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Recent Posts
My Weight Loss Blog
March 27, 2011
March 18, 2011
Book Review: The Queen of Babble
Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lizzie Nichols has a problem - she can’t help spilling secrets. When she decides to spend the summer in London with her boyfriend, she accidentally gets him trouble with her big mouth and they break up. She ends up spending the summer in the South of France, working with her best friend catering weddings at a chateau.
This was a fun, lighthearted piece of chick-lit. Even though Lizzie doesn’t always make the best decisions, she’s funny and likable and I was rooting for her all the way through the book. Sometimes in these types of books the clueless heroine stresses me out so much that I can’t enjoy the story (e.g. the Shopaholic books) but that was not true in this case.
I listened to the audio version of this book. It’s narrated by Justine Eyre who also narrated Cabot’s Heather Wells mystery series. She does a great job with all the required accents – American, English and French.
*Buy this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
Powell's Books
*affliate links
March 01, 2011
Book Review: Night Road
Night Road by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
This is the first Kristin Hannah book I’ve read so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found it to be a Lifetime Movie in print form. It had the requisite broadly painted characters – the overprotective mom (Jude), the detached father (Miles), the son who’s the most popular kid in school (Zach) and his misfit twin sister who has grown up in her brother’s shadow (Mia) and Mia’s best friend Lexi – the kid who has grown up in foster care and come out of it with a martyr complex.
Jude has got to be one of the worst mothers ever. She is today’s typical helicopter mom, directing every move of her children’s lives while indulging them in the worst way. After the tragedy that is heavily foreshadowed in the first pages of the book happens, she becomes the most self-involved bitch you can imagine. I had no sympathy for her and couldn’t find any redeeming qualities about her.
I found the things that happened to Lexi, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks that befriends Mia, fairly unrealistic. Being a foster parent myself, I know that a social worker does not just wake a 14 year old child up at the break of dawn and say, “Guess what – we’re flying halfway across the country so you can live with your aunt.” – unless they are a very bad social worker. She would talk to the child about it well before the moving day and at least have the child talk on the phone to the aunt before moving in with her. Anyway, I found just about everything that happened to Lexi or that she did pretty unbelievable but I just had to let that go so I could enjoy the story.
I really wanted to dislike this book. Especially since I’ve recently read Every Last One by Anna Quindlen which has similar themes but a much better developed characters and better written story. The whole time I was reading Night Road, I was thinking to myself how predictable the story line was and how one-dimensional the characters were. But just like I can get sucked into a Lifetime Movie while flipping channels and two hours later wonder why I watched the whole thing, I could not put this book down. It’s definitely a guilty pleasure read.
(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
February 27, 2011
February 17, 2011
Book Review: The Weird Sisters
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The three Andreas sisters have all come back to the small town they grew up in and moved back in with their parents under the pretense of helping their ailing mother. However, they're really all running away from something: Rose, the caretaking, controlling oldest sister is avoiding her increasing stressful relationship; Bean, the middle sister struggling to form her own identity is running from troubles at her job; and Cordy, the vagabond youngest sister, is unmarried and pregnant.
Shakespeare references are found throughout the book. The sisters are all named after characters in Shakespeare plays and their father, a college professor, prefers to communicate by quoting Shakespeare instead of using his own words. I don't know much about Shakespeare beyond Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book. (Although if you are a Shakespeare expert, you will enjoy it that much more I'm sure.) Sometimes the sisters didn't even understand what their father was trying to say!
This book was just wonderful! The author did a fantastic job of making each sister a believable, sympathetic three dimensional character. I could relate to some aspect of each sister. The author tells us their story in a unique way - the book is narrated by all three sisters in first person at the same time, as if they were one person. It sounds strange but it really works to show how close the sisters are and how intertwined their lives are whether they like it or not. Overall, this was a beautifully written engaging story.
The Weird Sisters is published by Amy Einhorn Books and therefore part of the Amy Einhorn Books Perputual Challenge. I received a copy courtsey of the author via a giveawy hosted on Beth Fish Reads.
