

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical – most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent – and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don’s Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie – and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

I want to post books as well but the truth is I have three I am working on this week, the same ones I mentioned last week so I am going to leave it at that. 🙂

I would love to know what you are reading this first week of January!  Please add your What Are You Reading post below where it says click her.

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**Quick note:  Oh my gosh!  I wrote this Sunday evening after a long day and getting home late from hanging with friends.  I wrote it, posted it (so I thought) and went to bed.  I did not notice until I came home after my 12 hour shift today that it never posted.  Good grief….  🙂

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!

Quite the week here of last minute shopping, get togethers with friends, planning and yes.. even late card writing.  Books have not been an option, thank you God so much for audio or I would really have nothing to say.  Here is what I posted this week:

The Anti Prom by Andy McDonald

The KOBO has arrived!

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 

Platform 21 by T R Patrick

Red Hill by Jamie McGuire (how do I keep missing out on these great authors?)

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (oh my word me head is still reeling from this amazing book)

The Twelve by Justin Cronin (read many months ago, finally putting the post up!)

So it has been a good week.  Not sure how this week will fare, I work two back to back 12 hour shifts the next two days but then have Wednesday – the weekend off.  Maybe that will lead to reading time…. ooh I hope so!

SO for this week here is what is currently happening:

Does a respected adoption agency have a frightening secret? Tipped off by a determined ex-colleague on a desperate quest to find her birth mother, Boston newspaper reporter Jane Ryland begins to suspect that the agency is engaging in the ultimate betrayal—reuniting birth parents with the wrong children.

For detective Jake Brogan and his partner, a young woman’s brutal murder seems a sadly predictable case of domestic violence, one that results in two toddlers being shuttled into the foster care system. Then Jake finds an empty cradle at the murder scene. Where is the baby who should have been sleeping there?

Jane and Jake are soon on a trail full of twists and turns that takes them deep into the heart of a foster care system in crisis and threatens to blow the lid off an adoption agency scandal. When the threatening phone calls start, Jane knows she is on the right track…but with both a killer at large and an infant missing, time is running out….

EEP -right?

1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.
 
At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

Another one I dont know how it escaped me!

I think that is all I am going to put up here.  I am not sure what (or if) I will be reading this week, it will be a surprise to me as well. 🙂

I am curious as to what you will be reading!  Please add your link to where it says click here below and hopefully some of us will be over to check it out 🙂

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

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!

I hope everyone had a good week.  I did!  We had book club this week, and I am finally getting into the Christmas mood… which is typical for me… it takes me a while to get there 😉

Here is what I posted this week:

Ladies Night by Mary Kay Andrews

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

The Bookies Christmas Party

Pain Parties Work by Elizabeth Winder (The Sylvia Plath Story)

An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatfield

When I Practice To Deceive by Ann Rule (“Meh” of the week)

Homemade Caramels – a recipe for you (oh… and for me too!)

also these challenges coming up:

WHAT Are You Reading Challenge 2014

Bucket List Challenge 2014

First Book Of The Year 2014

It feels good to be an active blogger again!  😀  So for this week I am cruising right along into these:

For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone means fighting for tomorrow is an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can’t remember what it’s like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda’s biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals.

When reports of a widespread, deadly “outbreak” begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined. Recognizing they can’t outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy—an enemy who no longer remembers what it’s like to be human.

I smoked through this one in the last couple of days… review this week!

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

Just started this one this afternoon 😀

In Parkland (originally titled Four Days in November), author Vincent Bugliosi “has definitively explained the murder that recalibrated modern America” (Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times Book Review). Releasing this fall, the movie—starring Paul Giamatti, Zac Efron, Jacki Weaver, and Billy Bob Thornton—follows a group of individuals making split-second decisions after this incomprehensible event: the doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital, the chief of the Dallas Secret Service, the cameraman who captured what has become the most examined film in history, the FBI agents who had gunman Lee Harvey Oswald within their grasp, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson who had to take control of the country at a moment’s notice. Based on Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History—Parkland is the story of that day.

I started this last week and ooh… it is good!

Luke’s life is about to take a dangerous turn.
But first he has to die.

In the year 2052, high school sophomore Luke Gibson considers himself an average teenager in a world on the brink of monumental change. Joining his parents and sister, Laura, at the first World Energy Initiative Conference, he is among thousands gathered in a Denver arena to celebrate free renewable energy when a massive earthquake strikes killing everyone in the stadium. The last thing Luke sees before his death is a girl reaching out to him–a stranger whose face he remembers from his dreams.

