Lovely Little Shelf

Review: Always Looking Up

December 18, 2011 – 9:40 pm

alwayslooking

The Book: Always Looking Up, by Michael J. Fox

The Story: After Michael J. Fox quit working on Spin City due to Parkinson’s, he was kind of depressed- day-to-day life was a struggle and after years and years in front of the camera, he felt bored and lonely. He decided to use his disease, his fame, and his money toward something that really mattered to him: finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease, which had effected him for almost 20 years at that point.

By surrounding himself with excited, influential people and putting his heart on the line, Michael J. Fox developed The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Their goal is to hire scientists who are experts in their field to focus their whole attention on Parkinson’s. Through this, the foundation has been able to develop amazing drugs and therapies that are helping the tons of people effected by this disease.

What I Thought: When I went to the library in search of Michael J. Fox’s book, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that there were two. When the librarian handed me both of them, I know I looked confused. I decided to pick the newest one for no other reason than it was newer. I didn’t even read the book flaps. Had I read them, I think I would have picked the first one because what I was looking for was more of an overview of his life. While this book had a little bit of that, it really was more focused on his later life- his disease and post-TV/movie life.

That being said, I really did enjoy this. The first chapter just talks about his daily struggles- getting up and getting ready when his muscles just refuse to listen to him. For me, this was the most memorable part of the book. To be able to watch movies (Hello, Back to the Future, I love you!) where he is so adorable and totally in control and know that at such a young age that even brushing his teeth is quite the job… that’s tough. As I read the book and learned about all the good he is doing in the world, I kept reflecting on the fact that he’s doing all of this while almost unable to walk.

I sometimes get annoyed when celebrities “use” their fame to promote stuff, but I love that Michael J. was smart enough to realize that he could influence real change. He didn’t do it in this “look at me!” way- instead he got with smart people who knew what they were doing and basically told them that he wanted to be the face and the voice of this thing, but wanted them to use their knowledge, their training to make the real change. There is a powerful message in there.

Of course Michael J. Fox is brimming over with lovableness, but this book just hammered it home even more.

At points I got bored with hearing about the political side of what he does, but even in that I was impressed with his will, with his determination and with his vigor. He decided what he wanted to do and is totally going after it. I love that.

Conclusion: While I still haven’t read it, I think I’d recommend reading his first memoir first, but even as a stand alone, this is a moving book.

By Jacki | Posted in Review | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Friday Five (15)

December 16, 2011 – 5:01 pm

1. At the cafe where I work, it is an annual tradition to sell Christmas cookie trays. It is a competition for the employees- whoever sells the most gets a prize- and people will come in and order 100 dozen or something crazy like that to take to clients. I am, of course, the baker, so this time of year finds me with flour from head to toe and cookie recipes on repeat in my brain. If I can’t function (or, say, blog more than a couple times a week), that’s my excuse. Cookies.

2. We’re leaving to head home for the holidays in less than a week. That totally blows my mind.

3. This is how we do:

Steamed milk. From Starbucks. For a one year old. Wearing a hoodie. Bam.

4. My parents and my little brother and my nephew all visited from Tuesday thru Thursday this week. It was a blast. My nephew, Conner, is almost exactly one year older than Isaac, but he is huge for his age and Izey is tiny for his age and seeing them together is hilarious. We really did have a blast.

5. While they were here, Shaun talked them into buying iPhone 4Ss. They now have cooler phones than us. Dang.

By Jacki | Posted in default | Comments (2)

Bookish Thoughts: Author Dolls

December 14, 2011 – 11:42 am

Looking for a great gift for that nerdy, hard to buy for book lover in your life?

Because these are amaaaaazing and hilarious.

UneekDollDesigns has a whole line of author inspired dolls. They are even holding little copies of their books. Hilarious.

Here are some of my favorites:

Mark Twain’s is perfectly him!

Shel Silverstein looks JUST like him!

