Book 14, 15, & 16

Book #14 - Don't Look Down by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer - Here is a review on this book from Booklist.

"It sounded simple. Go to Savannah. Finish directing an action-adventure film. Earn some quick money. Get a chance to see sister Daisy and niece Pepper. Instead, as soon as Lucy Armstrong arrives on the set of Don't Look Down, she discovers that nothing about her current job is simple. The cast is lackluster. What she has seen of the script is, even by Hollywood standards, unbelievably incoherent. The stunt coordinator is none other than her annoying ex-husband, Connor Nash, and her sister seems to have become a zombie. Bryce McKay, the movie's leading man, turns up with Captain J. T. Wilder, whom Bryce has personally hired to be his stunt double and military consultant. The last thing Lucy needs is a taciturn, too-sexy-for-his-own-good male like J. T. on her set, but once the going gets tough, someone like J. T. turns out to be exactly the kind of person Lucy decides she wants in her life."

This book was alright. It wasn't one of my favorites that I have read recently, but I don't feel like the time I took to read it was wasted. It was entertaining and had some funny bits, but it was pretty forgettable.


Book #15 - The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffery Zaslow - This book was amazing. I was so inspired while reading this book. Here is what the inside cover says:

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, or enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you might find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come."

I am actually going to read this book again before taking it back to the library. Then I will actually make a different post in my other journal about this book. I also will go to the Last Lecture website, and actually listen to the lecture. If anyone reads any of the books that I have talked about so far on this blog, I would hope that this would be one of them. I think that everyone should read this book.


Book #16 - Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - Here is the review on this book from Amazon.com.

"On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings."

This was a good book. Like many that I seem to read, the subject material is hard, but to be able to look at things through the victims "eyes" makes it very interesting. I'm not sure what it is about books like this, but I do enjoy reading them, even if they are hard. Most anyone who knows me, knows that I am a weeper and that I cry, sometimes way too much. But I enjoy a good book that makes me cry and also makes me think. Sometimes I end up a little depressed in the end and I have to deal with that. Not an unpleasant depressed feeling. This one I didn't feel that way though. This one left me thinking, but not sad.

Books 11, 12, & 13

Book #11 - All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown - Here is what the cover insert says:

"When Paul Miller's pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she's been waiting years for -- until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune. Meanwhile, four hundred miles south in Los Angeles, the Millers' daugher, Margaret, has been dumped by her newly famous actor boyfriend and left in the lurch by an investor who promised to revive her fledgling postfeminist magazine, Snatch. Sliding toward bankruptcy and dogged by creditors, she flees for home, where her teenage sister, Lizzie is struggling with problems of her own. Formerly chubby, Lizzie has been enjoying her newfound popularity until some bathroom graffiti alerts her to the fact that she's become the school slut.

The three Miller women retreat behind the walls of their Georgian colonial to wage batter with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, mean girls, country club ladies, evangelical neighbors, their own demons, and each other, and in the process they bceom achingly sympathetic characters we can't help but root for, even as the world they live in epitomizes everything wrong with the American Dream."

I liked the book. I agree with the person who wrote the blurb. Even though they were pretty snotty people to begin with and they had some major issues, I still found myself rooting for them for things to turn out in their favor.

Book #12 - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - Here is a blurb from Amazon:

"Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan"

I really loved this one. I think it is one that I am going to want to read again, probably sooner rather than later. I am sure that I missed some of the details in it. I really pretty fast, and I have a tendency to read too quickly to catch all of the little details because I just want to see how it ends. This book was great!

Book #13 - T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton - I love this series of books. I started reading them a few years ago and so far I have read every one of them in the series. I just hope that she is able to finish the alphabet. There is a book for every letter of the alphabet. They are about a private investigator named Kinsey Millhone. This one was about a woman who had a habit of stealing people's identities. There are always lots of twists and turns in her books and I just love them. I'm so sad that I am done for a while. And in my humble opinion, these books are MUCH better than Janet Evanovich's books that I have just started reading.

Update on how it is going!

