It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

First off – Happy New Year!  I hope all of you have had a wonderful time this last holiday week of Christmas to New Years…. and now today, here we all are in 2012.  I am glad to have you here celebrating with me 🙂

Welcome to 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:

Lori from Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book

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

**Please note one change for 2012… if you are in Canada or out of the US and win the comment contest here, I will send you the $5 Amazon gift card to use on any Amazon purchase.  It has just become too pricey to mail the books out of the states.  If you are out of the US and have a US address I can send the book to for you, that would work. 😀

Again, Happy New Year!  I have spent pretty much all of today reading my first book of the year, Divergent and loving it.  I was hoping to have the review up today but I am still about 60 pages from finishing so it will go up Monday late afternoon instead.  I actually have several great reads lined up for the week and I have the week off so I am looking forward to some wonderful writing time and reading too!  😀 

Here is what was true of this past week:

The Black Shard by Victoria Simcox with a signed GIVEAWAY!

 

My 2011 recap of the best and the worst of each month

 

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (2nd in the World As We Knew It trilogy)

My final book/audio counts for 2011

 

The 2011 WHERE Are You Reading Counts are in and I posted my map and a link for others who participated as well.

 

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer (yet to be reviewed)

 

Winter Bone by Daniel Woodrell (yet to be reviewed)

 

I am planning on doing a giveaway a day here this week and todays was posted this morning, you can still enter by going to the post and letting me know what your first book of the year is going to be.

 

I am actually really excited about the books and audio I have going on this week to kick off the new year, and a new crisp and clean 2012 Reading map!  Here is what is happening:

One choice can transform you. Pass initiation. Do not fail! Thrilling urban dystopian fiction debut from exciting young author. In sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior’s world, society is divided into five factions — Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent) — each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue, in the attempt to form a “perfect society.” At the age of sixteen, teens must choose the faction to which they will devote their lives. On her Choosing Day, Beatrice renames herself Tris, rejects her family’s group, and chooses another faction. After surviving a brutal initiation, Tris finds romance with a super-hot boy, but also discovers unrest and growing conflict in their seemingly “perfect society.” To survive and save those they love, they must use their strengths to uncover the truths about their identities, their families, and the order of their society itself.

Currently reading and should finish tonight… I have pretty much read this non stop all day (errr… except for the two hour nap I had… 😳 )

With its glistening beaches, laidback Southern charm, and enticing Gullah tradition, Folly Beach has long been one of South Carolina’s most historic and romantic spots. It is the land of Cate Cooper’s childhood, the place where all the ghosts of her past roam freely. Cate never thought she’d return to the beach house named for this lovely strip of coast. But circumstances have changed, thanks to her newly dead husband, whose financial—and emotional—perfidy has left Cate homeless and broke.

Yet Folly Beach holds more than just memories. Once upon a time another woman found unexpected comfort within its welcoming arms. An artist, writer, and sometime colleague of the revered George Gershwin, Dorothy Heyward enjoyed the greatest moments of her life at Folly with her beloved husband, DuBose. And though the Heywards are long gone, their passion and spirit linger in every sunset and ocean breeze.

And for Cate, Folly holds the promise of unexpected fulfillment . . . of the woman she’s always wanted—and is finally ready—to become.

I am on tour for this one, coming up on Wednesday!  🙂

 

 

 

Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.

Isabelle has worked hard to leave Trillium River, Oregon, behind as she travels the globe taking award-winning photographs. It’s not that Isabelle hates her family. On the contrary, she and her sisters Cecilia, an outspoken kindergarten teacher, and Janie, a bestselling author, share a deep, loving bond. And all of them adore their brother, Henry, whose disabilities haven’t stopped him from helping out at the bakery and bringing good cheer to everyone in town.

But going home again has a way of forcing open the secrets and hurts that the Bommaritos would rather keep tightly closed Isabelle’s fleeting and too-frequent relationships, Janie’s obsessive compulsive disorder, and Cecilia’s self-destructive streak and grief over her husband’s death. Working together to look after Henry and save their flagging bakery, Isabelle and her sisters begin to find answers to questions they never knew existed, unexpected ways to salve the wounds of their childhoods, and the courage to grasp surprising new chances at happiness.

Let me just say I have been reading this for the last couple of days and it is a WINNER!  This is our January book club read and w-o-w!!!

 

 

 

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men’s Journal, retraces McCandless’s ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father.

I have never read this although I have always wanted to – now this week I will be listening to it on audio.

 

 

 

As medical director of the famed Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Lee Lipsenthal helped thousands of patients struggling with disease to overcome their fears of pain and death and to embrace a more joyful way of living. In his own life, happily married and the proud father of two remarkable children, Lee was similarly committed to living his life fully and gratefully each day.

The power of those beliefs was tested in July 2009, when Lee was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. As Lee and his wife, Kathy, navigated his diagnosis, illness, and treatment, he discovered that he did not fear death, and that even as he was facing his own mortality, he felt more fully alive than ever before. In the bestselling tradition of Tuesdays with Morrie, told with humor and heart, and deeply inspiring, Enjoy Every Sandwich distills everything Lee learned about how we find meaning, purpose, and peace in our lives.

I have seen this on a few blogs and admit… it has me curious…

 

 

 

It’s 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They’ve been best friends almost as long – at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh’s family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they’re automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn’t been invented yet. And they’re looking at themselves fifteen years in the future.

By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they’re forced to confront what they’re doing right – and wrong – in the present.

If there is time, I hope by the weekend to be reading this one!  A gift from my son for Christmas. 

 

There it is!  A very bookish week but I am loving it!  😀 

I am looking forward to what you are starting your year out with!  Please add your link below to where it says “click here” – I should be able to get around and see you all!  😀

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And for those of you who read a lot of YA, Middle Grade, and Childrens reads, pop in and link here as well: