Book Review: Lost December

For December's book club choice we read Lost December by Richard Paul Evans. It was the perfect book to read for Christmas, I really enjoyed it. I read it on my Pandigital and it went super fast. The story is kind of a modern day version of the Prodigal Son, which the author explains right away.


Luke Crisp was born into a a wealthy family, his mother died when he was a kid but he has a wonderful relationship with his father. His father started and runs Crisp Copy Centers and that is where the families money comes from. Luke was raised a hard worker, managing copy centers at a young age. He thought after graduating college that he would take over the family business but much to his surprise his father tells him he should go to Philadelphia to get his Masters Degree as well as some life experience.
In Philly he meets a group a friends that basically change his entire life. His best friend Sean tries to make Luke see life the way that he does. Sean believes that because they all have lots of money they deserve to really "live", drinking, partying, sleeping around, spending ridiculous amounts of money, etc. After they all graduate they decide to go to Europe and just live it up. Once they get there it becomes very apparent that everyone is living this grand life off of Luke and his trust fund. One thing leads to another and Luke realizes that these people aren't really his friends and they are just using him. Right before he tries to leave he realizes that he didn't have as much money as he thought and that his friends have been spending A LOT more of his money than he thought too. His girlfriend who he had planned to propose to even leaves him when she discovers that all his money is gone!
He comes back to the states and literally only has the clothes on his back. He goes to his fathers office only to discover that his father had major surgery, handed the business over to the Vice President and said "Luke is dead to me". Stranded and homeless in Las Vegas, Luke tries to put his life back together. He lives on the street, in the sewer pipes, at soup kitchens and selling the few belongings he has to get by. One night he is mugged and beaten. A man name Carlos literally rescues him. Carlos feeds him and takes him to the nursing home that he manages. He gives Luke a job there and a place to sleep. After a little while Luke gets a second job at one of the branches of his fathers copy centers. He meets a woman that he falls in love with and tries to mend things with his father.
It has a very happy ending, I was literally crying while I finished the book. It's totally a riches to rags story and full of life lessons. It was the perfect story to read around Christmas but I can imagine it being great anytime of year. Like I said it goes very fast and I highly recommend it!

Jamie

Book Review: The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime

My wonderful friend Kara and I recommend books to one another all the time now. It turns out we have a pretty similar taste in what we like to read so this has worked out pretty well. A couple weeks ago I told her I needed something to read and was not interested in anything I had at home. She said she would look for something for me.  The next day she gave me her Kindle to borrow!

Last Christmas Jeremy had mentioned giving me a Kindle and I said I didn't want one. I love books! I love the smell of books, physically turning the pages, wandering around the library, book store or thrift store looking for my next favorite book. A Kindle just seems like it takes all the beauty and wonder out of reading. Kara really recommended that I read one of two of the books she has on her Kindle though. She showed me how to work the thing and I took it home with me. One thing I was happily surprised about is that I thought it would be like looking at a computer screen or my phone but it's not. The screen looks like an actual book page. It was kind of weird at first too that the pages don't have the page numbers on them.  I guess because you can alter the font size and line spacing, it could be inaccurate. Instead there is a little bar on the bottom that tells you what percentage you are through the book, I kind of love that!

Now onto the actual Book Review....

The first book I read was The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde. It was sooo good!! I found out after I finished it that it is actually the sequel to The Big Over Easy. It definitely didn't matter that I started with the sequel because I never felt like I was missing anything. The concept of the book is so funny. In Reading, England there is a Nursery Crime Division in the police department. There are only 3 members of the NCD, Jack Spratt (notice the two T's), Mary Mary (it's never mentioned but I'm pretty sure she's quite contrary) and an alien called Ashley. There are all kinds of Nursery Rhyme characters living throughout Reading and whenever there is any need for the police, the NCD are the ones on the scene. The story centers around Goldilocks' murder and an escaped serial killer, the Gingerbreadman. There is a conspiracy that Goldilocks uncovered about nuclear power available in the most unsuspecting place, cucumbers!! The book is so cleverly written interweaving well known nursery rhymes with real crime drama! It's silly yet very suspenseful, I highly recommend this book. Jasper Fforde has written a few other series' that I think I may have to look for too.

