Little Thoughts About Books and Stuff

Currently Reading: Title:  Cape May Author:  Chip Cheek Date Started:  February 16 Note:  eARC provided by NetGalley Goodreads Summary: Late September 1957. Henry and Effie, very young newlyweds from Georgia, arrive in Cape May, New Jersey, for their honeymoon only to find the town is deserted. Feeling shy of each other and isolated, they decide to cut the trip short. But before they leave, they meet a glamorous set of people who sweep them up into their drama. Clara, a beautiful socialite who feels her youth slipping away; Max, a wealthy playboy and Clara’s lover; and Alma, Max’s aloof and mysterious half-sister, to whom Henry is irresistibly drawn. The empty beach town becomes their playground, and as they sneak into abandoned summer homes, go sailing, walk naked under the stars, make love, and drink a great deal of gin, Henry and Effie slip from innocence into betrayal, with irrevocable consequences. Erotic and moving, this is a novel abo...

Book Beginnings on Friday from  Rose City Reader   The Friday 56 with  Freda's Voice . This week I'm reading:  Cape May  by Chip Cheek It Begins:   The beaches were empty, the stores were closed, and after sunset, all the houses on New Hampshire Avenue stood dark.  56%: "Maybe we can escape," she said. "We've got our pick of houses. We don't have to stay here." She was smiling at him, full of meaning, and Henry felt dizzy. The lights seemed to dim, the music to come from far away.  Verdict: I'm only a few chapters into this eARC but I can already tell that I'm not a fan of Henry. Henry and Effie are on their honeymoon in Cape May, NJ in 1957.  The town is pretty dead until Clara and a group of rich socialiets show up and turn everything crazy.

Currently Reading: Title:  The Girl with Seven Names: Escape From North Korea Author:  Hyeonseo Lee Date Started:  February 15 Goodreads Summary: As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by the secretive and brutal communist regime created by dictator Kim Il-Sung and his successors (son Kim Jong-Il and grandson Kim Jong-Un). Although her privileged family background insulated her from the cruelest horrors of the regime, living near the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom. When the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, “the best on the planet”?Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she w...

Book Beginnings on Friday from  Rose City Reader   The Friday 56 with  Freda's Voice . This week I'm reading: Becoming   by Michelle Obama It Begins:   Preface March 2017 When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple.  On Page 56: This was the doubt that sat in my mind through student orientation, through my first sessions of high school biology and English, through my somewhat fumbling get-to-know-you conversations in the cafeteria with new friends. Not enough. Not enough.  It was doubt about where I came from and what I'd believed about myself until now. It was like a malignant cell that threatened to divide and divide again, unless I could find some way to stop it.  Verdict: I'm really enjoying this look into Michelle Obama's life. It's comforting in a way to see that she has struggled with self image, self doubt and a need to be in control in an order to comfort herself.  She talks about meeting ...

Currently Reading: Title:  Becoming Author:  Michelle Obama Date Started: February 8 Goodreads Summary:  In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African-American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicli...

Book Beginnings on Friday from  Rose City Reader   The Friday 56 with  Freda's Voice . This week I'm reading: The Hate U Give   by Angie Thoas It Begins:   I shouldn't have come to this party. On Page 56: Talking to Ms. Rosalie may be harder than talking to the cops, honestly. But I owe it to Khalil to pay his grandmother a visit. Verdict: This book is so popular that it has had a constant holds list since it was released in 2017. I'm currently on either my 3rd or 4th checkout and I'm finally reading the book.  All the previous checkouts I had so many things checked out that I didn't get a chance to crack the cover before my loan period was over.  I was so nervous reading it, thinking that the hype wouldn't hold up (its happened to me before) but no, this book is living up to the hype, the must deserved hype. 

Book Blogger Hop Audiobooks vs Ebook? If the world stopped printing books which would you prefer between the two?  When I first read this week's question it hit me as a hard question, but then I really started to think about it and realized, as much as I like audiobooks, there are some narrators that I just wouldn't be able to listen too. Just think about all those books, I'd miss out on.  So I'm gonna have to say ebooks.

Currently Reading: Title:  The Library Book Author:  Susan Orlean Date Started:  January 29, 2019 Goodreads Summary: On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean d...

When I was deciding to come back to the blog I was looking through all the blogging memes that the blogs I read follow. I had done Book Beginnings and The Friday 56 a handful of times, but over at  Mixed Book Bag , JC merged them together and I really like that idea.  So borrowing from her I'm going to start linking up to both Book Beginnings on Friday from  Rose City Reader  and The Friday 56 with  Freda's Voice . This week I'm reading: The Library Book   by Susan Orlean It Begins:   Even in Los Angeles, where there is no shortage of remarkable hairdoes, Harry Peak attracted attention.  On Page 56: Many times, I have stood over a trash can, holding a book with a torn cover and a broken binding, and I have hovered there, dangling the book, and finally, I have let the trash can lid snap shut and I have walked away with the goddam book - a battered, dog-eared, woulnded soldier that has been spared to live another day.  ...