The Girl Who Played With Fire

First off.. the winner of the second summer giveaway is... Lisa of Lisa's Yarns! Lisa you must be one lucky lady since you won by my other one, or it could be because no one else entered besides Julie (thanks lady!).. I will try to send it out today! ;)

The Girl Who Played With Fire starts off about a year after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ends. We find out that Lisbeth has gone off and traveled the world and has been zealously reading about Mathematics. She gets hung up on Fermat's Last Theorem and fills notebook pages trying to solve it. She hasn't talked to Mikael in almost a year and can't believe she allowed herself to 'love' him.

Mikael is super busy at Millennium still and seemingly has no idea why Lisbeth is not returning his calls or nowhere to be found.

Eventually Lisbeth makes her way back to Stockholm and reconnects with an old flame, buys herself a ridiculous new apartment and trying to figure out what to do with her billions and checks in on her guardian and then on Mikael. She finds a startling connection between the story Millennium is working on, her douche of a guardian and her past. She meets up with the two reporters working on the case and the next thing you know, they are dead, her prints are on the weapon and the douche of a guardian is dead as well.

Of course, everyone points the blame on Lisbeth and paints her as a maniac in the press. Her dear friend Mikael does not believe it and races against the police to clear her name.

I really really really liked this book about 983434324 times better than the first. I would suggest forging through the first just to get to this book it was so good. Kelly even told me! ;) She's a smart cookie. I started it on the beach on Wednesday and finished it Friday. And there are a LOT OF pages. It was so good. Totally up in the top books of the year. ;)

What's your favorite series? (Mine is Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum Series!!)

July Group Read is...

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett!

Description...
Frightened orphan Mary discovers the joyful wonders of life on the Yorkshire Moors with the help of two local boys and a mysterious, abandoned garden...where all things seem possible.

This will be interesting one for me... I never ever wanted to read this as a kid. I thought it would be 'boring.' Here is to hoping my adult self doesn't think so! ;)

I have been out of town basically since last Wednesday. I was home for a brief time on Sunday and then just got back and will be gone most of tomorrow because of a funeral. I have finished The Wednesday Sisters and The Girl Who Played with Fire and can't wait to write up reviews on them. Both of them were fabulous!!! Read them for sure!

Today is the last day to enter my giveaway for Twenty Stories by Kirstin Fouquet. It would be a great beach read!

I also want to hopefully post some discussion questions for House Rules tomorrow since it is the last day of June. If you have any quotes, thoughts or questions you want me to include in my post send them to me either my blog comment or via email at pinkflipflops44 at gmail dot com. I am planning on a lot of blog work today!! ;)

What I took to the Beach this weekend..

12 Times Blessed by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Though True Dickinson was widowed eight years ago, her young son, her thriving business, and her loving friends give her a full life. Still, her fory-third birthday party, on a snowy Cape Cod night, is cause to reflect and lament her dwindling youth, beauty, and chances at romance.

But everything changes the moment True slides into a ditch on the drive home and comes face-to-face with an opportunity to let love back into her life.

Twelve Times Blessed is the story of one year of transformation in a woman's life, and an unforgettable tale of the perils and pleasures of love in the modern age.

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government.

But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered. And even more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander—the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker who came to his aid in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and who now becomes the focus and fierce heart of The Girl Who Played with Fire.

As Blomkvist, alone in his belief in Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation of the slayings, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous hunt in which she is the prey, and which compels her to revisit her dark past in an effort to settle with it once and for all.

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton’s beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family.

For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These “Wednesday Sisters” seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature–Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens–and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year.

As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success.

Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.

I am pretty sure that I am going to start off with The Girl Who Played with Fire, but we shall see what I am in the mood for! I am hoping to get a lot of reading done. We've been camping with the fam since Wednesday and will be coming back Sunday... So lots of time to get reading! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and don't forget to enter my 2nd Summer Giveaway!

What is in your beach bag this weekend?

2010 Challenges Update

Don't forget to vote on the July Group Read. Poll is up on the side!

