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.