The books of January 2012

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...but the fire is so delightful...wait a minute! The weather has been in the 50s and 60s and while a fire is always delightful, I don't know that it's necessary just right now. Seriously! I'm not sure what's up with the spring weather in January, but I'm sure we'll pay for it later somehow.

What have I done this month? Well, I know I saw Underworld: Awakening. It was a good sequel and led me to believe another installment will happen. What I couldn't believe is the trailer I saw for a new Resident Evil. People really continued to watch these after the first one?! Inconceivable! (And yes I do know what that means and I am using it properly.)

Let's see...a few crafts this month...pretty much all of them to be gifts for people next month, so I can't post them. But I can show one of them now. I found the pattern in an etsy store and almost died laughing. Luckily, a fellow Buffy fan had a birthday and was in need of a present:

Buffy to Giles: hips don't usually lie like that!

I'm trying to remember if I bought books this month. And, brace yourselves, I did not by myself a book in the whole month of January! Did I think about it? Yes. Did I buy books for other people? Yes. But, I decided to dip further into the seemingly never-ending pile of books that are around me daily.

So what did I read? I started with a couple of items from the library: Other People's Rejection Letters: Relationship Enders, Career Killers, and 150 Other Letters You'll Be Glad You Didn't Receive by Bill Shapiro and I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee. From the home stash, I read: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir by Jennifer Mascia, The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares, The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream by Wade Rouse, Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin, and Insatiable by Meg Cabot.
The rejection letters book was funny and sad. It was a fun way to pass a few hours on an actual cold, wet, wintry Saturday afternoon with the sniffles. I feel like the title is pretty self explanatory. I just really needed something to cleanse my reading palette from the crap that was Room.

I always thought Samantha Bee was funny on The Daily Show, but I hadn't gotten around to reading her book. It wasn't as hilarious as the Mindy Kaling book, but it was still very entertaining. I'm always drawn to comic actors/actresses biographies and straight up humor books under the implied promise of hilarity. If you enjoy her humor, you'll probably like this. I did.

The Jennifer Mascia memoir was one I searched for...and searched for...after seeing it one time on a display at a bookstore and reading an article about it a long time ago. I did overhype it in my head, but it was still really interesting...and the cover was cross-stitched, so that's awesome. Who doesn't like a book cover with a little old-school stitchin' with some guns? Jennifer grew up fairly naive to the nature of her family's business ventures, possibly because each individual may have needed more therapy techniques than people knew about in the 70s and 80s. Mafia involvement? Check. Drugs? Check. Adultery? Check. INSANITY? CHECK! As a family unit, these people were tight, but just messed up. I enjoyed how the view she gave into her childhood, teen years, and adulthood. Despite all the crazy, there was a lot of love, but wow. I'm glad her parents had passed once she found all of this out or she might not have been able to move on with her own, separate life.

Ann Brashares is a little bit the same in every book. The story took place mostly at the beach, but some in the city. Sisters grow up, dynamics of relationships change, one sister doesn't change her thought processes, the other does, and of course, there's a man stuck in the middle. I guess you could call it a love triangle, but it's different than that. The guy is bff with one sister and in love with the other. They both need him in completely different ways...then tragedy, as only Brashares can write it. She does manage to give it a kind of happy ending, but it has some sad that you can't shake off.

If you're not a fan of historical fiction (not romance, but history mixed up with fictional dialog), then you probably don't like most of Phillipa Gregory's books. I started reading her way back...I think my first one was The Other Boelyn Girl, but it could've easily been that weird one about the gardener and the little person. Life was definitely different back in the day. Anyway, The White Queen is the first of the Cousins' War set of books by her. This first one happens during the time of the War of the Roses and focuses on Elizabeth Woodville, better known by her position as mother to the princes in the tower than by her name. I've only read one other book series that falls into that time period and I LOVED it, so I was kind of inclined to like this just because of the era. It was a good read and definitely has me ready to read the other two in the series (The Red Queen and The Lady of the Rivers) that I know are out now.

[Sidebar: while looking up that Sharon Kay Penman link, I found out that she has a new-ish one out last fall...Lionheart, which I will be either buying or checking out immediately. Although, it's been years since I read While Christ and His Saints Slept, so I might need to skim through that a bit again.]

Wade Rouse. Hilarious. This is another find from reading Jen Lancaster's blog posts regularly. Wade and his partner moved from the big city to a small, small town in Michigan near the water. Since neither were particularly adept at country-livin', the anecdotes are hysterical. I had more than one soda-up-and-out-the-nose moments with this book. Not many reads start with your main character being attacked by a raccoon and defending himself with lip gloss. Pure fun.

And now, let's watch while I yet AGAIN read a book about an animal. You guys know that in books and in movies, animals die a lot of the time, right? I know it too. but I continue to read books that make me cry. Now, you know going into this, right form the cover picture, that Oogy has had some problems. And thanks to a video passed around a couple of years ago when I got this book, I knew that Oogy was alive so I thought it might be better to read about a doggie who overcame all the crap at the beginning and LIVES and has a happy life. I cried every chapter. But I still can't believe how amazing his story, and his family's story, is. If you feel like crying, but know that things turn around, read this. Otherwise, just stay away. It's too emotional.