I love Ray Bradbury’s glasses.

And this is my absolute favorite, and maybe it’s because I’m totally obsessed with Margaret Mitchell, but I think this is awesome.

And there are THREE PAGES of these. She’s way, way talented, and for such a personal and awesome gift, they really aren’t too pricy. So fun. Go look.

(There are also pages of literary characters, which are equally as awesome, but I haven’t looked all the way through them yet. Let me know which ones you love!)

By Jacki | Posted in Thoughts | Comments (3)

Book I Just Gave Up On: The Solace of Leaving Early

December 13, 2011 – 8:36 am

solace
The Solace of Leaving Early, by Haven Kimmel

I read Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy maybe five years ago and LOVED it. I remember sitting on the porch swing at my moms and laughing until I couldn’t breathe at this book. A couple of years ago, I picked it up again and if it is possible, I loved it even more. It is a memoir about Haven’s life growing up in a small-town in Indiana. It is brilliant.

When I saw this at a book sale and realized that it was by the same author, I grabbed it up, no questions asked.

December is always a hard reading month for me- we have a lot going on and I don’t often get long chunks of time to sit down and read. I like to read lighter, easier to read books during December and leave the heavy stuff for later in the winter. After struggling and sweating over the decision- and even asking my Twitter friends- I finally picked this book, The Solace of Leaving Early, to read next.

This morning, I regret to inform you, I have decided to ditch it.

Maybe part of it is the December-reading-void thing. I have one every year and now that I keep track of my books read, it is even well documented… but I don’t think that is it.

I think what happened here is that Haven Kimmel tried to hard to dip her toes into literary fiction. I really, really enjoy literary fiction. I love the lyrical feel, the unique style and the focus on characters. This had all that, but it was just really forced. It sounded like something she had written for a writing assignment that was something like, “Write a story in a genre that you are familiar with but have never written in.” She just used things that had been used before, but it a more “clunky” way, if that makes sense.

Her characters and even her setting where just the same way- forced and unbelievable. Not that fiction has to be 100% plausible, but it at least has to have some spark of recognition. For me, there was none of that here.

I made it about halfway through before I realized that I just couldn’t push through the last 150 pages or so. Reading is just a hobby for me, not a job, so I don’t feel bad ditching a book if it is not enjoyable for me to read. This was in no way enjoyable for me, so it is now chilling in my thrift store pile where it can (hopefully!) get snatched up by someone who is more in the mood for this type of thing.

Have you given up on any books lately? Do you feel guilty when you ditch books?

By Jacki | Posted in default | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Random Questions Vlog

December 12, 2011 – 9:35 am

One of my friends challenged a bunch of us to do a vlog answering a list of questions.

I did mine this morning, sans makeup and before getting dressed. It’s pretty impressive.

As other people get theirs up, if they want them to be public, I’ll make a little list here. Fun!

By Jacki | Posted in default | Comments (10)

Review: The Slow Moon

December 11, 2011 – 1:08 pm

slowmoon

The Book: The Slow Moon, by Elizabeth Cox

The Story: Sophie and Crow (yeah, his name is Crow) have been dating for awhile. He is 16 and she is 14 and one night at a party they sneak out in the woods for a little *ahem* alone time. When Crow realizes that he needs some protection to participate in said alone time, he runs back to his car. While he is gone, Sophie is brutally raped by more than one man. When Crow comes back and finds her, he knows he will be under suspicion, so he runs off. When they finally pull Sophie out of the woods, she refuses to talk.

The mystery of whodunit throws the small town into a vicious finger pointing contest and Crow and his family are generally on the “pointed at” end.

What I Thought: One of my favorite types of books is the “throw a family into a crazy/horrible situation and watch them try to wiggle out” type. I love the idea of slipping into these situations and trying to figure out how I would respond. I thought this book would be right up my alley.

