Book Review: Room

Book 25/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  (I DID IT!!)  Date completed: November 28, 2011.

Room.  I took an interest in this book months and months ago while it was first on the bestsellers list, but because of VERY mixed reviews, I put off reading it.  Then my friend (the same friend that recommended I listen to Crank) said it was great and that I should give it a go but only if I was doing the audiobook format again.

So, like I said, I had been looking for entertainment for my upcoming flights and I downloaded Crank, Room, and one other book right then and there on her suggestion (I believe it's Still Missing, but my iPod is like 5 feet away from me at the moment and I can't be bothered to double check the title...  Sue me!)

Like with Crank, I "spoiled my appetite" and started listening to it as soon as our move started.  I sat out in the hallway as the movers packed up our belongings with my headphones on and listened to this book.  And then I just couldn't stop and ended up subjecting my children and husband to listening to this book (and my incessant hushing) during each of our car rides together.  At first listen, this book is absolutely obnoxious.  I didn't read any reviews thoroughly before starting the book so I wasn't sure what exactly I was getting myself into.  Room is told from the perspective of a (very sheltered, to put it lightly) five-year-old, and as my husband pointed out, it sounds like a really long cheesy radio commercial, or maybe a radio show from the 50s.  It's told entirely in the voice of a small child, save for the parts where other characters are talking.  As I adjusted, though, I wasn't so bothered by Jack's voice any more, nor was I bothered by his childish grammar - actually, I found myself repeating "Jack-isms" to my husband, who I do believe got pretty involved in this book too.

As a sidenote - I don't recall if I've ever mentioned it before, but I bought my husband The Hunger Games trilogy audiobooks and he listens to them like they're going out of style.  It's pretty much the only way I can get him to share in my book obsession with me.  So for him to be cool with listening to Room at every opportunity with me is probably because of that.  He has probably listened to the full Hunger Games trilogy at least 10 times now.  And no, he's not sick of them yet.  They're that good!

Anyways once I got used to Room, I absolutely could not stop listening to it.  It's the story of a woman who is abducted at age 19 and kept isolated by her captor in a modified garden shed for seven years.  The story of her and the wonderful, charming, sweet product of her abuse - her five-year-old son, Jack.  Going into the story, none of that is entirely apparent however and it just seems like Ma and Jack are a couple of weirdos.

This is a definite good read.  I gave it four stars, one short of five because Ma's character did, on occasion, drive me crazy...  But I think that's sort of to be expected from someone so detached from the world.  This book doesn't leave anything out.  It includes all the details from Jack's perspective and it's extremely haunting.  I don't want to say too much and give the story away, just know that you really should read Room.

Book Review: Crank

Book 24/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 21, 2011.

This was different for me in many ways.  Crank was recommended to me by a friend who said it was really different and that she'd really enjoyed it.  I didn't know what to expect, but she suggested the audiobook as that was how she'd taken it in.  So, ok, I'm up for new stuff.  Plus, I've been wanting something to entertain me on the plane that doesn't require my eyes.  Figured an audiobook would be appropriate.

But I didn't wait till I got on the plane to start listening to Crank.  I started listening to it in the car on a drive to one of the other bases here on island to keep me company since I was going solo.  Right away I noticed how it was written much differently than anything else I've ever read.  I looked it up when I got home and found out that the book was written entirely in verse, almost as poetry.  (Which explains why the recording was only a little over four hours long total.)  It is from the perspective of a 16-going-on-17-year-old girl, Kristina, as she spirals downward into addiction.  It's very raw.  Talks about rape, talks about specific drug usage, talks about scandal of all sorts, teen pregnancy, abortion, and all those things that mothers of daughters worry about incessantly.

