Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Author: E. Lockhart

Narrator: Tanya Eby Sirois

Date Finished: March 27, 2009

Personal Book Count: 25 out of 100

Rating: 4 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: Young Adult Fiction

Summery: Taken from authors website:

“Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:Debate Club.Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.”

Why did I pick this book? : I have read about it on a couple blogs (that is where I am starting to believe I find MOST of my books) and then was pleasantly surprised to notice my library had an audio copy.

Review: I love Frankie’s character. I would like to think that is the tough, smart, keep up with the boys, take no guff person I would have been as a teen. But maybe I’m just flattering myself. I love some of the pranks pulled, and would love to have seen that type of thing in real life. Matthew was so passive with her sometimes, and corrected her so often, that started to get to me. On the other hand, I think that Alpha was a good match for her, and would like to have seen them together. Not today, but maybe 10 years down the road. But I also understand why that couldn’t work, at least for now (I’m not going to spoil the book and tell you why :P)

On the other hand, I found it a little hard for me to relate that she was a jewish teenager in boarding school, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book. In fact, I think it was the opposite. I was a little curious. And a little jealous. I always wondered what it would be like to go to boarding school. I even skipped the whole ‘college experience’ as I took night classes all the way through as I worked. My choice at the time, but now sometimes when I look back, I wonder what I missed.

My big pet peeve would be the ending. I found the punishment unrealistic. Especially in these times of zero tolerance.

But, it was a good ‘read’, and kept me quite amused through some other tasks. =D

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

Annie's Adventures

Title: The Sisters 8: Annie’s Adventures (book 1)

Author: Lauren Baratz- Logsted with Greg Logsted and Jackie Logsted

Date Finished: March 26, 2009

Personal Book Count: 24 out of 100

Rating: 3 out of 10

Genre/ Subject: Children’s fiction

First Line: It was New Year’s Eve 2007, approximately ten o’clock, and we were just getting ready to celebrate Christmas.

Summery: From the back cover-

“The story begins.

On New Year’s Eve, eight sisters- octuplets- wait for Mommy to come back from the kitchen with eggnog and Daddy to come back for the shed with more wood for the fire.

But they- Mommy and Daddy- don’t. Come back. Ever.

It takes the sisters a few minutes to notice, but when they do it’s just as one would expect. Disbelief! Outrage! Despair! Then a note appears, explaining that each girl has a power and a gift. They all must find theirs and learn what happened to Mommy and Daddy.

So that’s how the story begins. How does it end? Enter the world of the Sisters Eight to find out…”

Why did I pick this book? : It was one I had heard of through the blogs and then bookmooched.

Review: I liked it. Octuplets. Very timely. Logical progression of events. Enough open-ended mysteries to make me want to read the next one. Enough lose ends tied up that I felt I had some closure. The octuplets had unique enough personalities, I didn’t feel like I was struggling to keep them straight.

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

I Shall Not Want

Title: I Shall Not Want

Author: Julia Spencer-Fleming

Date Finished: March 25, 2009

Personal Book Count: 23 out of 100

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: mystery

First Line: When she saw the glint of revolver barrel through the broken glass in the window, Hadley Knox thought, I’m going to die for sixteen bucks and hour.

Summery: Taken from the jacket-

“People die. Marriages fail. In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, New York, however, life doesn’t stop for heartbreak. A brand-new officer in the police department, a breaking-and-entering, and trouble within his own family keep Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne busy enough to ignore the pain of losing his wife---and the woman he loves.

At St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend Clare Fergusson is trying to keep her vestry, her bishop, and her National Guard superiors happy---all the while denying her own wounded soul.

When a Mexican farmhand stumbles over a Latino man killed with a single shot to the back of his head, Clare is sucked into the investigation through her involvement in the migrant community. The discovery of two more bodies executed in the same way ignites fears that a serial killer is loose in the close-knit community. While the sorrowful spring turns into a scorching summer, Russ is plagued by media hysteria, conflict within his department, and a series of baffling assaults.

As the violence strikes closer and closer to home, an untried officer is tested, a wary migrant worker is tempted, and two would-be lovers who thought they had lost everything must find a way to trust each other again---before it becomes forever, fatally, too late.

Julia Spencer-Fleming shows you can escape danger---but not desire---in her most suspenseful, passionate novel yet.”

