Little Thoughts About Books and Stuff

Source: Uploaded by user via Community on Pinterest As the final weeks of the semester roll on, I have less time for stuff other than studying and writing papers, so I totally forgot that today was the end of the month until about 2 minutes ago. So no end of month review today...maybe tomorrow, or in the next few days.

I've read six books towards this challenge this year; three new books ( Celebrity in Death, The Witness , and The Last Boyfriend ), and three old books ( The Art of Deception, Impulse, and Temptation ). I just recently finished Impulse and Temptation in a 2-in-1 book called Windfall. Windfall: Impulse\Temptation by Nora Roberts My rating: 3 of 5 stars Impulse had the feel of a Harlequin romance novel.  It should be titled something like The Greek Billionaire's Summer Fling. I don't know, it just felt like that kind of story.  I liked Rebecca and Stephen but at a few different points I wanted to hit Rebecca.  I felt like if she was so smart she should have been able to put a few more things together and realize that Stephen was more than what she believed him to be, but *shrug* such is the case with romances. I liked Temptation a little bit more.  Eden and Chase were really great.  These two felt more like the Nora Robert's characters that I love. ...

The White Queen: The Cousins War Book One by Phillipa Gregory My rating: 2 of 5 stars This was a book that I did not finish but I'm giving this book 2 stars because I did like the beginning. It started off as one of those audio books where I couldn't get out of the car because I wanted to listen to more, but then I hit a wall. I have a half hour commute to work and I don't like to listen to the radio so I listen to audio books. When I would prefer to listen to the radio and constantly scan channels I know I've lost interest in the book. I went from loving the foreshadowing of Elizabeth's feelings about her Grey sons to not caring how she makes it out of sanctuary the second time or how the princes end up in the tower. I know the history and the stories and at the point I stopped listening there wasn't anything compelling me to keep listening. View all my reviews

Miranda's Viking (Spellbound) by Maggie Shayne My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is by far one of my favorite books. I just re-read it again this weekend. I can't really tell you why I like it so much, but I keep coming back to read it again.  One of the things I do really like about the book is the development of Rolf's English.  Maggie Shayne did a good job of showing his progression of learning from simple phrases to longer sentences and from broken English to pretty near perfect. View all my reviews Having just re-read this book this past weekend I noticed a few things about my copy.  I think it might be time to replace my much loved book. This book wasn't new when I bought it like 8 years ago, but it really has been beaten up since it's come into my possession. Here is what my copy looks like: The cover is starting to rip off, so the pages are all staring to rip out from this point on. As I turned the first ten pages I think it got worse When Ellie (m...

Before I went to book club this month I stood in line to see S.E. Hinton.  If you've never read The Outsiders  then you missed out on an amazing experience as a teenager.  Go read it now! There were two books I remember reading in middle school that I just had to own so I could reread them.  One was The Giver  and the other was The Outsiders .  So when I heard that S.E. Hinton would be doing a signing at one of my local Barnes & Nobel's stores I just had to be there. The Nook Blog has a Q&A with Hinton and these are similar questions and answers we heard at the singing.

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James My rating: 2 of 5 stars Characters - 1/2 Star Plot - 1/2 Star Setting/Accuracy - 1/2 Star Genre -1 Rounded down because I just couldn't get over the "Twilight References." Characters - I want to like both characters and it's upsetting when I can't stand one of them, in this case it was Anna.  She was forgettable.  Christian was interesting, if I end up reading the other books it will be to find out more about him. Plot - I found myself skimming quite a bit of this book.  Going in I thought possible just the sex scenes but really the book didn't really hold my attention all that much.  I wanted it to have a good story, so I could at least say that about it, however, if it wasn't that I wanted to finish it for book club I probably wouldn't have finished the book. Setting/Accuracy- I don't know much about the setting so it just seemed safe to give it a half a star in this category. Genre - I've...

Book Trailer: The Family Corleone – Ed Falco : Publisher’s Summary: “New York, 1933. The city and the nation are in the depths of the Great Depression. The crime families of New York have prospered in this time, but with the coming end of Prohibition, a battle is looming that will determine which organizations will rise and which will face a violent end. For Vito Corleone, nothing is more important that his family’s future. While his youngest children, Michael, Fredo, and Connie, are in school, unaware of their father’s true occupation, and his adopted son Tom Hagen is a college student, he worries most about Sonny, his eldest child. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman, but Sonny-17 years-old, impatient and reckless-wants something else: To follow in his father’s footsteps and become a part of the real family business.” From The award-winning reader's blog of the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers, MA.

Hi, my name is Amelia, and I'm addicted to cookbooks. I can't help myself, I have to buy them. I'm trying really hard not to, so I've been using Pinterest to keep track of cookbooks. But then I had to see that 2012 James Beard Awards had been announced and now I want to buy more cookbooks. Here's one that I would love to own, but I can restrain myself from purchasing. Cookbook of the Year Modernist Cuisine , by Nathan Myhrvold with Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, (The Cooking Lab) Here's one that will be hard to hold back on purchasing! General Cooking Ruhlman’s Twenty , by Michael Ruhlman. (Chronicle Books)

Description from Amazon . A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text. The first novel to be released in The Foreworld Saga, The Mongoliad: Book One, is an epic-within-an-epic, taking place in 13th century. In it, a small band of warriors and mystics raise their swords to save Europe from a bloodthirsty Mongol invasion. Inspired by their leader (an elder of an order of warrior monks), they embark on a perilous journey and uncover the history of hidden knowledge and conflict among powerful secret societies that had been shaping world events ...

The first semester of my work towards my second masters degree started this month.  This is week five and I'm please that I'm able to still get some pleasure reading in while doing a lot of intense reading for my two classes. Lover Reborn by J.R. Ward My rating: 5 of 5 stars No enough Z for my liking but it was a great story. How long do I have to wait for the next book? Keep a Little Secret by Dorothy Garlock My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was our April book Club pick. No Mercy by Sherrilyn Kenyon My rating: 4 of 5 stars WOW! While not a favorite, it was a good one, I've always thought the Peltier brothers sounded interesting, I hope we see more of them in the future. Sherrilyn added a nice little twist to help set up future books. Can't wait to see where she takes this. Retribution by Sherrilyn Kenyon My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another really good book, thought not a top favorite. I like when we take a break from New Orleans to s...