Good morning!   Coffee Cup and I are lying low, I am working on growing a mustache and going by the name of “Vinnie”.  I have really gone and done it this time…..

I have over due library books.

I received the letter last Friday and I have never received a letter before.  Usually it is an email.  In fact the book they mentioned I had forgotten I had checked out and had to do a search and rescue off the shelf to return.  SO – I did actually go to the library (the scene of the crime) before I left town on Friday – and I had good intentions to return the several (GULP!) late items I had – but….. here’s my story.

1.  I am in my car on my way to the library and there is a train.  SO while I wait, I pull open one of the books sitting beside me.  I chose Not Without Hope by Nick Schuyler.  I had started this one but did not get it finished.  A true story that actually happened in early 2009, when 4 friends went out on a fishing trip and only one came back.   I started flipping through the pages while I waited for the train.  I hooked myself into the book and knew I could not return it yet.  While I went into the Library, Not Without Hope stayed in the car with me.

2.  Also over due are the CD audio for Happy Potter and The Deathly Hollows.  This one  I have been listening to all along, but it is 17 CD’s.  I haven’t had a large road trip as of late to get this one in and have listened to it as I puttered around town but that has got me to CD #14 by the time of the overdue notice.  CD #14 out of 17.  I can’t stop now….. I have to finish……. so that one has not been returned either.

Today however – both will be going back.  I finished up Not Without Hope over the weekend and that review will be up today.   I am on CD 17 of The Deathly Hollows and I will finish it even if I have to sit in my car to do it.

I had a wonderful weekend with my friends on the North Shore.  I posted a picture yesterday with the Monday What Are You Reading post.  We visited the shops around Silver and Beaver Bay, spent Saturday afternoon at Lutsen riding the sleds down the Alpine Slide, enjoying yummy salads and that evening we attended a street dance.

It is good to be home and it looks like I am going to go back this next weekend just Friday and part of Saturday to do some cleaning that I just couldn’t get to with company.  I have to be back Saturday because Sunday morning we are driving my son and his belongings back to Mankato to his new apartment.

Tonight said son and I are going to the movie Inception.  He says I have to see it!  Busy week!  How about you anything happening this week – bookish or otherwise?

I noticed yesterday that my upper left sidebar Twitter button is gone.  Stolen from my blog?  I do not know so I took my case to Twitter and found out that many bloggers are missing their Twitter buttons.   It’s like a bad Twilight episode….  anyone have the answer of what is going on?  I could not seem to fix it either.  Uhhhhhh…. A w k w a r d.

In other bookish news….. I was very excited to hear that Swaptree which is known for swapping books is going to start allowing audio books to be Swapped in August.  Seriously that calls for a big SQQQQQQUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEE!  😀  I love audio and have been tossing around ideas of how to do a swap so I could get my hands on some of the great audio books I have been hearing about.  Maybe this will be the answer.

And finally, I seen this You Tube video posted at Maw Books and it made me smile.  If you remember a while back I posted about the Old Spice commercial that just cracked me up.  Well this is kind of a spoof of that and made my day when I seen it!

I am off to a day at work and hopefully some biking or blading in the afternoon.   I will be posting a review later.  Have a super day 😀

Most of you are probably familiar with the Monday, What Are You reading meme that I host each Monday.  I love to see the bloggers and book lovers checking out different blogs and picking up great titles as well as maybe seeing blogs that they would enjoy following.  I really LOVE the community of blogging.

I too like to take time on Mondays to go and see what is happening out in the blogesphere….. what are people reading, what bookish news are they chatting about….. I love it all!

This past Monday I found a couple books that I cant get out of my head.  The first one I seen over at Second Childhood Reviews:

I think this looks so interesting – what a cover!

Then…. Julie at My Book Retreat has this book review up:

This one is about Conjoined Twins and Julie’s review is so good!

Today I will be posting my review of Seven Year Switch and also my author chat with Claire Cook.  I am so excited to share these both with you!  😀

How about you, see any good books around the blogesphere?

Good morning!  I hope everyone’s weekends went well.  I had a little hangout time with Chance (Kinship Partner) On Sunday afternoon.  We went and hung out at a small touristy town near us called Nisswa Minnesota.  It’s a fun little town to just explore and that’s what we did.

Here’s a few pics of what we did:

Ok…. sorry about the photo shoot, but for a couple of time wasters, we had a blast!  We ended up at Rainy Day Book Store.  They always have large basket of ARC’s that you can donate $2 a piece for.  The money goes to the Nisswa  library fund.  I dug through the box and came out with these:

I am off to work.   I have a pretty easy week coming up but there is a slight chance I may be in Texas next week for training.   Not too big of a chance, but a chance all the same and that would make my scheduling (I am at the cabin this weekend) become a bit intense.  We will see……  hate to turn down an opportunity.

Review coming up later today!  Hope your day is wonderful!  Is anything fun happening out there?

😀

Good morning everyone. I hope all your weekend plans are coming along nicely. It hasn’t been too bad here. We had a weird Saturday – gorgeous morning, storming by noon, tornado warnings by 1, then cleared, then stormed, clear, rain, cloudy then more thunder and rain. Our weather has been really odd this summer.

Anyway, a girl my son works with loaned me her copy of The Lovely Bones DVD. She knows what a book nut I am and she asked me if I had read Lovely Bones, which I had…. a long time ago (if I could find my review book I could tell you when). She wanted to know if I had went to the movie and I told her I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see the movie. I really struggled with the audio and thought maybe I would catch it sometime later. Well, she sent the movie home with my son and I did watch it last night and was actually surprised how well I did like it.

