November Monthly Recap

My list of books read this month:

Fallen by Lauren Kate: Luce meets two strangely interesting, yet different guys when she starts a new school and that sets off all kinds of trouble.

The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks: The story of how a Traveler and the Harlequin trained to protect him, come together to fight against the oppressions of this futuristic society.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: Henry looks back on his experiences in Seattle during the Japanese internment.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger: After their aunt dies, these twin girls go to London to live in her apartment and some strange and bizarre things begin to happen.

Farworld: Land Keep by J. Scott Savage: Marcus and Kyja continue their adventures of solving riddles and meeting interesting creatures as they try to find the Land Elementals.

A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander: Lady Emily's friend's husband is accused of murder so she goes on a quest to prove him innocent.

Favorites of the month: Hotel at the Corner, Fallen, and Farworld.

Honoring Dewey with a New Challenge: Support Your Local Authors

It was one year ago today that as I opened my Reader, I was greeted with the news that one our best book bloggin' buddies, Dewey, had passed away. The news traveled quickly through the book blogging community and it was an amazing thing to witness everyone coming together to think of ways to honor Dewey, and to keep her visions and projects alive.

As part of that, I've had a wonderful time helping out with Weekly Geeks from time to time, and by participating in Dewey's Books Challenge. I loved every one of those books I read for that one!

And now there's a mini challenge posted by Kailana of The Written World, suggesting that we do something new, or contribute in some way, to the book blogging community as a way to honor Dewey on this one year anniversary.

So, I've been pondering for awhile this challenge idea, and this seems like the perfect time to lay aside all my fears and worries and just throw it out there and see what happens.

My idea is to have a challenge called Support Your Local Authors. I'm always trying to stay up-to-date with what my local authors are writing and I think it would be fun to make it official and get others to join me. The idea is that where ever we live, we try to read the books that authors who live in our area are writing. I think it wold be fun to get to know each other better this way, and learn which authors live near everyone. Besides that, it's just cool to support your local authors!

I'd like to make this one of those ongoing challenges, with really no deadline, and just have it be a goal to read a certain amount of books during the year from your local author stash. You can try to catch up with past books, or simply try to keep up with the new books. You can help discover new authors and promote them, or help to maintain the "old" ones.

If you are interested, let me know in comments and if there's enough people then perhaps I'll go the next step and create a new blog as a place to keep track of everyone. I'm nervous that everyone is overly "challenged" these days, so it will be interesting to see what y'all think.

Review: Farworld: Land Keep by J. Scott Savage

Book: Farworld: Land Keep by J. Scott Savage

Genre: YA (Middle Grade actually) Fantasy

Rating: A

For: Fun... and to Support My Local Authors (hey, would anyone be interested in a challenge with such a premise as this?)

This story continues the adventures of friends and buddies, Kyja and Marcus, that began with Far World: Water Keep. They are on a quest to save Farworld from the Dark Circle. They've learned that to do this, they must gather the support from all the Elementals: water, land, air and fire. So this book takes them through some amazing adventures as they seek out the Land Elementals.

I love the theme that carries over from the first book, finding the magic within yourself. Also, this book ponders the idea of sacrifice, and what certain things, or people, are worth to you. What would you give up to help someone? Some pretty deep subjects to touch on as we bounce from one crazy thing to another!

Kyja and Marcus(one from Earth, one from Farworld... one with magic and one without) are tested over and over as they try to solve riddles, and figure out the strange things they come up against. Everything is very fast-paced and never boring or dull.

Seriously, it's quite the adventure. If you enjoyed the first one, and I know tons of you did because there was huge blogger blitz going on with it when it came out, then you don't want to miss this one.

And of course, there's that ending! Yet another one where I banged the book against my head and said, "You've GOT to be kidding me!" These authors... they know we love it.

The Sunday Salon: Whew! What a Weekend!

Here it is Sunday, the end of a fun-filled, crazy, Thanksgiving five day weekend! I feel like I'm just coming back from a long vacation, and yet, I haven't gone anywhere. I had so many plans to accomplish so many things, but I ended up playing the whole time and getting nothing at all done.

Wednesday: The five day weekend begun. We were all free from school and work. I think I did get a very very small bit of shopping done this day. We all split up and went our separate ways that afternoon. The kids thought that was especially great since they were out on the town on their own too. That evening we just hung out.

Thursday: We joined my family for dinner around noon, and spent the rest of the day with them. I made four pies and the sweet potatoes. We finished off the pies when we got home, but there's still lots of sweet potatoes left!

Friday: Slept in until nearly 11:00! Now THAT's what I'm talking about! :) None of this shopping at 4:00 am for me! But even with that good sleep, I didn't feel too great that day and ended up resting a lot during the day. I had plans to shop later, but ended up not going out at all until evening when we had yet another family party. This time at a brother's house who couldn't make it to Thanksgiving the day before. We had pizza, white elephant presents, and decorated cookies. We came home and watched Survivor (On Demand) and read until late.

