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Friday, July 30, 2010

Miss Hildreth Wore Brown: Anecdotes of a Southern Belle

By:  Olivia deBelle Byrd

From Goodreads:   With storytelling written in the finest Southern tradition from the soap operas of Chandler Street in the quaint town of Gainesville, Georgia, to a country store on the Alabama state line, Oliviade Belle Byrd delves with wit and amusement into the world of the Deep South with all its unique idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms. The characters who dance across the pages range from Great-Aunt LottieMae, who is as “old-fashioned and opinionated as the day is long,” to Mrs. Brewton, who calls everyone “dahling” whether they are darling or not, to Isabella with her penchant for mint juleps and drama. Humorous anecdotes from a Christmas coffee, where one can converse with a lady who has Christmas trees with blinking lights dangling from her ears, to Sunday church,where a mink coat is mistaken for possum, will delight Southerners and baffle many a non-Southerner. There is the proverbial Southern beauty pageant, where even a six-month-old can win a tiara, to a funeral faux pas of the iron clad Southern rule—one never wears white after Labor Day and, dear gussy, most certainly not to a funeral. Miss Hildreth Wore Brown—Anecdotes of a Southern Belle is guaranteed to provide an afternoon of laugh-out-loud reading and hilarious enjoyment.

I thought this book was great.  The stories were cute and funny.  They were definitely the sort of things I could hear in my daily life in Louisiana (especially among my Tuesday Night Ladies).   Some of these stories had me laughing out loud and some had me rolling my eyes because I knew my mom, grandmother, insert any other female relative probably would have said or done something similar.  Fun book!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Follow Friday

Book Blogger Hop

This week's question is who is your favorite new-to-you author this year?  My answer would have to be Charles Martin.  I read The Mountain Between Us and LOVED it.  I'll definitely be reading more of his work in the future.




Where did this week go????

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Katrina Diary

By:  Amy Rohde

The Katrina Diary is a memoir of one family's evacuation from New Orleans in advance of Hurricane Katrina to Jasper, Texas.  The family then suffers the second blow of Hurricane Rita that hits the area less than a month later.  This is the story of their struggle to get their lives together in the face of uncertainty and the aftermath of two devastating hurricanes.

I was very interested in reading this book because I live in South Louisiana.  Our family lives about 60 miles northwest of New Orleans.  We stayed home for both hurricanes and have a pretty good first hand knowledge of what it was like around here.

First off, I will say that I did enjoy reading the book.  I'm always interested in learning about people's Katrina experiences.  It's been 5 years and still not a day goes by that I don't hear someone talking about how Katrina changed their life.  The author did a good job illustrating what their daily life was like and the fears and challenges they faced.

However, I had a couple of technical issues.  The first was that I was unclear as to where the family actually lived originally.  In reading the book I was able to figure out it was a military base, but which one?  It doesn't really matter, but its just one of those things people are usually really specific about when they tell their story, exactly where there house was when New Orleans flooded.  Secondly, the writer stated that Katrina came ashore as a Category 5 or strong Category 4 hurricane.  That's incorrect.  Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.   Then the last was that it was stated that "thousands" died here.  That's a bit of an exaggeration.  The final death toll number was 1,836 (over several states) with 135 categorized as missing.  Missing doesn't necessarily mean that they're dead and their body just hasn't been found, it's been theorized that some people took the opportunity of all the chaos to disappear on purpose.

Overall, I thought the book was interesting and touching.  I could relate to it personally I guess because I had been through it all and I had very small children at the time too.  Our poor state of Louisiana has suffered through a lot over the last few years, but we shall persevere through all this mess.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Wildthorn

By:  Jane Eagland
Publish date:  Sept. 6, 2010

Seventeen year old Louisa Cosgrove thinks she's on her way to her new job as companion for a new family, but instead she arrives at Wildthorn, an insane asylum for women.  Her traveling chaperone is there to make she she gets admitted.  She's told she's no longer Louisa Cosgrove, that her name is Lucy Childs and that she has to stay there to get well.  What makes Louisa so crazy?  In Victorian England the problem is that she wants to be a doctor, she reads too much, she learns too much and it makes her family uncomfortable.