A long time ago, I noticed that Meg Cabot (love her!) had put out a book called Insatiable and the version I have has a woman on the cover, holding a stake. That's right. Vampire book! And then, just before Borders closed, I saw another book by Meg Cabot, that went with that first book and it's called Overbite. I bought it too. As luck would have it, after the history lesson, the sad puppy who get happy, and the modern Green Acres tale, I was really in the mood for vampires. They are not sparkley. The entire situation is very humorous (this is part of why I love her)...it's about the original Dracul family, and their clan in modern day New York. There's a soap opera vampire war and a real-life vampire war with the Vatican's Palatine Guard getting involved. The woman in the center of all of it? Meena Harper (yes, like Mina Harker, only better). And she has a special ability...she knows when people are going to die. And her dog, Jack Bauer. HA! Yes, she totally named her dog Jack Bauer and if I ever get another dog, I consider this now to be the perfect name. If you can't tell, I really liked this book. Just go read it. I don't even want to tell you any more about it.

I've started Overbite, so it'll be on next month's list. Oh! Marian Keyes! She's back! I am so very, very happy about that. She has a baking book (with Himself) coming out next month and she's working on a new novel involving the last sister from the Walsh family, Helen. Yes! Keyes was out of commission for two years, fighting to get it together. Her newsletter for January is pretty awesome. If you like her, check it out.

Alrighty, next month should also include tidbits on how I felt about the Oscars. Later!

The books of December 2011

Happy New Year everyone! It was a good year, but as always, I'm looking forward to whatever's next. Bring it on, 2012!

Last month, I saw some more movies (gotta get ready for the Oscars, right?) - the new Sherlock Holmes (possibly even better than the first one), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (really, really, really good), and the latest Mission Impossible (entertaining, despite Tom Cruise).

I went to the annual Renegade Holiday craft fair in Chicago and hung out with an old friend afterward. This year, I actually made it home for Christmas...so far I've still only seen a dusting of snow for the winter...definitely a change from the 2010/2011 winter. I also made some more crafts to complete my goal of completing 1/4 of the Iron Craft Challenges. I had two left at the beginning of the month to meet my goal (as well as finishing up some Christmas gifts). I chose the last two challenges. The Mulligan challenge was taking one of the previous challenges and doing it, I chose to do the one where I make a gift for a friend again. I customized a sign a friend made during her work day a few months prior to Christmas:

Hopefully her new job will help her avoid such events.

The other challenge I did was called Bling. I made a ring based on the instructions in Erica Domesek's book, PS - I Made This:

Shiny and bulky!

This month I got a few books as gifts and bought a couple: One for the Money by Janet Evanovich, Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling, The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, Book 1) and The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, Book 2) by Rick Riordan, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and Girl in the Kitchen: How a Top Chef Cooks, Thinks, Shops, Eats and Drinks by Stephanie Izard...thank you to friends, Santa, and the sales at Target.

The books I read this month: The Magician King by Lev Grossman, The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, Book 1) by Rick Riordan, A Life in Stitches: Knitting My Way Through Love, Loss, and Laughter by Rachel Herron, Is Everyone Hanging Out with Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield, One for the Money by Janet Evanovich, The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen, and Room by Emma Donoghue.


The Magician King was a good follow up to The Magicians. I'm glad I read them back-to-back like that. Quentin's friends show up in mid-air at the end of the first book and ask for Quentin to come back to Fillory with them. This second book is about all of their adventures since he returned to Fillory as a Magician King. I think it was even better than the first book, but I definitely needed to know the characters and the history to enjoy it as much as I did. Last I heard, The Magicians was going to become a show on TV at some point. I can see how it would be fun to watch. It's much darker than the Harry Potter books...even more so than the last of that series, but it would be interesting to see how they created the land of Fillory.


The Red Pyramid is the first of the Kane Chronicles. The first series of Rick Riordan books I read (see The books of January 2011) were about Greek mythology. The books I got by him for Christmas are about Roman mythology. The Kane Chronicles are about Egyptian mythology. A brother and sister team have lost both of their parents before I'd read even a third of the book. Turns out their family is in a long line of protectors of magic and on one side, blood descendants of the original pharoh-gods.Their adventure takes them all over the world and they deal with different gods and different magic as they have on-the-go crash lessons about their family throughout the ages. Egyptian mythology was one of my first interests when I was a little kid, so this book was very fun for me to read.

A Life in Stitches was collection of stories of the author's life. How she used knitting to get through good and bad times; how she used knitting to express her emotions; and how she used knitting to help others (friends, family, and strangers). Some of it made me cry and some of it made me laugh out loud. You don't have to know how to knit to read it, which is nice, but it definitely made me want to knit things when I was done.

Mindy Kaling is "Kelly Kapoor" on the American version of The Office. She also writes and produces for the show. Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? was so hilarious, I have to wonder why anyone would ever NOT want to hang out with her! It's a quick read and when you're done, you really want to be her new BFF. I laughed so hard a few times while I was reading this, that my parents (I was visiting for Christmas) came upstairs and asked what was so funny. This book is an excellent way to pass some time.


I read Rob Sheffield's previous book, Love Is a Mix Tape, about his wife and being widowed at a young age. Sheffield is a music writer and this book was really good...especially if you tie your life and memories to the music you listened to at any given time (that's also why I like High Fidelity by Nick Hornby). Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is more about his life before all of that when he lived at home in a house full of sisters. There was a lot of good musical memories (again), but not nearly enough Duran Duran for me ;) He ties learning about new music and loving it to growing up and learning about dating and living. Another good read.


