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Bookish Thoughts: Book Blogs Part Two

Jacki — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:11:40 +0000

I know that I told you a good month ago that I’d get part two up in the next week or so, but you know how that goes, right? Right.

Here is a link to my original list of book blogs that I love, and I’m just going to pick up right where I left off.

DeRaps Reads- This is a blog that I’m newly following and loving! She mostly reviews YA, but she also does a lot of challenges and posts little news and other fun stuff. Her reviews are well thought-out and I really enjoy reading them.

That’s Life…- I love this blog. I love Ashley. I cannot get enough. This is one of the blogs that gets me all excited when I see that there’s a new entry. She posts mainly about books, but also updates on her family and vacations, and really just whatever is getting her wound up that day. So good.

The Nerd’s Wife- I totally understand being a nerd’s wife. One day you are at least slightly cool, then you end up with this nerdy guy and soon you are, say, getting excited about a binary clock or playing video games, and going to see Back to the Future at the theater for your anniversary (this is not even a joke) and generally just becoming too nerdy to function. I’m totally there. For that very reason, I love this blog. Arena and her husband are pretty much adorable. The link I gave you is to the “reading” part of her blog, but there is a ton there. I get stuck there for an hour sometime just clicking and clicking. Seriously a great blog!

Tea Time with Marce- Giveaways, thoughts on books, memes, challenges, and tons of reviews… this blog pretty much covers the gambit of what’s happening in the blogging world. There is a ton going on here and I love it.

Reader’s Corner- This blog really doesn’t get updated too frequently and doesn’t really review a ton of books, but for whatever reason I love it anyway. The blogger is a librarian and she just has a real passion for libraries and books and news related to books. I love that and I get excited when she posts something new.

My brain’s comfort food- Jen’s taste in books really could not be any more opposite of mine. We’ve even joked before about how the only thing we really have in common is that we loved Harry Potter, but even that she had to really, really talk me into even trying. That being said, I love her blog. She is passionate about books and it comes out in her reviews and other posts.

CasuALLY Musing- Ally only hits on books every once in awhile, but I don’t care, I’m including her in this list anyway. She is doing a Project 365- taking a picture every day for a year and posting it- and a 101 in 1001- accomplishing 101 goals in 1001 days- and I’m obsessed with both of her ventures. Also, her most recent post is just about the cutest baby I’ve ever seen, so that helps too!

That’s enough for now! Check these out and add them to your reader, your bookmarks, however you organize your stuff. I have a handful more on my reader but it’s getting late and this list is everything that I’ve accomplished today, so I maybe need to, you know, get dressed or something.

Flashback Friday: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Jacki — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:47:14 +0000

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz

I have always been a little bit morbid. I know I’ve told you that before, but it just comes up so often. This week I was struggling between Summer of My German Soldier and Scary Stories. Huh? I guess even as a kid I was quite the prolific reader.

Anyway, I completely loved this whole series. Most of the stories were adapted from urban legends and myths like the hook man, the baby-sitter getting calls from inside the house, the killer in the back of the car… that kind of stuff. The pictures were just as creepy as the stories, sometimes even creepier. I remember there being creepy songs and poems and jokes and tons of ghost stories.

I remember one of the stories (not sure if it was in this one or one of the sequels) where a girl always wore this ribbon around her neck. She falls in love with this boy and he always asks her about it. One day, either she offers to show him or he just takes it off and her head plops off- that was all that was holding her together. *Insert girly screaming here*

I was in Girl Scouts the whole time I was growing up and I remember this being one of those essential packing items when going on a camping trip. After we were supposed to be asleep we’d read these by flashlight and just totally freak each other out. This really is one of my fonder book-related memories. So much fun. I remember getting one girl all worked up and crying and we didn’t want her telling on us for being up late so we resorted to gossip and who “liked” who until she fell asleep… then we got to the really creepy stories.

To participate in Flashback Friday, head over here to get the info on what’s going on. After posting your flashback, come back here and comment with a link to your blog so everyone can enjoy!

Review: Jungle

Jacki — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:16:50 +0000

The Book: Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival, by Yossi Ghinsberg

The Story: This is a wild one. This guy, Yossi, is traveling in South America and meets up with a couple other guys who are doing the same thing. They form a quick friendship. They meet a guy named Karl who tells them that he is headed into the jungle to do some work (he’s a biologist/gold prospector) and invites them along. The guys jump at the chance and spend a couple of weeks gearing up for the trip, which they expect to be a few weeks long.

Everything kind of starts out rough and the friendship that the guys has formed starts to unravel. After a couple of weeks, Karl and one of the guys, Marcus, decide to head back by a fairly easy route. Kevin and Yosssi decide to go on with the planned route and meet the guys back in the city in a couple of weeks. Not even two days later, Yossi ends up going over a waterfall on a raft made of balsa wood and getting separated from Kevin.

He’s solo.

The rest of the book is his crazy and true story of survival. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong, from a flood, to getting all turned around, to large animals, to getting nearly eaten alive by termites. He did have luck on his side more than once and the fact that he made it through all of this is pretty much incredible.

What I Thought: I was telling a friend that I have found myself really drawn to survival-type stories lately and he about jumped out of his seat recommending this one to me. That evening, he gave it to me to read and couldn’t wait to hear what I thought about it.

This book was seriously amazing. The story of Yossi’s survival was honest and seriously just crazy. I kept telling myself over and over that obviously he makes it because he lived to write the book, but sometimes I wasn’t so sure that he was going to get out of this crazy situation.

