Blue Boon by Alyson Noel 284 pages

Blue Moon by Alyson Noel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Soooo, good!! I loved it!! It kept me guessing and it was awesome getting to know Ever better. The whole ordeal at school broke my heart.

I'm diving right into Shadowland to see what happens next!



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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 246 pages

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Okay...so I finally forced myself to read this and all I can say is 'Eh'. I truly had to FORCE myself to read every single page, it was not an enjoyable or quick read for me. It was a fairly short book and it took me nearly a month.

The old English/King James version writing style threw me for a loop. The plot was scattered and we came into it half way through any of the goings on. The characters were unbelievable and dull. It was all this build up and drama only for the baby daddy to bite it at the end.

I can understand why this book is considered a classic, but it won't be a favorite or anything I'll pick up to read again. I have several friends who think this book is the greatest thing since sliced bread but it just ticked me off. It was a good look into how the Puritans lived but in general, I just didn't care for it. I can appreciate it's standing as a classic novel and even it's importance as being one of the top 100 must read books but I really didn't care for it.



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Evermore by Alyson Noel

Evermore by Alyson Noel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


WOW! I was pretty much blown away by this book. It was a bit slow to develop at first but once I got into it WHOA!! It's about a normal teenager turned telepathic psychic after the car crash that kills her family. She is sent from Oregon to sunny California to live with her father's sister. There she struggles to fit in as she's bombarded by thoughts and auras and other psychic symbols. To top it all off her younger sister is stuck between The Other Side and Earth and visits quite often.

Soon she meets Damien and the love story develops from there. I won't spoil it but I really did enjoy this book.



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Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I found this one a bit slow, but it was sort of neat learning more of Vampire history. I love Sookie & Eric together. I cannot wait for the next book! It really kills me that I'll be bookless until it comes out! Boo!!



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From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another Sookie showstopper!! It's been so cool reading her budding relationship with Eric. The Fae stuff had me sitting on the edge of my seat. It was very sad to see so many characters go though :(



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Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty 349 pages

Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Love love love this series!

We follow Jessica through the summer prior and then her senior year. We watch romances grow and romances die. She develops a surprising and enduring friendship with a member of the Clueless Crew (now apply named the Clueless Two with the succession of one of the crew).

As always it's told with witty dialogue and just enough angst to make it believable but not over the top. I find myself transported back to high school...and with Jessica as my new BFF that's not such a bad thing ;-) Once again, I found myself relating to Jessica because I was that 'fringe' in school, I wasn't a Prep or a Jock or a Scerv or a FFA or a Burn Out...but I had friends in all the groups (go figure)...

I can't wait to see Jessica take on college!!



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All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris - 323 pages

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lots and lots of action!Once again Sookie is drug into service of the Queen and the rest of the vamps. This time at a vampire conference in Chicago. Things happen quickly as she realizes the Queen is being conspired against from many sides and finally it all comes to a head when she and the other telepath Barry Bellboy have to use their gift/curse to save the vamps and everyone else in the hotel from fanatics. I liked it! Fast paced and I loved the blossoming romance between Sookie & Quinn but I also love the sexual/emotional tension between Sookie & Eric that is now compounded. I can't wait to see what happense next!

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Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty - 280 Pages

Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Oddly enough, despite it being geared at 16 year olds I really enjoyed this book. I felt that I could relate a LOT to Jessica. I was sort of 'odd girl out' in high school except I didn't have sports to fall back on. I had my 'group' but even with them I always felt somewhat on the fringe and now...8 years post high school I am 'in touch' with very few of them (aka 2) and I don't really see them on a daily basis. The odd part is that in a world made hyper-small because of Facebook I'm reminded of the fact that my BFFs see EACH OTHER fairly regularly. Which is fine really. Anyway, this book follows Jessica Darling as she copes with her one and only TRUE BFF's sudden move and her emerging relationship with the high school 'bad boy' and the family pressures. It's typical teenage angst but it's actually REAL and very well written. It's in diary form but there is still a lot of dialogue, but it doesn't waste time describing the weather or the color of the sky or the room. It's very one-on-one and the outside world is actually pretty unimportant. I like that, I get bored when novels are too descriptive of the outside world...especially when it doesn't pertain to what's going on in the story.

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Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really kept me guessing!! I loved this one. The developing relationship between Sookie & the supes, her willingness to put herself on the line for the Queen. The battle all very cool. I wanted to bawl along with her with the news about Bill.I do love Quinn but I don't know how much I 'believe' him as a romantic lead...

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Dead as a Dornail by Charlaine Harris - 295 pages

Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Yet another winner by Ms. Harris! Loved it! I am loving the developing men vying for Sookie's attention. I was dismayed to see her relationship with Alcide go down the pipes.

I had the sniper figured out pretty quickly but the 2nd twist was one I didn't see coming!