I'm going to try to update on the items that I have completed or that are in progress. Hopefully I can do this once every few weeks or so to keep myself on track with the items that I need to be working on.
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10. Apply for a design team or submit layouts for publication. One of the monthly scrapbook clubs that I used to receive is having a design team call. I'm going to try for it. I have to have it submitted by Sept. 15th.

19. Get yearly physical and well-woman check-up. 2008 well-woman in August

31. Complete remaining questions in journal jar. I'm not sure how many are left to go, but I'm working on getting them completed.

32. Complete an entry in one of my on-line journals at least three times a week for 1 year. OK, just starting this one, but I'm really going to try this one out right now. So I'm putting the start day down as today, 09/03/2008.

35. Read an average of a book a week for the entire 1001 days. That is 143 books. I'm on track with this one right now.

36. Make a list of all books read during 1001 days. Write what I thought of each book in my blog. So far I have actually completed at least some sort of "review" for each one.

54. Go on at least 5 camping trips. One completed with our trip to Alpine to visit Mom and Dad.

58. Try 10 new restaurants. These can be fast food or sit down restaurants, but preferably fairly inexpensive. One down when we tried Scholtzsky's while in Sierra Vista.

59. Have at least two characters who are at the highest level on World of Warcraft. Breka counts as one. Lalaith is next. Breka is already 70 which is the highest until the next expansion comes out. Lalaith is level 50 as of today.

69. Discover 5 new singers or groups that I really enjoy. I found one that I really like so far called Lady Antebellum.

92. Read all e-mail in in-box within 3 days. Keep in-box organized for 6 months. Unsubscribe from all mailing lists that I don’t even bother opening. I am really trying with this one. I need to work on the unsubscribing part, but I did clean out the in-box and I am keeping up on the reading within 3 days. Started August 27th.

I'm on track!!

I just looked and I am way more than on track. Tomorrow will be 7 weeks that I have been working on this list and I'm already well into book #11. We also went to the library yesterday and I have four more books waiting for me.

I also checked out a couple of cookbooks but those don't count. Those might just add some nice new recipes to our diet though.

Books 9 & 10

I'm still not doing good at posting after each finished book, but at least I am still keeping track of them. I need to go back and see if I am on schedule with my goal. I am guessing that I am, since I do read quickly, but I just need to check. I am going to try to do an update post for the whole 101 things sometime this weekend.


Book #9 - English as a Second Language by Megan Crane - This was not one of my favorite books. I was interested enough to want to know how it ended, but it seemed like it took me forever to get there. This was a pretty short book compared to most that I read, but it took me a lot longer than normal to finish it.

The book is about a girl who, after breaking up with her boyfriend, decides to go to school in England. Her ex said that she would never be able to get into a school there for her Master's program, so she decides to prove him wrong. She spends most of her time there drinking, smoking, and partying. I found the character development to be lacking. I don't feel like I ever really got to know the people in the book, because the talk was always about how much drinking was done and how many papers there were left, but not anything of real substance. I like to know the story of the people. Their backgrounds and why they do what they do, not just that they do it.

I would like to try another one of her books and possibly see if it is any better.



Book #10 - Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie - I really liked this book a lot. It was a very quick read for me, even though it was quite a bit longer than the last book. The words just flowed and I was entertained through the whole book. I will post a little blurb about the book from Amazon, since I have already returned it to the library.

"Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Emotionally numb from her divorce 18 months earlier, Nell Dysart is about to waken with a vengeance. When she takes a job as office manager for McKenna Investigations, she's determined to reorganize, redecorate, and revamp the stuck-in-the-'50s surroundings, but she runs smack-dab into senior partner Gabe McKenna, the immovable object to her irresistible force. Gabe likes the dated ambiance just fine and doesn't want a thing changed, but he soon learns that nothing in his life is going to stay the same now that Nell has arrived.

Rough and gruff, but with a heart of gold, Gabe is just what Nell needs to jump-start her hormones. Nell's formerly dull life is suddenly wildly active, for not only is she lusting after Gabe (and vice versa), but there's also a case of embezzlement to uncover, a dog to steal, and bribery to investigate. And, oh yes, there are those very cold, very dead bodies in the freezer.