*Buy this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
Powell's Books
*affiliate links
February 16, 2011
Happy Valentine's Day
We had a great Valentine's Day at our house. The boys made me "the biggest Valentine EVER". They also gave me baked heart shaped sugar cookies that they baked with Travis. Apparently they did this Sunday morning while I was sleeping off a cold. I didn't hear or smell anything!
West saw these nesting owls at Urban Outfitters last month and fell in love with them. I'm not really sure why. He talked about them all the time and was desperately trying to save up his tokens to buy them. We went ahead and gave them to him for his Valentine's Day present. He was thrilled! He played with them the rest of the night and tucked them in to his bed by wrapping them up in a burp cloth.
Cash loved his LilKinz bluejay. He named him Blues.
After gifts, it was time to eat our heart-shaped pizza. Yum!
We wrapped up the night with some very serious Webkinz playing.
February 15, 2011
February 14, 2011
February 07, 2011
Book Review: My Name Is Memory
My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Daniel is one of the rare people in the world who has "the memory". In other words, he remembers all his past lives and can recognize the souls of people he knew in those lives. He's spent life after life looking for Sophia, a girl he fell in love with in his first life. Some times he finds her, some times he doesn't. Somehow in all his many lives, circumstances have never worked out for Daniel and Sophia to be together without tragedy.
The story alternates between Daniel's past lives and his present day life where he has found Sophia and enrolled in the same high school as her. But how does he convince her that he's not crazy and that they have a long history together? It's a beautiful love story and towards the last half also very suspenseful and action packed. I was so absorbed I finished it in two days. I couldn't stop thinking about Daniel and his unique condition. I think this would make a great book club selection.
HOWEVER, the ending was terrible! It was very abrupt and jarring - like the author just decided to stop writing. I've seen many places on the Internet that indicate there will be a sequel and other places that state this is the first book in a trilogy but I wasn't able to find anywhere where the author or publisher confirmed this. (If you have please let me know!) So my five-star review is contingent on there being a sequel. If there isn't, then I would downgrade to four stars, maybe lower.
*Buy this book at:
*affiliate links
February 05, 2011
January Reading Challenge Update
I'm keeping good on my plan to do a monthly update post to track where I'm at on my challenges. Here's where I am one month into 2011.
I'm signed up to read five books in the 2011 South Asian Challenge:
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5.
I'm signed up for six audio books in the 2011 Audio Book Challenge:
1. Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot
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6.
I signed up for six e-books in the 2011 E-Book Challenge:
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The categories in the What's In A Name 4 challenge are:
1. A book with a number in the title - Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title
3. A book with a size in the title
4. A book with travel or movement in the title - The Art of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein
5. A book with evil in the title
6. A book with a life stage in the title
I signed up for three books in the 2011 2nds Challenge which challenges readers to read a second book by an author you've read before:
1.
2.
3.
Bart's Bookshelf is hosting the TwentyEleven Challenge. I need to read two books in nine of the categories and one book in two of the categories:
- To YA or not YA… (I think I read mostly adult fiction so I'll read YA for this category.)
- …With a Twist. (Read a sub-genre you don't normally read. This will be hard because I read almost everything!)
- Hot off the Presses. (Read a book published in 2011.)
- It Wasn’t Me! (Read a book you've chosen based on a blogger's recommendation.
- Show it Who is Boss! (Read a book from your TBR pile as of 12/31/10.)
Lover Awakened by JR Ward and Lover Revealed by JR Ward (reviews coming soon) - Bablefish. (Read a translated book.)
- Will-Power? What Will-Power? (Read a book you bought in 2011.)
- Mind the Gap. (Read a book you need finish a series.)
- Back in the Day. (Re-read a favorite book.)
- Way Back When. (Read a book published before you were born.)
- Slim-Pickings (Read a book between 90-150 pages.)
There are ten books in The Vampire Chronicles Reading Challenge hosted by Book Chick City:
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10.