Anyways, at just four hours, I finished this book pretty quickly.  I put on my headphones and listened while I folded laundry and did dishes, I listened in the car on a couple of errand runs, and before I knew it, the book was over.  It scared the shit out of me, if I'm being honest.  I only gave it two stars, but not because it was bad - just because it really wasn't my thing.  I didn't relate at all to the plot - I was always pretty straight-edge - most would say my teenage years were quite boring and I'm alright with that.  But I did find it...  Well, fascinating, because of the absence of such chaos in my own life.

Apparently this book is the first in a series that continues to follow Kristina's life.  I'm not sure if I'll read the others, but this was definitely an interesting experience for me.  And makes me want to squeeze my children a little tighter.

Book Review: Divergent

Book 23/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 14, 2011.

I stumbled upon Divergent because I am such a fan of The Hunger Games trilogy.  Divergent is the first (and currently the only - book number two, Insurgent, is due out next May) book in Veronica Roth's new trilogy.  It is very similar in feeling to The Hunger Games.  Maybe it's biased for me to review it in comparison but I couldn't help myself all throughout from feeling like they were spun from the same thread.

Beatrice (aka Tris) is a sixteen-year-old girl in a dystopian civilization divided into five factions: Abnegation, whose people are known for their selflessness; Amity, whose people are known for being caring; Candor, whose people are known for honesty; Dauntless, whose people are known for their fearlessness; and Erudite, whose people are known for their intelligence.  Beatrice is born and raised in Abnegation, but when her turn to choose her life's path and designated faction comes about, she opts to leave behind the family and the life that she has always known.

The story details the sometimes brutal initiation process for the teenagers entering into the Dauntless faction, but more specifically, it follows Beatrice's unique case as she tries to conceal the dangerous truth (and understand what it really means) that she is, in fact, a Divergent.

This is Veronica Roth's first book and I think it's really good.  I only gave it three stars on Goodreads, because I feel like it has a lot of potential but it just felt so much like The Hunger Games to me that I want to see what else is going to happen in the trilogy before I commit to absolutely loving it.  I felt like some parts were very predictable, where I never felt that way with The Hunger Games.  It's another time where I wish I could give ratings with half-stars, because Divergent certainly would merit three and a half if I could do it.  I'll definitely be reading the next book when I get my hands on it, and the other reviewers that say if you liked The Hunger Games you'll enjoy Divergent were right.

Book Review: Love Walked In

Book 22/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 3, 2011.

Ok, so this was another Pinterest find because I liked the cover.  I'd probably have never heard of this book or Marisa de los Santos otherwise.  I gave it a three-star rating on Goodreads, but it was one of those times where I really wished instead of a five-star rating system, they used a ten-star.  I think this book would have merited more than six stars out of ten but probably only about seven total.  So, yeah, I suppose what I'm getting at is that I feel like about a 3.5 star rating is more honest.

The book started out really well.  I was hooked on it right away, especially from the first Clare chapter as her mother seemingly goes insane...  And Cornelia certainly was a lovable character, too.  She made a lot of classic film and book references and I like that sort of thing.  She's a hopeless romantic and a bit of an under-achiever, but content with her life in general.  The book creates a very unlikely connection between Cornelia and Clare, who we several chapters in discover is the daughter of Cornelia's super-suave boyfriend, Martin.  When Clare's mother goes off the proverbial "deep end," Martin finds himself suddenly solely responsible for the 11-year-old daughter he has essentially spent carefully avoiding her whole life.  He turns to Cornelia for help with Clare, and this was about the point where I sensed a plot-twist approaching that I wanted to dig my heels into the mud to prevent.

Without spoiling the story, I can only say that things changed about halfway through this book.  I felt it coming and I was really hoping against all hopes that it wasn't going where it was, but I was right.  Nothing terrible happens, just that it was really..  well, unbelievable.  And sappy.  And that was why it took me nearly a month to get through.  I lost interest.  It ends happy, it's just not the ending I'd have chosen.  The first half of the book, though, I really enjoyed!

