Book Review: Something Borrowed

Book 16/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: June 3, 2011.

Something Borrowed.  Huh.  Not as disastrously horrendous as Safe Haven, but damn close.  I gave it a Goodreads rating of two stars.

My friend recommended this read to me - she enjoyed it for it's lightheartedness and simplicity.  I don't know what I was expecting, I have never read any of Emily Giffin's other books, but this was not enjoyable for me.

Something Borrowed is the story of Rachel and Darcy - long-time best friends and polar opposites.  Rachel is the typical good girl.  Good friend, good daughter, works hard, got good grades in school, average looks...  Your basic girl-next-door.  Darcy, on the other hand, was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  She's inevitably always the prettiest girl in her social circles, skates by on her popularity and looks alone and has everything handed to her.

Rachel has just turned thirty - a couple of months before Darcy - and is feeling down because as a child she assumed she'd be married with children by age thirty.  Instead, she is unattached, living in a studio apartment, working at a job she hates, and helping Darcy plan the perfect wedding to her perfect beau of seven years, Dex.

Long story short - and I don't think this is actually a spoiler, because it's all pretty much summed up in the movie previews - Rachel winds up sleeping with Dex.

I'm no fan of infidelity (though I do subscribe to the notion that you "can't break up a happy home"), but I was less disturbed by the subject matter of this book than I was annoyed with the characters in it.  I feel like Emily Giffin must have spent a lot of time trying to make Darcy as obnoxious and insidious as possible so that the reader could justify Dex and Rachel's duplicity.

And then there's Rachel.  She is absolutely spineless.  The book's from her point-of-view, and she spends all of her monologues justifying the affair and her "ultimate betrayal", defending (and trash-talking) Dex and Darcy alternately, sneaking around, and feeling sorry for herself.  Ohhh boo hoo I am soooo in LOVE with Dex and he is stringing me along.  Waaaahhhh, I love him so much it hurts.  Darcy is so selfish!  Darcy is bridezilla!  Darcy thinks the world revolves around her!  Darcy is the most loyal friend on the planet!  Dex is so handsome.  I love Dex.  I hate Dex.  I wish Dex would call off the wedding.  I can't bear the thought of losing my friendship with Darcy.  I wish Dex was here to bang.  He is sooo sexy.  I can't believe Dex is going home to Darcy.  I can't believe he had SEX with HIS FIANCÉ!!  The nerve!!

She's absolutely insufferable.  You want to like her but at the same time she is just so extremely obnoxious and idiotic and, well, PATHETIC that you can't bear to.  Well, I couldn't anyway.

And then there's Dex.  I can't tell you very much about Dexter's character because it's almost nonexistent.  All I know about Dex is that he is handsome and good in bed.  Other than that, I've got nothing.  He's the ghosty kind of character I recall reading about here:

First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn't described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick.

 Dex is a douchebag.  He's having his cake and eating it too.  He's stringing along two equally stupid (though stupid in different ways) girls.  I don't know, maybe he has beer-flavored nether-parts, but I doubt it.  There doesn't seem to be anything genuinely special about his character.

This book went on forever.  I agonized over the nearly 300 pages before I hit the halfway point.  The drama of the affair between Dex and Rachel just drags on and on to the point that by the time the book finally ends you feel completely relieved.

This was a New York Times Bestseller?  And worthy of making into a movie?  Starring Kate Hudson?? (Who, by the way, in no way ACTUALLY resembles the Darcy in the book - way to stretch, Mr. Director-man.)  Definitely not impressed, and definitely won't be reading it's follow up, Something Blue - the story from Darcy's perspective.

Ok.  I'll probably watch the movie but only for the sake of comparison, and let it be known that I have very low expectations for it.  This one was just not for me.

Bento Friday :)

Yeah!  I always feel so accomplished when I manage to crank out a bento for my kids.  Especially when I do it without us having any other plans to go anywhere or do anything.  Today was one of those days.  I should really make an effort to make them a bento lunch at least every Friday - we'll see how that goes.

The table is set! :)

A's lunch

Corn, grape tomato, cheese "candy", hot dog flowers, strawberries, fruit jelly, and teddy onigiri

C's lunch

She had the same.  :)

On the side, for dessert, each girl had a matching container with Chex "Muddy Buddies" in it - a favorite snack around here.  If you haven't had these you are definitely missing out.  :)  They each had a cup of chocolate soy milk, too.  Yum!

photo credit: http://thegalwaygirl.com/

Muddy Buddies:

9 cups Chex cereal (rice, corn, wheat, or a combination - all work fine)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter (I use Simply Jif creamy)
1/4 cup margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1. Measure cereal into a large bowl with a lid.
2. Put chocolate chips, peanut butter, and margarine into a 1-quart microwavable bowl.  Microwave this on high for one minute, then stir.  Microwave on high for another 30 seconds, or until mixture can be stirred smooth.  Add in the vanilla and stir to combine.
3. Pour the chocolate mixture over the cereal and fold together to coat the cereal.
4. Measure powdered sugar on top of the coated cereal, then put the lid on your bowl (seal it carefully otherwise you'll have a powdered sugar explosion), and let your kids shake it like crazy till the powdered sugar has completely coated the cereal.
5. Enjoy with caution - this stuff's dangerous.

Sushi Night - Hungry for a good time?

Went super overboard last week with another sushi night.  It was fun and delicious.  I seriously VERY highly recommend sushi parties to everyone.  It seems like a lot of work, but really it is quite simple and the clean up is minimal.  Do it!  Now!

Homemade gyoza, yakitori, pan-fried chicken, sushi fixins, and shrimp tempura.  DROOL!  We also had some to-die-for egg drop soup.  My kids were in freaking HEAVEN!

Avocado, cream cheese, cucumber, crab, and shrimp.  Mmm...

Assemble and add Sriracha (rooster sauce) as desired...  (Don't actually do it like this - this puppy is WAY overloaded!  But it's pretty funny.  We dubbed this "the MAN roll")

Roll it, slice it (use a super sharp knife moistened with water), and ENJOY!  :)

One of my good friends told me she wanted to make sushi, I told her to have a party!  She's a super-mom type, so I suggested a sushi play-date.  If I had enough "play date mom" type friends, I'd do this too.  I'm actually pretty jealous that she is going to have the opportunity!

Before the party, pre-assemble sushi for the kids - PB&J "sushi" rolled sandwiches (use slices of bread rolled thin with a rolling pin), Hot Dog Sushi (from my friend Kristin @ Holy Cannoli!), veggie rolls - they make these at our commissary - super delicious, and maybe even some Rice Krispy sushi rolls for dessert.

Gather all your sushi ingredients (Sushi rice, nori, sesame seeds, cut veggie sticks, cream cheese [I stick an 8-oz package in the freezer for a couple of hours and then cut it into sticks - it's a lot easier to work with that way], crab, shrimp, soy sauce, wasabi, Sriracha, basically whatever your heart desires!) and your sushi tools (cutting boards, bamboo rolling mats, bamboo paddles, containers of water to "de-stick" everything, sharp knife [we found that the sashimi knife was the BEST], plastic wrap, paper towels, plates, chop sticks, etc.)  Have edamame available for snacking, and maybe some tempura.  You could also try making some yakisoba in case you're friends with weirdos that don't like sushi.  ;)  I fried up some won-ton wrappers and warmed a little bit of sweet and sour sauce as a snack, too.  I know it's more Chinese than Japanese but it's a favorite snack of mine so work with me!

Have the moms assemble their own sushi while the kids eat theirs and play.  I guarantee this will be a good time, sushi making is super fun and easier than you think - and it's cool when you make your own edible art piece.  Delicious!

Book Review: Two Kisses For Maddy

Book 15/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: May 28, 2011.

