It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

This past weeks winner:

Paula at Community Book Stop

WOO HOO!!!!  Please choose an item out of the Reading Cafe Grab Shelves  and email me your choice with your mailing address as well!   journeythroughbooks@gmail.com

It is a balmy 44 degrees here in Minnesota and we are snow-less.  I could not be any more thrilled.  Hate cold.  Hate snow.

This past week has been nice with a few sprinkles of snow that did not stick.  As far as my reading adventures, here is what happened on the blog:

The 2012 WHERE Are You Reading Challenge sign up is ready.  LOVE this challeneg and I hoep you will join in the fun!

Book Coveting for 2012 (come on…. everyone is doing it!)  😛

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (a fascinating journey set in 179 1 centered around a tobacco plantation and the African American “help” that work the land and the kitchen.

Read Dystopia 2012 Challenge (In my new found appreciation for Dystopia reads, I am offering up a challenge with giveaways that is not too big and should be a lot of fun.  Come on!  Join me!  :razz:)

Ok, thats a little embarrassing that I only posted one review for this past week.  😯  I have another written and ready to go, I have two that I will be finishing in the next day or two, and I have a tour on Tuesday as well as book club review on Wednesday so this next week will look a lot better reading wise.  😛

Here is what is new for this next week:

Life was always just about perfect for Brooke Madison Bowers. She was the prettiest, most popular girl in small-town St. Dennis, Maryland, a prom queen, local pageant star, and the pride and joy of her loving parents. She even married the man of her dreams. But the promise of happily ever after fell to pieces when her husband was killed while serving in Iraq. Brokenhearted and longing for the solace of better days, she returns to the idyllic world of St. Dennis, and the familiar comfort of the family farm. Surrounded by her loving family and friends, she’s determined to build a new life, complete with her own cupcake bakery. She’s equally determined never to fall in love again.

For Jesse Enright, life has been a challenge. A fourth-generation attorney, he’s spent his life fighting to escape the shadow of his irresponsible father. Now he’s moved to St. Dennis to run the family law practice, and he’s ready to find the right girl, get married, and settle down. But his carefully laid plans go out the window when he meets Brooke and finds himself caught between the unbreakable law of attraction and Brooke’s resolve to go her way alone—despite the undeniable feelings Jesse stirs in her. But just like catching lightning in a bottle, is it possible to fall head-over-heels, heart-and-soul in love all over again?

On tour – see my review this coming Tuesday!

In the summer of 1974, a fourteen-year-old girl in Dolton, Illinois, had a dream. A dream to become an actress, like her idols Ron Howard and Vicki Lawrence. But it was a long way from the South Side of Chicago to Hollywood, and it didn’t help that she’d recently dropped out of the school play, The Ugly Duckling. Or that the Hollywood casting directors she wrote to replied that “professional training was a requirement.”

But the funny thing is, it all came true. Through a series of Happy Accidents, Jane Lynch created an improbable–and hilarious–path to success. In those early years, despite her dreams, she was also consumed with anxiety, feeling out of place in both her body and her family. To deal with her worries about her sexuality, she escaped in positive ways–such as joining a high school chorus not unlike the one in Glee–but also found destructive outlets. She started drinking almost every night her freshman year of high school and developed a mean and judgmental streak that turned her into a real-life Sue Sylvester.

Then, at thirty-one, she started to get her life together. She was finally able to embrace her sexuality, come out to her parents, and quit drinking for good. Soon after, a Frosted Flakes commercial and a chance meeting in a coffee shop led to a role in the Christopher Guest movie Best in Show, which helped her get cast in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Similar coincidences and chance meetings led to roles in movies starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, and even Meryl Streep in 2009’s Julie & Julia. Then, of course, came the two lucky accidents that truly changed her life. Getting lost in a hotel led to an introduction to her future wife, Lara. Then, a series she’d signed up for abruptly got canceled, making it possible for her to take the role of Sue Sylvester in Glee, which made her a megastar.

I have seen Jane Lynch in a couple movies, a a bit in GLEE.  I have been interested in her story and am currently listening to it on audio.

Kristina’s stay at summer horse camp is horrible to say the least, and it’s all because Hester and Davina are there as well, making her life miserable. When Hester’s cruel prank goes terribly wrong, it’s actually what sends the three girls back to the magical land of Bernovem. In Bernovem, Kristina is very excited to see her former friend, Prince Werrien. When he invites her to sail with him on his ship to his homeland Tezerel, putting it simply, Kristina can’t refuse.

Reunited with her gnome, dwarf, animal, fairy friends … and best of all, Werrien, things seem like they couldn’t get any better for Kristina. But when Werrien becomes fascinated with an unusual seeing stone, the ”Black Shard”, Kristina is haunted by a ghostlike old hag. Struggling against suspicion, guilt, illness, and ultimately the one who wants to possess her soul, Kristina will see it’s in her weakest moment that she will encounter more strength than she has ever known.

I read The Magic Warble by this author about a year ago and now have the opportunity to read this second book.

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive “theory of mind” by which most of us sense what’s going on in other people’s heads. When his neighbor’s poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents’ broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns (“4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don’t speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don’t eat my lunch and Take No Risks”).

Confession – my book club read this years ago and I could not get into it.  After sitting through the review while they all raved, I felt I missed something and have kept it on my shelf ever since.  Now I am going to try it in audio.

This may look like a heavy reading week but I am hoping not.  My Monday class has been cancelled this week, Tuesday is book club, Wednesday is helping with students, but Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are pretty open. 

 

Oh and one more thing, Teach Mentor Texts has asked and received my permission to start a MG (Middle Grade/ Childrens book version Of Its MOnday What Are You Reading.  If you or any bloggy friends you know review mainly MG or Childrens Books, they may wish to link up there as well as here:

SO what are you reading this mid December?  Does this time of year just get crazier so your reading becomes less, or as the weather turns cold and the days are shorter do you tend to read more?

Add your link to Its Monday!  What Are You Reading below where it says click here.  I would love to see what you are reading!  😀

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