Why did I pick this book? : I read All Mortal Flesh and loved it. When I saw recently this was up for an Agatha Award I thought I would try this one.

Review: I had severe let down. I don’t know if it’s because my expectations were so high, after the other one was so good, or if I was just in a different mind space, or if I could predict where it was going as I had read the author before, but this one fell short for me. Or maybe it’s because I have read Harlan Coben, who tends to do a lot a similar things in his books, but more so.

Now with that said, I do like Russ and Clare, but am getting a bit tired of the push/pull between them. I liked that a lot of my old favorite characters were there, and well and short visits from past ones. I like Hadley and hope she sticks around. We finally got some edge of my seat moments near the end, and I like that it was a humorous ending, although I’m not sure it fit with the rest of the book. There was pay off in the end, but it felt like me to be a lot of work to get there. I’m glad I did though, otherwise I would have been very discouraged. It made it worth my time investment.

I like the dialog, internal as well as between the characters. I like that we got to see EVERYONES point of view, from the main characters, to minor characters. I think that it could have been done very well (and easier for the author) from just the two points of view of the main characters, but the fact that there was more really added layers to the story.

Will I read anymore of this series? I don’t know. I didn’t think I would read this one, and I did, so who knows?

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

Friday Fill-Ins

I haven't' done one of these in a while, and since I haven't finished reading anything ot blog about lately, I thought this would be good =D

Click title to be linked back to original site to see more.

And...here we go!

1. Why do we have to work on Fridays?

2. Checking the new library site daily and playing hatchlings on facebook are now habits.

3. I have a full pot of coffee, a new book and a free afternoon. =D

4. I had never heard the phrase "_____" and it _____. (um, pass. how do you answer something you never heard? lol)

5. I wish my husband would put his dishes in the sink (not on the counter) the way I always do.

6. How was I to know What you got when you goosed a ghost? (A handful of sheet. (Sorry, couldn't resist, it's my favorite joke))

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to seeing my parents, watching Dollhouse and spending some time with Hubby, tomorrow my plans include buying pastic boxes to organise my home, and seeing if I can get a slanket at the TV store and Sunday, I want to watch NASCAR! Who knows? maybe even finish a book.

The Writing Class

Title: The Writing Class

Author: Jincy Willett

Date Finished: March 16, 2009

Personal Book Count: 22 out of 100

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: mystery

First Line: Lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl brief case stuffed with old notebooks.

Summery: from the jacket-

“Amy Gallup is gifted, perhaps too gifted for her own good. Published at only twenty-two, she peaked early and found critical but not commercial success. Now her former life is gone, along with her writing career and beloved husband. A reclusive widow, Amy's daily mantra is KILL ME NOW, her sole companion a dour, flatulent basset hound who barely tolerates her- she is a loner who is afraid to be alone. The only bright spot each week is the writing class she teaches at the university extension.

This semester's class is full of the usual suspects: the doctor who wants to be the next Robin Cook, the overly enthusiastic repeat student, the unassuming pupil with the hidden talent, the prankster, the know-it-all...Amy's seen them all before. But something is very different about this class - and the clues begin with a scary phone call in the middle of the night and obscene threats instead of peer evaluations on writing assignments. Amy soon realizes that one of the callers is a very sick puppy, and when a member of the class is murdered, everyone becomes a suspect. As she dissects each student's writing for clues, Amy must enlist the help of everyone in her class, including the murderer, to find the killer among them.”

Why did I pick this book? : I was intrigued by the idea of a writing class trying to solve a mystery.

Review: A very interesting thing happened when I was reading this book. It hasn’t happened before. Several times throughout, I would think to myself, why am I reading this? It was entertaining enough, but I didn’t think I was really invested enough to continue. I would put it down and walk away for a while. I usually have several books on the go, but when I would sit down and debate what to read next, none of them appealed to me, and I always ended up back at this book. There was such a diverse cast of characters, that by about half way through, I wanted to finish, just to see who done it (although, I’m not sure I WANTED it to be any of them). At the same time, I couldn’t be bothered to read any more, I couldn’t read anything else. Intriguing is the word that comes to mind that is appropriate. Has this every happened to anyone else?