Fast Women has well-rounded characters, an interesting mystery to resolve, and author Jennifer Crusie's trademark humor. In addition, Crusie gives readers a little something extra in her exploration of the emotional stages of divorce, the viability of marriage, and the value of self-honesty--all of which add up to an excellent fictional tale layered with a thought-provoking look at contemporary culture. --Lois Faye Dyer "

This was a great book and I can't wait until I can find some more books by this author to read. The library here doesn't seem to have anymore, so I will have to find them someplace else or maybe do an inter-library request or something. I need more!!!

Books 6, 7, & 8

Book #6 - Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer - I was so excited to buy this book and read it. I really liked it in some ways and I was actually a little disappointed in others. I had certain things that I wanted to happen in the book, so that I why I was disappointed. I expected certain things, I guess. When I get past the fact that my expectations really don't matter in the grand scheme of things, then I was really able to look back and see that I did, in fact, really enjoy the book. I love Stephanie's writing and I love where the story ended up.



Book 7 - Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich - This book was a short, quick read. I liked it and found it pretty funny. There are parts that are just way too much. Things that I hope would never happen in real life, but it made the book funnier in a way. I would like to keep reading the books, to see if they get better, but the library doesn't have number 3 in the series and I'm not sure that I like them enough to start buying the series. I guess I could get it from Bookman's next time we go and then sell it back later if I don't want to keep it.


Book #8 - Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer - I really enjoyed this book. The book is over 400 pages but they just seemed to fly for me. Here is a little blurb from the inside cover of the book.

"Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Later Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young."

I really liked the way that Elissa shared her life with the readers. She really told her story in an amazing way. It was hard to read some of the stuff that she and others in this religion have to go through. She told her story with such clarity and bravery.

I love this kind of book. I love to learn about the lives of others. That is probably why I love reading other people's blogs so much. Some of my favorite books have been people's life stories. Some of them have been very sad and hard to read because of the things that have happened to these people, but they make a huge impact to me.

Books 3, 4, & 5

3. Snowed In by Christina Bartolomeo - I really liked this book. It is about woman named Sophie Quinn who has been married to her husband for two years when they move from Washington D.C. to Portland, Maine. The book basically covers how she deals with life in a new place. She pretty much has to do it all herself because her husband is busy with work. I really enjoyed it. A little blurb from the cover of the book that really says it well.

"For any woman who has ever had to confront the landlord about the heat, for any woman who has ever longed for impractical shoes instead of winter boots, for any woman who has ever been in the wrong place at the right time, Snowed In will have you laughing, crying, and rooting for Sophie Quinn."

4. The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff - I read this one because I had read one by this author a few weeks ago. That book was called "The Kommandant's Girl". It is a good thing I read that one first, because this one is actually a continuation of the Kommandant's Girl. So, if anyone wants to read "The Diplomat's Wife", please read the other one first.

I really loved both books. The time in history that most intrigues me is during World War I and World War II. I really enjoy reading books written about that time, even though it is hard to keep from crying most times. I am a weeper, but I don't really mind it. I actually love a good book that will make me cry.

This book is about a woman named Marta who worked with the Polish Resistance during World War II. The book begins with her inside a prison camp after being arrested by the Gestapo. The book covers her release from the prison and what happens in her life after that. I would saw that out of the three books I'm reviewing today, this one was my favorite.


5. Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella - This one was a pretty fun, light read. I read it very quickly because it just flowed so smoothly and kept me really interested.

Here is a blurb from the cover. "When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she's in for a big surpirse. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident - in a Mercedes no less - Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she's about to find out just how much things have changed."


I am realizing that throughout this reading goal, I am probably going to like or love most of the books that I write about in here. Usually if I don't like a book, I'm not going to keep reading it, so then it won't complete a step in my goal. I guess if I pick out one that I just hate, I could do a little review to warn others about the stink of the book, but that one will just be done as a public service announcement. I do enjoy most of the books that I read though. I just love books!!!!