Books read in 2010

1. Cross Country – James Patterson (Jan. 2nd)
2. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood (Jan 26th)
3. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson (Feb. 2nd)
4. Twenty Stories – Kristin Fouquet (Feb 3rd)
5. The Sister Pact – Cami Checketts (Feb 7th)
6. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink (Feb. 14th)
7. Spooky Little Girl – Laurie Notaro (Feb. 21st)
8. The Worst Case – James Patterson (March 1st)
9. Morning Neurosis: The mostly true story of a girly trying to reconcile her rock n ‘ roll roots – Juliette Miranda (March 6th)
10. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher (March 7th)
11. Sexaholics – Pynk
12. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
13. Firefly Lane – Kristin Hannah (April 19th)
14. The Last Child – John Hart (May 2nd)
15. True Colors – Kristin Hannah (May 8th)
16. The Help – Kathryn Stockett (May 22nd)
17. Jane Austen Ruined My Life – Beth Pattillo (May 23rd)
18. The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush – Ann Gerhart (June 12th)
19. Dying Scream – Mary Burton – (June 13th)
20. House Rules – Jodi Picoult – (June 20th)


A-Z Author and Book Title Challenge..

Author
A – Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
B – Dying Scream – Mary Burton
C- The Sister Pact – Cami Checketts
D –
E – Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
f – Twenty Stories – Kristin Fouquet
G –
H- Firefly Lane – Kristin Hannah
I –
J –
K –
L – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
M – Morning Neurosis: The mostly true story of a girly trying to reconcile her rock n ‘ roll roots – Juliette Miranda
N – Spooky Little Girl – Laurie Notaro
O –
P – House Rules – Jodi Picoult
Q –
R –
S – The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
T –
U –
V –
W –
X
Y
Z


Title

A -
B –
C- Cross Country – James Patterson
D –
E –
f –
G – The Perfect Wife: The Life an Choices of Laura Bush – Ann Gerhart
H- The Help – Kathryn Stockett
I –
J – Jane Austen Ruined My Life – Beth Pattillo
K –
L – The Last Child – John Hart
M –
N –
O –
P –
Q –
R –
S – Sexaholics - Pynk
T – Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
U –
V -
W – The Worst Case – James Patterson
X
Y
Z

10 TBR from my Blog readers
Revolutionary Road – 5
Middlesex – 5
Water for Elephants – 5
Teacher Man – 4
The Perfect Wife - 1
Summer Reading - 1
Jane Austin Ruined my Life - 1
Wednesday Sisters - 1
Pledged - 1
Bridget Jones -1

I need to get my booty reading more! Hopefully I will get a lot done this summer! My favorites so far were probably, The Help, The Reader, Firefly Lane, Morning Neurosis, The Last Child and 13 Reasons Why.

What are some of your favorites from this year so far?

2nd Random Summer Giveaway!

My first random summer giveaway was Isabel Allende's Portrait in Sepia that Lisa won!

The second one is Twenty Stories by Kristin Fouquet. I received this book as a goodreads.com giveaway and reviewed it here back in February. This book would be great for beach as it is a collection of flash fiction. You can read a story and hop in the water. Come back and read another! If you are fascinated with New Orleans or enjoy short stories this would be great for you.

Oh and my favorite part? The book cover!!!! I LOVE IT.

To enter you must be a follower..

Leave a comment telling me what is your favorite collection of short stories.

Follow me on twitter for an additional entry...

and tweet about this on twitter for an additional comment.. (one tweet per day... just leave a comment letting me know)

Giveaway will be up until Tuesday June, 29th and the winner will be announced Wednesday, June 30th! Thank you for reading and commenting!

Don't forget to vote for the July Group Read. Poll is up on the side!

House Rules Review...

Don't forget to suggest a book for July's Group Read!

House Rules by Jodi Picoult is about Jacob, an 18 year old teenager with Aspergers. Jacob is obsessed with forensic science and likes to set up crime scenes for his mom to solve. This is just one of his many 'quirks' as his mom refers to his Aspie symptoms. He only eats brown food on Thursday, blue food on Friday and the first of the month is all white food. His world is very black and white. He is made fun of at school and is super smart. He meets with a tutor named Jess twice a week to work on social skills. Jess is his best-friend and only friend in the whole world.




His younger brother Theo is also really smart and aggravated with how is life is because of Jacob. Theo starts breaking into houses of people who have 'perfect' families. He steals something small from them and thinks no one is the wiser. One day, he sneaks into a professors house that he thinks is empty. Unfortunately, it is not empty. Jess is staying at this house while the professor is out of town and in the shower when Theo walks in. Jess catches Theo and as he runs out of the house, she slips and falls in the bathroom.