Life and death in 27 hours.  Matt Logelin has "24" tattooed in his wife's handwriting (taken from a scrap of paper on which she'd written out a math problem) on the inside of his left wrist, and "25" on the inside of his right wrist.  24 represents the date his beautiful daughter, Madeline, was born seven weeks early via c-section.  25 represents the date his beautiful wife, Liz, unexpectedly died.

I was really excited to read Matt Logelin's masterpiece. I've been off-and-on following his blog at www.mattlogelin.com since Madeline was very small. Two Kisses for Maddy was good. It was painful and beautiful and hard to put down.  I gave it four stars. Matt's not the greatest writer in the world - I don't think he ever claimed to be - but his memoir was clearly written from the heart and I really appreciated reading the finer details of his story in a format unlike the telegram-esque weirdly spaced fragmented thoughts he uses on his blog. Each chapter begins with such a "clip" from his blog, but then goes on to read in a regular paragraph-style. I very much liked that. The one thing that keeps me "forgetting" about his blog for a month or two at a time is the fact that I find the posts to be difficult to get through typed out the way they are. I appreciate his style and I love reading his updates, but the choppiness gets to driving me batty.

Anyways, I really did enjoy this book. I can't say it'd be a great book for just anyone as his is a really devastating story and he doesn't attempt to sugarcoat it or censor his language (not that he should) at all. I'm sure that some people would be offended by the frequent F-bombs. I enjoyed those particularly, though. When he wrote that he was "crying like a motherfucker," I smiled because it was so REAL and normal. When the first line of the eulogy he delivered at his 30-year-old wife's funeral was, "This fucking sucks," I found myself nodding grimly. It does fucking suck. It is the kind of story that makes you want to put your arms around everyone you love and squeeze really hard. It makes you reconsider any and all hesitations within your own life.

Matt strikes me as a nerdy guy. He frequently references his favorite music and relates some of the most overwhelming moments in his own life to lyrics of his most-loved songs. I like that, though. And while it's obviously a tragedy that Madeline will grow up never having actually met the mother she so resembles, the woman that was so utterly thrilled to bring her into the world and share it with her... She is really lucky to have a father as determined as Matt Logelin is to give her a wonderful upbringing and to protect the memory of Liz.

See also: http://www.thelizlogelinfoundation.org/

Book Review: Emails from an A**hole

Book 14/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: May 26, 2011.

I have been a fan of John Lindsay's DontEvenReply.com for quite some time now.  I go there when I am in need of a giggle and I'm pretty sure I've read almost all of his email correspondence posted there.  I was eager to buy the book and read it.  I got through it really quickly, and I spent much of my reading time giggling uncontrollably - I was especially entertained by Killer, the Papillon guard dog.

I think my hopes were a little too high for this book though because I could only give it a three-star rating.  It's not that it wasn't funny - it was hilarious - but it was very short.  And much of the content was taken directly from his website.  I think there was a little more background on each email conversation included in the book, but I was hoping for NEW material, not the same things I'd read in the past couple of years of enjoying his website.  There were a few letters I hadn't read before but they were sprinkled in amidst the ones I was already familiar with.  Don't get me wrong, even the "repeats" had me completely cracking up, but I guess I just expected a little more from the "king of prank-emails".

Still a fun read, but I am not positive about whether or not it actually merits to be included in my reading challenge.  It does, however, inspire me to seek out and respond to some ridiculous Craigslist ads.

As a sidenote, if you are into this sort of thing, I highly recommend 27b/6 - it's even more hilarious (but also slightly more offensive).  My favorite is the Easter Play Permission Slip.  I seriously have never laughed so hard in my life.

The Hungry Little Bento... and other stories.

I have been trying to get back into my bento groove, honest I have!  It has not been working out though.  With my kids both home all day and no car while my husband is at work, there isn't enough structure to my days most of the time.  So we usually end up doing something super simple for lunch.  Plus, of course, I've been caught up thinking about the upcoming move and I spend a lot of my spare time these days researching our next adventure.  (Well, when I'm not reading, that is.)

