Wonder

Wonder by R.J. Palacio is a story about ten year old August Pullman, a boy with rare and severe facial deformities. August has been homeschooled his entire life to accommodate his many surgeries. Now he is embarking a new journey, entering middle school!

This was a book club read for a local group. They tend to pick some downer books and my expectations for this one were not high. However, I was surprised to find a book the was uplifting and completely inspiring. I wanted to jump into the book and just hug Auggie! I won't give anything away, but this book left me teary. I thoroughly enjoyed cheering August Pullman on throughout this book. A must read!

Outlander Read-A-Long Week 1

Jess at Gone With The Words provided us with some questions for Chapters 1-7. 


Here are my answers!

1. Outlander is a well-known book. Before you cracked it open, what were your expectations or assumptions about this story? Or did you jump into it with a blank slate? I had tried reading Outlander a couple times in the past. I had heard from several people that the books were wonderful, but they failed to mention that the first chapter can be difficult to get through. I had assumed that it was just not my style or that it wasn't the right time for me to read it. Luckily, I found this time that if I had just stuck with it long enough to read chapter 2 I would have been just fine! Once I reached chapter 2 I was hooked! In fact, I had to make myself stop so I wouldn't get so far ahead. I know some of my fellow bloggers/readers have read ahead, but my memory just doesn't allow me to do that.
2. Claire’s husband, Frank, is fascinated with learning more and more facts about his family tree, which extends back pretty far. Do you or anyone in your family keep a family tree? How many years/generations back does it go? If not, have you ever considered or attempted to create one? My grandparents had a plaque given to them containing a lot of information about our family history. I haven't looked it over since I was a kid but it was very interesting and went back several hundred years. 
3. How did you find Claire’s initial conclusion as to her surroundings after waking up from going through the stones? Did you think that was a reasonable conclusion? I did think it was reasonable for Claire to assume she had stumbled upon a reenactment rather than travel through time. Wouldn't you?
4. How about her composed, rational way of dealing with the fact she’s traveled back in time. Did you find it believable? Do you think you would have acted the same way? What good does freaking out do? Every time travel movie or tv show I've watch the person who came from the future (or past) starts telling everyone they see their crazy time travel story. Everyone thinks they're nuts! In Claire's situation I think telling the truth about where she came from could have gotten her killed or at the very least she wouldn't have been given shelter and resources. 
5. At this point in the story, what are your feelings or expectations on Claire and Jamie? Is Frank still a factor for you? This is a point my husband and I have debated about. Claire is still married to Frank and she should respect their marriage by remaining faithful (his opinion), but after a certain point she will need to accept this as her reality and move on with her life even if that means excepting a new man into her arms (my opinion). Personally, I like Jamie a whole heck of a lot better than Frank. I wholeheartedly believe that Frank is the reason that the first chapter of this book is so dull.
Bonus Question: Frank encounters a man outside of the inn where he and Claire are staying. He is afraid it might have been a ghost. What do you believe it was? Do you have any predictions or suspicions on what that was about? Having not read this before, I believe that it was Jamie. I'm guessing he stepped through the stone and traveled forward in time. 

It's not too late to join in! Visit Stalking the Bookshelves for next week's questions and check back in with me next week to see what I have to say about chapters 8-14!

The Power of Six, 365 better each day, and Winning by Losing

I haven't been reading much the last week what with dealing with a three week long migraine. I found it's a little hard to focus on the words when I'm half blind with pain. 

 The Power of Six is the second in the I am Number Four series. Because of my lack of competent thinking at the moment, I'm just going to tell you what I thought of it.

The series itself, while predictable sci-fi/alien/young adult fiction, is an enjoyable easy read. The Power of Six by itself was a little disappointing to me. It wasn't that the story wasn't good or the writing was bad, it's just that it was a middle book, if that makes sense. See this is where my migraine has me go on random tangents!

The book starts where the first book left off and had no real ending. It wasn't even so much a cliff ending to me, but rather just an abrupt ending. There was no closure whatsoever and it just left me feeling like there were chapters missing.

Now I know this is supposed to make me rush out and buy the next book to find out what happens next, but really I just felt like I had wasted my time. Sure I got to meet some new characters and see a little character  development with the previous people, but I just felt like this book was a series of random dialog and fights. I mean, several chapters were of the Numbers just kind of sitting around waiting to happen. And then when danger did present itself, it seemed fairly easy to handle. Not that they didn't struggle, but it just seemed like no big deal.

All in all, if you like the first book, you have to finish the rest, otherwise it's just a waste. It's an enjoyable time wasting read...but still wasteful.




This book had a lot of great ideas, however most of it could be found from just about any magazine on the racks for women.  Lot of it was also common sense, like go outside and listen to music that makes you happy. I had this as a 21 day check out from the library so I didn't have the time to read one a day as I had wanted. Reading a few "days" at a time, the tips started to become a little repetitive. I think it would have been a bit better if the book had been sorted by topic instead of randomly flipping back and forth between weight loss and depression. Overall, many of the tips were interesting and helpful. Actually, I would have liked to see this as a one a day desk calendar rather than in book form.

Unfortunately, my checkout of Winning by Losing expired before I was able to finish reading it, though I did put it on hold for the next available copy.

Going into this book I was expecting...I don't know, Jillian to be mean and yell at me or something. What I found instead was a good break down of really useful weight loss information.

Now I know what you're thinking, rapid weight loss is not healthy. Well! She actually only promotes 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week and the advice in the book is the as what you would find from other sources.