Oh well.  On to the next.  It's definitely crunch-time.  I'm running out of days to complete the last three books.  I have started Divergent this weekend so hopefully I'll get through it pretty quickly and painlessly, but with the move and our vacation so quickly approaching and my husband going in for gallbladder surgery this week...  I'm slightly stressed out lately.  So we'll see.  Need to do a bento update soon, and a life-in-general update, too!

Book Review: The Help

Book 21/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed:  October 5, 2011.

I feel like The Help doesn't really need to be reviewed.  I feel like this book's reputation speaks for itself and I am just predictably giving it another five-star review.

I'm sure nearly everyone who might encounter this review already knows that The Help follows the lives of several women in Jackson, Mississippi and the lives of their black maids, also known as "the help".  Somehow a book whose main issues are racism in the mid-20th century and toilets is one of the most moving books I've ever read.  I felt like I was best friends with Skeeter Phelan, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson.  And Hilly Holbrook - well, I just wanted to punch that woman in the face.

I bought The Help several months ago when it had been lingering at the top of the bestseller list, and I didn't know a lot about it except that it was getting rave reviews.  And then the movie came out and I heard from stateside friends via Facebook how incredible it was.  So I decided I'd go ahead and read it finally.  I had a very hard time reading Winter's Bone and blamed it largely on the vernacular but in The Help, I loved the way the maids sections were written in their own casual (if grammatically incorrect) language.  I could hear Aibileen, Minny, and the others speaking in my ears just as clear as could be and after I'd set the book down, I found myself wanting to talk the way I'd been reading.  Fo' sho.  Law have mercy!  I don't know why this is, but I just found the maids SO endearing.  I could not get enough of them.

Skeeter Phelan crosses an "invisible line" between white and colored women and secretly befriends maids in her quest to put her newly earned degree to good use and write a book about something that bothers her and seemingly nobody else - a book from the perspective of "the help" regarding exactly what it's like to be a colored woman in the very repressed state of Mississippi.  This secret work changes the lives of nearly everyone in the community, as well as poses a huge danger to many of the maids involved and Skeeter herself.

Certainly a book worth reading, though I'm sure you already knew that.  Seriously though, sit down with this one.  It's good.  And if you're like me you'll be waiting on pins and needles to watch the movie afterwards.  It's not out here yet, so I'm about dying with anticipation.

Book Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Book 20/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: September 20, 2011.

I found the cover of this book while perusing Pinterest one day and I was drawn in by it instantly (much in the same way I was with Before I Fall.)  Pinterest seems to be one of my main methods for book-scouting lately.  In the case of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, the title sounded familiar, though I couldn't place it.  After I'd gotten through more than half of the book I mentioned it to a friend and she told me that it had been made into a Lifetime movie, which she had seen.

The subject matter of The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a little heavy.  A young woman in 1964 gives birth in the midst of a snowstorm.  Her husband, a doctor, ends up delivering his own firstborn: Paul, a perfect little boy.  And then, unexpectedly, he delivers his own second born: Phoebe, a baby girl with Down Syndrome.  In order to spare his wife the pain he had experienced growing up when his younger sister died as a result of a heart defect, he asks his trusted nurse to take the infant to a facility and tells his wife that their son's twin was a stillborn.

The nurse finds herself unable to leave Phoebe to live her life unwanted in the cold facility and winds up ultimately raising her as her own child.  The secret tears the young family apart in a very slow and painful way as Norah - Paul and Phoebe's biological mother - finds herself unable to let go of the daughter she never even laid eyes on and her husband, David, continues to burrow himself further and further into an elaborate tangle of deception.

The book was good.  It wasn't my favorite piece of literature and there were things I disliked about it - the way David could never bring himself to do the "right thing," the way Norah was unable to control herself through her grief or her failing marriage, and a few strange and unnecessary (in my opinion, anyway) additions to the plot.  But for me, it was worth reading through to the end - even though it took me nearly a month (in the book's defense it has been a chaotic month!) to get through.  I gave it a Goodreads rating of three stars, and I'm looking forward to watching the movie.