A couldn't stop asking me about WHEN we were heading to Germany, so I made her a paper chain.  This was it a couple of weeks ago - it's even shorter now.  The anticipation is certainly building!  I've been house-hunting, outing-planning, and travel-arranging from afar.  I still don't have specific dates yet but with conditions in our apartment building becoming ever-worse, I have to hold on to something.  So I've been occupying myself with the fact that there IS, in fact, an end in sight.

I did go bento shopping last week for the first time in a long time (the ¥/$ rate these days is REALLY not in our favor, unfortunately!  I've been trying to limit my out-in-town excursions as a result) so I was inspired.  I made the girls teddy bear bentos for lunch the next day, and that went over really well.  Poor photo quality, when I made these my camera's memory card was full so I had to take iPod photos.

A's lunch

C's lunch

These were really simple - a quick little salad with olives and heart shaped carrot slices, slider patties with hot dog, pepperoni and nori details to make them "beary" cute, a couple of fresh strawberries, a fruit jelly, and some pink star puffs.  My kids were really excited to have a bento for lunch so I think it could have been liver and onions and they'd have eaten it.

Then we had a sushi party.  Be jealous.  This was fantastic and I think we're planning to do these sushi nights at least twice a month from now on.

But what I am most excited to post is a bento I made with my friend the other night for her son's lunch.  We were experimenting with hot dog "sculptures" and I had the bright idea to do a hot dog caterpillar.  And then it came to me - her son's most favorite book in the world is Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  He talks about this book like crazy and it was the first book he read aloud to his class.  Whenever he comes over, he volunteers to read it to my girls.  It's adorable.  So why not make a Very Hungry bento lunch?  Hello inspiration!!

So my friend and I put together his lunch box and had a freaking blast doing it.  It was the most fun bento-ing I think I've ever had.  And the finished product was nothing short of awesome!

The very hungry hot dog caterpillar with spaghetti antennae and legs was sooo hungry on his bed of rice that he ate through two slices of pepperoni, one slice of "swiss cheese", and one (soy sauce filled) apple.

This side of the box is a little bit of a jumble, but he had a salad, two pickles, two strawberries (both snacked on by the caterpillar), a leaf with a caterpillar egg, and a butterfly.

This lunch was a total hit with him.  He was quite excited about it.

Of course we had to make my friend's daughter a super girly fun lunch too, so we did that - it's not nearly as awesome as the caterpillar lunch but it's still pretty cute.

She got a Hello Kitty onigiri with hot dogs, a salad and some grapes.  All decked out with hearts and cuteness.  :) You can't ever go wrong with Hello Kitty rice balls.  And when you have a Hello Kitty onigiri mold, it couldn't be easier!  Seriously, this is like a favorite tool.

So there is an update on the food happenings here.  Nobody has starved just yet.  ;)  OH!  And as a side note, did anybody happen to watch the Season finale of House?  I was a little miffed with it.  And VERY miffed to learn that Lisa Edelstein will not be returning for season 8.  I can understand the series ending after next year, but I can't imagine a whole season without Dr. Cuddy.  Hmpf!

Oh well.  I still think that Hugh Laurie is like the coolest guy ever, so I'll just try my hardest to savor the fact that there is going to be a season 8 at all.  And in the meanwhile I can just busy myself with Army Wives, Modern Family, 30 Rock, and the fact that hopefully soon Dexter season 5 should be coming available on iTunes.  See?  I do have things to keep me occupied.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

Book 13/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: May 24, 2011.

My friend and I were out together a couple of weekends ago trying to come up with something to do - play the slot machines for a while, have a couple of drinks or maybe catch a movie before we headed back home for the night.  We went by the movie theater on base to see what was playing, but found it empty.  Ridiculous for a Saturday night, if you ask me, but we stood out front and looked at the schedule and the movie posters featured outside before we headed down to the bowling alley.  Advertised as "Coming soon" was a movie called Water for Elephants.  I squinted at the poster in the dim lighting and said, "What is THAT about???"  My friend said, "Oh, I don't know.  It has Reese Witherspoon and that "Twilight" boy in it."