What are your thoughts on the Kindle? Do you have one? Like it, hate it? I think Jeremy may be getting me one for my birthday now that he sees I've been borrowing Kara's. Since I've been having such an issue getting certain books from the library for book club and I don't want to buy them brand new since they're too expensive, maybe downloading them for the lower price would be good? I have such mixed feelings about it still!

2 Book Reviews: Monster Island & Before I Go To Sleep

I finished Monster Island by David Wellington a few weeks ago and it wasn't exactly what I was expecting when I pulled it off the shelf at the library. I was in the mood for another zombie book and this came up on the library search. It is the first in a series of three books and I thought if I liked it enough, I'd read the next two. The beginning half of the book was pretty good. The basic story starts a short time after a global disaster and zombies inhabit most of the earth. A man who works for the U.N. as a weapons inspector lives in Somalia with his daughter. He and a group of teenage girl soldiers have to travel to New York City in seach of medicine for one of the countries leaders. However, NYC is crawling with zombies. Among the dead is one zombie who was a doctor in life and managed to retain his intelligence after being bitten. So far so good. Then something really weird happened and a mummy showed up who somehow could rule all the zombies with his thoughts. All the zombies had to build this shrine thing and they were going to take over the world. I don't know it got really weird with the mummies and the zombies being controlled. It took me way longer than it should have to finish the book because toward the end it was just not my cup of tea. I'm not going to continue the series and I think I'm over zombie books for a while.


I also just finished reading the book club book from July, Before I Go To Sleep by S.J.Watson. I wasn't able to get it at the library to read in time for book club but my friend Shannon let me borrow it after she had finished it. Everyone was saying how much they liked it and that the ending was a total twist so I had to borrow it!! It was most definitely a "page turner" as people say. It only took a few days to read because it was so good and suspensful I just couldn't put it down! The story is about a woman who has lost her memory over 20 years prior and wakes up every morning with no idea where she is or who the man in her bed is. We are lead to believe that she has tried all different treatments to help regain her memory but nothing works. She lives with her husband who has pictures all around the house to remind her of her life and he has to tell her who she is every morning. When I read the description it reminded me of '50 First Dates' with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. Some of the girls said it was similar to the movie 'Momento' but I've never seen it so I have no idea. Throughout the book the woman starts secretly seeing a doctor who believes he can help her. She starts keeping a journal that she writes in every day and then reads every morning to remind her of what her last few days have been like. We find out eventually that her husband has been keeping things from her, what really caused her memory loss, facts about her family, her friends, etc. The ending is soooo good and not at all what I was expecting!! I really suggest if you are looking for a good read to pick this one up!

Book Review: The Witches of Eastwick

I just finished reading The Witches of Eastwick. I bought this book at a rummage sale years ago and honestly had no idea what it was about. I've never seen the movie but I assumed it was about witches. After reading this book I can safley say I didn't like it at all and was completely disappointed.

It was set in the 60's or 70's, I couldn't really tell but there were hippies around. It takes place in Rhode Island near the ocean and centers around 3 main women and a man who moves to their neighborhood from NYC. There wasn't much "witchyness" in the book. It was mostly just bitchy old divorced ladies putting curses on people they didn't like or who did something wrong to them. All 3 of them basically neglect their kids to go have orgys with the hairy guy from New York or hang out amongst themselves. Besides him all 3 of the women have random lovers throughout town, all who are married men. There was just something about the whole book and the main characters that made me pretty much hate them all. They bitched about their kids, the other women in town, each other, life, everything! I would never associate with women like that and most of the time while reading this book I wanted to punch them all! They were just a bunch of catty old broads and I don't recommend this book to anyone!

Book Review: Dismantled

For the month of June we read Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon for Book Club. For the most part I really liked this book, all the way up until the end I loved it. It was scary and creepy and a really fast read. It was as they say "a page turner". Most of the time I just kept turning the pages until the last thing I read wasn't scary so I could fall asleep, ha! I mean ghosts, little kids, "imaginary" friends, possessed dolls...it was creeeepy!