Book Review: Before I Fall

Book 19/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: August 26, 2011.

Before I Fall is the story of the last day of Samantha Kingston's life.  I have been trying to stay away from young adult titles (aside from my Hunger Games obsession) but I spotted this book cover on Pinterest and was intrigued.  I know, I just can't help myself though - I judge books' readworthiness by their covers.

Samantha Kingston is a popular high school senior with a trio of best friends and a dreamy (although kind of a meat-head) boyfriend.  Before I Fall starts out on the first of a "Groundhog Day"-style repetition of Friday, February 12.  Samantha relives Cupid Day seven times before she finally "figures things out" and ends the cycle.

I'm not going to lie.  I didn't like this book in the beginning.  First of all, she starts out as a snooty brat teenager - the type of girl I spent my high school years avoiding.  At one point she refers to the special needs students in the cafeteria as something along the lines of "the short bus parade dribbling their applesauce."  That pissed me off, if I'm being quite honest.  I spent a lot of time in high school as a T.A. with the disabled students, so I'm a touch over-sensitive, but come on.  Seriously!

Even as I tried not to get into the book, with it's long chapters (277 pages are split into only seven chapters - each of which is a new play-out of February 12) and it's teen-speak and all of the high school drama and ridiculous-ness...  Plus, I felt like it was a blatant, modern-day rip off of Groundhog Day, and I actually quite enjoyed that movie through my youth and even still today.  I found, though, that as each chapter went by, Samantha Kingston became more and more bearable, so that by the end I was really rooting for her and appreciating her ordeal.  By the end I didn't want to set the book down any more, the anticipation to see how things would turn out for Sam was just killing me!

I can remember thinking I'd give this book no better than a three star rating, but in the end I gave it four stars.  It was really quite good, Lauren Oliver definitely accomplished what I think she set out to.  My advice with this one would definitely be to keep pressing forward (which makes me wonder if I was wrong to abandon A Million Little Pieces...?  Nah.)

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces

Would be book 19/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge...  Had I finished it.

Really disappointed.  I'm not ordinarily a quitter.  Ok, ok, scratch that.  I do tend to quit a lot of projects half-completed.  But usually I'll finish a book once I start it.  Something about tying up loose ends, even if I hate the story.  (Case-in-point: Safe Haven, Something Borrowed, etc.)  I HATE not finishing a book.  Really.  It bothers me.  But I just couldn't get through James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

I knew going into this book about the controversy surrounding it.  I knew that it had been sold as a Memoir and then later determined to have been largely fabricated, which apparently pissed off one Oprah Winfrey who had given tons of praise to the book and it's author.  I was cool with all that, honestly.  I'm completely ok with a book being fiction.  I don't even care if somebody wants to call a book a memoir and have me believe it's true because generally that doesn't affect me in the slightest.  True or not, I read books for entertainment value.  So if the book's good, chances are that I'm going to enjoy it regardless of it's genre.

My problem with A Million Little Pieces is that I really don't care for James Frey's writing.  It's repetitive, it's overly look-at-me-I'm-such-a-bad-ass, and it's tiresome.  I would read and re-read the same paragraph over and over and scold myself for getting distracted, but then I'd realize that I hadn't been re-reading the same paragraphs.  In fact, he just repeats himself THAT often.  I can't handle that.  I'm ok with a little bit of repetition for emphasis but I am NOT ok with repeating the same sentence three times in each of four consecutive paragraphs.  That's just obnoxious.

Additionally, James Frey's writing irritated me in that he capitalized the first letter in almost every noun in the book.  And it's full of run-on sentences.  It's kind of a mess.  I mean, I understand that the subject matter is also a mess so maybe it fits, but I'm kind of anal and I can't handle this style of writing.