But like I said, I was unable to finish the book due to time constraints. I just have not reached a point where I am able to devote 100% of my reading time to non-fiction or in this case self-help. Anyway, once I have finished the book, I will be soon to update on what I thought of this book.

Coming Soon: Outlander read-a-long

I've been hearing for years now how great the Outlander series is. I think I've tried to read the first book about three times. But every time I failed to get past the first chapter. I just always figured it wasn't the right time for me to read it yet. I guess I was right! Because if I had read it the first time, how would I be able to experience it for the first time with this read a long? 

June 11th - July 23rd I get to read Outlander with a group of amazing bloggers. Lucky for me, they've set up a great schedule breaking the book up into easy to manage chunks and will be doing a series of questions and answers about each chapter. How cool is that?

June 11th – Questions for chapters 1-7 announced at Gone with the Words

June 18th – Questions for chapters 1-7 answered & questions announced for chapters 8-14 at Stalking the Bookshelves

June 25th – Questions for chapters 8-14 answered & questions announced for chapters 15-21 on Tangled up in Blue

July 2nd – Questions for chapters 15-21 answered & questions announced for chapters 22-28 on Into the Hall of Books

July 9th – Questions for chapters 22-28 answered & questions announced for chapters 29-35 on Logan E. Turner

July 16th – Questions for chapters 29-35 answered & questions announced for chapters 36-41 on The Reading Housewives

July 23rd – Questions for chapters 36-41 answered on Gone with the Words. The end.

Want to participate? Click on the icon above to read more and sign up! I'm super excited. :)

I may be crazy...

Book crazy that is.

I go through these phases where I just cannot read enough. There's something so therapeutic about shutting out the real world and escaping into a book. I thoroughly enjoy becoming completely immersed into a characters thoughts and life. So much so, that I am often saddened to finish a book simply because I feel like I am losing my connection with a really good friend.

As you probably can tell, I am going through one of those periods of reading books back to back or even several at a time. I used to never be able to read more than one thing at a time, but now I find myself sometimes keeping one book in my purse, a back up in the car, one in each bathroom and a couple going on my Kindle Fire. To keep from losing interest in a good book or becoming confused about a story line, I'm trying to limit myself to one fiction book at a time.

Right now I am not completely comfortable with my book review skills and that is something that I hope to improve on over time with practice. But I have found recently that I enjoy writing about what I'm reading. Plus I am really forgetful and if I don't write about it right away I won't be able to tell you anything about the book later except for whether I liked it or not.

Oh! I was going to tell you why I am crazy! So over the past week, I've been suffering pretty hard from migraine headaches and today my brain just would not allow me to focus on my current read (The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies)) so instead I started looking for other books to right. That in of itself is a little crazy since my bookshelf currently holds over a hundred unread books from a local book fair I like to frequent twice a year, but I also already have about ten books already checked out from my local library through Overdrive. Since I only have 21 days for each book, I don't want to check out too many at one time. Luckily, they allow me to place books on a wish list. For a couple hours I just browsed around the Overdrive site and various other websites looking for books that seemed interesting. I just checked my list and was startled to find that I had placed 34 books on my wish list. At least next time I need a book I won't have to do much searching!!! Of course this is not to say that I will not happily accept any recommendations you may throw my way!

The Language of Flowers

Victoria Jones is a young woman who grew up shuffled from one foster home to the next with the exception of one woman, Elizabeth, who fought to love and keep her. During their short 15 months together, Elizabeth taught Victoria about flowers and what it's like to be a family. When their little family crumples, Victoria is sent to live in a group home until being emancipated at the age of 18. Her sudden homelessness on her 18th birthday does not improve her distrust and bitterness towards all of humankind. Through Victoria's love of flowers she begins a journey to mend her shattered heart.

The Language of Flowers is a story about mothers and daughters, forgiveness, love and heartache. Vanessa Diffenbaugh weaves a story is equally difficult to read as it is to put down. Her book debut is stunning and realistic.

The back of the book contains a modern dictionary of flowers and their meanings.

I read this book in less than 24 hours, staying up until 3 am to finish it. I felt each characters joys and pains as if they were my own. I highly recommend this book!

Something Missing

 From Amazon:

A career criminal with OCD tendencies and a savant-like genius for bringing order to his crime scenes, Martin considers himself one of the best in the biz. After all, he’s been able to steal from the same people for years on end—virtually undetected. Of course, this could also be attributed to his unique business model—he takes only items that will go unnoticed by the homeowner. After all, who in their right mind would miss a roll of toilet paper here, a half-used bottle of maple syrup there, or even a rarely used piece of china buried deep within a dusty cabinet?

Even though he's never met these homeowners, he's spent hours in their houses, looking through their photo albums and reading their journals. In essence, Martin has developed a friendship of sorts with them and as such, he decides to interfere more in their lives—playing the part of a rather odd guardian angel—even though it means breaking many of his twitchy neurotic rules. 

Along the way Martin not only improves the lives of others, but he also discovers love and finds that his own life is much better lived on the edge (at least some of the time) in this hilarious, suspenseful and often profound novel about a man used to planning every second of his life, suddenly forced to confront chaos and spontaneity.  

Something Missing is a great book. There were many chapters that had me on the edge of my seat and nervous for Martin. I got caught up in the story line right away and found Martin's strict rules for stealing common household items intriguing. I also began to wonder if I was a client with as many times as I've thought to myself "I swore we had one more..." I was slightly paranoid! 

Filled with humor and suspense, Something Missing is a short read that will keep you interested. Check it out!