10 years ago a group of 4 friends who were all art students at the same college formed a grouped, The Compassionate Dismantlers. They believed that the only true art is not to create something but to destroy it, take it apart until it is nothing again. They caused some disturbances in town, setting buldings on fire, destroying their college records, framing a professor for sexual assault, etc. They spent their last summer together at a cabin on a lake in the Vermont woods. Throughout the entire book we know that something happened at the lake to the leader of the group, Suz but we don't know what exactly until almost the very end of the book. All we know is that she is dead. Another girl in the group moved away and the other two, Tess and Henry get married and have a little girl.
Their marriage is troubled, Henry has moved into the barn and drinks a bit too much. Their daughter Emma is a little odd, she has OCD and is constantly counting and keeping things in order. She also has an imaginary friend that somehow knows about Suz and eventually her parents start to believe IS Suz! The little girl Emma and a friend decided to root around through her parents things to find a way to get them back together. They find a journal and photos from that summer at the lake and decide to send postcards to the other Dismantlers. A guy who wasn't really a member but was basically tormented by this group gets a postcard too and he kills himself. His family hires a private detective to find out why he would have killed himself. This guy starts sniffing around Tess and Henry who have kept the secret of what happened to Suz that summer. They become very frightened that the truth will come out and they will end up in prison.
Throughout the book it seems like Suz's ghost is haunting them all, leaving little trinkets around that once belonged to her, photographs, the daughter starts saying things that no one else would have known, etc. It definitely is scary and I loved it!
The ending was kind of a disappointment, I won't tell you why because other than that I highly recommend the book and I don't want to ruin the ending for you.

Have you read any good books lately? Every month I try to read one book on my own as well as the Book Club book. I'm trying to read all the books I own that I haven't read yet but have been on my book shelf for a while. Up next is The Witches of Eastwick. I think I got this at a garage sale or something but it's been on my shelf forever and I decided it's time to read it!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies last week and I loved every page of it. I should preface that I have never read the real Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen so I have no basis for comparing the two but taking "and Zombies" as it is, I loved it.

It has all the elements of an old novel set in the English countryside which I've always been partial to. Rolling hills, horse drawn carriages, dinner parties, formal introductions, arranged marriages, family estates, etc. Throw zombies into the mix and it was an awesome book! I now kind of want to read the original just so I can see how the real story was written and what may have been taken out or changed to make the whole zombie plot work. The author did a pretty good job of getting the zombie plot all entangeled into the original story so it actually made sense and flowed well. There were a few times that I thought I hadn't read about zombies in a while or when something zombie related came up I realized it didn't matter if it was there or not as far as the story goes. Still, it was a fun read.

The 5 Bennet sisters are all zombie slayers, trained in China and highly recognized for their abilities. They are employed by England to help keep their part of the country free from the zombies. Once they are married however, they no longer need to be zombie killers. Like most women and mothers of that time, their whole goal in life is to be married. The main character, Lizzy however does not want this. She is the most revered of the zombie slayers and loves doing it. She doesn't want to be married and have to stop killing. Throughout the book we see 3 of her sisters married and we watch her fall in love with a man who she initially despised. Also, her best friend becomes infected by the disease and has her life prolonged by a serum but it seems like this serum just prolongs the suffering and inevitable death. It has a happy ending and all in all I really enjoyed this book.

I also liked that there were a few illustrations throughout the book. It's nice to see a visual of a lady all dressed to the nines as only they did in the 1800's and kicking a zombie in the face!!

Another Book Review: Bossypants

This month's Book Club book was Bossypants by Tina Fey. I don't think I ever watched SNL when she was on it and I've never watched 30 Rock. Not on purpose or anything, I just never have. I did see 'Date Night' though with Steve Carell and thought it was pretty funny. Of course I also saw a lot of her Sarah Palin impressions when that was going on.

This book was flat out HILARIOUS. I laid in bed the last two nights reading this book and was laughing hysterically. Yes, I read this book in two nights. She just has a really great sense of humor, bitchy, straight forward, self-deprecating, raunchy, and all my favorite kinds of humor! I was never one of those "drama kids" in school. I was in two plays but that was just something to do after school. My friends and I weren't those kids whose whole life is acting and they want to be on Broadway or go to Hollywood and what not. It seems like Tina was definitely that kind of kid. It was cool to see how she took things she learned from acting camp and improv to help her in other aspects of life.

I've never identified myself as a Feminist. I mean I'm pretty sure I have quite a few qualities and beliefs that my fellow woman has but I never labeled myself. I've never been big on labels, it's too much pressure. I really enjoyed reading her take on motherhood, being a working mom and what it is like being a woman in a man's world especially career wise. It was really awesome actually.

I highly recommend this book. It was a light, funny read but also pretty inspiring. I am now a huge Tina Fey fan!

