You Won't Forget Precious Jones.

There are certainly some unforgettable book characters in my memory... Olive from Olive Kitteridge, Minny Jackson from The Help, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Enzo the dog from The Art of Racing in the Rain...and I certainly could go on...
But,there are none who will stay with me as much as Clarice "Precious" Jones, the main character in Sapphire's novel, Push.
How can it be described?


Gut wrenching, graphic, devastating.
Heartwarming, encouraging, enlightening.

Yes, all of these things.

It's also worth mentioning that this was my first audio book. It wasn't 5 minutes into my drive to my first day at my new job when tears were streaming down my face. I wore foundation for Pete's sake. I hate foundation. By the time I was at work it was all streaky and weird...
The story, narrated in a very believable voice, really touches you while leaving you stunned at what this character endures. Though a novel, I am sure there are stories out there of kids that have been through similar stories. Heck, I've met a few of them in my career...
The story is as follows- you have a young girl who has every social, physical, emotional, and economical disadvantage one can have. It's her story of how she "plays the hand she's dealt" (my favorite line from the book) and comes out on the other side.
Read it, but be prepared- it's not for the fainthearted. It's not an easy read, but I sometimes find these reads necessary to center myself, regain perspective, and just plan be real. I have not seen the movie, and I'm not sure I will, but I have heard it's also quite touching.

Believer? It will warm your heart and strengthen your faith. Skeptic? Give it a go, see if you rethink your ideas or see a scam. Lost a loved one? You may get some peace. Have young kids? You'll know that if it's as written, it could not have been made up.
A lot of times you have to make a conscious choice to believe. I think this book easily fits into this category. I had moments of tears and am making that choice to believe it. Even if you're unsure, you can read it in about 2 hours and not lose too much time with it. Give it a shot!

Latest in Literature

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein.
I am neither a fan of car racing or fluffy stories, so I hesitated to pick this novel up, figuring that it had elements of both of the aforementioned things. Also, nine times out of ten when you pick a book about a dog you know it's going to die. If you go into it expecting this, you have a better chance of not crying on a plane, like I did here. I won't say if this one is the one out of ten...but I will say it was a pleasant surprise of a read.
The Art of Racing in the Rain is told from Enzo's perspective, a sweet and fiercely loyal terrier mix who throughout the book narrates the life of a young guy, going from bachelorhood to family life over the span of several years. It's very heartfelt and insightful. There are some tough moments, but overall it's a nice read that will leave you appreciating man's best friend all the more, especially if you have one of your own.
You can read more about our families' buddy here and here, and for sure you will notice him in the background of many of our pictures.

Read Me.

There is little I can say about this short story collection, because just reading it will allow it to speak for itself. It's simple, beautifully written, and engrossing despite its regular, everyday life stories.
I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

If You Liked Reading "The Help"...

Meet CeeCee...
Finally, a book that I can recommend to anyone and everyone. (Synopsis from barnesandnoble.com)
"Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell. In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston..."

For those who follow my book reviews, many times I find myself saying that despite the challenging content I love a book, or despite the unconventional material that it should be read. Not this one. It's a crowd pleaser... You will fall in love with CeeCee, and the characters that come with her throughout the book. It's well written, heart wrenching at times, but most of all leaves you smiling at the antics and situations that CeeCee experiences as her life gets put back together...
Happy Reading!

The Hunger Games Trilogy in Review

With all the buzz about these books, I could not resist giving them a try. Right from the start, I knew they were not my usual read. Not even close. They are odd, post-apocalyptic, graphically violent at times, and positively impossible to put down.
Here is the link to Wikipedia, for a full synopsis. Your best bet is to read this to get the gist of the storyline.
I would have to say it's been a while since I got quite this absorbed in a series. I had to finish it. I wanted to sneak upstairs and read with a house full of company. So, clearly they were definitely intriguing and fast paced. The story is original and certainly rich in detail. It is written to the young adult crowd, so it's a pretty easy read, and is of course laced with a love triangle and teenage feelings confusion galore, but not in an annoying way. Overall, I would say books one and two are two thumbs up, while book three is not quite so good, although does bring a satisfying conclusion to the series.

Still Alice in Review

"Relieved, Alice took out the ingredients for the white-chocolate bread pudding and placed them on the counter-vanilla extract, a pint of heavy cream, milk, sugar, white chocolate, a loaf of challah bread, and two half-dozen cartons of eggs. A dozen eggs?? If the piece of notebook paper with her mother's recipe on it still existed, Alice didn't know where it was. She hadn't needed to refer to it in years. It was a simple recipe, arguably better than Marty's cheesecake, and she'd made it every Christmas Eve since she was a young girl. How many eggs? It had to be more than six, or she would've taken out only one carton. Was it seven, eight, nine?
She tried skipping over the eggs for a moment,but the other ingredients looked just as foreign. Was she supposed to use all of the cream or measure out only some of it? How much sugar? Was she supposed to combine everything all at once or in a particular sequence? What pan did she use? At what temperature did she bake it and for how long? No possibility rang true. The information just wasn't there.
What the hell was wrong with me?" pg. 65


