A Look Back

What I was reading this time last year: Partials by Dan Wells, and the sequel is coming soon! So excited! This series also has a  "middle ebook" which I'm quite tempted by, I guess we'll see.. maybe it comes up cheap or free on Amazon!

What I was blogging about this time last year: Downton Abbey of course! Remember that time I started using old language with my kids? Yeah, that was funny.

What I was reading this time five years ago: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, which was awesome! I remember walking on the treadmill while reading this one. I was so impressed with her beautiful language, all that after not have language for so long!

What I was blogging about this time five years ago: I got my first author comment on my blog exactly five years ago! And that led to getting my first ARC and doing my first blog tour later that year. I was ecstatic  And all of that led to my learning about local authors and getting out of my shell just a bit to try and get to know them better.

What I was reading this time ten years ago: A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. Loved this book. Loved the grandma! Loved that I got to meet this author a few years later!

What I was NOT blogging about this time ten years ago: Ten years ago we were deep into the planning of our trip over to England and Denmark! Ah, fun times that was!

What do you see when you look back? Is it a good view? :)

A Post About Nothing

Rambling nothing thoughts of the day:

* having fun writing letters so far this month! If you signed up on my form, I'm slowly getting through that!

* loving the new Josh Groban CD, but you knew that.

* tried to watch American Idol on On Demand, it failed on me. I am not impressed!

* I was so healthy today and ate a smoothie for lunch, but then I made cookies and ate a bunch of those. :(

* I started reading Mind Games on my Kindle and have neglected Wolf Hall!

* I'm very excited for LTUE next week. But I know life is going to give me grief for going.

* I thought book club was next week, but no, it's another week AFTER that! I think we got an extra week in there somewhere this month!

* I watched a scary Dr. Who the other day... season 6 episode 2! The Silence guys! Oh my. Filmed in Utah though... how cool is that?

* I seem to be out of blogging post ideas. Someone brainstorm with me and let's come up with something fun!

* Dreamgirls (the musical) which I saw the other night was... okay. But not my favorite. Not a huge fan of that type of music I guess! Up next... Shrek! I think I will really like Shrek!

* I've got a new dishwasher, and it's nice that the dishes finally get clean again! But.. it's smaller than the one before, so we'll be washing more often I think. I'm trying to get to used to a new loading routine. Strange.

* and that's about it from here. Boring, I know.

Booking Through Thursday: Influences

Wow! I haven't done a Booking Through Thursday question in forever! But today, I'm fresh out of blogging ideas and I don't seem to be finishing any books to tell you about, so I thought, why not go back to my blogging beginning and try a question! Ah, the memories!

Here's today's question:

Do other people influence what you choose to read? When a family member recommends something, or a friend says they hated a book you were planning to read … does it affect your reading choices?


I find that I'm influenced on the positive, but not necessarily the negative side of things. Meaning, if people (friends, you guys, sometimes family) say they loved something, I'm anxious to add that to the pile and read it. BUT, if the same people say they hated it, I tend to still want to read it (especially if I already had plans to do so) to find out for myself if I do or don't like it.

I was wanting to say that I hope I'm the one doing the influencing these days, but then, I remembered how often I see the buzz about certain books on the blogosphere and how then I think I HAVE to read it! Sometimes this is very true, but sometimes I'll wait until the buzz dies down and then I'll try it out a little later.

Is it the same for you all? Or do you find you are not influenced at all? Or that you respond to it differently?

Just Joshing

So, it's been awhile since I went on Josh overload, but these past few days have been just that. Well, except "overload" has a bit of a negative connotation, and this overload has been a good awesome thing!

Monday night Josh (do I need to say Groban?  Okay... Groban! For those newbie blog readers!) did a mini sort of concert in New York to celebrate the kick off his new album, which was yesterday. This concert was broadcast into 500 theaters across the country. I wanted to go so bad! But it was my son's 18th birthday and so I figured we'd be at home celebrating.

As it turned out, he and the other kids went off to an extreme sports playground (which I so can't do!) and while they did that, I went to see Josh! All by myself! (I know, I know, but it was seriously the first time I went to the movie theater to see something all alone!)

And it was awesome!

It was just like being at a concert, except the audience was a bit more subdued (we did little golf claps because it felt weird to REALLY clap!), and the sound still wasn't quite as loud as I like. But it was so fun to have him there singing to us and talking to us, the theater crowd, even though he couldn't see us. He was so funny and personable as always and had us all giggling, even all the old folk in the theater!