One for the Money is the first of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. It's going to be a movie later this month. Plum is a fun character who's down on her luck, with a family we can all relate to (driving her crazy most of the time). She gets a job as a bail bondsman for her cousin's company and ends up having to bring in the guy who was her first crush and more. It should translate to the screen really well...it's got action, romance, comic relief, and suspense. A quick and fun book to read and the best part is, there's already at least eighteen of these so whenever I need to read more about her life, I can go to the library and pick one up with little hassle.


The Opposite of Me has sat on my nightstand for a while. Twin sisters who don't really look alike, living very different lives. One has a breakdown after being fired from her job and returns back home and back to being jealous of her sister who is beautiful and seems to have a charmed life. Of course, nothing is as it seems on the surface. The sisters have traumas and change and become friends. It ends really happy, which was nice. Luckily both characters are sympathetic enough and you enjoy reading about them changing their lives for the better and learning their lessons. I'll be reading more of Pekkanen's books.


Last, I read Room (I actually cheated a little and finished it this morning). People raved about this book and from what I'd read, I thought it sounded interesting. It was not. I really did not like it. A woman was kidnapped and repeatedly raped over a period of years while living in a shed "Room". She gives birth to a little boy and she names him Jack. They end up escaping and I guess it's supposed to be a story of heroics and renewal of life but mostly I was irritated as crap by how the story was told through the 5-year-old Jack. I guess that was what was supposed to be so interesting, but I didn't care for it. I finished it because I was determined to do so, not because I was so engrossed in the story that I couldn't put it down. Guess I'll be thinking twice before falling for the hype again.


Mostly good choices this month. I'm guessing that I'll keep doing this as part of my 2012 resolutions. I like chronicling what I've read...mostly because it's a nice exercise in memory and hopefully gives others some good ideas of some books to read. I don't know what my other resolutions will be...I'll think about that this week. I want to do another modified challenge for crafts...Iron Craft is going to a challenge every two weeks this year, but since I don't always like the challenges, I don't want to say I'll do all of them. Still contemplating, I guess. I'd love to travel some more, but that's dependent on a lot of factors. As the Euro drops, my hopes go up though. I hope everyone has a great 2012!

The books of November 2011

November was another busy month. I felt like it had been forever since I'd spent time inside the movie theater, so I rectified that by seeing The Immortals (surprisingly good), the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (not good, either time I saw it, but a fun way to spend time with friends), and the new Muppet movie (it was "sensational, inspirational, celebrational, [and] Muppetational" - LOVED IT!).

I kept working toward my goal of 12 or 13 total crafts (one for each month or one-fourth of them) for this year's Iron Craft Challenge. For the Rest Your Head challenge, I made a pillow that looks like a present:

Finally, a gift that truly keeps giving.

Next up was the Fall Contest for crafting something that fell into the theme of fall/autumn. I made a bag with all the fall colors I love to represent my favorite time of the year:

Hopefully I won't fall down with my fall bag.

You may have noticed that the title of that challenge included the word "contest". Well, thanks to everyone who voted for my fall inspired bag, I won the Iron Craft Fall Challenge! I even got a badge for my blog to prove it!

I did two more challenges in November: the Handmade Holiday challenge and the For the Table challenge. I haven't framed any of these yet, but I like them a lot.

Hoppy Christmas, people!

Pumpkins go on the table, generally in pie form.

This month, I didn't buy any books, but I got one for my birthday called A Life in Stitches: Knitting My Way Through Love, Loss, and Laughter by Rachel Herron. It looks like a good one!

It was another library-based reading month. I read Forever by Maggie Stiefvater, Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares, Gossip Girl: Psycho Killer by Cecily von Ziegesar, The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan, The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig, The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry, The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry, and The Magicians by Lev Grossman (this one was borrowed from a friend).

Forever is the third book of the Wolves of Mercy Falls series. Again, while reading the book, I wasn't that into it (same with all of her books) and it felt like it was taking a long time, but the story stays with you afterward. This one focuses on the same group of teens, but this time the threats are more imminent: a rogue wolf who cares nothing for her fellow wolves and a group of men with weapons enough to destroy the pack. The story is sad, but ends up happier than expected. I'm not sure if there will be a fourth book...to me this kind of wrapped up the series.

Sisterhood Everlasting is the latest in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. The girls are all grown up and don't have loads of time for each other. Spoiler: complete and unexpected tragedy strikes for a book like this. The story this time focuses on how the girls deal with/cope and recover from their loss. It actually made me cry. I didn't expect the dark turn, although I knew Brashares was more than capable of it (remember the little girl who dies in the first book?), I just didn't think she'd move the story in this way. If you've not read any of these books, they're kind of fun (better than the movies) and I did like that this one was based around their friendships and how they try (or not) to hold them together when it's too hard to even hold themselves together. I like coming back to these friends every few years to see what's up.

Some of you might know that I occasionally dabble in watching Gossip Girl. What you might not know is that I actually read the first book before I watched any of the series on TV, just to see if I might enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. Turns out I did. I don't regularly watch and I don't go out of my way to read the books...I only ever read the first one. And that's what Psycho Killer is: it's the first book, redone with lots and lots of murdering. Teen angst gone wild! I was highly entertained by the characters being taken to their worst extremes...the book was pretty funny. Perfect for a post-Halloween fix.