For reference, no copyright infringement intended, but here is a passage from A Million Little Pieces where you can see what I'm talking about:

I stand and I stare at her, just stare stare stare. Men walk past me and other women look at me and Lilly doesn't understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing it and she's blushing and it's beautiful. I stand there and I stare. I stare because I know where I am going I'm not going to see any beauty. They don't sell crack in Mansions or fancy Department Stores and you don't go to luxury Hotels or Country Clubs to smoke it. Strong, cheap liquor isn't served in five-star Restaurants or Champagne Bars and it isn't sold in gourmet Groceries or boutique Liquor Stores. I'm going to a horrible place in a horrible neighborhood run by horrible people providing product for the worst Society has to offer. There will be no beauty there, nothing even resembling beauty. There will be Dealers and Addicts and Criminals and Whores and Pimps and Killers and Slaves. There will be drugs and liquor and pipes and bottles and smoke and vomit and blood and human rot and human decay and human disintegration. I have spent much of my life in these places. When I leave here I will find one of them and I will stay there until I die. Before I do, however, I want one last look at something beautiful. I want one last look so that I have something to hold in my mind while I'm dying, so that when I take my last breath I will be able to think of something that will make me smile, so that in the midst of the horror I can hold on to some shred of humanity.

This book was just not my thing.  I really wanted it to be my thing - I wanted to love it - but it just wasn't.  I'm disappointed in myself for setting it down but I think that if I do force myself through the remaining two-hundred pages, I will probably become an alcoholic and a crack addict myself.  (Ok, that was poorly placed and distasteful humor.  Sorry!  But seriously.)

While I cannot commend James Frey enough for overcoming his addictions and changing his life, I'd give his book one star.  Am I allowed to count this towards the Reading Challenge?  I'm betting no.  Ok, fine.  Moving on.

Book Review: What Alice Forgot

Book 18/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed:  July 26, 2011.

I forget how I stumbled upon this book.  (Irony!)  Something tells me it was a Pinterest find.  Whatever the reason, I am so glad I found it.  This book was awesome.  I bought it because it's title and subject reminded me vaguely of Lisa Genova's Still Alice, which I read shortly after my mother was diagnosed with dementia.  While it probably wasn't the best book in the whole world, it obviously spoke to me and meant a lot.  I hate to sound cliché, but I'd say it even sort of changed my perspective some.

What Alice Forgot is not only vaguely reminiscent of Still Alice, but also reminded me of some other stories I have very much enjoyed, such as The Family Man - the Nicholas Cage film (and ordinarily I can't stand Nicholas Cage, for the record), Big (Tom Hanks), 13 Going on 30 (Jennifer Garner), Memento (Guy Pearce), Back to the Future (Michael J Fox) and perhaps even a touch of "real life".

I could not put this book down and I finished it (obviously) quite quickly.  I literally found myself tuning my kids out to finish chapters and staying up well past midnight turning the pages.  I gave it a Goodreads rating of five stars, and in searching for the book image I discovered they're turning it into a film (to be released in 2013) - this makes me really hope the Mayans are wrong because I'd love to see it's movie adaptation.

Alice Love is coming up on her 40th birthday when she falls off the bike at her Friday morning spin class and knocks herself unconscious.  When she comes to, a decade worth of memories are completely missing, and she believes she is in fact 29 - blissfully married, and pregnant with her first child.

In fact, Alice is a very domestic and active mother of three school-aged children whose life has completely changed in the past 10 years, so that she quite literally knows nothing about herself or the people she associates with.

Alice is shocked and devastated to learn that she and her husband (the love of her life!) are in the middle of an ugly divorce, her best friend is a woman she does not even recall ever meeting and is now dead, her three children are complete strangers to her, her mother has married her father-in-law, and she and her sister have grown apart.  In essence, Alice finds her life a very organized disaster.

It takes a full week for Alice's memory to fully return and she spends that week being very disappointed in the way her life has panned out, and actually trying to "fix" the things that seem so wrong to her.

This book fascinated me because I couldn't help wondering what it'd be like to wake up and not remember the last decade of my own life.  It made me really stop and look around and wonder if I'm making decisions that would make the past "me" (and the future "me"!) proud.