Saturday: Slept in until.... ugh... nearly 11:00 a.m. AGAIN! Then, my sister, who had been trying to figure out a sister's New Moon adventure, called and said we had to go to the noon showing! So JJ and I got ready quickly and met my two sisters at the theater and saw New Moon again... dejavu from the Saturday of last week. I loved seeing it again. Totally enjoyed it all. Then we came home, ate pizza leftovers with the boys who were watching the big rival game, then went BACK to the movies and saw The Blind Side. What a wonderful inspirational movie that is! And then, when we got home from that, everyone left, and it was time to go to bed already. I did NOTHING but watch movies and worry about food all day long. Oh, and Moder bought a beta fish. Add that to our pet list now!

Sunday: Today is actually being fairly normal. Church, dinner, and now blogging and hopefully reading, all followed by Amazing Race later. Oh, and a nap sometime. Because even with all that sleeping in all weekend, I'm still tired. Funny how that happens.

Book related, when I had reading time this weekend, I managed to get myself totally immersed in the Vampire Diaries saga. Totally different from the TV show. Character names are the same, but that's pretty much it. And I've been reading my Wilkie Collins book, Hide and Seek, quite a bit. It's fun too.

But I haven't done any shopping, and we planned to paint Toto's room and that didn't happen, and I wanted to get all ready for the big church party I'm in charge of this Friday and I didn't do much with that. I need to finish getting the outside lights figured out, and turned on. But the tree and the rest of the decor... they are waiting until next weekend I'm thinking.

What a crazy weekend. Fun, but crazy.

How did your weekend go? Crazy too? Or were you able to relax? Did you get any reading done at all?

I'm Thankful For....

• libraries


• dishwashers


• quilts


• kitties


• drums


• cars


• levis and tshirts


• happy kids


• a supportive husband


• chocolate chips


• a huge extended family


• travel opportunities


• cameras


• indoor plumbing


• authors


• book bloggin' buddies


• Josh Groban


• mountains, trees, flowers and rain


• fresh tomatoes


• book shelves


• computers


• music


• Honey Bunches of Oats


• electricity


• book clubs


• memories


• grandma and grandpa


• air conditioning


• perms


• Ibuprofen


• ice cold water
• freedom


• and last, but not least, BOOKS!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Thoughts on New Moon

Just in case you wondered, here's what I thought about New Moon:

What I liked:

- the dialogue wasn't as cheesy, in fact, it was often quite funny

- Bella's friend, Jessica, was great!

- Jacob with short hair

- Jasper's one line

- Charlie

- all the work Taylor L. went through to create the perfect (and shirtless) Jacob

- the almost kisses (thanks to Brodi Ashton for that term!)

- the creepiness of Aro

- smiling Jacob

- Bella and Edward's chemistry

- Alice

- the sparkle was improved

- the wolf pack

What I didn't like:

- I meant to notice the music, and then I didn't. This bugged me. Did it mean I was wrapped up in the movie, or did it mean the music didn't stand out?

- too much slo-mo

- Bella and Edward do too much mumbling

- I needed more Volturi stuff. It seemed longer in the book and flew by in the movie. There was tons of Dakota Fanning build up and then.... she was gone in a flash.

- it was over too soon,

- and that ending was extremely abrupt!

I wanted an audience that was into it, but not too screamy, and we lucked out there too. They laughed at all the right times, and oohed and aahed at the right times, but didn't overly freak out at the wrong times. So, it was great! Fun movie. I enjoyed it.

Now, what to see this weekend during the holiday?

The Sunday Salon: Sick of Reading?

I had a tiny little Twitter conversation with Kelly of The Written World where we were moaning about not being too drawn into our books this past while and starting lots, but not finishing any. She said, "Maybe we're just tired of reading."

What? Did she really say that?? Tired of reading? Me? Us? Is that even possible!!??

But then I thought, hmmm... you know what.... I think that perhaps she's right. What a weird thought that is, but perhaps I'm just tired of reading. Maybe it's time to haul out the sewing machine and quilt something for Christmas. Maybe I should catch up on some scrapbooks. Maybe I should jump into the Christmas prep wholeheartedly, without complaining, and actually have fun with it.

Maybe I should stop stressing about getting challenges done by year's end, or reaching some 100 books read goal (no way that's going to happen this year!) Maybe I should stop reading what I feel must/needs to be read, and only read what I want to.

What if I went for a whole week without reading? No, now that's just going to far!

Have you ever been just plain old sick and tired of reading? Do you ever take a week off? How'd it go?

Books I am reading/should be reading this Sunday:

Hide and Seek by Wilkie Collins: my post for this book for The Classics Circuit will be up on Dec. 8. Be sure to drop by then. I'm enjoying the book, it's just not grabbing me, you know. But I will finish and have a post.

The Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander: I need to get this borrowed book back to it's owner. And I'm halfway done, and I'm just not into it.

The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley: I grabbed this one because it fit into my purse, and I needed something on the run. But so far, I have no idea what's happening. But I know I'm going to love it... soon.

Farworld: Land Keep by J. Scott Savage: The treadmill book. Just a few more pages! And I have been loving it. Very exciting, fast paced story. After tomorrow's walking session, I'll have figure out a new treadmill book.

What the family is reading:

The Mr.: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

JJ: The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith

Moder: The Odyssey by Homer

Toto: Pendragon book #6 by D.J. MacHale