Carrie Ryan's third book of the Forest of Hands and Teeth series was another good one. The main character this time is the lost sister of the last book's focus. It brings together the four teens in an epic battle with the zombie-type creatures who are destroying what's left of humanity. It drags a little in comparison to some other, similar books, but it's still interesting. The army of protectors for the city show themselves to be horrible people, capable of things much worse than the zombie-types. This series isn't as awesome as The Hunger Games, but it fills a nice void left once you finish Mocking Jay.

When I'd looked earlier, I was told The Orchid Affair wouldn't be out until next year. I was so excited when I saw it at the library that I may have made a little squealing noise. Once again, Willig takes us into the world of British and French spies in the time of Napoleon. The Pink Carnation and the Purple Gentian make appearances in the book, helping out one of the students from their spy school. In real time, the grad student telling the story is having to help her new boyfriend (descendant of the spies) deal with the betrayals of his own family while trying to move her research forward. I really love these books. I think there are plenty of flowers to come and I'm very happy about that!

Next up were books six and seven from Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series. The Emperor's Tomb takes place after The Paris Betrayal...maybe a few months after. The double-agent makes another appearance and messes with the flow of events for Cotton and Cassiopeia. Working with the Russians and the Americans, Cotton goes off to help save Cassiopeia from the Chinese. The Chinese end up being at the brink of civil war and Cotton and Cassiopeia get completely tangled in the plots and have to help figure out who the best bet for safety might be. The double-agent earns Cassiopeia's trust and Cotton's anger, but eventually, all the truth comes out. Book seven, The Jefferson Key, is the first in the series to take place in the United States. Basically a bunch of pirates feel they should have free reign within and without the US government. They mess with the economy of the world and then try to assassinate the President. It turns out they were behind all assassination attempts (failures and successes). This one was a really fun read since it was stuff I knew a lot about...kind of like National Treasure with a better lead and less inconceivable happenings.

The last book I read, I finished on the 1st of December, so I cheated a little by saying this is for November only. But I was 80 pages away from the end and couldn't stay up any more on the 30th! Anyway, a little while ago I read in a magazine or online or somewhere that Fox was going to start a new show based on Lev Grossman's book The Magicians. A friend had it and loaned it to me so I could see what I thought. It's a decent book, kind of too long, but just when I'd think I was bored, something would catch my attention. The book is about Quentin, an outcast type of boy who loves books about the magical land of Fillory. Much to his chagrin, he lives in the regular world. But then he finds out that not only is magic real, so is Fillory! The book covers his journey from regular world boy to magical world traveler and back to normal working human. He loves and loses. The magical training and the kids in Brakebills (the magic school) is darker than Harry Potter...well, the beginnings of Harry Potter. It's not as engaging because it's very hard to feel sorry for several of the main characters. I laughed whenever they compared their real magic with the Potter series and when they visited Illinois and talked about how cold it was in Urbana in the winter! Overall, it was an interesting take on the what if magic is real question. I've already started reading the second book and will talk about it next month.

Well, hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and is looking forward to a great holiday season!

The books of October 2011

Didn't I just write one of these things?! How is it Halloween? I mean, tomorrow it's NOVEMBER! Actually, quite a bit of last month was spent working on the blog I did to archive my pictures from Italy so I could remember the trip. If you missed that, and want to see lots of old and beautiful things (and no, I don't mean me), then you should check out Pictures from Italy 2011. The first post you see is the last, so scroll down if you want to read it in order, or, just scroll and look at stuff. The pictures make me really happy.

I also made a few crafts this month. A friend at work had a birthday and I worked with another friend to figure out what he says the most. This is what he ended up with:

Totally different from being tanorexic.

I made an imaginary friend for the Iron Craft challenge. Her name is Ms. Flora Petalsworth and she is very into mischief. I'm pretty sure she's the reason all my plans to clean my room have been thwarted.

She looks so sweet and innocent...

For another Iron Craft challenge, the topic was just Halloween. That's fairly broad, so I narrowed it down in my head to something my friend would like to have for her Halloween parties. I gave it to her on Saturday.

Stitching this candy corn did not drive me batty.

I think I only bought one book for myself this month...I'm still pretty sad about the no Borders situation. No wait...I bought two...and a couple of friends have lent books to me that I swear I'll get to as soon as I can! I got Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory (mainly because it has a spaceship AND a tentacle on the front cover) and The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan.  

This month I stuck mostly with library books again...and got a new, smaller stack before I came home tonight (because I need to read my friends' books). I finished The Host by Stephenie Meyer, aka The Worst Book Ever. I also read Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and books one, two, three, and five of Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series: The Templar Legacy, The Alexandria Link, The Venetian Betrayal, and The Paris Vendetta (I accidentally read book four, The Charlemagne Pursuit, while on vacation last month).

A quick sum up of The Host: it never got any better. Never. It was really a bad book, but I'd committed and refused to give up. As badly written (and still much beloved) as the Twilight books are, the sparkley vampires and faux wolves have a great story to tell. These characters? Not so much. The hosts are bodies taken to "host" new souls. I'm pretty sure most doctrines don't refer to the host/parasite relationship when discussing souls, but whatever. The main host can't get rid of the original soul inside the body, so she ends up falling in love with the girl's past and helping carve out a new future. I don't know if you see potential in that, but if you do, I'm telling you, don't bother. It went unfulfilled. It was just not a good read...and because it was so long, it felt like for-ev-er before I finished it. I was completely happy to move on to any other topic by that point.