The above is an exerct of my latest non-work related read. Alice is a 50 year old linguistics and psychology professor at Harvard University, wife, and mother to three children. She is a top notch, globally respected authority in her field. Until she starts noticing that her eloquent speeches and dynamic talks are not flowing as they used to. Names of people she sees everyday are not coming to her. She gets lost in her own neighborhood, where she has walked everyday for 25 years. She initially blames menopause, stress, etc... but it becomes clear it's more. She is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease. The book is from her perceptive as the disease progresses and dramatically changes life as she knows it, and how she views it's impact on her peers and family.

Personally, I have only heard about Alzheimer's from sad, worried, and frustrated family members. It was a hard but profound read through Alice's eyes. I would highly recommend giving this book a shot. Though you may not experience the warm feelings we all love to get through our stories, it opens your eyes, increases empathy, and is more than worth reading.

Plus, it's a quick read, I finished in 2 days.

Water for Elephants in Review

Since I have finally mastered the art of reading in the car, this was one of two books I dove into on vacation as my gracious hubby drove many hours..
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is a book I started several times before and just never got into despite it's rave reviews and a movie with some big name stars that's beginning to buzz. I applied my 100 page rule this time because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Once I did that, I began to really like it. It's historical (the author spent a lot of time researching the circus in this era) , non-gagging romance, and interesting. I loved the detail in the story, the talented author really paints a picture with her words and leaves just the right amount of suspense in her tale.
I would not call it a "feel good" book or a "beach read". There is some challenging content at times, but it's fitting with the story. I especially loved the ending. You will likely figure it out, and be relieved and delighted at the same time.

Also, watch in the book for how the main character Jacob Jankowki's life shows some parallels to the Biblical Jacob.

Here's the plot summary from Publishers Weekly:
The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures. He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.

The Help in Review

If you read one book this summer... choose this one.
I really cannot remember the last time I read a book so poignant, absorbing, and thought provoking. It's beautifully written, and reads like a memoir even though it's fiction. There are parts that will leave you laughing, other parts will leave you with your mouth hanging open.
When you are done you feel like you miss your friends because the characters grow on you so much.
Tired moms beware: it will keep you up wayyyy to late. But you won't forget it.



Here is the synopois from Amazon.com..
"Newly graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English but neither an engagement ring nor a steady boyfriend, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns to her parents' cotton farm in Jackson. Although it's 1962, during the early years of the civil rights movement, she is largely unaware of the tensions gathering around her town.

Skeeter is in some ways an outsider. Her friends, bridge partners and fellow members of the Junior League are married. Most subscribe to the racist attitudes of the era, mistreating and despising the black maids whom they count on to raise their children. Skeeter is not racist, but she is naive and unwittingly patronizing. When her best friend makes a political issue of not allowing the "help" to use the toilets in their employers' houses, she decides to write a book in which the community's maids -- their names disguised -- talk about their experiences.

Fear of discovery and retribution at first keep the maids from complying, but a stalwart woman named Aibileen, who has raised and nurtured 17 white children, and her friend Minny, who keeps losing jobs because she talks back when insulted and abused, sign on with Skeeter's risky project, and eventually 10 others follow.

Aibileen and Minny share the narration with Skeeter, and one of Stockett's accomplishments is reproducing African American vernacular and racy humor without resorting to stilted dialogue. She unsparingly delineates the conditions of black servitude a century after the Civil War.

The murders of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen through African American eyes, but go largely unobserved by the white community. Meanwhile, a room "full of cake-eating, Tab-drinking, cigarette-smoking women" pretentiously plan a fundraiser for the "Poor Starving Children of Africa." In general, Stockett doesn't sledgehammer her ironies, though she skirts caricature with a "white trash" woman who has married into an old Jackson family. Yet even this character is portrayed with the compassion and humor that keep the novel levitating above its serious theme. "

Olive Kitteridge in Review

My most recent literary delight came in short story form. Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, is one a book I thoroughly enjoyed and will certainly remember. Here is the Pulitzer Prize websites (which this book is a recipient of) summary of the book:


At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

I really loved the way that each story incorporated Olive and her quirks. Each story you read has some meaning, and at times the stories overlap. They are not all "feel good" stories, but very real and true to life. You'll for sure laugh, maybe cry, and definitely relate to this book. I truly think everyone knows an Olive. I know who mine is, who is yours?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I am definitely attracted to most books by a catchy title or cover ( typical cover judger!).
I have to say at first the title of this book made me say "huh?" and it starts a little slow too, which does not help. Then, the story envelopes you. As you begin to read a book that's all letters, it's hard to see how it will come together. Then, about 40 pages in the characters feel like old friends. The premise is there is a famous columnist. Juliet, in London who begins to correspond with the members of a literary society in Guernsey, an island that is part of England, which was overtaken by the Nazi Germans in the 1940's. The islanders begin to share some of their stories and experiences with her via letters, and she begins to want to know more and more about them. This leads her to visit the island... and well...no spoilers here!!