I found this book to be very good, it starts off right away at her arriving at the asylum and is told through a series of flashbacks which I thought was really effective.  I felt very bad Louisa, she couldn't do anything to get out of the situation she was in and she didn't do anything wrong to get herself into the situation she was in. 

There's a very mild lesbian theme throughout the book, which wasn't graphic by any means at all, but if that offends you this book might not be for you. 

This book is also classified as Young Adult, but don't let that deter you grown ups, it's worth the read I think.

I got an ARC of this book from Netgalley

Marked & Betrayed

By: PC and Kristin Cast

In Marked 16 year old Zoey Redbird has been Marked as a fledgling vampire.  She must leave her school and family and move into the House of Night, a boarding school for young vampyres making the Change into adults.  Not all the fledglings will survive the Change. 

From the very first day it's obvious that Zoey is different, her mark is different.  She has been bestowed special gifts from the Goddess Nyx, the Goddess that watches over vampyres. 

Zoey's arrival shakes up the status quo in the cliquey group called the Dark Daughters and she becomes the leader. 

The story continues in the second book in the series called Betrayed.


In Betrayed Zoey is settling into her life at House of Night and loving her new friends.  Things are rolling along smoothing until a series of murders of human kids occur, kids that she knew.  The murders appear to be committed by vampyres, but were they really?

My neighbor gave me these books, but I really didn't think I was going to like them too much.  I figured I needed to hurry up and read them before she got back from vacation.  Once I picked up the first one I couldn't put it down.  I thought they were great!  I know they didn't get great reviews on Amazon but I think those are people that want the super serious Twilight like love story vamp thing and these just aren't it.  They're fun and light and teenybopper. 

Great beach reads I'd think!  I read both books in a day and a half.  Now I just need to track down the rest of the series!!

Check out the House of Night Website.  Pretty Cool!  There's an ebook special on Marked on there too.

Friday, July 23, 2010

The Wings of Leo Spencer

By:  Jerome Parisse

The plot summaries that I've seen posted on Amazon and Goodreads and the back of the book are really misleading.  Basically this book is about 14 year old Leo Spencer who dies abruptly and unexpectedly.  Unexpectedly to him, his family knew he had some disease that was never named that would kill him, but never let on to him the severity of the situation.  So, he dies and goes to heaven and become and angel and spends the rest of the book fighting evil forces that are trying to take over heaven and kill his family.

Part of me liked the book.  I thought it was interesting and different and it was written by a Australian originally born in France so that makes for unique word choices.  Another part of me was really frustrated with the writer.  It was like he had this grand picture in his head that he didn't get all down on paper.  I think the reader had to assume a lot.  The writer just expected us to know what he would know.  The dialogue was just completely unrealistic in places and at times it just didn't make sense at all.  There could have been a lot more texture brought to the story.   Overall, it was a good effort that fell a little short in my opinion.


Just Grace

By:  Charise Harper

Grace Stewart enters the third grade to learn there are 3 other Graces in her class.  In order to avoid confusion her name becomes "Just Grace".  How humiliating!!  The story of Just Grace is a super cute story about unlikely heroes and missing cat mysteries.

This week I let my 8 year old pick the audio book we'd be listening to in the car as we ran errands and this is what she picked.  While this is geared towards 2nd - 4th graders, I thought it was pretty fun.  The audio reader did a really good job.  All three girls had a lot of fun with this book.  It says something when there's no fussing about going anywhere because they wanted to know what was going to happen with Just Grace.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Follow Friday



I love Follow Friday!  I find so many fun new blogs!

Let's Blog Hop while we're at it.  Crazy For Books asks us to tell about what book we're currently reading.  I'm reading Wildthorn by Jane Eagland.  A young girl is put into an insane asylum and told she is someone she isn't.  It's been pretty interesting so far!