Huh.  I live under a rock as far as newly released movies go and I really have very little desire to see anything with the "Twilight boy" in it anyways, so whatever.  We bought a couple of drinks from the soda machine and moved on.

A few days later I logged into the Reader Store and saw the book on the front page, advertised as a bestseller.

Bestseller, huh?

Ok.  So I bought it.  It was very impulsive but it was while I was reading Winter's Bone, so I needed something to look forward to.  I bought a lot of books while I was reading Winter's Bone to try and motivate myself through it.

Then I forgot about it because I got distracted by Tina Fey.  But while I was reading that, the same friend I was with outside the theater that night told me she had bought and started reading Water for Elephants and told me that it was so far really good and I should start it next.

So I did.  And (this is the same friend that suggested I read Running With Scissors) of course, my friend was right.  It was a great read.  I finished this book pretty quickly, and was completely captivated by the romance, the era, the circus, the animals, the drama, and the adventure.  I feel like this book maybe took a little bit from Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook as it begins and ends with an elderly Jacob Jankowski, a nursing home resident, reflecting on his past.  His story is nothing short of riveting.  I've read mixed reviews on the book - some people suggest it was overrated, some people loved it.  I loved it and gave it a five star rating.  I thought the story was absolutely beautifully done and I thought that the ending was completely appropriate and not devastating like some love stories tend to be (coughTheNotebookcough).

Now if only our on-base theater would play this movie sometime soon - I'm of course dying to see it, and I think I'm even willing to look past Robert Pattinson's teeny-boppin' self.

Book Review: Bossypants

Book 12/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: May 19, 2011.

A friend recommended Tina Fey's memoir, Bossypants, to me.  I needed something light-hearted and fun after reading Winter's Bone, and I happen to really enjoy Tina Fey, so I scooped this one up without being asked twice.  I'm glad I did.  This book was exactly what I needed.

Bossypants covers Tina Fey's life from briefly touching on the childhood attack that resulted in the scar across her jaw line to her love of improv, experiences with Saturday Night Live, being the "bossypants" at 30 Rock, and parenting.  This book threw me into fits of giggles and I was sad when it ended.  I gave it a Goodreads rating of five stars.  She's no Augusten Burroughs, but she is still absolutely wonderful and I can imagine reading this book again and again.

This book will obviously not appeal to the extreme conservative or anti-feminist.  That's cool with me.  I felt like through reading this book, Tina Fey and I were pals.  We have a TON of the same views on things and in a different world I'll bet we'd hang out together.  This book was totally fun and I loved it.  I gained a new appreciation for "that funny girl who looks a little bit like Sarah Palin".  (Although, in my opinion, Tina Fey is way prettier than Palin.)

Definitely a worthwhile read, and exactly what I needed after the painfully dry experience of reading Winter's Bone.  Now I can move on with my life (and my reading challenge).  :)

Book Review: Winter's Bone

Book 11/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: May 11, 2011.

I haven't been ignoring my blog, honest.  It actually took me this long to get through this book. After my love affair with The Hunger Games trilogy, I was so excited for the upcoming movies that I started looking into them.  I saw that they cast Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and was instantly disappointed because her imdb page clearly shows her to be a blonde girl.  Katniss has dark hair.  Details like this that are ignored in book to movie conversions irritate me half to death.  And just who was this Jennifer Lawrence girl anyway??  I mean, if they'd cast a "big name" blondie to play the role I'd maybe half understand but I've never even heard of her.

So I poked around and found that she starred in a film called Winter's Bone, where she played the role of Ree Dolly - the teenaged daughter of a crank-cooker.  (Is that the proper teminology?  All I know is that throughout the book Ree pointed out frequently that Jessup, her dad, "cooks crank".)