The Cotton Malone series. I know I gushed about this last month...and some of you began reading and some see the awesome and some don't. That's cool. I think part of what I like about these books is that Berry discusses how he researched things and lived in those places to get the best out of himself for the book that he could. I think it shows. The Templar Knights have long been a fascination for me. I think many of you know how I feel about that medieval time period and knights in general. Get me started on King Arthur and I'll probably never stop typing! Anyway, this was about the lost templar treasury from when the knights were killed off by the king's (and church's) proclamation. We meet Cotton Malone, dragged into his first mystery by accident, while trying to help out his friend and former boss, Stephanie Nell. The old Danish guy, Henrik Thorvaldsen, and the woman who (sometimes) works for him, Cassiopeia Vitt (what a great name), also become involve and lay the groundwork for the next stories with their teamwork to (a) thwart danger, (b) solve the mystery, (c) kill the bad guys, and generally (d) save the day. It's really the framework for all the novels in this series, but since they're based with some true history, I am hooked. The Alexandria Link is about the library of Alexandria, supposedly lost, but apparently kept going by a very secretive group of guardians who need help from Cotton to keep their treasure safe. In this one we meet Cotton's son Gary and his ex-wife Pam (who he throws out of an airplane...which she didn't like, even though they had to jump). They get a little closure and a better relationship...oh, and save the day. In The Venetian Betrayal, we learn more about St. Mark and Alexander the Great and the links between them. The people working against them find the cure for AIDS (oddly, a bacteria that attacks and destroys the disease) and the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. The Paris Vendetta is centered on old family rivals of Napoleon and finding his lost millions. There are lots of twists and turns as always, but I was surprised (SPOILER) that one of the main characters thus far is killed off. A new one was introduced, but I don't know yet if he'll play an integral part to upcoming plots. I've got the next paperback, The Emperor's Tomb, sitting on the nightstand and I'm going to ask for The Jefferson Key (book 7) for Christmas. I know this may seem like not great, very formulaic reading, but because the adventures take place all over the world and include researched historical facts woven in with stories you learned long ago, they're just great fun to read. 

Beauty Queens is about teen beauty pageant contestants that survive a plane wreck and get completely, and utterly, screwed by the company sponsoring the pageant because it's run by a woman with aspirations that can not be stopped. She's planning dirty deals with embargoed nations for arms and oil while covertly covering up that there are surviving teen dreams on the island The Corporation owns. Her plan? Kill them off...pretty much everyone involved...to achieve her goal of becoming possibly the least informed president ever. A smile and a wave don't always solve the problem. The girls (and one near girl) become extremely self-sufficient and are able to bounce back once the evil plot is discovered. All this, and PIRATES. Seriously? This book is insane. It was kind of funny though. Not laugh out loud, but satirically funny, if that makes sense.

OK. Happy Halloween and I'll be back next month!

The books of September 2011

September completely flew by, didn't it? It was a good month though. I mean, it's hard for a month to be bad when you spend half of it traveling in Italy.

Why aren't all of the ceilings like this everywhere?

Before I left, I finished up a couple of projects: my wrist-warmers (which have already been worn at work) and my friend's birthday present as mentioned last month.

The Happy Birthday Monster is coming to get you!

It was the last month of Borders bookstore...so sad! I picked up a few titles before they were gone for good: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge, The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, and The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry.

I continued reading books from the library, but I needed to have things turned in before my vacation, so I took books I owned with me on the trip. Here's what I read in September: It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy by Laurie Notaro, The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome by Luca Spaghetti, Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge, Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry, and part of The Host by Stephenie Meyer.

The Laurie Notaro was funny as always. I'm not a huge fan of her fiction works, but these essays on her life are hysterical every time. I recommend all of them. This one has a couple of appearances from Ambien Laurie who takes on a life of her own while regular Laurie is sleeping. Seriously, if you've not read her before, check out the first one from her, The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life. I remember laughing out loud while having coffee somewhere quiet and everyone looking at me because of the disruption. If you like that one, you'll like the rest.

Dead-Tossed Waves is the second book in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series. (The library has the third one, so it will be coming soon to this blog.) This story focuses on the daughter of the main character from the first book. It turns out the story is much more complex than I originally thought...apparently the daughter is not hers biologically and she has a twin who's been gone for a long time, but was alive the last time the new male interest saw her. There are a lot of twists and turns in these books, but for a post-apocalyptic teen book, it's pretty intriguing. It's not the Hunger Games, but it's a different take on survival and you root for the characters who are pushing the story forward.

The Luca Spaghetti book wasn't that great. It did fill in any holes you may have thought existed in the Rome portion of the Eat, Pray, Love story. Luca Spaghetti is a real person and in this book he tells his story and writes in depth about his friendship with Liz and what it's all come to mean to him. Reading it while in Rome was the only thing that saved it for me because he gave a lot of history/background stories to many of the places we visited, so sometimes I would know a little more about it than if we'd just walked there and looked at it. I left it at the apartment in Rome for the next person in case it was of interest.

Once in a Blue Moon was definitely my vacation book. I've read a few of Goudge's books before...they tend to be about families and twists in lives and trying to piece it back together...generally with a few well-written sex scenes to glue it all together. This particular story was about two sisters, living with a horrible mother who ended up in jail while they were farmed out to foster care. One thrived; one repeated their mother's patterns. Once reunited, they were able to come to terms with the different hands life had dealt them and it all ends happily...after more ups and downs. It wasn't the best novel ever written, but it was engrossing and passed the time. I left it at the apartment in Positano.