He sang many of his new songs, but also many of his old songs like February Song, Alla Luce, Vincent and of course, You Raise Me Up (which he introduced by saying for sarcastically that nope, he NEVER gets sick of singing certain songs.. nope never... ha ha! But then explained that he gets and he appreciates it and he will sing it forever!)

The new songs he sang that I remember were Falling Slowly, Una Alma Mas (which he wrote), She Walked Through the Fair (an Irish folk tune,) Below the Line, and then he ended with I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever, which, he said, is something he truly feels. Ah, Josh!!! Fall in love already!!! No more excuses!

Sigh. It was awesome. (Wait, did I say that already?)

And then yesterday morning before I faced what would be a really crazy day, I went to Target and bought the exclusive edition with FOUR bonus tracks! (Don't you love the marketing? I just don't get it, but whatever. Like who would by the other CD sitting there, the poor CD without ALL the songs? NO ONE I tell you!!)

Then all day long as I drove kids here and there and here and there and back again, I blasted Josh. And fell in love with several songs already! So. Much. Fun.


(Updated to add: A link from Spotify! Just had to try this to see if it really works!)

So anyway, it's been a happy couple of Josh days around here and of course, I had to tell you about it.

What singer/band would you go to the store first thing in the morning on release day in order to buy their CD?

Top Ten Tuesday: All Time Favorite Bookish Memories

This is going to be a fun post to write! I'm thinking back in all my whole long life to all my bookish memories (and there are A LOT) and am trying to decide what the best ten should be! This is not an easy task people. But here's what I'm settling on:

Top Ten Bookish Memories..EVER!

1. I'm sorry to list it YET AGAIN and regular readers are going to be sick of hearing about it over and over, BUT, my best bookish memory to date is meeting Markus Zusak. Nothing has yet to compare how awesome that night was.

2. The whole Harry Potter phenomenon will always be something to remember. We were on vacation when the third book came out and it was on the news. I had never ever before in my life heard of a book making news like that. It blew me away. The following books were the first books I'd ever cared about getting on the first day. And it was so much fun!

3. Reading the Little House books. Looking back, I'm not sure these were the best and most exciting books after all! But I loved them and I ate them up and I owned the whole series!

4. Joining online book groups in the mid to late 90s. It was the coolest, COOLEST, I tell you, to be able to connect with people all over the world about books! Who knew? Wow.

5. Scholastic Book Fairs. Both going to them as a kid, and running them for 10 years as a mom. Going to them was so fun, because we could get quite a little handful of books for not much money. It was awesome! And running them? That defined my life for years! And was also lots of fun.

6. Another very specific bookish memory was the day my dad and I were at the library, and we were walking up and down the shelves and he randomly picked a book for me and said, here read this one! So I did, and I LOVED it! It was the love story of Tristan and Isolde (The Enchanted Cup by Dorothy Roberts). The fact that you could just up and pick something, not knowing a thing about it, and that it would end up being so so good, was amazing to me. A whole new world!

7. I've probably mentioned this one before, but once when I was probably 10 or so, we went on a trip and while on that trip we meet up with my dad's cousin who was a librarian. My dad said to him, hey, this kid likes to read, what should she be reading? And he gave me a list that I hung on to for years and methodically went through all the books one by one and read them. They were a bunch of Newbery Awards winners like Island of the Blue Dolphins, Julie of the Wolves, The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frank...something something! This was a defining moment in my bookish life, this list. It was most awesome!

8. Shortly after getting married, we had only one working car. So while my husband was still at work, and even after I had walked a good distance home from school, I would still walk a nice good distance to the public library and check out book after book after book. I remember loving that small little library (which now, by the way, is the BIG Provo Library where so many awesome events happen!) and I felt the need to read EVERYTHING they had!

9. A few years after starting the blogging thing, we had a Utah book blogger party. And there was an author there! (James Dashner) And that's when it occurred to me that readers and authors could actually interact with each other and maybe even be friends. The concept was a big one, and another most awesome bookish memory!

10. One of the first signings I went to was Stephenie Meyer. We crashed a paid event to get in line. When we were discovered, they made us get OUT of line and sit on the chairs and wait and wait and wait.... in order to insure that we would indeed be the VERY LAST people in line. After nearly three hours, we got our books (Twilight and New Moon at the time) signed by a very very tired author! There's been so many book signing lines since then, but this memory is one that stands out and makes me realize the things I'll endure in order to get a book signed!