I was super impressed with Yossi’s writing style, especially when you take into consideration that he’s not a writer. This book was well thought out and well executed. It wasn’t amazing literature by any means, but that wasn’t really the point. He did a good job.

I cannot tell you how many times I was just seriously on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t believe that they trusted Karl from the get-go and I just wanted to smack them around a little bit. The other obviously-bad choices that the guys made just floored me. So did Yossi’s survival instinct. He did things without thinking that would have never crossed my mind. Although he had no real idea where he was in the jungle, he was able to figure it out and get himself headed in the right direction. I’m pretty sure I just would have laid on a beach somewhere until a) someone found me or b) I got eaten by a jaguar. Yossi even knew where to find food and how to build a tent. Impressive stuff.

I read online that after this was written, the tv show I Shouldn’t Be Alive did a feature on Yossi & his friends’ journey and now I’ve got Shaun on the hunt for it. I’ll let you know how it is!

Conclusion: Really a great read. Would be an excellent book for someone who loves travel, the outdoors, or just reading a good survival story. Would make a great Father’s Day present for a reading Dad!

Built-Ins from Heaven

Jacki — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:05:29 +0000

We’re moving to a new apartment in a couple of weeks. We have some furniture that is too ugly or too annoying to bother moving so we’re starting fresh in some areas. One of those is my bookshelf situation. Suffice to say that it is sad and annoying.

I was Googling today for some inspiration of easy, pretty solutions. These are not easy or functional for an apartment, but boy are they pretty. I just wanted to share.

Perfection, right?

Review: The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

Jacki — Sat, 22 May 2010 20:49:40 +0000

The Book: The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, by Kelly O’Connor McNees

The Story: Most fans of Little Women know at least a little bit of Louisa May Alcott’s history. Her dad was part of a pretty influential group in Concord, but seemed a little nutty about transcendentalism. She had three sisters, who she kind of based Little Women on. She started writing at a very young age and always made it first in her life. She never married.

That is the basic outline that this book follows. The story takes place during the summer of 1855, when her family had moved and was living in New Hampshire. She meets a local boy, Joseph Singer, and despite her feelings on love, ends up falling for him. Louisa’s struggle to keep writing her first priority, take care of her family, and balance a relationship are kind of the core of the story.

The sub-plots involve putting on a play, her sister’s romance, and observations on Louisa’s parents’ marriage. The most important thing happening in the background is kind of this cultural change. There is a lot of thought put into slavery and politics as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (who were close friends of the Alcotts) and their views. This is the summer that Whitman’s Leaves of Grass came out and that kind of had a serious effect on Louisa as well as her boy toy.

What I Thought: Like I told you guys a few weeks ago, I’m a pretty big Little Women fan. I was so excited when I saw this on the bookshelf because I am a sucker for books about Louisa May Alcott. Last year sometime I read The Glory Cloak , which was a totally different take on Louisa May Alcott’s life, and I throughly enjoyed it. I’ve also read a couple of non-fiction books about her life, so I kind of knew what I was getting into.

I thought that this book was fun. Not wonderful, not life-changing, and not even the best historical fiction I’ve read in the last few months.

I loved seeing Louisa May Alcott getting kind of dopey in love because she is generally not portrayed like that at all. She never married and really did devote her entire life to her writing. I like the idea that she found love at one point and was all goofy and making bad decisions and stuff.

However. Yeah, there’s a “however.” The writing was kind of cheesy and (especially for anyone with even a base knowledge of Louisa May Alcott’s life) fairly predictable. I thought that it was researched pretty well but the town and historical period and everything just kind of seemed pretty bland, like stage settings or something- not like a place, a time that was really alive.

I did read it fairly quickly and enjoyed it for what it was: a historical fiction version of brain candy. I didn’t have to think to read this and the story didn’t get me wrapped up. It was one of those books that I enjoyed while I read it and didn’t give it a minute’s thought when the book wasn’t in my hand.

Conclusion: Read this by the pool or in the car or while you’re on vacation. It’s not anything life changing, but it is a good, fun read.

The only reason I’d ever move to Kansas City…

Jacki — Sun, 16 May 2010 12:34:53 +0000

This is their library:

Most amazing thing ever.

Bookish Comic

Jacki — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:54:45 +0000

Drew, at Toothpaste for Dinner, does it for me every time.

Dear Junot Diaz,

Jacki — Fri, 07 May 2010 20:55:57 +0000

It seems that while writing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, you may have misplaced all of your quotation marks. Here, have some of mine.

” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” “

Feel free to use liberally. I have more if you need them. General rules say to use them to bracket characters’ conversation to set off speech from the rest of the story. If you need any more pointers in this area, I’d be glad to help you out. Thanks!

Your Reader,

Jacki

100th Post Winner!

Jacki — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:32:18 +0000

On Friday, I celebrated my 100th post by buying a good book for one of my readers.

Today, I used a random number generator that picked the number 10.

That means Sadie, of Our Little Pebbles is getting a shiny new book in the mail!!

Congrats Sadie!

Thanks again to everyone who reads my blog and who entered the giveaway!

Bookish News: Ramona is going to be a movie?!

Jacki — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:40:03 +0000

How am I just hearing about this? First the Baby-Sitter’s Club makes a comeback then this!? I feel like these people are tapping into my little book-loves-memory-bank and having a heyday.

Too cute, huh? If you haven’t hit cute overload yet, check out the Ramona and Beezus website. Cute to the max.

So excited.