The thing is, this book suffered from quite a few pretty horrible faults. First off, it was very, very predictable. I knew from maybe page fifty exactly what had gone down. In addition, there were just too many story lines. The story takes place in a small town and it kind of seems like you get to “meet” everyone. This would be great if the characterization were killer, but instead it just turned into a sloppy, soupy mess. Because the book was short and packed full of characters and their situations, I walked away feel like I hadn’t really gotten to know anyone.

The biggest problem, though, was that this book was supposed to be about teenagers but I feel fairly confident that Elizabeth Cox has never met or talked to a teenager. It was just…. off. How they talked to each other, their parents, everyone was just nothing like teenagers in my experience and it took a lot away from the story for me.

I don’t want to sit here all day and tear this apart, but I’m struggling to find a redeeming quality here. Bleh.

Conclusion: I would honestly recommend Jodi Picoult over this, and that’s saying something.

By Jacki | Posted in Review | Tagged , | Comments Off

Friday Five (14)

December 9, 2011 – 9:20 am

1. Oh my gosh you guys, this week. This frigging week. I’m so tired I can’t even move. I haven’t had time to blog or tweet or anything and I miss my friends that live in my computer! Hope I haven’t missed anything amazing happening. Let me know if I did. On top of being busy and tired during the day, I’m not sleeping hardly at all at night. I fall asleep easily then wake up in the middle of the night, wide awake and ready to go. Grrr. Last night I slept from 10-1 and then from 5-7. So. Annoying.

2. Izey woke up this morning with a fever. He’s cutting 5 or 6 teeth and they’ve been tough ones. Today has the potential to be awful.

3. We cut down our Christmas tree last weekend! We are big real tree people and going to cut one down is probably my favorite Christmas tradition.

Here’s Izey with the one we picked out. He’s pretty mad that we even asked him to NOT run for ten seconds, but to be fair it was a beautiful day in December, so we pretty much just let him do his thing.

tree

Here we are after Shaun had done the man-work of chopping that bad boy down:
tree2

We got it home and decorated it, and I have pictures of that… but for the first time in my real-tree-lovin’-life, our tree crashed down and almost all of the ornaments broke. We have since sat it back up and bought all new ornaments. I haven’t taken a picture of the “new” tree yet, but it is amazingly beautiful!

4. We got our first sticky snow last night! It’s that amazing stick-to-everything-perfectly kind of snow that makes the world look like a Christmas card.

5. Last night I went with a couple of friends to our county’s Child and Family Services and helped them wrap presents for all of the foster kids in the system. I know that I shouldn’t have been, but I was SHOCKED at the number of kids right now that are in the system. On one hand it is totally heartbreaking, but it’s awesome that there are people out there to take them in. It is also amazing that donors give enough money for every single kid to get presents. There were crates and crates of toys and games that needed wrapped for their Christmas party this weekend. It was really fun to be able to be a very small part of making those kids’ holidays a bit jollier. Are you doing anything this season to give back a little bit?

By Jacki | Posted in default | Comments (2)

Review: The Reservoir

December 7, 2011 – 10:17 am

reservoir

The Book: The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

The Story: One chilly morning a hugely-pregnant girl named Lillie is found floating in the town’s reservoir. Initially, it is assumed to be a suicide and kind of swept under the rug. A detective notices some clues that say otherwise and a group of men start investigating and conclude that this was not a suicide, but a homicide. Eek.

When fingers start to point, most of them point right at her cousin Tommie. As their past comes to the surface, it really does seem plausible that he could have murdered her, but he his adamantly denying any charges.

By the time the case makes it to the courtroom it has gained national attention and most people want to see Tommie hang. The book ends with a courtroom climax that will leave your head spinning.

What I Thought: I found out after I was about halfway through this book that it was based on a true story. The author put tons of time researching a case that was a national phenomenon and then decided to put flesh on it. This added so, so much to the book for me. I loved looking on Wikipedia and finding out that most of what I was reading had actually happened. Totally wild.