There is a perfect mix of the humorous, heartbreaking, and bittersweet- you feel like you are there. Who does not want a book to do that? The story more than comes together, it warms you and makes you admire the perseverance of all those who lived through German occupancy.

I highly recommend it. In fact, so much so that I even sent my out of town best friend a copy of the book, a letter, and a pack of stationary to go "old school" to try to keep in touch better.

I had the, er, pleasure of tasting potato peel pie. This is the "dessert" spoken of in the book- served at the literary meetings during the occupation and made of the only food they had- potatoes and beets with a potato peel pie crust. At my book group our host made one. It was not as bad as one might think, but boy was I glad we had a 7 layer German Chocolate Cake too!

Julie & Julia In Review

My last read... Julie and Julia. I wanted to read it before the movie.

The basic jist of the book/movie is this:
Julie Powell, a Texas transplant to NYC, is a secretary who is nearing thirty and generally disenchanted with her current life. She treks home for a family visit and dicovers her mother's old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, which peaks her interest. Her husband gives her the idea to start a blog and cook her way through the entire 524 recipe cookbook in a year. The book highlights the ups and downs of her project, and the way it add meaning and a sense of ambition to her life. It also has some humor, frustration, sheer grossness, as well as a few big surprises. The book follows Julie's jounrey and completeion of her goal, and interwines the life of Julia Child into hers.

My thoughts:
First off, this is certainly an appealing and enjoyable read, especially for a blogger! I really enjoyed the straighforward and no bones about it way Julie gets her story across. The images she creates for you are not only hysterical, but cause you to nod in agreement if you too are trapped in a small kitchen trying to make a full meal! Some of her descriptions make you drool, while others make you gag...
I enjoyed reading about someone my age who is in a totally different place in life. I liked her perseverance. Trust me, one aspic and I'd be done... She finished. I always struggle to start and finish things. I admire her for this. I thought it rang true that she had a few "crazy" friends. Don't we all? Don't we all need a few crazy friends?

Though it was not the most riveting book I've ever read, but definitely kept my interest, and definitely kept me laughing. Julie Powell is real. That was the thing that made her most likable to me. Sure, she curses like a truck driver and doesn't discourage her friends from adultery, but she's true to who she is. Gotta love that.

I'll stop here to avoid any spoilers! Happy reading!

Marley and Me: A Review from an Anti-Critic

Let's just say that while I am not overly critical, I certainly appreciate a good piece of literature, and am aware of a bad one. That being said, I am able to enjoy a book for what it is- simple or complex, smart or easy, deep or trashy... whatever..
I recently finished Marley and Me by John Grogan. I did not see the movie, as many have, but certainly went in eyes wide open. (The dog dies people...I mean, hellooo...) So, I was prepared for that. I was prepared for the tears that so many said to expect... "oh, I won't tell you what happens, but I CRIED SO HARD"... The tears came, while alone on a plane at night. The little kid next to me looked sweetly concerned, but did not ask.
In a nutshell, I really enjoyed this book. It was an easy read. So easy that I left it for about a month and dove right back into it. I felt that yes, this book is about a crazy hysterical dog, but more about life. The joys, heartbreaks, obstacles, humor. I think I was literally shaking my head in agreement at a couple chapters as Mr. Grogan described things...
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone at all really. Single, no kids? You'll relate. Married starting a family? Definitely! Those later in life? You'll love the story.
Life changing? No (well maybe in some ways, I heart my dog more now, despite his idiosyncrasies). A literary masterpiece? No. Heartwarming? Yes. That was enough for me.

The Kite Runner in Review

Lately I have struggled with things to write about. While my life is not boring, it does tend to get repetitive. Fortunately, this is just fine by me.

So, anyway, my goal of reading more this year is off to a slow start. But, I did recently finish The Kite Runner by Khalad Hosseni. What a neat book. Certainly not your "feel good" Nicolas Sparks type book, but an eye opener. One that makes you think- about relationships, about the easy life we have here in our luxury life of freedom and safety, even with the hardships of economy and daily life.

In the book, there are two boys... one a poor servant boy (Hassan)and the other the "servee", a rich and more fortunate child (Amir). Hassan and Amir are playmates, like brothers- one living in the main mansion, the other in the servant house. But, due to the cultural differences Amir is always above Hassan. Hassan is highly loyal to Amir, and a gentle spirit, unconditional friend. In the book, Hassan continually makes sacrifice (big ones) for Amir... and says "for you, 1000 times over...", to express his steadfast friendship. In the end, Amir has to attempt to friendship of his devoted Hassan.

I realized through this book that there are only a handful of people in my life that I can say "for you, 1000 times over". It's for those people I am who I am today.

You know who you are.