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Stay a little longer by Dorthy Garlock - 385 pages

Stay a Little Longer by Dorothy Garlock

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Eh, pretty basic romance/mystery. It was okay. Not trashy at least, not really based in reality (considering it was historical fiction) but okay.

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The Moon Looked Down by Dorthy Garlock - 386 pages

The Moon Looked Down by Dorothy Garlock

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this book. It was just the right amount of intrigue and romance and action. The last several chapters were the make me stay up late finishing it variety. One, minor, stupid complaint was toward the end there was too much 'the stars and moon above' seriously, it was like a shot game. Once I started noticing that phrase repeated it started to irritate me. :-)

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The Birth House by Ami McKay - 368 pages

The Birth House: A Novel by Ami McKay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am a big proponent of natural birth. I wouldn't trust anyone but a midwife to help me bring my babies into the world. It was really neat reading about the movement away from midwives to the age of Twilight Sleep and Maternity hospitals.My heart ached for Dora though, being around mama's all her life and never having her own babies aside from her Moss baby.

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Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to do About It by Dan Hurley 312 pages

Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It by Dan Hurley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I am very interested in diabetes because my husband is Type 1 diabetic. We've been blessed that in our almost 8 year marriage he's only had a very serious low one time (resulted in an ambulance ride to the hospital) however we have dealt with several other complications related to his diabetes (eye issues, he just had a kidney transplant a year ago). Mostly I was hoping I'd learn 'new' ways to help prevent the disease in our 3 children. I must say I was disappointed in the lip service paid to breastfeeding. It seems like such a cheap (aka FREE) and easy way to help prevent the disease in those who are at risk. It really bothered me that the doctors interviewed went as far as to say they won't recommend it as a prevention in order to prevent 'guilt' in parents of diabetics. Something needs said about the subject!! I worked very hard to breastfeed all 3 of my children. I'm distressed that with most medical groups saying not breastfeeding raises the risk as much as 33% that they'd play such lip service to it. Overall the history and the startling rise of diabetes diagnoses was very interesting.

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The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson 265 pages

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wow.Really, wow.In some distant future, Jenna Fox wakes up. She remembers nothing. Not her name, not her parents, nothing. She's been in a coma for 18 months her parents say. Slowly it all comes back to her and she is faced with yet MORE mysteries about herself. She's thrust into a world of new and strange medical ethics and the consequences for not abiding by those 'rules'. As she begins to unravel the truth she's faced with her own ethical dilemma.I'm not generally into sci-fi books but this grabbed me. It was a page turner and made me really think about the what ifs...and the ethics of what we do NOW and how our choices NOW will have far reaching implications into the future. The book really rocked me. A++

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Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris - 291 pages

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really liked this story. It was fast paced and suspenceful. I actually found myself very sad about the turn of events with Eric. I liked the gentler Eric. I liked the story line. I can't wait till I can get ahold of the next one!!

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Club Dead by Charlaine Harris - 292 Pages

Compared to the others in the series I felt this one was lacking. The saga between Sookie and Bill and Eric just doesn't really ring true. I can't get a handle on Eric's true intentions and there was a lot unexplained regarding why Bill did what he did and what happened. There was a lot of action scenes but many of them seemed fairly needless and off. Even for a vampire novel this one was unbelievable. 3 out of 5 stars.

Le sigh

I've been super busy attempting to catch up on my sorely neglected housework and have fallen WAY behind on my reading....plus I've been plugging away with a non-fiction book and those just do NOT suck me in the way a good novel does!

I'll try to catch up!

Define Normal by Julie Anne Peters 196 pages

Define "Normal" by Julie Anne Peters

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It was a pretty quick teeny-bopper read. I thought it would be a little bit better but it was very much the Full House of novels (everything works out great in the end).

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The Postmistress by Sarah Blake - 326 pages

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It took me quite a bit to get into this book. It jumped between characters so much with very little tying them together. And then, finally, it got to where the 3 main women all fit together and it became a real page turner. I want to say I am disappointed with the ending, but I'm not. It was interesting the way 2 of the women compromised so much on their ideals.It was a heartbreaking read.

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Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another very quick, very easy read. It was fast moving and kept my attention :-) I like the author's style. This book is more sexual than the first. I am having fun reading this series. I'm interested to see what happens next.

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Ahead

Going by my average of 137 pages a day I should be at 1370 today. I'm actually a little bit over 1500 so I'm almost 200 pages over! Woot!!

And I'm reading a fast-paced Sookie Stackhouse novel. Hopefully I can finish it tonight or tomorrow.

Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale by Donna Jo Napoli

Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale by Donna Jo Napoli

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book was really interesting. I wasn't sure what to expect from it but I did like it. I'm sorry that it ended on such a sour note, but it's based on an Irish fable so that is how it was. I'm still unsure what prompted her to take the vow of silence but it did make her more interesting.