I thought that the book as a whole was just all right. The writing didn’t blow me away or annoy me. It was interesting but not captivating. It was gripping but not heart wrenching or anything. It was just a book.

I liked the time period. I really enjoy reading about the Civil War and this took place right after the Civil War in Virginia, so there was a lot going on there and I enjoyed that aspect.

I’m also a sucker for a good sibling story and the heart of this book is not as much a murder mystery but a family drama, mainly revolving around these two brothers, Tommy and Willie. Tommie’s innocence or guilt, Willie’s belief and disbelief and both of their love and involvement with Lillie are really what gave this book its legs. While I enjoyed reading about the relationships, I still thought that the author could have given them more depth. They were all pretty surface-level, and that’s too bad because I think that he was onto something good here.

Conclusion: The back-and-forth, did-he-do-it will thrill true-crime readers and historical fiction lovers alike, but the chances of you finding something here that you haven’t read before are pretty slim.

By Jacki | Posted in Review | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Bookish Thoughts: Awesome People Reading

December 5, 2011 – 8:58 am

Forgive me if I have talked about this before. I’ve been following this blog since Shaun sent me the link months ago and keep meaning to tell you about it, but I don’t think I have.

If I have, pretend like I’m your little, old, confused Grandma and just listen politely. ;)

This blog is amazing: Awesome People Reading.

Sure some of them are actors reading scripts (*yawn*) but there are some legitimately awesome people legitimately reading books. It makes me swoon.

Or in Orlando Bloom’s case, TRYING to read. Give the kid a break, that book looks heavy! It probably wore out his arms just holding it up.

The Beatles

A very young, baby-faced Sean Connery

The Kennedys

And on and on and on for 50-something pages. So fun! Go check it out!

By Jacki | Posted in Thoughts | Comments (4)

Review: Shadow of the Wind

December 4, 2011 – 5:46 pm

shadowofthewind

The Book: The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Story: I have a feeling I’m not going to do justice to this story if I try to explain it, but I’ll give it a go.

Daniel is the son of a bookstore owner in post-war Barcelona. His mother died when he was young and he is pretty much being raised in the bookstore. This has given him a pretty unique respect for good books and good writing.

When his dad takes him to a secret book stash in the city and lets him pick out one book (a rite of passage for a bookseller), he picks the book The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. He falls immediately, deeply in love with the book and wants to read everything else the author has ever written. He starts searching for other books and is surprised to find out that the books by Carax are being sought out by someone else- and not for reading, for destroying.

This sets Daniel on a quest not only to get these to these books before someone else was, but to find out any information he can about the man that was Julian Carax. His adventure through his own city and what he finds are more than shocking.

What I Thought: Rarely, rarely do I read a book that stops me in my tracks. This is one of those books.

Guys, the writing here…. whew. What can I say? It totally, totally blew my mind. I have (obviously) never visited post-war Barcelona, but the setting became a character here as Daniel searched the streets, met the people and ended up in the darkest, most remote corners of the city. The city and the time period were brought to life here and I walked away feeling like I was visiting 2011 and not the other way around. Just amazing.

I loved Daniel so much I can hardly describe it. He was just this smart, impassioned, witty, loving kid who put himself on this mission and refused to backdown. When he found himself part of something way larger than himself, I was so happy to see him rise to the occasion and not back away. I want him to be a real person so I can hug him.

I thought that the plot was engaging and fun. There were lots of bumps and surprises and spookiness. It kept me turning the pages, but the writing is what had my jaw hanging to the ground. It’s just perfect and lyrical and wonderful. I’ve already recommended it to three or four people and loaned out my copy. I know that the other has a few other books, but I haven’t heard as much about them as I heard about this one prior to reading it, but regardless, I plan to read them. I may have just found a new favorite author.

Conclusion: Highly, highly recommended!!

By Jacki | Posted in Review | Tagged , | Comments (1)