Ah, there's so many memories! I look forward to hopping around to see what sort things everyone else has listed today! Come and link your stories up over at The Broke and the Bookish!

Book Review: Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Book: Just One Day by Gayle Forman
Genre: YA Romance
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
For: Fun
From: Bought with gift card

I loved this book, which actually has quite the simple plot. Allyson is on a summer European tour and while in England she and her friend ditch the main group to see a different take on a Shakespeare play. Of course there's an awesome looking dude in it! And later when she sees that guy on the train she takes a major risk and goes to spend a day in Paris with him.... just one day!

Well, things do not end as you might expect and she comes back to her normal life and wonders what the heck happened in Paris! In fact, she wonders so much that she can barely function. So when she gets a chance, she goes back to try and discover some answers and figure things out.

I loved it because it really gives an interesting look at the oh so very romantic city of Paris. They don't do the normal things, and that was fun. I'm hoping to see Paris really soon myself, and I'm sure I'll probably do the normal things, but I'm hoping I can squeeze in a few off the beaten path things too. That is always such a cool way to see a city.

There was lots of other traveling tidbits in this book too that were lots of fun and basically, let's just say, this book will want to make you see the world.

However, if you are a mom of a girl about the age of this girl, it will make you crazy! To imagine my daughter doing the things and making the choices this girl did? Yeah, scares me to death.

I also found it interesting that this book is not your normal romance. Nothing happens quite as you expect. And I now I can't wait for the next book! (From the guy's point of view this time.) Much needs to be resolved!

Bottom line: I really loved it.

Other Reviews:

Emotions filling every pore and just releasing and turning you into a wreck. From Books With Bite

Forman clearly wants her readers to be frustrated and confused and angry. I think my reaction stems from how real this book seemed. From Anna Reads

There is to be a sequel, presenting the story from Willem’s point of view. Let’s hope he’s more interesting. From Rhapsody in Books

I really enjoyed seeing Allyson and Willem's interactions. It never felt dull... From Book Chic Club

I mean this book, it makes you think about everything big and small. From Buried in Books

Currently: UnSuperbowl

C  U  R  R  E  N  T  L  Y

(as written on Sunday morning/afternoon)

Listening: at the moment? Not much. A quiet-ish morning house. But here's a song I want to share with you, a song I am loving so so much:
. 

It's a cover of a Bob Dylan song, and the one that they use for the show Parenthood, though they have changed it up so much in this version that I hardly recognized it. I LOVE what they've done with it. Gives me chills!!

Eating: healthy! Well, at least making a stab at it. Though I did have ice cream last night at a birthday party (passed on the cake though) and wow, it tasted good!

Loving: the mini bloggiesta this weekend! We TRENDED last night during the chat! How cool is that! And I thought it would be a "mini" thing with not near as many people, but you all TALKED a lot and it was great, so thanks for that and here's hoping all your blogs are looking shiny today! I have yet had a chance to really work on more things today, but I did a few things yesterday. So that's good.

Reading: Wolf Hall! Trying to finish up my segment of the week. I'm a bit behind. I'm anxious to jump into some other books now though. And some ARCs I've got on the Kindle! Anxious I tell you!

Feeling: quite good today! Last night I felt weird, but I feel much better today. Amazing what a little sleep can do!

Watching: NOT the Superbowl! But I'm still holding out hope that someday I can host an UN-Superbowl party! I think that would be fun, but, not sure how... or who.

But this week, it was "fun" to see everyone's reactions to the Downton Abbey episode that I endured all alone a few months ago when I watched it online! Wasn't that the worst???

And Vampire Diaries continues to intrigue! Sheesh, that show is crazy!

And I haven't watched any American Idol and it feels weird.

We watched Pitch Perfect over the weekend, rented from Redbox. I enjoyed the singing, but the story was debatable, and the kids were crude. I would love it, LOVE it is someone would be brave enough to make a movie about singing high school (or college as this one was) kids and leave out all the crap. Please?

Wanting: The Josh Groban CD... Tuesday! So excited! Yep, I'm still on board with this guy and his songs. Love.

Thinking: that it's impossible that kid #3 is turning 18 tomorrow. Not really happening, right? Someone stop this time thing! I'm tired of it going so fast!

Exercising: Not really. Zumba once. It's like I can only concentrate on either the food end or the exercise end. This week, it was the food I guess. 

What's new this week for you all?