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Local Knowledge by Liza Gyllenhaal

Local Knowledge by Liza Gyllenhaal

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book was really excellent. I loved it. The characters were engaging and well developed, I felt myself relating to almost everyone in one way of another. The story started out sort of slow to develop but it eventually got very engaging and was a real page turner. The end was really a twist I didn't see coming but I loved how it ended. It left me wanting to know more about what happened. Cliffhanger...I couldn't recommend this book enough, if you read it you have to give it 80 or so pages before it REALLY gets intersting but once it does it's fantastic.

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On target

Based on my calculations I need to average about 137 pages a day. I'm up to 772...I am only 50 pages short...not bad considering...I'm also headed to bed so I should be able to crank out a few dozen pages :-)

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

I finished Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, 312 pages

All in all it was a good book. I've really gotten into vampire type novels since Twilight so it was quick to suck me in (haha). The characters were likable and well described. The main character, Sookie, is easy to relate to. I don't usually care for books with a lot of sex and stuff but these were really good. It was fast paced and easy to get into.

I really like that it stayed true to the narrator and felt 'down homey'...I felt like I was having the story told to me by someone from rural Louisiana (no offense, but it did have a true 'Southern' twang to it).

The whole thing kept me guessing and I loved that the ending twisted so much! I never would have guessed at that outcome.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. I would recommend it to other people (in fact I'm gonna probably have to tell my mom to read it...she likes Anne Rice vampires so I think she'll like this book).

The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen

I finished The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen. 378 pages!

It was a very interesting book. It was written about one of the first female painters in the 1500's...she came to be on the Queen of Spain's court and served her.

It is a work of fiction deeply rooted in truth. The characters and time line are all real, the dialog and story probably mostly false. It gave me a glimpse of what life was like for women in that time. They were to be seen and not heard, mostly only good for breeding. Also the insane medical practices! Bleeding people and stuff. I cannot imagine.

Reading the Authors Note puts me at 390 pages!

Review-

I would give it 3.5 stars. It was well written and though a lot of true history was wove into it it did not read like a non-fiction history novel. It jumped around a long amongst time and toward the end it sort of fell apart for me. I don't feel there was enough character development so I never really felt a pull toward any one character. Their emotions were grazed over but never really anything in depth. But since it was told in diary form I sort of expect that because women were really trained to hide their feelings so in that sense it stayed very true to the era.

The author spoke more on the people rather than wasting time on descriptive word pictures which i appreciate...nothing bores me more then when an author sits there and describes the blades of grass. Considering the diary was supposed to have been written by an artist I was surprised.

I did enjoy it though, if you are interested in history of that time period then it would probably interest you too. Many of the things that were spoken of as 'common practice' really shocked me. The 3rd queen of Spain was only 14 when the King took her as a wife! FOURTEEN!! And it was a 'bad thing' that he waited until after she started her period (or 'courses' as they called it) to sleep with her!

Ooooh, and in this novel it was rumored that the king poisoned his 3rd wife. That's crazy to me...also the number of people afflicted by syphilis, of course they had no idea what it was back then...they called it The French Disease or the Spanish Disease depending on where they were from (always blaming the other country, ha) It would be passed on to the baby during birth...sooo sad no wonder they died so soon. Especially women.

Reader

I've always been a reader. I was both hated and adored by my teachers in grade school by my ability to read. One teacher told my mom he wished he had a class room FULL of kids just like me because when I was finished with my work, I'd grab a book and read. Another claimed that she could not get my attention half the time because I had my nose stuck in a book.

I could spend HOURS or DAYS reading. I love the pursuit of knowledge. I love to loose myself in a wonderful book. I love spending time with make believe.

So this blog is my challenge and my quest. I am going to read 50,000 pages in 1 year...that equals out to roughly 137 pages a day. I probably cannot do it but that is my goal.

When we did Book-It one year we had to set a page goal...I was the only one to master 4,000 pages in a MONTH. Keep in mind this was in 5th grade.

My challenge begins...well probably tomorrow.

My 'rules'

1) It must be a book I've never read (I tend to re-read books I love...I've read the entire Twilight series probably 20 times)

2) I am allowed a mixture of young adult and adult novels

3) I must include at least 3 Classic Novels (I didn't take lit in HS so this is my chance)

4) I must include some non-fiction, and they cannot be about parenting *gasp*

5) I must include at least 3 books off the Banned Book List (aside from the ones considered 'classics')

6) I must include at least 3 from the BBC The Big Read

7) I will write up a review here once I'm finished, so there may be quite a bit of time between postings

8) I MUST finish every book I start...I tend to read for a few chapters and if I can't fall in love with it, I stop. I am going to force myself to finish what I start

9) I will NOT read any more than 3 'chick lit' books


Now for the other stuff, I have 3 children, my reading time is limited but I'm REALLY REALLY going to try to fit all this in!! Really I am. I do own some of the books that I want to read, that I've yet to pick up and read but the majority of my books will come from my local library. I'm going to be picking books at random throughout the library just to broaden my horizons.