The end, however, is not the end. Suddenly, inexplicably, Luke is back home in Ohio and everything is different. His sister is gone, the victim in an unsolved homicide years before. Angela, his mysterious dream girl, is here also, and the only person besides Luke who recalls the previous reality. And now their determination to uncover the truth about Laura’s murder and their transformed world is making them targets–forced to flee for their lives from a nameless shadow organization and a government seeking vengeance for an unthinkable act of terror–as they stand on the threshold of a dark conspiracy that threatens all humankind.

I am reading this one for a blog tour this week.

Beyond that I have a few books I have started but have yet to finish that I would like to work on cleaning up before year end.  How about you?  What are you reading this end of December?  I would love to know!  Please add your What Are You Reading link to the link below where it says click here:

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and children’s books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

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!

It was a pretty great week!  I worked, I volunteered, I got things done. 😀  I posted yesterday that we had our Holiday Open House at the Library on Saturday and I put together a book tree.  I promised to post a pic earlier today and then I forgot so here it is now… Wala:

It was fun to put together but a lot more work (and books!) than I thought it would be.

I posted quite a few things this week too and that I feel is awesome… I so feel like i have my groove back!  “Hello Stella!”

The 2014 Bucket List Challenge (something a little different that I am excited about!)

WHERE Are You Reading Challenge 2014 ( I have hosted this challenge since 2011, it seems like the appropriate  challenge to go with our What are you reading meme.)  Check it out!

What Alice Forgot by Alice Moriarty (WOW!  I am loving this author!)

GONE by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (love this series!)

First Book Of The Year Group meme and YOU are invited!  😛

Holiday decorating at the library! 

The Coldest Girl In Cold Town by Holly Black (if there is a “meh” of the week… this is it.)

City Of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare (*sigh*  LOVE!)

As for what I will be reading this week:

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life–and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

Ok, this one sounds a little different to me but people are raving so in I go.  I started it today.

Brooke has been happily married to her college sweetheart for fifteen years. Even after the C-section, the dog poop, the stomach viruses and the coffee breath, Scott always winks at her in just the right moments. That is why, for her beloved, romantic, successful husband’s fortieth birthday, she is giving him pictures. Of herself. Naked.

Newlywed Samantha learns of her husband’s cheating heart when she finds the goods on his computer.

High-powered career woman Katherine works with heartbreaker Phillip, the man who hurt her early on in her career.          

Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine don’t know each other, but their stories are about to intertwine in ways no one could have imagined.

And all three are about to discover the power of friendship to conquer adversity, the satisfaction of unexpected delights, the incredible difference one human being can have on other lives–and that they have all they could ask for, as long as they have each other.

Doesn’t this sound fun? 

Four Days in November is an extraordinarily exciting, precise, and definitive narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. It is drawn from Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a huge and historic account of the event and all the conspiracy theories it spawned, by Vincent Bugliosi, famed prosecutor of Charles Manson and author of Helter Skelter. For general readers, the carefully documented account presented in Four Days is utterly persuasive: Oswald did it and he acted alone.

OOh .. right?

I think that’s where I am at for the week.  I am excited to see what you are reading and or listening to.  Please add your It’s Monday What Are You Reading post to the link below where it says click here.

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and childrens books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

 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!

Can you even believe it is December? I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!  We did here.  For the first time in 4 years both my boys were home. Brad has been in the Navy for the past 4 years but is now out as of mid October!  😀  On Friday, my College Son Justin went back to Mankato as he had to work and everyone went back to life as usual so my cousin Cheryl and I went to the cabin in Finland Minnesota.  It was a fantastic time hanging out with her!  We just came back this morning where I dropped her off at her car and went to the Library to help with the holiday decorating.  It was fun!

Here is what I posted here last week:

Retrieving My Readers -a post about where I have been and where I am going

Coreyography by Corey Feldman (wow.  This one was good on audio)

Goat Mountain by David Vann (hmmmm…. not what I was expecting)

It was a good week, I have a few (ok… maybe more than a few) more book/audio reviews to post this week.  Here is what I am reading and listening to right now:

Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child.

 

So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! She HATES the gym) and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over — she’s getting divorced, , she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over…

After listening to The Husband’s Secret by this same author and enjoying it, I was more than curious about this one.  About half way though I am really enjoying it!

Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey, a transporting companion piece to the New York Times bestseller Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, tells the story of Catherine Wendell, the beautiful and spirited American woman who married Lady Almina’s son, the man who would become the 6th Earl of Carnarvon. The couple presided over Highclere Castle, the grand estate that serves as the setting for the hit PBS show. Following the First World War, many of the great houses of England faded as their owners fortunes declined in the new political and social world of the 1920s and 1930s. As war loomed, Highclere’s survival as the family home of the Carnarvons was again in the balance—as was peace between the nations of Europe.
    Using copious materials—including diaries and scrapbooks—from the castle’s archives, the current Countess of Carnarvon brings alive a very modern story in a beautiful and fabled setting, paying particular attention to the staff who provide Highclere Castle with continuity between generations.

I just started this one this weekend at the cabin and have not got far but think it is going to be interesting!

Now the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor details the events leading up to the murder of the most influential man in history: Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly two thousand years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. Killing Jesus will take readers inside Jesus’s life, recounting the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable – and changed the world forever.

I was not sure I was going to read this one.  I have listened to Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy but this one…. yet a friend told me it was really interesting so in I go. 😀

Not sure what the next book will be but whatever it is… I am looking forward to it.  I also am excited to see what you are reading as we kick off the next 4 weeks of holiday craziness of parties, gift giving, time limitations, family and friends.. and boy… I sure hope there is room for books too. 😀

On a sadder note.. my heart goes out to the loss of Paul Walker, one of the stars of the Fast and Furious movies who died in a horrible car crash yesterday. 

Please add your link to your What Are You Reading post where it says “click here” .  I would love to see what you are reading and so would others!  😀

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and childrens books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

Happy Monday everyone (or Sunday evening here for me – but I post this early to catch out friends in the world who are already having Sunday 😀 )

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!

Check me out!  I was an active blogger this week!  It is true!  I read, I listened to audio…. and wrote posts.  Here is what I put out there this week:

A little paint project with audio on the side…

Catching Fire Movie Review (I liked this one even more than the Hunger Games movie!)

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty (oh wow oh wow!!!)

It has been a good week.  I had a low key weekend and wrote up some of the reviews I keep saying I am going to write and then…. do not.  I also have been flying through some really good audio and it feels so good to be back in my audio groove.  Here is what I am reading and listening to this week:

Lovable child star by age ten, international teen idol by fifteen, and to this day a perennial pop-culture staple, Corey Feldman has not only spent the entirety of his life in the spotlight, he’s become just as famous for his off-screen exploits as for his roles in such classic films as Gremlins, The Goonies, and Stand by Me. He’s been linked to a slew of Hollywood starlets (including Drew Barrymore, Vanessa Marcil, and adult entertainer Ginger Lynn), shared a highly publicized friendship with Michael Jackson, and with his frequent costar Corey Haim enjoyed immeasurable success as one half of the wildly popular duo “The Two Coreys,” spawning seven films, a 1-900 number, and “Coreymania” in the process. What child of the eighties didn’t have a Corey Feldman poster hanging in her bedroom, or a pile of Tiger Beats stashed in his closet?

Now, in this brave and moving memoir, Corey is revealing the truth about what his life was like behind the scenes: His is a past that included physical, drug, and sexual abuse, a dysfunctional family from which he was emancipated at age fifteen, three high-profile arrests for drug possession, a nine-month stint in rehab, and a long, slow crawl back to the top of the box office.

While Corey has managed to overcome the traps that ensnared so many other entertainers of his generation—he’s still acting, is a touring musician, and is a proud father to his son, Zen—many of those closest to him haven’t been so lucky. In the span of one year, he mourned the passing of seven friends and family members, including Corey Haim and Michael Jackson. In the wake of those tragedies, he’s spoken publicly about the dark side of fame, lobbied for legislation affording greater protections for children in the entertainment industry, and lifted the lid off of what he calls Hollywood’s biggest secret.

I just started listening to this one.  I grew up on the Corey Feldman (and the late Corey Haim) movies…. Dream A Little Dream, Gremlins, Goonies, Stand By Me….  his story is one of tragic grace.

Shandi Pierce is juggling finishing college, raising her delightful three-year-old genius son Nathan, aka Natty Bumppo, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced parents. She’s got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up and falling in love with William Ashe, who willingly steps between the robber and her son.

Shandi doesn’t know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his world. But William doesn’t define destiny the way others do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in facts and numbers, destiny to him is about choice. Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head on, making choices that will reveal unexpected truths about love, life, and the world they think they know.

