July's Group Read Suggestions

It's that time again to suggest a book for July! Something steamy, beachy, romantic? What's your thought on what we should read together in July?

What we've read...

Eleanor & Park
Jane Eyre
The Rent Collector
Labor Day
Orphan Train
The Death of Bees
Liberating Paris
Life Sentences
Looking for Me
Ladder of Years
Where'd You Go Bernadette?
Beach Music
The Dinner
The End of Your Life Book Club
Still Alice 
The Song Remains the Same
Those Who Save Us
We Are All Welcome Here
Gone Girl
Prisoner of Tehran
The Wednesday Sisters
Looking for Alaska
Cutting for Stone
One Summer
The Year of Fog
Winter Garden
The Violets of March
Rebecca
State of Wonder
The Invisible Bridge
The Postmistress
The Scent of Rain and Lightning
Still Missing
The Sandalwood Tree
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Something Borrowed
The Blue Orchard
Sammy's Hill
In the Woods
Shanghai Girls
The Weight of Water
Water for Elephants
The Color Purple
The One That I Want
The Secret Garden
House Rules
American Wife
Firefly Lane
Middlesex
The Reader
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Awakening
Pride & Prejudice
I See You Everywhere

Hope you can join us! I will use random.org to pick a winner on Friday, June 20th!

Looking Forward

I'm a follower.  Thanks, Lisa for the idea! ;)

Here are some things I am looking forward to...

This weekend - We are busy non-stop! Friday night we are hosting a retirement party for my mother-in-law.  She retired this week after 42 years of teaching! And all in the same grade in the same school district! Pretty amazing.  Not something I aspire to do, but sometime I respect.  That's impressive!  She has a master's degree and over 30 extra credits she took over the years not to mention all the professional development and stuff she's done over the years.  Saturday will probably be spent recovering in the morning and cleaning up.  My parents are taking my child home from the party so we will have a child free morning that will hopefully be enjoyed and we won't be too hung over from the previous night! Then we will either get our camper out then or wait on that until Sunday.  Saturday night we have a graduation open house of one of my husband's cousins but it is just down the road so that is nice! Sunday - We have my baby cousin's graduation open house and it is a bit of a drive.  We are hoping to get there a little earlier to take my dad out for a bloody mary for father's day! Not sure what we will do with the rest of our day when we get home but camping preparations are a for sure!

This month - Our annual family camping trip! We are planning on 8 days which will be our longest camping trip ever.  As a child my husband used to go all 7 days (which has now turned into 10 for some people) but in college we'd always go up for a 4 day weekend and then with Isla we did a 4 day weekend and then last year we did a 6 night trip and this year here we go on 8! It should be a blast. His mom is the oldest of 10  at some point in the week all will be there.  And most of his 29 other first cousins will be there for some part of the week as well.  And there are now, 12, I think great-grandchildren and I think 10 of them should be making an appearance at some point, so it's a lot of fun.  A lot of work, but a lot of fun! Plenty of time to read, enjoy the sun, catch up with family, campfires, and lots of childhood memories that get reminisced every year!

This year - I'm excited to b attending a good family friend's wedding this year in Louisville.  It may be just me attending with my parents or my husband might come too, but I'm excited to watch him get married and explore the area.  It's still up in the air but my fingers are crossed it will be happening.  Otherwise, I am just going to be equally as excited to go tailgating with my dad again this fall to watch my Buckeyes!

What is on your looking forward list?

Three Year Old's Library Finds

We hit up the library for the first time over summer break because the weather this week hasn't been stellar.  Monday we did get to play outside a lot and swim in the pool but it wasn't 'hot' and the pool was not refreshing it was just a tad chilly for those of us not three years old!  Tuesday, we hit up our other book place, Barnes & Noble because I seem to collect their gift cards and I needed a copy of The Burgess Boys for our Books & Bars meeting later this month. 

Both the library and Barnes & Noble are our fave spots in the summer.  Books (both of us), train (her), and a/c (both of us). 

It's still hard for Isla to pick out her own library books because of the distraction of the train and all the other toys and things to look at, so I tend to pick most of her books or get yes or no's from her as I show her stuff.

Yesterday at Barnes & Noble we read almost all of the Elmo books they had there (gag me) and when it was time to go I did tell her she could pick out one book but NOT Elmo so of course she picked a Curious George book "monkey book mama'.  I am so not a fan of commercialized books but when my sweetie was SO good at sharing and listening I just have to reward her, especially after overhearing a conversation between a grandma and mom and the two little girls with them.  Oh lord.  I feel for those kids and I'm so glad my baby has me and I'm glad that I know as an adult how not to talk to children.  Eessh. Poor babies.  I hope Isla grows up to realize how lucky she is because I know I know as an adult how lucky I was as a child.

Today I did most of the picking...

 

 

Underwater Counting was picked because she is obsessed with counting lately and it looked cute.

Fancy Nancy because I love the vocabulary used.