Everything about the end of this book made me happy.  All the things I felt should happen did and it all came together wonderfully.  The tagline for the book is "Was losing her memory the best thing that ever happened to her?"  I think we could all do to step back and take an objective look at our lives from time to time and take a moment to consider what we'd have thought about all this ten years ago.  Being young and naïve is one thing, but being old, bitter, and jaded is another completely - I think the key to happiness is to reconcile and find a happy medium between the two.

Definitely a worthwhile read.  On to the next!

Book Review: The Gun Seller

Book 17/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: July 21, 2011.

I don't have a whole lot to say about The Gun Seller, unfortunately.  I really really really wanted to love it, simply because I am crazy about Hugh Laurie, but I just didn't.  It took me over a month to wade through it, which is a pretty long time for me.  I don't know why, other than that it just wasn't really my forté.  It's a [really long] story about a British man named Thomas Lang who finds himself in the middle of a very complex conspiracy dealing with terrorism and large weaponry.

For me, The Gun Seller was about 100 pages too long.  Like I said, it wasn't a BAD book, it just wasn't my thing.  Most disappointing for me was that I wanted so badly to enjoy it and then I just couldn't get engrossed in it like I'd expected to.  The things I enjoyed the most about this book were the decidedly "British" spellings ("favour" as opposed to "favor", "theatre" instead of "theater", etc.) and lingo ("bloke" instead of "guy", etc) and above all, I enjoyed reading it and picturing Hugh Laurie himself as Thomas Lang - I don't mean that in any sort of creepy way - he's no Johnny Depp - but Hugh Laurie is awesome.  I love that he has a British accent underneath his perfect Gregory House "American" accent - and Thomas Lang had the same gift.  I literally found myself confused when Thomas Lang was referred to by his name (or by one of his aliases) because I was constantly envisioning him as "Hugh".

If I'm being honest, I bought this book from the Reader Store literally within minutes of discovering it existed.  So I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  If I'd looked past the author's name to the summary, reviews, or sheesh - even the cover picture or title of the book - I'd probably have known it wasn't going to be a favorite of mine, and then I'd have potentially saved myself a whole month's worth of [very slow] reading.  Although, maybe not - I didn't think I'd enjoy The Hunger Games, either.  (By the way, my husband finally made it through the whole trilogy and is every bit as obsessed as I am.  Pretty sure this means that we're total nerds.)

Anyways, I gave this book a two-star rating on GoodReads.  And I feel guilty about it because I still love Hugh Laurie.  And I'd probably even read it if he wrote another book.  Because he is pretty much the coolest guy ever.  And I dare you to argue against me on that.  ;)

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.

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.

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.

Book Review: Mockingjay

Book 9/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Completed March 28, 2011.

Obviously I've become quite a fan of The Hunger Games trilogy.  I wish I could put into words just what it was about these books that captivated me most. The love triangle, the fast-paced action, the slight touches of future, the drama...  I can't pinpoint it.  All I know for certain is that these three books have moved me.

Mockingjay did not disappoint.  There were moments at the end when I found my eyes widened and my heart rate picking up.  There were also moments when I found myself stealing glances at the page numbers and feeling premature withdrawals upon realizing how soon I would be reading the final pages.  I didn't know what would happen to Katniss Everdeen in the end - with all of the things she experienced almost no one ending seemed appropriate.  Until it happened, of course, and then I found the words on the final pages pages blurry through the tears in my eyes.

Suzanne Collins has simply done a remarkable job with these three books.  Color me impressed.  I'd read them again and again, and I don't often say that about books - even my favorites.  I gave each book in the trilogy a Goodreads rating of five stars, and I think each of those fifteen stars were well-deserved.

I am the kind of reader that gets engrossed in the story and attached to the characters within it.  Katniss, Prim, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, Finnick, Annie, and Cinna, among the many other unforgettable personas in this trilogy will not soon be forgotten by me.  If you've not read or considered reading these books yet, I can honestly say I don't know what you're waiting for.