I'm not into drug movies.  I never have been.  I don't like the comedies that feature potheads acting like idiots, and I don't like the whole drug culture.  It's just not my thing.  House is the exception to this rule as I actually quite enjoy him as a Vicodin-popping madman.  Still, though, I wanted to see Jennifer Lawrence's acting to see if I'd change my mind about her being the "wrong" choice for my beloved Katniss.

Winter's Bone is based on a book of the same name, so I of course had to read that before I touched the movie.  I'm weird like that.  I cracked it open early in April and almost chuckled at the fact that it only had 150 pages.  I'd breeze right through this one no problem.  Mwahahaha.

Wrong.  I set this book down a LOT.  I went days in between reading like five pages at a time.  I liked the story but the writing was not my forte at all.  The book is about a family in the Ozarks...  Basically about a backwoods family struggling to get by.  And that's how it's written.  The dialogue was almost painful for me.  So this one took me a while.  And I only gave it a two star rating on Goodreads.  But again, not because the story was bad - I actually quite enjoyed the story.  The style was just really rough for me and getting all the way through those 150 pages was akin to pulling teeth.  By the time I realized it was never going to get any better though I was too far into it to quit.

As a reference, here is a brief passage - no copyright infringement intended:

Harold said, "Some suds got missed."

"We'll get 'em with the next rinse."

Sonny coughed forth a shallow cough and said, "Got'ny more of that syrup?"

"Huh-uh.  You two like it too much."

"It sure gets rid of that scratchy feelin' good, though."

Ice hung from the roof eaves, catching dribbles of melt to become longer and stouter pickets of jagged freeze stretched across the window above the sink.  The sun was weak in the west, a faint smudge behind middling clouds, and low.  Soup stock from deer bones simmered on the stove and steamed a comforting scent.

"Might could mix you some later--but now you watch this.  Watch how to do her hair."

Harold said, "Got suds in her ear still."

Once I finally conquered the book, I was free to watch the movie adaptation.  I thought they did a great job with it and was impressed.  Although my opinion on it may be biased since watching the movie was much easier on me than reading the book.  And I can now vouch for Jennifer Lawrence.  I think she is a great choice for Katniss Everdeen.  Her acting was great and with a bottle of Nice n'Easy, I think she even looks like the Katniss I have formed in my mind's eye.

Glad it's over with and I am free to move on to more lighthearted reads.  And also glad that The Hunger Games put me ahead of schedule for the reading challenge because one book per month is not going to get me through the year.

Book Review: Look Again

Book 10/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Completed April 2, 2011.

This was my first Lisa Scottoline book, and it came recommended from a friend who had just started reading it herself.  She said it picked up right away and held her interest.  I had just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy so I was definitely eager to start in on a new read.  She was right, of course.  Look Again caught my attention from the start.  The story of a newspaper reporter and single mother named Ellen Gleeson who notices a "Missing Child" card in her mail with a photo of a boy who looks remarkably like her own three year old son, Will.  Ellen had adopted Will at age one when she was writing a series on hospitalized children.

This little bit of "junk mail" turns Ellen's life upside down as she tries and tries to prove to herself that her Will is not in fact Timothy Braverman.  On top of her personal quest to validate her happy little family's existence, Ellen faces professional struggles as the newspaper she works for seeks to cut back on employees, and romantic endeavors between her and Marcelo, her editor.

Look Again hit the ground running and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It did lose some momentum and got a touch predictable in places, but it wasn't annoying.  Lisa Scottoline managed to keep things interesting with this story up till the end.  It was a bit "fairy tale" at the end, but again not too annoying.  I gave it a Goodreads rating of three stars, but if I could have, I'd have given it three and a half.  I was never one for action-packed books in the past, but I am finding myself really enjoying them lately.  I finished this one before the friend that recommended it (I have a lot of free time...  hehehe), and then another friend said she was a big Lisa Scottoline fan and suggested another of her books to me, so I'll have to try that one out soon too.