Happy Thursday my darlings!

Book Review: The Sea-Hawk

The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini was last months Book Club book. I finally finished it Sunday night (yeah 3 weeks late) and I really loved it! It's about a man, Sir Oliver who is accused of killing his girlfriend's brother. He is actually covering for his own brother, Lionel who was the murderer. Lionel has Oliver kidnapped and enslaved on a ship. While a slave on this Spanish ship, Oliver becomes a Muslim. His ship is raided by Barbary pirates, they free him from being a slave because he is now Muslim like them and he becomes a pirate. Years later he goes back and kidnaps his girlfriend to only find out that she is now married to his brother!
The book was written in 1915 so you can imagine the language is quite a bit different than modern novels.

"Sakr-el-Bahr (this is Sir Oliver's new name), scimitar in hand, stood on the prow, a little in advance of the mob of eager babbling corsairs who surrounded him, quivering in their impatience to be let loose upon the Christian foe. Above, along the yardarm and up the ratlines swarmed his bowmen. From the mast-head floated out his standard, of crimson charged with a green crescent."

This book was really exciting and everything you would expect from a Pirate novel. Lots of fighting at sea, slaves, kidnapping, Muslims vs. Christians, etc. In the beginning it was a little hard to get used to the language and I didn't know all the words that were being used. I just looked up the words (corsair for example is just another word for pirate) and let myself be taken into this pirate world! All in all I really loved this book!

Hope everyone has a great day!

Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski was our Book Club book for March.


I didn't finish it in time for the meeting but I did finish it last night. This was a long book, 562 pages to be exact. It was really good though, kind of slow but a good slow and very well written. It's about a boy (Edgar, obviously) who was born a mute. He can hear but can't speak. He lives on a farm in northern Wisconsin with his mother and father and they raise dogs. Not just any dog, these really awesome dogs that people across the country seek out because of how well trained they are and the amazing bonds they have with humans. One chapter is all about his dog, Almondine and how when Edgar was born she knew that her life was meant to watch over the boy. It was so well written, I mean how do you write from the point of view of a dog?! Wroblewski did it and did it so well. Reading it I was thinking "clearly this is how dogs think, it makes so much sense!"
Then Edgar's father dies. This isn't really a spoiler, it even says it on the book jacket and that's where a lot more of the story comes into focus. He believes his uncle killed his father and obsesses over proving it. Something else happens (this would be a spolier) and Edgar runs away. He runs north with 3 dogs in tow and hides for 2 months. Robbing food from lake houses and eventually ends up staying with a nice guy he meets when one of the dogs gets injured. After a while Edgar is so homesick for his mother and Almondine that he back tracks through the woods and fields back home.
I don't want to give away the ending but it was good! I definitely recommend this book. Like I said, it is a bit slow. It's slow though because, how fast paced is life on a farm anyway?! Plus there's a lot of description of the landscape and what not. I really liked it and gave it 4 stars!
Now onto April's book which is My Pick!!

Book Review: Unbroken

The book we read in Book Club for the month of February was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.


It's a true story and so, so good!
The story is about Louie Zamperini who grew up in California, had a bit of a trouble childhood but as a teenager he started running. And holy moly did he run!! He ended up breaking all kinds of state and country records and eventually went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He shook Hitler's hand...creeeepy! He ended up traning again for the 1940 Olympics which were supposed to be held in Tokyo. However, WWII broke out and Japan backed out of hosting the Olympics. They were then supposed to be held in Finland but also because of WWII the Olympics never happened. Louie ended up being drafted and becoming a bombardier (the guy who actually drops the bombs out of the planes) in the US Army.
Around page 100ish the book got a little slow. I think it was because they went out on a mission and I was expecting the plane to crash. The book opens with a scene of Louie stranded in the Pacific ocean. That didn't happen for a little while though and I just had so much anticipation!
Then it happened, the plane crashed and I don't want to give any major spoilers but let me say this...punching sharks! This man punches sharks!! The amount of time he is stranded in the Pacific ocean is unbelievable. I had to remind myself multiple times that I was reading a true story.
Eventually he ends up in POW camps and is transferred to a few different ones. The things that man, and all the men endured at the hands of their Japanese captures made me cry. Multiple times I was reading this book at night and crying or getting choked up.
When the war is declared over and Louie returns home, the war isn't actually over for him. The post traumatic stress and the horrors that haunt him was so overwhelming. He turns to drinking to try and drown out the war.
At book club Liz told us that this book has some controversy behind it because people believe it to be propaganda. At the end Louie turns to God and is saved by Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher (you've probably seen him on TV.) I do not believe this book to be any sort of propaganda, this is just what happened to Louie. It never once says that everyone needs to live their life for God and all that. Louie lives well into his 90s and doing all sorts of crazy things in his old age! Skiing, skateboarding and gets back into running. He ran the Olympic torch in 1984 past one of the now destroyed POW camps he was enslaved at.
I highly recommend this book and give it 5 stars!