Commencement is one I read about on Jen Lancaster's blog. It's four unlikely friends who go to an all female college and how their paths cross and uncross after college. It was really well done and I loved reading it. I couldn't believe what happened toward the end and that's pretty amazing to me. I started picking up on the twist, but I had never expected that particular thing to be the twist. She's a good writer, and now I totally want to read the other one by her, Maine. This one stayed in Positano too after being read almost completely while on the terrace.

I read Steve Berry's The Romanov Prophecy sometime a couple of years ago. I loved it so much that when I noticed The Charlemagne Pursuit out in paperback around the following Christmas, I asked for it. I didn't get around to reading it until I was on vacation. Apparently the Romanov one was a one-off and I plunged into the middle of a series when reading the Charlemagne one. But that's ok! The series is about the main character, Cotton Malone. There are several in the series (most all currently on loan to me from the library) and a couple more one-offs. I plan to read them all. In this book, Cotton Malone, retired justice agent, is pulled into a huge mess, simply by trying to figure out more about his father's death on a submarine that was never found. He got a classified report and it turns out, the mission of the sub was not what they'd been told and only one ship was ever sent to look for it. The mystery of this leads to a huge amount of killing, both in the states and in Europe. I could not put this book down. When it was time to do stuff, it was really hard for me...and I was in ITALY and it was BEAUTIFUL and I wanted to read about people getting killed over something that had happened like 40 years earlier. It was really, really good. I can't wait to read the rest...he's a very strong character.

When I got back, instead of heading to the library right away (just went today), I decided to read whatever was on top of the night stand. Unfortunately, that was The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I read the Twilight series. I always said it wasn't the best written, but the story was compelling, so I kept reading, and yes, I've seen all the movies so far and plan to see the other two from the last book. This one though, it's just, well, the same writing style (bad) with a story that I can't seem to follow and kind of don't want to. One friend said she liked it and others have all said it was bad. I'm determined to finish the thing since it's been a chore to read at all so far but it seems like it might be picking up a little (I'm about a third of the way through). I don't think it's going to turn out ok though...not like Anne Rice's The Queen of the Damned - the first half was the worst book I'd ever read and then all of the sudden, POW! Awesomeness! Not many authors can pull that off, and most shouldn't even try. I'll let you know how it goes next month.

The books of August

I can not believe it's the last day of August! I feel like I just put up the last post and poof! It's that time again. I saw a couple of movies this month: Crazy Stupid Love and The Help. Crazy Stupid Love, I gotta say, had no pull on me when my friend asked me to see it. I thought it looked kind of funny, but imagined that all of the laughs would be in the same previews I had seen. I was delighted to be absolutely wrong. It was freaking hilarious! And while I've not been an avid Gosling fan in the past, I was struck mute...and possibly temporarily blind...by the glory of his possibly photoshopped abs. It was insane. There were times when I was laughing so hard I was crying and I couldn't talk. The Help was every bit as good as the book. Funny, sad, just a great, great movie with great performances.

I've been busy trying to get lots of crafts done as well. An ex-boss left my current place of work...he used to always tell people how mean and angry I was...which took everyone by surprise because I'm actually not. So, I made a joke of it and decided since he was the one who thought that, then he could take it with him:

The real question is why was I mean and angry...was it all those vampire books?

Later on in the month after his departure, I actually did feel both mean and angry. It made me think for a little bit and I decided to sublimate my rage through my inner artist:

I also made a few birthday gifts...I'll post those next month though...after people have received their gifts!

I did pick up a few books this month...all at Borders: The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashares, It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy by Laurie Notaro, and Avec Eric by Eric Ripert.

The library got a lot more of my business this month...as did my stash of books scattered around the apartment. Here's what I read this month: The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig, Walks with Men by Ann Beattie, Let's Talk About Pep by Sandy "Pepa" Denton, Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, Man Camp by Adrienne Broduer, The Family Fortune by Laurie Horowitz, Ransom My Heart by Meg Cabot and Mia Thermopolis, and Lips Unsealed by Belinda Carlisle.

First, the Sittenfeld book. I know I read Prep a long, long time ago and maybe I should've expected this style, but I'd completely forgotten. The story follows Hannah from elementary school all the way into adulthood. Every relationship is screwed up somehow...although maybe that's because it's all from Hannah's viewpoint. After seeing her dysfunctional family fall apart and slowly pick up the pieces, it's not like her life choices were unexpected. The relationship with her shrink seems to be the most stable one she has. I was glad that she grew throughout the book, but when it ends, you kind of feel like there should be a more positive resolution after all of that crap. You want that nice, neat, storybook ending all tied up with a pretty bow. But what you get is something more realistic and outlandish at the same time. Not a bad read, but makes me want to avoid that other one...what was it? Oh yeah, American Wife.

Another fun Lauren Willig book! I swear, this series might be my favorite. It's not one I actively seek, but when I remember it, I look, and there's always a new one that absorbs me. This one I should've read between the two I read last month, but it wasn't on the shelf at the library. I could sit here and gush and go on and on about how I enjoy her novels, but I want everyone to just go read them! You can see all the titles (and get the order of release) on Amazon. As a bonus, there's supposed to be a new one coming out in February. There's the modern love story, the historical love story (stories), the historical settings, and the mysteries. Just so much fun. When I start one, it takes all my will to leave the house if I don't finish it in one sitting.