Book Blogger Hop

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Same Kind of Different As Me

By:  Ron Hall and Denver Moore

This is the story of two very unlikely people becoming best friends and the woman who guided them together.    Ron Hall is an international art dealer that is extremely wealthy living in Fort Worth, Texas.  Denver Moore grew up a virtual plantation slave in Louisiana until he hopped a train to Texas where he was living homeless on the streets of Fort Worth. 

Deborah Hall, Ron's wife, was a woman of God and her calling was to help the homeless in Fort Worth.  She had a vision of Denver and knew that that man was going to change their lives.  When she finally met him she encouraged her husband to become his friend.  Denver, more cautious of white people, took some time to come around, but once he did they were friends for life.

Same Kind of Different As Me, is told in alternating view points.  One chapter is from Ron's point of view, the next is Denver's.  It's slightly confusing because it's not labeled, but Denver's dialect is different being that he was completely uneducated, so you can figure it out, but in my perfect world the chapters would have been labeled.

The story was really fantastic.  I was kind of skeptical about it.  I knew it was going to be a "religious" book, but it was very well done, not too over the top I didn't think.  It was just a laying out of their story and what happened to them, not any "You must do this!" sort of thing.

I would recommend that you read the last third of the book with a box of tissues.  It gets very emotional from that point on.


I received a copy of this book from BookSneeze in exchange for an honest review

Monday, July 19, 2010

The Mountain Between Us

By:  Charles Martin

Ashley, a writer, and Ben, an orthopedic surgeon, were waiting for their flight in Salt Lake City when they first met.  When their flight is cancelled due to an impending ice storm, Ben convinces a charter flight pilot to fly them to Denver and hopefully a connecting flight that will get them home more quickly.  Unfortunately, their pilot has a fatal heart attack over the High Uintas Wilderness, which has the distinction as being the most remote land in the United States. 

The Mountain Between Us is the story of Ben and Ashley's desperate struggle to survive despite the staggering odds against them. 

I won a copy of this book from Read It Forward.  However, after seeing the author interviews talking about his book, I was really excited to read the book.  When I saw the audiobook at the library I checked it out and got started. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the story.  It was interesting and exciting and I just couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next.  I felt so let down when things didn't go right for Ben and Ashley and happy when something finally did.  I listened to much of this book with my daughter (8 years old) and it led to some very interesting "what would you do if..." type discussions.  I think she enjoyed the adventure aspect of the story. 

The characters, particularly Ben and Ashley, were believable.  Their dialogue was great.  I loved their sarcastic conversations.  I could relate to Rachel (Ben's wife) in that I have twin daughters and I understood her, but I won't say anything further because I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

There were a few copyediting type things that caught my attention.  Mostly repetitions, which I think are more noticeable when you're listening rather than reading.  You might not notice the same phrase 3 times when you're reading quickly, but when you're listening and have to listening to every single word, it's far easier to pick up on.

Now, my one negative...the audiobook reader.  I didn't like him.  Maybe I've gotten spoiled with some really good actors, but he just seemed not as into it.  It was hard to distinguish between narration and main character dialogue.  Most readers seem to distinguigh between these a little better...having a different voice for the main character and their regular voice for narration.  The tone of his voice seemed too jovial and lighthearted in places for two characters that have suffered major injuries and are stuck in freezing cold in the middle of nowhere.   There were a few spots where you could tell where some sort of technical editing had been done.  That wasn't the readers fault though, that was some producer some editor somewhere I'm sure.  Overall, it wasn't horrible, it wasn't even bad, I'm just being overly picky maybe.

Bottom line...go get the book!!  It was an excellent story!


CymLowell

Friday, July 16, 2010

Friday Followers

Book Blogger Hop

Right now the question is what book am I dying to get my hands on?  This very second it would be Linger because I just finished up Shiver.  Easy!!

And here's a new way to find new followers and blogs to follow.  Check it out!