The Pigeon Wants a Puppy because 1) The Pigeon is HILARIOUS and 2) the kid loves puppies .. (also if you don't think the pigeon books or the elephant and piggy books are hilarious, you're reading them wrong and you need me to read them to you stat)

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site because I've debated buying it a bunch

Ten Little Caterpillars because she loves counting and caterpillars

Pigs Make Me Sneeze because Mo Willems is awesome.  Seriously, if you have young kids you should be checking out Mo books! The only one I'm not a fan of so far is Knufflebunny.

 

This excites me for many more library trips over the summer.  Hopefully we will make it to story time and move and groves as our schedule allows!

 

What did you last get from the library?

 

 



South of Broad

I read Beach Music by Pat Conroy last year and I wanted to check out another one of his stories when I had more time, aka the summer.  It did not disappoint.  It's over 400 pages so make sure you have time set aside because you will not want to walk away from the story.  I stayed up late, drug it in the car, and spent whatever previous free moments I had soaking it up. 

Description:  Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.

Leo is the narrator and I felt so badly for his childhood.  His mother was just not a loving type of mother.  We enter his life in the summer before his senior year and he just then finds out that his mother used to be a nun.  That is kind of a shocker when apparently other people in his life knew about it but didn't share it with him.  However, Leo's world was rocked after his beloved older brother killed himself, when he was 10.  Leo's adolescence and his parents lives were markedly different than he beginning years of his life.

I will say that just basing off of reading one of his other books, he does have a way with dysfunctional families in his stories, however his own upbringing was dysfunctional from what I understand.  Sometimes the conversational language between people was a tad unbelievable
but overall the story is good.  He is windy, but not so bad that you can't skim a paragraph or two and forgive the first chapter of the book.  I almost put it down but I took a deep breath and gave it a shot. ;)

Conroy just as a way with tragedy and dysfunction that no matter the amount of words that surround it I will keep reading.  That and I love books set in the south and Charleston is a beautiful setting with a history to dig up rich characters.

What author/s are you planning on reading this summer?

5 on Friday

1.       It’s my last day of work of the school year! This was my most trying year yet.  Beginning with going full-time for the first time as a parent and then meeting all the families.  Let’s just say you wouldn’t even believe my school year if I told you.  It was that ‘interesting,’ to be PC and still employable we will leave it at that.

2.       So excited for what the summer has in hold!  8 day camping trip, James Taylor in concert, multiple family parties, one-on-one time with my little lady, pool time, boating, my best-friend from childhood will be home for a visit, camping on Lake Huron once if not twice, an anniversary trip to Traverse City area and reading in my hammock.  It shall be good.

3.       I feel the stress lifting.  No work, no classes.  Just me, a three year old and summer.  It sounds so glorious!!!!!!

4.       I’m reading South of Broad by Pat Conroy and I am so glad I will have more free time to finish it up this weekend.  A little wordy (he always is) but a great story with quirky characters.

5.       DID I MENTION I AM DONE WITH WORK???????????????????????

Happy Weekend! What are your plans?

All the Summer Girls

A little over a month ago I had a few extra minutes and I popped into the library to browse and ended up walking out with two books, All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue and South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  I needed something light so I started with All the Summer Girls and basically read it all last Sunday.

A great piece of literature it s not, but a quick read out in the sun on a summer/spring day, it will do.

Description: In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiance the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa is obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the aspiring writer who can't seem to put down a book--or a cocktail--long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired... again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women being to realize how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier--and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

I never felt a pull towards any of the characters.  They all seemed to be huge into self-pity. I more wanted to know what happened the night Colin died and why everyone blamed themselves.  They were basically all spoiled selfish people but the mystery of Colin was intriguing.

The writing confused me at times too.  Different chapters were narrated by the different girls, but sometimes it seemed like it changed from first person to third person and it just was kinda blah.

Also, so Kate is pregnant.  She is at the beach, at a bar with friends who are picking up guys.  A guy picks her up.  A guy who is 7 years younger than her and doesn't mind that she's 'not into' the party scene.  Then she finally tells him she's pregnant and he never appears in the book again.  What was the point of this plot line? 1) Not believable that this dude who is like 22 right out of college would want to try HARD to hook up with an older chick who doesn't seem that into  it.  2)If by some chance he is madly weirdly in love with her, he should make another entrance in the book after that revelation and declare his love or tell her good luck in life or something. 

I guess I just felt that the ending shouldn't have been the ending.  It needed more closure/wrapping up of storylines.

A line that I resonated with, "I used to be fearless."

Oh so true.  Sometimes I miss the girl I used to be.  Life and circumstances have beaten away at the fearless girl I used to be and sometimes I miss her and don't know how to get her or even just pieces of her back.

Definite beach read.

What was your last beach read?

June's Group Read

May was definitely a flop for posting as well.  The end of the school year and parenting got the best of me.  I did hit some good good books so that was positive, but my life balance not so good.

Since I was a little crazy I never did write a suggestion post for June and since we didn't do one for May I made an executive decision.  Lisa had suggested Eleanor & Park for May and it was the only suggestion and I got that book for my birthday.  So, winner winner, chicken dinner!

