Desperately Seeking Bookworm

This was the second book I read of the Summer, and it was pretty alright. I like that it was easy to read as YA is and as YA goes there was a good life lesson. No vampires or crazy mysteries here, just a well told story that was based off a real life case. In 2012 a real life incident at a high school came to the national spotlight as 2 star football players were charged and convicted of the rape of a classmate at a party. Additionally there were 4 adults who were charged with covering up the crime and the principal was charged with covering up an additional rape that took prior. It was a very awful case and I was quite sickened by it, but I don't want to go into too much detail because this isn't what the post is about. I just thought I would give some background on the case to set up this book. Short version is that this is setup like this case, but it takes place in Iowa instead of Ohio and features basketball instead of football. Kate Weston can piece together most of the...

I don't think it's any surprise that I love meself some YA! I think I was introduced to a blurb about The Selection series in Newsweek ...kidding it was an issue of Seventeen I was reading at the Dentist? Whatever it doesn't matter, all you need to know is that its awesome! A Dystopian America that's now a smaller fragile absolute monarchy and has a caste system??? Uh yes please! The series (originally a trilogy) is narrated by America Singer, a 5 (there are 8 castes) who lives in post WW3 (could be WW4 I honestly don't remember) Illea province named Carolina. As Artists, 5's are 3rd from the bottom in the caste system. I would equate them to the typical American family today, not well off, but they feel the struggle of staying afloat throughout the year. As per tradition with all the Princes of Illea a selection is held, where 35 girls throughout the kingdom compete for his hand in marriage. Kinda like The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games with less bloodshe...

I've been having a hard time deciding on what to read in order to check off Pulitzer prize winner on my reading list. Originally I wanted to read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  After some further research, I read a lot of reviews that weren't very kind about Ms. Tartt's work. And they weren't professional reviews either, they were just ordinary reviewers on Goodreads, because the professional reviews that seemed to only fawn over this book. I'm conflicted. I fell like I should at least give The Goldfinch a try, but it's a really big book. I have some backups A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr . I've just finished the 4th book in The Selection Series, so now I can focus on this daunting task ahead of me. Any suggestions if this doesn't work out? I'm open to non-fiction winners as well! UPDATE: Okay so The Goldfinch definitely did not work out. I think I'm going to go with A ll the Lig...

My Summer Reading List isn't doing so hot guys. I have bailed on the following 4 books... Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters Wicked Charms by Janet Evanovich Diamond Head by Cecily Wong Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz I've tried to read all 4 of these books, and so far none of them have captivated me. Beautiful Ruins also got a second chance, but I just couldn't do it. There was something about it that just threw me off. I think the storyline was not as simple as I would like for a summer read. I prefer something simple and beachy not flashing back and forward through time and changing characters left and right. Diamond Head just didn't quite grab me in the first 50 pages and I didn't have enough confidence that it would wow me in the coming chapters. When it came to Witches of East End I just couldn't do it. I tend to like to read the book first before the movie or TV show starts, and since I have already watched and loved the now cancelled ( ...

My summer reads haven't been too promising, but Anita Diamant certainly gave me hope.  From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.  Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her ...

I'm 2 books down so far from my summer reading list and I'm feeling a bit down, both were such disappointing reads. I think maybe I expected too much because one did have a fair amount of negative reviews on Goodreads, but I thought to myself so did Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore and I loved that book! Let's just say that I should've trusted the reviewers instead of my heart. First up... We Were Liars A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth.   We Were Liars  is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.  Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE. I believe this was featured in a Peeople or Us Weekly "Must Read" section last summer and since it centered...

Yes I still make my own summer reading lists and they're awesome! I like to only read "summer themed" books during the summer months, so starting June 1st until August 31 I only read off of that list. The criteria to get on the list is the plot takes place during the summer, the cover is summer themed, or the title is summer themed. Right now I have 36 books on my list, but that can always get bigger, or I might not even finish (I still have a couple of books left over from last summers list). I read some pretty bomb books last summer, and I've already picked up my first 3 to start. On my list for this year I have: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter Open Road Summer by Emery Lord Wicked Charms (Lizzie & Diesel #3) by Janet Evanovich Diamond Head by Cecily Wong Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin Eat, Drink, & Remarry: Confessions of a Serial Wife by Margo Howard Yes Please by Amy Poehler The Amateurs by  Davi...