I am going to post a review later today on the book vs. audio vs. movie. Which brings me to the fact that I can not find my review book that I wrote in prior to the blog and I am frustrated by this. I know I recently had it out for something and it has to be somewhere in this house. This book contains about 8 years of reviews prior to the blog so it is important to me. I wanted to pull out some of my original thoughts on the book when I read it and hopefully I will find it and be able to do that.

Ok – enough wining about my missing review book. Today is my 23rd anniversary. I know, right? Twenty three years. I told my hubby it couldn’t possibly be that long but he did the math for me (he is a math guy) and sure enough. I have been married for over half of my life. We are not big celebration people so nothing really planned for today. We may go out to dinner. I told him we could just high-five. 😀

Today is also the last day to enter the Book Extravaganza giveaway!

I am off to take another walk through the house for my book. Have a beautiful Sunday!

Happy Saturday everyone!  Hope your weekend is off to a good start.  If you have not had a chance to sign up for the Book Extravaganza book giveaway I have here for the weekend, please do so – great reads available, not only here, but if you click over to Bookworming In The 21st Century you will find links to many more blogs that are doing giveaways this weekend….

AND…. even if you have already signed up, grab a cup of coffee and come back and read through the responses to my request on that post for people to share little known facts about themselves!  Some of them are funny, some surprising, and some amazing!  We used to ask that question as a “get to know you” ice breaker when I worked at Wal-Mart and it was fun to learn what people had experienced.

Did you know that some of the fellow book bloggers are twins?  Published?  Singers?  Related to Henry VIII?  Extra in a movie?  Cheryl Crow’s roommate?  And much more…..

I felt a little left out that I couldn’t play on my own question so I will do it here.

• When I was 14 I fell off a friends horse on the highway by her home and hit my head.  I was airlifted to Minneapolis and my mom was told I had a 10% chance of living and if I did live I would be in a hospital the rest of my life with severe brain damage.  I was in a coma for 6 days.   The night before they were going to do surgery to relieve the pressure around my brain, the swelling started going away on its own..,  I came out of it 100%, but of course my friends like to sometimes say I didn’t and ask me if I hit my head or something…LOL.
  

• I have been to Honduras 8 times since 2004 working with kids who live on the street or in the dumps.
  

• I can do a really good Smeagol (voice) impression.  Perhaps this is all due to the first fact I gave you.  😀

Anyway – I ran out and bought a book yesterday which is completely insane (and again, see fact #1), but I read an awesome review and I was just not in the mood for the book I was in so instead started Seven Year Switch and I almost have it finished.

I have a bridal shower to attend today and hope to take a bike ride this afternoon.  There is a really yummy sounding recipe in the book I am reading (actually several good recipes) and I think I am making it for dinner tonight.    Hope your Saturday is full of fun things!  😀

Good morning everyone!  Last night I pulled the survey that I have had at the top of this blog for a month and tallied the results.  As promised, here they are:

How Long Have You Been Reading Book Journey?

I’m new! 1 month or less		37	23%
2-4 months		50	30%
4 – 8 months		41	25%
over 8 months		36	22%

What Do You Like About Book Journey

What Genres Do You Enjoy?

How Did You Originally Find This Blog?

Nimbus 2000 and Firebolt are both brands of what?

103 said brooms

20 said I dont know

37 were left blank

5 answers were just fun:

• sticks Harry flies on
• wands
• search engines
• internet software (2 answered this)
• Virus blocker

*I loved the extra answers and have to say while Nimbus 2000 and Firebolts are both brooms used in the Harry Potter books, I think virus blocker could also work!  😀

What Age Group Do You Fall Into?

I will do another survey in another six months or so to see how things have changed.  This was a lot of fun and thank you to all who participated!

Have a fantastic day  – any fun weekend plans?

Book Lovers/Bloggers are just the best!  Yesterday I came home to a box in my mail from Reagan at Miss Remmer’s Reviews.  She had recently had a post up about a set of The Chronicle Of Narnia books that I was drooling a bit over.  I have my own set and they are ‘much loved” (meaning worn, and brittle) and I keep them up high – more for looking at then reading at this point in their book life.

So – guess what was in my mailbox?  Yup!  She sent me the books – delightful, beautiful, Chronicles Of Narnia books!  Totally “SQUEEEE” worthy.

Thank you Reagan – you rock!  😀

On another note, those of us who registered for BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week) should have received an email with an opportunity to vote for Best Event, Feature, or Meme.  It’s Monday, What Are You Reading is on the meme list and that made me “SQUUUUEEEE” again.

Many of you know I inherited this meme when J Kaye from J Kaye’s Book Blog decided to step away from her blog to further her writing career.  It is an inheritance I was honored to be offered and hope I can be half the blogger J Kaye was. 🙂

Brainerd Minnesota survived the storm from Wednesday – we did get hit with a couple of tornado warnings, downed trees and a bit of building damage in Baxter Minnesota but nothing too serious that I am aware of.  (Makes you want to come visit me – right?)

Have a super fabulous day!

Good morning!  I love my book club!

Yesterdays Queen Event for our book club went wonderfully.  We had a nice evening – not too warm out and not too cool.  We were at Sharon’s home which is a lovely spot on the lake, ate wonderful food, talked books, and chose a new Queen for the year.

Every July we dress up, have a potluck, pick our August read, and our October Classic.  We read one classic a year as a group and choose it in July so people have time to secure a copy and read it (because seriously, some classics do not read through quickly).

After many wonderful selections brought up for our August read – we chose Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.  Our Classic for October will be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

I have more to share about the event – but I am saving that for my post later today.  I will have more pictures up as well as what everyone read and recommended in July.

Its dark and gloomy here this morning.  In fact it is so dark it looks like it is about midnight.  We are in for a big storm and I am just now starting to hear the rain pound the glass of the windows.  Too bad I have to get to work – this is ideal weather for a good mystery…