Book Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I finally finished "Fear & Loathing" Wednesday night. I thought maybe I'd give a little review in case anyone was interested in reading it.


First off, I've seen the movie a few times. I hate reading a book AFTER I've seen the movie because the whole time I am imagining the actors and scenery from the movie instead of creating my own in my head based on the author's descriptions.
With that said, the movie was so incredibly much like the book Which says a lot for the people who made the movie, they kept true to the book.
I liked it a lot. Mostly because the mayhem Hunter and his attorney get into is so incredibly ridiculous and drug induced, I kept turning pages to see what the hell they would get into next! I love the style of his writing as well, it's just like as if he were talking to you and telling you the story. No censoring, no bullshit, just straight facts of the situation. The whole time I kept thinking that I would have passed out or ODed if I did the amount of drugs and drinking they were. There were also some crazy illustrations throughout the book that I love. Very creepy but awesome at the same time.
I definitely recommend the book.
Plus there were two other short stories at the end. One about a Chicano in CA who was killed by cops in the 70's and the conspiracy that surrounded it. Also a true story. That was a good read because it was COMPLETELY different than Fear & Loathing yet Thompson's Gonzo reporting is very evident. It's just an entirely different and sad story.
The second was about him covering the Kentucky Derby, that was mostly just funny. Old southern men, drunk and horses. How could it not be funny?!
I've had the Gonzo book for a few years and never read it. I bought it for an ex whose mother also bought it for him so I just took my copy back and never returned it. I might really read it now!

Anyone else read Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas? What were your thoughts?

D.E.A.R.

Drop Everything And Read. Did you have that or something similar in your school?!

So you may or may not have noticed that I added a little GoodReads widget over on the left side of my blog. With all this talk of Book Club, I decided I would share a little bit about what we read and what I have been reading on my own. I still need to add a bunch of stuff to that GoodReads list which I will do over time.

I've always been a pretty avid reader, even as a kid. I was very forunate to have parents that read to us all the time and I am certain that is one of the reasons I love books. I remember in elementary school we had an assignment to pick a trait from our parents that we hoped to have when we grew up. I don't remember what I told my Dad but I do remember telling my Mom that I hoped I would always read as much as her. The quintessential image I have of my Mother is her cozied up on the couch with a mug of tea and a book.
We used to live very close to the library when I was little and I remember walking up there all the time with my Mom and being able to take home 3 books each and it was always SO hard for me to decide. I also remember all the popular girls reading The Babysitters Club in elementary school. I tried reading one (in hopes of becoming cool) and I just didn't get the appeal and gave up. At some point I became obsessed with R.L. Stein's Goosebumps. I would hide under my covers with a flashlight and read into the wee hours of the night. Then I would get in trouble every morning for not being able to wake up for school. =P
In high school I started reading a lot of Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite (both the main reason for my love of NOLA), old beatnik stuff, poetry, anything I could get my hands on really!
Over the last year or so I have completely been slacking on my reading. Since Book Club started I would always read one book for myself and whatever the Book Club book was each month. I don't even remember the last Book Club book I finished...Shameful!

So since this blog has given me so much motivation to keep up with my crafts and finish what I start, I am hoping it will do the same for my reading.
At the moment, I am determined to finish last months Book Club book which is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (yes total theme to go with our trip). Then I will start our next book so I have it finished in time for the meeting I'm hosting and after that I will start a book of my own!


Print by MarianneLoMonaco.

What is your favorite book? Do you have just one or do you have a few?!
My favorite Book Club book was Shadow of the Wind by Carols Ruiz Zafon. I've made at least 5 other people read it who all loved it too!

Also, Welcome to all my new followers!! I feel so special that you want to read about my crafts and the randomness of my life <3 <3