A typical fun southern Jackson read… I am a little over half way through this one.

Summer blockbusters and independent sleepers; masterworks of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese; the timeless comedy of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton; animated classics from Walt Disney and Pixar; the finest foreign films ever made. This 2014 edition covers the modern era, from 1965 to the present, while including all the great older films you can’t afford to miss—and those you can—from box-office smashes to cult classics to forgotten gems to forgettable bombs, listed alphabetically, and complete with all the essential information you could ask for.

I am always looking for great movies so this guide is right up my alley!

Nestled in Puget Sound, Whidbey Island is a gem of the Pacific Northwest; accessible only by ferry and the soaring Deception Pass Bridge, it is known for its artistic communities and stunning natural beauty. Life there is low-key, insular, and the island’s year-round residents tend to know one another’s business. But when the blooddrenched body of Russel Douglas was discovered the day after Christmas in his SUV in a hidden driveway near Whidbey’s most exclusive mansions, the whole island was shocked. A single bullet between his eyes was the cause of death, but no one could imagine who among them could plot such a devious, cold-blooded crime. At first, police suspected suicide, tragically common at the height of the holiday season. But when they found no gun in or near the SUV, Russel’s manner of death became homicide. Like a cast of characters from a classic mystery novel, a host of Whidbey residents fell under suspicion.

Brenna Douglas was Russel’s estranged and soon-to-be-ex wife, who allowed him to come home for a Christmas visit with their children. The couple owned the popular Just B’s salon. Brenna’s good friend Peggy Sue Thomas worked there, and Brenna complained often to her that Russel was physically and emotionally abusive. Peggy Sue’s own life has been one of extremes. Married three times, hers is a rags-to-riches-and-back-again tale in which she’s played many roles: aircraft mechanic, basketball coach, the “drop-dead gorgeous” beauty queen as a former Ms. Washington, Las Vegas limousine driver, million-dollar horse breeder, wealthy divorcée. But in 2003, her love affair with married guitarist Jim Huden led the two Whidbey Island natives to pursue their ultimate dreams of wealth and privilege—even at the expense of human life.

I have a confession… I enjoy (probably not the right word…) Ann Rule’s true crime books.  I have not read one in a long time and I have never tried one on audio.  EXCITED!

Bloodmark and Lady Catherine, The Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey are up to be read.  I am excited about both and have a cabin weekend coming up and one gets to go with!  Which will be?  Which would you take along?

So that’s the week!  Thanksgiving is pretty quiet for us as our family is quite small and we just stay home.  This year will be exciting as both my boys will be home for the first time in 4 years now that Brad is out of the Navy!!!  I am looking forward to hanging out with them. 😀

I would love to see what you are reading this holiday week and weekend!  Please add your What Are You Reading post to the place below where it says “click here”

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and childrens books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!

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!

Last week I was in Florida for a fun weekend with my college son. Thank you to Vicki at I’d Rather Be At The Beach for hosting while I was away. 😀

Since I came back Monday evening last week, I was able to put up a couple posts…

A little bit of the Florida recap

City Of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

A chance to feel like I was on on e of those “Picker” shows….

City Of Glass By Cassandra Clare

You may see a pattern in my reading… I am devouring the Mortal Instrument books!  As for what else I am reading/listening to…

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

Grace Stanton’s life as a rising media star and beloved lifestyle blogger takes a surprising turn when she catches her husband cheating and torpedoes his pricey sports car straight into the family swimming pool.  Grace suddenly finds herself locked out of her palatial home, checking account, and even the blog she has worked so hard to develop in her signature style.  Moving in with her widowed mother, who owns and lives above a rundown beach bar called The Sandbox, is less than ideal.  So is attending court-mandated weekly “divorce recovery” therapy sessions with three other women and one man for whom betrayal seems to be the only commonality.  When their “divorce coach” starts to act suspiciously, they decide to start having their own Wednesday “Ladies’ Night” sessions at The Sandbox, and the unanticipated bonds that develop lead the members of the group to try and find closure in ways they never imagined.  Can Grace figure out a new way home and discover how strong she needs to be to get there? 

In David Vann’s searing novel Goat Mountain, an 11-year-old boy at his family’s annual deer hunt is eager to make his first kill. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle. With this simple gesture, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably.
 
In prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions—what we owe for what we’ve done.

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For those of you that read mainly middle grade and childrens books, be sure to also link to the younger version of It’s Monday by using the link below!