I did like the humor, but found it very literary, for a mystery, and sometimes that was distracting. I could relate in some ways to the main character, who wanted to be alone in her house with her books and her dog, but then other things I found so far fetched. Why was she always being talked in to things? Why did she keep coming back? Why did she set herself up for some of the scenarios to happen? The book was set up to alternate back and forth between her life, and the class. I love that in the chapters that were set in the classroom setting she shared snippets of the writing of her students. They ranged from really good to really bad, and every genre you could imagine. It added another depth to the story I wouldn’t expect. Although it could be seen as distracting, or irrelevant, I thought it told us quite a bit about the characters that wrote them. Am I pleased that I finished? Yes, there was pay off at the end. Would I go out hunting more of the same? Probably not.

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

Small steps?

I think I did it. Went to the library this morning. I wasn't going to go in, just use the drop box, but I wanted to see what they had for Elizabeth Zimmerman books. Took one book, brought home one book. I know it's not much, but could it be the first step to recovery of my library addiction? we'll see...

vicious circle.

I have gotten myself locked in this loop, that I'm not sure I will ever find my way out of. It's all the library's fault. It's the tempting way they have it set up, and all those books lying around, to just take home. And now I'm in the never ending spiral. This is how it works. Let's say I take out 3 books. Not unreasonable for 3 weeks right? Should easily be able to read these, and a few off my shelves. Except I get done early and return them. But then I get more. Still not a problem right? Except it is. Because I always seem to take 1 or 2 more then I return. So if I return 3, I take out 4. If I return 1, I take out 3. If I return 5 I take out 6. So, not only am I not getting all the library books read, I'm not getting any of MY TBR's read. vicious circle.

Any one else have this problem?

Hold Tight

Title: Hold Tight

Author: Harlan Coben

Date Finished: March 10, 2009

Personal Book Count: 21 out of 100

Rating: 4 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: fiction/ suspense

First Line: Marianne nursed her third shot of Cuervo, marveling at her endless capacity to destroy any good in her pathetic life, when the man next to her shouted, “Listen up, sweetcakes: Creationism and evolution are totally compatible.”

Summery: Taken from the flap-

“Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they’d spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately, and after the suicide of his best friend Spencer Hill, they can’t help but worry. Within days of installing a sophisticated spy program on Adam’s computer they are jolted by a cryptic message from an unknown correspondent that shakes them to their core: “Just stay quiet and all safe.”

As if Mike Baye isn’t dealing with enough, he also learns that Lucas Loriman, the sweet kid who grew up next door, is in urgent need of a kidney transplant. As the boy’s doctor, Mike suddenly finds himself in possession of an explosive secret that threatens to rip the Loriman family apart at the seams.

Nearby, while browsing through an online memorial for Spencer, Betsy Hill discovers a surprising detail about the night of her son’s death. Before she can find out more, Adam disappears, taking the truth with him and sending shockwaves through the neighborhood.

As the lives of these families collide in tragic, unexpected, and violent ways, long-hidden connections in their small suburb begin to work their way to the surface. And when an unidentified Jane Doe is beaten to death not far away, those connections threaten to turn this quiet community upside down—and force these desperate parents to decide whether there is any line they won’t cross to protect those they love most in the world. “

Why did I pick this book? : I had received a Harlan Coben for Christmas and liked it, so thought I would try another.

Review: I liked it. It wasn’t as good as Tell No One, I wasn’t in suspense on the edge of my seat the entire time, but it was still good. I really like how Coben takes multiple strands, all seemingly unrelated, and ties them together in unexpected ways. It really makes you think, and wonder if you should be looking over your shoulder.

I found the characters sympathetic, and it was easy to follow them on their journey for the most part. I could see why they made the decisions they made. And all were very distinct. As there were many of them, some never made an appearance as regularly as others. I may have forgotten their name by the time they came around again, but I never forgot their ‘character’. Once I started reading, they were easy to place once again.

It amused me, that Tia was a lawyer, and very logical, and Mike was a doctor, and sometimes didn’t approach things as logically, but still quite often, they came to very similar (if not the same) conclusions, at about the same time, but through very different ways.