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell will be our book.

Description: Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.

Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Hope you will join us!

Blossoms and Bayonet's

Oh my goodness.  You know when a book brings you out of a reading rut? Wow.  I was interested in the book when I heard about it but then I started it and man, I didn't want the story to end. 

It is set in South Korea during WWII.  It changes perspectives between two brothers and their mother.  At first the mixture of Korean words had me checking the cheat sheet at the front of the book but then I got it.  It was never hard to tell the narrator's apart and I appreciated the different viewpoints.  My only complaint was that we didn't get to follow along with the oldest, He-Seung while he worked for the Japanese doing grunt work during the war.  I think that story would have been interesting if not disgusting to hear.  However, it is based off the life of one of the author's and he was not the brother who was conscripted so that may be why.

This was a chapter in WWII history that I have not read a lot about. It was very interesting to learn about how the Japanese treated the Koreans and how people's lives were ruined in South Korea during this time.  It was just a beautiful story and my words cannot do it justice.  I find it harder to glow about books that I enjoy than books I didn't really care for!  And one of my favorite signs of a good book, I was SO not ready for it to end!

Description: Hi-Dong Chai and Jana McBurney-Lin, the award-winning author of My Half of the Sky, turn their hands to a remarkable story of a family and country torn apart by outside forces. The time is 1942, the place, Japanese-occupied Seoul, Korea. Fifteen-year-old He-Seung is full of fire, ready to take on these Japanese...if only he could convince his father, a Christian minister more concerned about saving his flock in a time when Emperor-worship has become mandatory. Since occupation, the Japanese have eradicated the Korean language, names, even the country's flower. Now they are seeking Korean boys as volunteers for their army. When his father is arrested by the Japanese, however, He-Seung must swallow his hatred of the enemy and volunteer for the military. Even harder, he must leave his mother and baby brother He-Dong to fend for themselves. Based on a true story, Blossoms & Bayonets is suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period. The story lends an eyewitness perspective to events as they unfold. revealing an era of nuance and complexity. The result is a work that speaks volumes about the power of faith.

I found the religious aspects of the book very interesting as well.  Especially since the narrator's were Christian and that was what got them into their predicaments as they Japanese were promoting emperor worship only.  I also liked reading the quotes at each chapter beginning from different sources throughout the time period on the state of the war. 

Highly recommend it! I just can't really say it any better than that!

Have you read any books set in Korea before? About the Koreans during WWII?

I received this book from TLC tours, all thoughts and opinions are my own!

A Life Less Ordinary

Description:
For the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good girl. She turned her back on her youthful fancies and focused on her career. But now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit her job, sold her house and cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving town on a six month road trip.

After placing a personal ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most-read – and most controversial – blogger for the e-magazine, What Women Want. Zeke’s true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the same time. Leaving it all behind for six months is just an added bonus.

Now, armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.

Manny basically decides to change her entire life in one moment and head out on a road trip with a companion that she does not know, Zeke.  Oh, and her imaginary friend Harvey. (whaaat?) I'm sorry but a 45 year old woman with an imaginary friend is hard to take seriously.  Anywhoo, off they go across the country to do whatever. 

Zeke starts the trip with some very unsavory motives and it's interesting to see how that plays out.

Definitely a light read and minus jumping from charactrer to character and a few too many plot lines, it would be something to read this summer on vacation!

Have you ever traveled with someone you just met?

I received this book free in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own!

Fail

So, I'm sure nobody noticed that I posted May Group Read Suggestions and then didn't post a selection. ER.. hum.. whoops. 

April kicked my arse.  I am taking on May with a vengeance but that vengeance is without a May Group Read.  I do apologize and I will put up the Jane Eyre questions this Friday.  So, let's take a break for May and regroup in June. 

On tap for this week

- lots of working out.  I am back on the wagon after a HORRIBLE April.  I came back from vacation and my body/eating apparently just kept myself there because our weather sucked and I just had a crappy month overall.  So, yes lots of working out.  I've started a Wednesday Pound class with people I work with and it's a lot of fun and kicking my butt!  I'm also trying to restart the couch to 5k and other things.

- better eating.  I made a meal plan and I WILL STICK TO IT.  The last two weeks have been god awful and I didn't meal plan for the whole month of April and I really think I set myself up for some awful failure after I'd been doing sooo well.  So, I've learned that for me, that monthly plan is so needed.  I haven't fully planned out May but I have the first two weeks and next weekend I will finish out the month.

- cleaning.  I really feel like I was in a black hole all of April.  Work kicked my butt, my kid kicked my butt and just general life kicked my butt.  My house needs work.  I have been doing better in some spots but cleaning/decluttering needs to be hit hard again.  Especially since I am hosting two rather large parties in the next few months in my house.  AHHH.

Anyway, I do apologize for the absence from here posting and my absence from reading blogs.  I've been trying to do a once a week catch up but that is no fun.  Here's to better time management!