Jacob arrives at the house a little later. He and Jess had argued earlier in the week when he awkwardly had asked her out on a date. When Jacob gets home later that night he is agitated and has a complete meltdown. He sleeps in his closet over night and his mother, Emma, starts attempting to take him to the hospital when he 'snaps out of it.'





That morning, Mark, Jess's boyfriend shows up at the police station and claims Jess is missing. Detective Matson takes the case and assumes Mark is abusive (he is) and that he has something to do with her disappearance. It isn't for another 5 days and two talks with Jacob before they find Jess's body wrapped up with a quilt belonging to Jacob and marks on her neck and arms.





Here is the part in a Jodi novel, when you think ohh I bet this is what happens, but she will have a twist and maybe it won't be. Well, there was no twist. There was excellent character development and the different perspectives that she uses in her stories were a great way to tell this story. To understand how Emma, Theo and Jacob think.





I was however disappointed. I think it was frustrating to read about how unprepared the police were with dealing with Jacob even after being told about him. Like you wouldn't look up information on Aspergers or consult someone before you interviewed them. I was also disappointed in Oliver's character, the lawyer Jacob's mom gets. He was obviously very unprepared and yeah, she could hardly afford anything. BUT this is YOUR CHILD, who on TRIAL FOR MURDER. I would not have trusted him to be the best defense for my child. HELL NO. And why was no one asking Jacob' the correct questions. His mom flat out asked if he killed Jess, he said no. Okay, so then you say, why did you move her? Was Jess bleeding when you got there? Did you hit Jess? Come on people. You say over and over and over again that he will tell the truth, so ask the right questions!





And Emma was so into the Jacob drama she NEVER let Theo try to spit out information. And I was disappointed in Theo that he DID not say anything until waaayyyy late in the game. Ugh. I guess it was just aggravating to me.





There was a lot of information in there about Aspergers and a lot of information about forensic science. If either of those interest you, the book may interest you. The court scenes kind of dragged for me and I skimmed through some of it.





Disappointing.

If anyone else would like to share their thoughts on House Rules via a guest post email me at pinkflipflops44 at gmail dot com!

July Group Read Selection Ideas...

Ok everybody, throw them out there! What do you want to read together in July?

I will throw up a quiz on Wednesday (leaving town that afternoon for awhile..)

I finished House Rules last night and my review will be up tomorrow..

I hope everyone had a good weekend. What did you do?

We bought a pool on Saturday which turned into a bigger ordeal when we realized that we need a fence to put around it and we needed to level the ground out more. So needless to say we swam in a half full pool yesterday and then stated to drain it. Operation build a fence coming soon!

House Rules Check in...

First I want to lead off with Miss Anthrope's comment from my last check in last week. She just posted it today, but I didn't want anyone to miss it..

Uffda! I finally got this book a couple days ago from the library (Monday, actually)- I was like 130 on the wait list (so, whew! I'm gonna back off my library after seeing that some are in the 1000's!)

I work with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders- it's so fascinating in the way that they think:

For example:

I had one individual who used to hate taking showers. Whenever her mother tried to bathe her/wash her hair, she would become physically aggressive (hit, kick, spit, pull hair, etc). So when she came to the crisis facility, we showered her: we put up with the physical aggression, we got our hair pulled, punched, kicked, spit on, yelled at- but I'll never forget the day I had her in the shower and she looks at me and says, "Turn it farther!" And when I was clueless, she kept (calmly) repeating it. "Turn it farther?" I asked her, "Make it hotter?" and she'd scream out, "Noooo, farther!"
Finally I just looked at her and said, "show me". If you look at the shower handle, it was the kind where the handle should be turned in a counterclockwise fashion (like an arc) to get hotter and to the right to get colder. She literally meant, "turn it farther".

It was interesting because we always would teach people, "if you say something, they take it literally", but sometimes I think we don't even know what the literal meaning of a word is, or what slang literally means- because we're so used to it we don't think of it like that.

One guy I currently work with loves the tingling and burning sensation of slapping- it feels good to him, so he will walk around the house, pound on walls, windows, tables, doors, people-- yes, people, and he does it either because it feels good or he wants attention. For the longest time (years ago), they didn't think he could talk; he would just echo what he heard from others. Turns out, now many years later, he talks all right! He swears in context! He'll tell you that he does something, "to get a rise out of you!" It's a bit of a word salad, where throughout the day you have to stop and listen to what he's saying to figure it out. But we talk back to him- if he starts talking about something, we talk about it too, even though it might not be talking together, but more of a parallel conversation- that way, he knows we're listening to him (and it gives purpose to language for him). Otherwise, if no one would respond or listen to him, then why talk?