It did raise some very interesting “make-you-think” questions. Like how much supervision/ knowledge of your child is too much? Is too much or too little a detriment? Is your child better off being too independent or too protected? How far would you go/ should you go to keep them safe? I know it is fiction, and the extreme, not the everyday, but still…

Will DEFINITELY be reading more Coben in the future. =D

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

Talk Me Down

Title: Talk Me Down

Author: Victoria Dahl

Date Finished: March 5, 2009

Personal Book Count: 20 out of 100 (starting to think I may make it this year =D)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: Romance (contemporary)

First Line: Molly Jennings stood frozen in dismay, staring over the tiny coffee section of the tiny Tumble Creek Market.

Summery: from the back of the book-

“Molly Jenkins has one naughty little secret: her job as a bestselling erotic fiction author. Until her inspiration runs dry—thanks to a creepy ex—and it's time to skip town and move back to tiny Tumble Creek, Colorado.

One look at former high school hunk chief of police Ben Lawson and Molly is back in business. The town gossip is buzzing at her door and, worse still, a stalker seems to be watching her every move. Thankfully, her very own lawman has taken to coming over, often. The only problem now is that Molly may have to let the cat out of the bag about her chosen profession, and straitlaced Ben will definitely not approve.… “

Why did I pick this book? : I saw it on the rack at the library, and the cover caught my eye. Then, the description on the back make me take it home. I needed to find out what happened.

Review: yea, I liked it. It was a romance. It was hot. Or maybe it’s been too long since I read a pure romance (I usually either read them with suspense or a theme). It had a new twist that I had never seen before (she was an erotic novelist). It had humor. It had a couple hold your breath moments. It was light, fluffy, brain candy. Not much to say, it was a romance. =D

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

Sister Wife

Title: Sister Wife

Author: Shelley Hrdlitschka

Date Finished: March 3, 2009

Personal Book Count: 19 out of 100

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: Young Adult Fiction

First Line: I am consumed with impure thoughts.

Summery: from back of book-

“In the isolated rural community of Unity, the people of The Movement live a simple life guided by a set of religious principles and laws that are unique to them. Polygamy is the norm, strict obedience is expected and it is customary for young girls to be assigned to much older husbands.

Celeste was born and raised in Unity, yet she struggles to fit in and to accept her ordained life. At fifteen she is repulsed at the thought of being assigned to an older man and becoming a sister wife. She wants something more for herself, yet feels powerless to change her destiny because rebelling would bring shame upon her family.

Torn from the headlines and inspired by current events, Sister Wife is a compelling portrait of a community where the laws of the outside world are ignored and where individuality is punished.”

Why did I pick this book? : I had read reviews on line, and noticed it on my last trip to the library.

Review: I’m not really sure how to rate this book. I’m still digesting it. It is so different from anything I have come across, I’m not completely sure what to think. It is a good ending. Everyone gets what they deserve. I was drawn in by very distinct characters, all facing the same decision (to stay or go). I kept reading to find out what they would do in the end. And which factors were going to play into their decisions. And I was very drawn in by all the little details of their “culture”, as I have never experienced anything like that, and had no knowledge of that way of life. I don’t know if this kind of reading is my norm, or if I will be doing a lot of it in my future, but I did enjoy this ‘taste’. =D

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D

February Book Review.

February was a good month for reading for me. I actually finished 10 books, which is even more amazing because it was a short month. I attribute it to the challenges. Not only and I reading books I might not read/ might not get around to, but I’m spending more time reading, and enjoying was I do read. Of course it help that about 6 months ago, DH and I made a conscious decision to watch less TV, and as a result we have been reading more (not that we didn’t read a lot before). Anyhow, my books read this month are:

New Moon- Stephenie Meyer 4.5/5

The Chocolate War- Robert Cormier 3/5

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret- Judy Blume 3/5

The 4-Day Diet- Ian K. Smith 4/5

The Last Chance Café- Linda Lael Miller 3/5

Portobello- Ruth Rendell 3.5/5

Wake- Lisa McMann 5/5

Lost and Found- Carolyn Parkhurst 4/5

Mob Princess- For Money and Love- Todd Strasser 2/5

Tough Cookie- Diane Mott Davidson 4/5

If you are interested in what I thought of them, or what they were about, you can click on the link in the side bar, and it will take you straight to the review. =D

Orange Bunnies =D

Oh! Look! Knitting!

Sometimes the smallest things make me happy. Even if it's just orange bunnies. =D

my new favorite thing... =D

This is too much fun! I think I'm now a search addict... =D