Walks with Men was an odd little book. I knew nothing about it...I was looking to see if some other book I wanted was in and this was in a row nearby...it was very short and small and portable, so I checked it out. I never connected with the main character. She didn't seem to need the reader to do so. You felt bad for her at times, but then you were brought back to the reality that she brought it all on herself with her choices in men and her life. What it really did was make me think. I know I've made some INSANE choices when it comes to men, but like the character, I don't feel too bad about it. It happens; you move on. Granted, the ending was actually sad, but not a tear-jerker. Just kind of an awful way for it to all go down. And she got through it...just like we all do, all the time. While this one was a work of fiction, it could've easily been a memoir and I doubt I would've caught on that it was in the wrong place.

Salt and Pepa's here! Let's Talk About Pep...shall we? All I knew about S&P was that they were a ground-breaking female group and that I liked quite a few of their songs. Wow. She wasn't up to Vince Neil levels, but her choices? Oh my, her choices! What was she thinking?! Staying with men who repeatedly beat her?! It wasn't easy to read...and she knew it. She just told it like it was, said what she did, and kept moving forward to the next stage of life. She's clearly a survivor. Mostly what I got out of this book was that I needed to listen to "None of Your Business" on a repeated loop for about a week straight.

Juliet, Naked was so great! Totally Hornby. I just love the way he writes. The main characters start out on the road following the male's musical hero. The female, she's not as into it. They drift. She writes a thoughtful post for his blog about the musician. The musician contacts her and all of it comes together so well. You can visualize the characters and you like them all, even with their flaws and craziness. I really need to just re-read everything he's done. Sigh.

Man Camp was silly, but a decent read. Two friends in New York jokingly come up with a business for one of them to date men and tell the men what they do wrong so the men can become better mates. The dating thing only proved that the problems were too complex for one date and one review/advice meeting. They had to have a week or two to spend, showing these NY guys how to be real men and take care of women. Of course, being a work of fiction, everyone learns something, and everyone already had useful skills, and everyone lives happily ever after. Complete fluff, but sometimes, you just need fluff.

And apparently sometimes, you need more fluff because the next book I read was The Family Fortune. Jane Fortune and her family fall upon difficult financial times and Jane, being the level-headed one, becomes the focus as she's the only one in the family with a lick of sense and an actual job. Turns out the family has really done a number on her and it took this separation of them all to put it into perspective so she could get a real life...as she had the chance to do several years before instead of locking herself up with them. It was entertaining.

Another fluffy tale was Meg Cabot, writing as Mia Thermopolis (The Princess Diaries). Ransom My Heart was the story Mia wanted to write about a girl who decides to ransom a stranger to get money for her vapid sister who spent her dowry on trinkets...which wouldn't be a problem if said sister hadn't gotten herself knocked up by a wandering minstrel. Unfortunately for our heroine, she captures the returning man of rank, back from being imprisoned during the Crusades. Hilarity ensues. As does plenty of sex. This was a nice read and I liked most all of the characters (except the villains)...as I tend to do with all of Cabot's books.

Last, but not least, just an hour ago, I finished Belinda Carlisle's Lips Unsealed. If you didn't know, I love the Go-Gos. I bought this book a long time ago and have been waiting for a good time to dig into it. Apparently, the good time started last Saturday morning. Belinda has certainly led a life. She clearly wasted almost half of it in a fog of drugs and alcohol, but it did make for some excellent, gossipy reading. She could have dressed it up and made it less real, but she didn't, and I admire that. She told what she felt about a lot of my favorite songs (some were not her faves at all) and she talked about the band and her life as a musician afterward. It was nice to read that the songs were snapshots of their lives at the times...I think that's part of what makes those songs so fun...that you can feel what they were feeling and doing (although I guess you could also call that a contact high without inhaling). She also talked about what the drugs and alcohol were doing and how she couldn't face it. When I finished it, before I fired up the computer because I knew it was blog night, I knew that I'd be listening to the Go-Go's for a while, being really glad that she caught herself in time and got help before it was too late.

So that's August. September is going to be awesome, although I might not be reading that much. With that in mind, and the Go-Go's, I'll leave you with some lyrics: "Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away..." It's nearly vacation time and I can't wait! See y'all later!

The books of July 2011

Seven months gone. Seems way too fast, doesn't it? I saw the last Harry Potter and it was awesome! I also liked Captain America - it was a lot of fun.

Book buying will be more scarce throughout the year with Borders going out of business :( I loved my time working there and I loved shopping there. It's not gone yet, but I'm really going to miss it. I bought the following books this month: Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome by Luca Spaghetti, Overbite by Meg Cabot, and The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure.

I did make a few trips to the local library...something I guess I'll be doing more of without Borders. So, this month I read: The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate, Passion by Lauren Kate, The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig, Orange In the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman, The Department of Lost and Found by Alison Winn Scotch, Time of My Life by Alison Winn Scotch, The Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater by Frank Bruni, Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag by Michael Tonello, and A Hollywood Ending by Robyn Sisman.

The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove was an okay teen book. The main character has little conscious and really, having read the whole book, I can't say that I felt se had earned any sort of redemption. She came from nothing, turned her back on her roots, and lived it up as a spoiled brat. More than anything, this was just an unfortunate tragedy where no one seemed to grow or learn things until it was too late and then you didn't really care about them. Also, I like my teen books a smidge more chaste than this one was. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I really don't like to think of teens that way...even if they are.