Book Review: Catching Fire

Book 8/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Completed March 23, 2011.

After reading The Hunger Games, I could not WAIT to dig into Catching Fire.  It didn't disappoint.  I won't say it was as good as The Hunger Games, but I still think it was good enough to be worthy of a five-star Goodreads rating.  It was certainly more engaging than my average "four-star" read.

Suzanne Collins has a way with the characters in this series.  They almost all have weird names - Katniss, Peeta, Prim, Haymitch, Cinna...  (The list goes on and on, actually.)  But somehow they are still remarkably memorable and enjoyable.  Catching Fire follows the story of Katniss Everdeen, the winner of the 74th Hunger Games tournament, who winds up faced with a whole lot of trouble as her fans are empowered by her brave example (though the full effect of her actions may not have been wholly intentional).  Essentially, a desperate population clings to the hope that they are strong enough to overthrow the Capitol.  And the enraged Capitol springs to action with the sole intention of making an example out of Katniss and everyone she holds dear.

I don't want to get too far into the story line at the risk of completely spoiling it, but once this book...  well, catches fire - it doesn't slow down.  I read the last two thirds of the book over the span of two late nights and one morning.  As I edged closer to the final pages, I was completely baffled at how it could POSSIBLY be coming to an end already.  When I reached the end of Catching Fire, I was wide-eyed and wanting more!  My Reader's battery was low, though, so I opted to charge it and start in on Mockingjay tonight after my kids go to bed.  I'm pretty excited about it.  This trilogy has my attention in a really super nerdy way.  Never before have I been so involved in a series of books that I dream about it - I literally was dreaming up endings to this story the past couple of nights.

I'm excited to see what sort of end Suzanne Collins dreamed up in Mockingjay, and I am very hopeful that the movies based on these books will not come as a total disappointment, the way that so many book to film conversions do.

Book Review: The Hunger Games

Book 7/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Completed March 14, 2011.

I plowed through this one.  Seriously.  Three days?  With two kids in the house, chaos in the world, and my husband heading off to aid in humanitarian work?  How is that even possible?  Somehow, though, it's true.

I gave this book a five star rating on Goodreads.  I expected to give it a three, at best.  Let me elaborate.


So, ok. Seriously. After being recommended The Hunger Games several times, I gave in. Plus, I saw the notably high Goodreads average rating and I was curious about that. I will admit, despite the 4.63 collective stars and the "good word" from a few valued sources, my expectations were not very high. I know they always say "Don't judge a book by it's cover," but I do. I did. I was not intrigued by the cover of this book in the slightest and I was also a little bit deterred by it's classification as a children's/young adult read. Still, my curiosity won and I started in on it.

I was blown away. From the first few pages, I was captivated. I felt an instant connection with Katniss Everdeen - a very REAL and likable character. I found The Hunger Games to be a lot like an addiction for me - I couldn't put the book down. I couldn't stop reading. I stayed up late with my eyes glued to the pages. I finished it in all of three days - although looking back that seems nearly impossible because the story is one so haunting I feel like I've been entranced by it for ages.

I didn't feel that the concept of this book or the way it was written would be an appropriate "children's" book, but then again I have not read a lot of those lately to know what they're like. I suppose in the same way that books like The Lord Of The Flies (which I didn't care for in the slightest as a mandatory high school English read) are classified as "young adult," this could be too. This book deals a lot with violence and romance and (for lack of a better explanation) government opposition... Topics I find a bit mature for the majority of the audience I was anticipating this book to be geared towards. I don't want to spoil it, but just know that the book is nothing like it's blah cover. Crack it open and brace yourself for the intrigue. Very much looking forward to reading books #2 (Catching Fire) and #3 (Mockingjay).

A movie based on The Hunger Games is rumored for 2012.  I can't wait for that either.