Photo from Goodreads I have a new book to add to my speed reading record list! Yes I know I'm a fast reader, but most of the time I don't realize I'm reading that much that fast.  Like when I read The Hunger Games for the first time, I had to stop myself at 3 in the morning from finishing the whole book at once!  This time I wasn't that lost in the story, but it had large print and extremely short chapters (most likely because it was written by a senior citizen)  I'm talking about Betty White's sixth book If you Ask Me (And Of Course You Won't) . It's an advice book without being an advice book.  Of course you want to know Betty White's thought on subjects like aging, loss, and children! Why wouldn't you?  The chapters were topic oriented and specific to something that Betty had experienced in her own life.  I liked the chapter set up ( I'm a sucker for short chapters anyways). They were so easy to read, that I was done before I even kn...

Photo from Goodreads Feels good to read some fiction doesn't it? It's been awhile since I read one. I've been on a non-fiction binge and that's whats been filling up my Goodreads queue. My latest read was College Girl by Patricia Weitz. A terribly easy read that I think every girl in the world can relate too. At only 236 pages it took me two days to read. Very short and kept my interest the entire time. Told in first person by the main character, Natalie Bloom, a shy transfer senior at the University of Connecticut; and her journey into self destruction because of a boy.  When we meet Natalie she is from a blue collar town in Connecticut and has already begun her senior year at UConn to complete her degree in Russian History.  A hard studying introvert, Natalie meets Patrick at the library one Friday night.  Described as 6'4 with an abnormally large head, Natalie beings to obsess over their "future" together.  After a date and a lot of beer Natalie a...

UPDATE:  I have really exciting news about one of my favorite reads of 2013!  The Astronaut Wives Club  by Lily Koppel, has officially been green-lit and ordered straight to series by ABC Studios. According to TV Guide the series will be hitting the small screen this summer as a 10 episode season. This book was a really, really, REALLY good read and I hope the series lives up to the book. Some other exciting news about this series is that Stephanie Savage & Josh Schwartz are the creators and executive producers of the show! If you don't know who they are, they are the creators of  Gossip Girl , which just wrapped up its sixth and final season in December 2012. That was one of my favorite shows (Blair and her headbands made that show), so I'm excited to see what they do with this. Some other news about this series, is that Joanna Garcia Swisher has joined the cast. You may remember her as pregnant teen Cheyenne on  Reba  or most recently as Ariel, the ...

Two books I read in January were both non-fiction accounts that were informative, sad, and grotesquely interesting. The first being Gracia Burnham's In the Presence of My Enemies , a terrifying recount of Burnham & her husbands time being held captive by an Islamic military sect, Abu Sayyaf, based in the Philippines. The second non-fiction novel was Jerry Oppenheimer's Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal, and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty . I don't think it needs a one sentence summary because really we can all draw our own conclusions from that title. Photo Courtesy of Goodreads Quick Facts: Based on the true story of two American missionaries taken hostage in the Philippines. The Burnham's (Gracia & Martin) spent over a year in captivity. Rescue attempts along with the actual rescue were very botched resulting in the wounding of Gracia & the deaths of Martin, as well as one other remaining hostage.  Okay so that's not a lot of qu...

Woo Woo 2014, a month late but hey I'm a busy girl. So I've tackled the first book of the new year and it was Julia Pandl's Memoir of the Sunday Brunch.   Pandl a stand-up comic originally from the Milwaukee area tells, personal family tales of her sweet, but often failed childhood memories. From being the youngest of nine to free child-slave labor at her father's restaurant. Told in two parts, the first of funny brunch serving, sibling squabbles, and a lot of twitching; The second of more recent memories of caring for someone who once cared for you. Photo Courtesy of Goodreads.com "I thought my dad was just like every other dad, until the day I worked my first Sunday Brunch" Be prepared for the second half of the book to shock you emotionally. It goes from a funny eye rolling recount of childhood, transitioning into being an adult child with rapidly aging parents. The second half was particularly heartwarming and sweet. Of course there's still som...

So this post is going to be my first "negative" review, and I say negative in quotes because it is, but it isn't. I read Penelope by Rebecca Harrington, and I can only describe it as a bad movie that you cannot tear your eyes away from. I tried very hard to stay positive while I read it, thinking that it was about to get better with the turn of the next page, but it didn't. Was it easy to read? Absolutely. Did it have a standard rise and fall in plot or action? No. This book had absolutely nothing happening in it. And the characters were so utterly weird that you couldn't like them or even want to read about them. Even the "heroine"/title character wasn't great. She wasn't overly unlikable or an underdog, she was just a plain boring girl from Connecticut. I'm going to copy paste the description from Goodreads, so you can pre-judge this baby for yourself. Here we go... "When Penelope O'Shaunessy steps into Harvard Yard for the...