Passion was the third in the series of the Fallen novels. This one explains more of the history of the angels and the fall and their fighting to gain control of Luce and her soul. Apparently there's another book to come in the series. I like these books...begrudginly. I didn't mean to like them. They are written about as well as the Twilight series...mostly, there's something about the storyline and the loyalties of the characters that's very intriguing. It's another series that could be seen on the big screen, but probably not as lucrative overall...no sparkley vampires or cool werewolf-like packs...just beautiful, beautiful angels with wings!

Lauren Willig is an author I found by accident. A few years ago, I read a few books by her about a graduate student who went to England to research a spy network working against the French. The books are highly entertaining and take you back to the era using dispatches, letters, and notebooks that the grad student is studying. It helps that her boyfriend is a distant relative of one in the spy network and that his aunt (she owns the archive) was clearly involved as well. The Mischief of the Mistletoe is a short Christmas story made from two characters who are in the books, but never the main characters. Here they get their chance to solve their own spy problem. It's a charming tale, full of comical little intrigues that bring the two together and compel them to stay together throughout the ordeal. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily was another introduction of main characters, these moving the Hellfire Club's intrigue to India through a bad marriage of one of the main characters and the introduction of a few more of the spy ring. The plot is well-written and the twists and turns are fun to follow because while you can tell where the path is going, you occasionally make a wrong turn in your thoughts, much like you're the grad student trying to figure it out as you go. The student in modern times may never finish her dissertation, but her research is certainly entertaining. I've got another of these from the library to read and I hope the author keeps writing them.

Orange Is the New Black was a departure from things I would usually read. I saw it on one of Jen Lancaster's book lists from last year. Piper did some really, really stupid things earlier in her life and ten years later, it all caught up to her. While she'd made a life for herself, she realized that she needed to pay for what she'd done, so she served her time and chronicled it for the rest of us. The women she met in prison were, and this is weird because I didn't expect it, very inspirational. They propped her up when she was down; they took care of each other. It wasn't a good place to be but they made it home (as much as possible) by recreating their sense of family. Together they got through a lot of horrible things. This book portrays something I hope not to experience, but something that I'm glad I took the time to read.

Originally, I was looking for The One That I Want by Alison Winn Scotch...and I still am since it's been checked out every time I've gone to the library. So in the meantime, I read The Department of Lost and Found and Time of My Life. Both were very well-written books that I had trouble putting down. In The Department, Natalie is the main character. She's a work-a-holic for a senator and she develops cancer. Around the time of that little announcement, her boyfriend walks out on her. After some wallowing, she slowly regains her footing in life to find that maybe it was time for some changes anyway. She lost some things and some people, but she found herself and started to take better care of herself. It was really good. In Time of My Life, Jill had a perfect life with a good husband, an adorable little girl, and a crap-ton of issues she's shoved into a tightly closed bag. The bag comes open and one morning she wakes up in her old life, with everything to do over however she pleases. It takes her returning to the past and doing things differently to realize things about herself and her life. Again, this was an entertaining page turner.

The Washingtonienne was just, well, smarmy. The main character cheats on her boyfriend and moves to DC from New York to start over. She lives a life of partying - drinking, drugs, and sex. She takes a job on the Hill and starts a blog to keep her friends apprised of her comings and goings. She juggles men, finds a decent one, and manages to completely mess up her life again. It's possible that she learned something at the end, but it's hard to tell if she really means it. I was pretty much appalled at this girl and felt a little dirty when I was done reading it. She didn't even like herself or what she was doing and yet she wrote it all down for everyone to read. Ugh.

I turned quickly to some non-fiction to cleanse my reading palette. Frank Bruni's Born Round is about his life with food and family. Bruni shares his problems with food, going all the way back to his childhood. His struggles to eat and to be happy are something anyone who has ever yo-yo dieted or made excuses for meals has felt. The increasing pant sizes; the binges; the misery...it's all there. As well as the food. I love how he tells his story. Sometimes, his descriptions of food were too accurate and I would find myself wandering to the kitchen for a snack while I read. He talks about being in Italy and still managing to stay on track...as well as finding happiness while maintaining a decent relationship with food and exercise and family. This book is pretty inspirational without being preachy. Read it when you need a boost.

Bringing Home the Birkin was highly entertaining. I kept laughing and wanting to read it when I should have been doing things like sleeping. Tonello's travels to retrieve the elusive handbags are near insane. At the end of like every chapter I'm thinking, "Hello! It's a freaking BAG" and he's dropping thousands and thousands of dollars on them. It's completely nuts and I loved it. It has some downer moments...and some scary ones, but his descriptions are quite lovely and make you want to experience these places and things yourself...maybe minus the price tags.

Last on the list was A Hollywood Ending. A cute book about an actress who takes off to London to try her hand at Shakespeare in the theater. All of her problems seem light-hearted to us readers and the way out of awkward situations pretty simple. It was a fast read, easy to follow, and generally just a nice way to spend a few hours in the air-conditioning on an extremely hot day. Plus, you can just hear the accents if you ficus hard enough :)

I've got another stack from the library and some books that are calling to me from the night stand. I need to start working on a lot of craft projects too. Let's just hope the weather starts to cool off...I am totally over this whole heat index and sweating thing. Later!