Oh, and the need for consistency and routine- it gets to be difficult. I work with one individual now who was misdiagnosed all his life as OCD, but really, he is on the spectrum. "I want peas, cottage cheese, and hot dish for supper". And if that's not what you were having, then he'd tell you, "I want my way now! Peas, cottage cheese and hotdish, now!" He'll eat food that falls on the table: not because he's hungry, but because it's his. So to get him to stop doing that (eating off the floor), we have him throw it away and we "replace" what he lost.

Surprisingly, Picoult does a really good job of conveying what it is like to support an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorders... the mom in this book, is, lemme tell you, by far the most understanding parent I've run across! (Many parents simply just don't understand or don't know what to do- even providers, group homes!! don't know what to do sometimes.

The mom in the book (I'm on all of page 61 haha) reminds me of another mom that I was blessed with meeting when I was student teaching. She is super mom to me. Her oldest daughter is on the spectrum and she fights for everything for her daughter. She has improved sooo much and she makes sure that her daughter gets what she deserves and is treated fairly. She gets the side-eye from a lot of people and has pissed off school admins but she is doing what she is supposed to do; advocate for her daughter. It's tough for people who have no experience with autism to realize how much work and how much struggle and how much isolation the whole family has to go through!

My thoughts through page 61...

I like Jacob's character but it is almost hard for me to think he can be so reflective on everything and yet unable to control his outbursts.

His brother is going to snap and his mother really needs to remember that she has two children and that Theo can live his how he wants regardless of his brother. Oh and the breaking into 'perfect family houses' is not going to end well and is a perfect example of a cry for help. I also have quite a few guesses as to how this is going to play out and I am already kind of disappointed.

My co-worker just finished it and she said she thought she had it figured out and was like no, it will be a twist and then at the end finished it and said, yep had it figured out. She was not a fan. So now I am worried.

And let's borrow a question from Jodi's website...

‘My mother will tell you Jacob’s not violent, but I am living proof that she’s kidding herself’ (p.11).
As with many of Jodi Picoult’s previous novels House Rules is written from the perspective of several different characters, each taking turns to narrate a chapter. Why do you think Picoult favours this narrative device, considering the nature of her stories? Is it a successful technique?

I enjoy when she tells the story in different perspectives, I think it helps you know more about the characters and develops them into real people to care about and gets me engaged in the story! I think she does it for those reasons.. ha

Have you gotten it? How far in are you? Do you like it? Anything you want to discuss? I will respond in comments!

Fruit & Veggie Fail...

I saw on Clean Eating Machine the other day this break down of how many servings of fruit & veggies she had in a 3 day span. She wanted to see how many she was getting out of the recommended 9 servings a day. I thought, what a great idea since I am trying to eat better and watch my veggie and fruit intake. Well after a 3 day recording of what Iwas putting into my body (only the fruits & veggies) I realized I have a LOT of room for improvement. The sad thing is, I was making an effort to eat a fruit or veggie or both with every meal or snack. So here is the damage.


Monday Fruits / Veggies
1. Tomato
2. Asparagus
3. strawberries (in yogurt)
4. orange
5.celery
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Tuesday Fruits/Veggies
1. Strawberries
2. lettuce
3. tomato
4. radishes
5. green pepper
6. carrot
7. pear
8.
9.

Wednesday Fruits/Veggies
1. green pepper
2. tomato
3. strawberries
4. orange
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Wednesday was a bit tough since I went down to the Tiger's game yesterday and as you can imagine there really aren't fruit and veggies at a ball park!!

How do you get in all your fruits and veggies? Do you get enough? Any suggestions on how to add more to your diet?

Winner of Portrait in Sepia!

is.....

Lisa from Lisa's Yarns!

Lisa I will email you.. I think I may still have your address. ;)

In blogger book club news.. I was able to get a copy of House Rules! I just popped into the library and they had like 8 copies just sitting there! So much for that 110 wait list! I am on page 60 something now.. Pretty good!

Headed down to the Tiger's game tonight..Pretty pumped! ;)