TUESDAY TOP THREE: Chick-Lit Summer Releases

I just devoured my Entertainment Weekly that focuses on all upcoming summer entertainment: movies, music, and books. I added a bunch of books to my wish list once I finished this issue, and after I looked at what I added - it seems most of them are of the chick-lit variety.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

To say that I went out of my way to read this book is an understatement. I stayed up late, woke up early, and sequestered myself in my room to finish this book. This book was GOOD! I've only read a few other dystopian YA novels because all of the descriptions sound lame, but this is the first book that has come close to THE trilogy, The Hunger Games.

Summary: In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself. 

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.

The Radleys by Matt Haig

I found out about this book through my trusty Entertainment Weekly a while back and finally got around to reading it. This book is such a departure from any vampire books/TV that I have seen. I almost didn't know how I felt about it because it was so different. It was not teen angst-y like Twilight, or overly smutty like True Blood, and definitely not dark and twisted like an Anne Rice novel. The intriguing part of this book was that it was that it reads like a typical family drama...except the family is full of vampires.

Publishers Weekly Summary: Dr. Peter Radley and his wife, Helen, have fled wild London for the village of Bishopthorpe, where they live an outwardly ordinary life. The Radleys, who follow the rules of The Abstainer's Handbook (e.g., "Be proud to act like a normal human being"), haven't told their 15-year-old vegan daughter, Clara, and 17-year-old son, Rowan, who's troubled by nightmares, that they're really vampires. A crisis occurs when a drunken classmate of Clara's, Stuart Harper, attacks her on her way home from a party and inadvertently awakens the girl's blood thirst. Peter's call for help to his brother, Will, a practicing vampire, leads to scary consequences.

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Everyone is all atwitter about this new book about ESPN. I've never been a huge fan of ESPN and usually only watch out of the corner of my eye when Ethan is catching up on baseball news. But I can't resist a good gossipy book, so this weirdly interests me.

The book features the history of ESPN and how it was a network that almost didn't happen. They also get into what the culture at ESPN is like. Apparently it's based out of a tiny town in Connecticut (Bristol). The town is supposedly very boring and that boredom helps drive a number of illicit behaviors in the ESPN offices. A Time article I read (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2073818,00.html) says this: The culture in Bristol was intense, and intensely male. Betting on games was epidemic. There were drugs. There was sexual harassment. There was sex in the stairwells. "We had no social life because we worked all the time," an early director of production says. "There were a lot of interoffice romances going on because you didn't have a chance to meet anybody else...People who you never thought would get divorced were getting divorced, and a lot of those guys didn't have any regard for women." The company kept an apartment in Manhattan, and at one point it came out that some of the secretaries were turning tricks there, pimped by a guy in the mail room. 

TUESDAY TOP THREE: NY Times Best Seller List

I've been racking my brain for a really good Tuesday Top Three topic and am at a loss...so then I hit up the NY Times Best Seller list for inspiration and decided that this is my topic for today! There are several books on this list that I have read, a couple that I want to read, and lots that I don't want to read. Here are a few that standout to me.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (+ Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zucko)

I've already posted a "halfway through the book" review (here: http://bit.ly/jORdwl), but since I've finished the book here's my 100% full take on the book...it was REALLY GOOD! There were parts that I would have cut out so that the book read a little quicker, but overall it was really engaging  and I've found myself babbling to other people about the things I've found out about from the story.

Quick summary: Louis Zamperini grew up a troubled kid and was in and out of trouble in his youth. His older brother got him into the sport of running. From there, Zamperini went on to be an Olympic athlete and came very close to reaching the elusive 4:00 mile (many speculate that he could have reached that mark if he didn't go off to war). With the looming war, Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was stationed in Hawaii. One day he took off in his B-24, The Green Hornet, on a search mission and his plane crashed in the Pacific. He and 2 other men survived and floated for 44 days while sharks circled the rafts. They were eventually picked up by the Japanese and became POWs. From there our story takes us through Zamperini's horrific time spent in POW camp.

Mid-book Review: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

I'm only about halfway through this book and have already developed a love/hate relationship with it. Because you should always end on a positive, I'll start with the ugly.

My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares

I just read about this book on one of the book blogs I follow (bookfinds.com/blog) and I'm doing small herkies at my desk because this book sounds A-MAY-ZING.

It's by the same author (Ann Brashares) who wrote Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This is a very young adult book that I'm not afraid to say I love and also own. She also wrote a chick-lit book last summer, The Last Summer (of You and Me), which was also good...but not great. I wouldn't go out of your way to read it.

But holy cow! This book sounds really good. (Maybe a little Nicholas Sparks-ish, though.)

Updated Wish List

I've mentioned before that I often have to go through my Amazon Wish List and clean it up based off books I've read, random books I've added, and of course any books that have recently been released and I need to read ASAP.

It must be because of the upcoming summer months, but I have a lot of books in my wish list that I'm really excited about getting into. Below are some of my tops...

Blameless by Gail Carriger

This is the 3rd book in the Parasol Protectorate series...I've blogged before about the first two books in the series, Soulless and Changeless (http://bit.ly/l9dHiC). While the book was really fun to read, it definitely fell to the bottom when compared to the other two books in the series. More on that later...

Quick summary: Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season.

Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London's vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires -- and they're armed with pesto.

The Red Tent by Anita Diaman

I don't typically read books like this, but this book came highly recommended to me so I had to check it out.

(I haven't read either of these books in a while, so I'm leaning heavily on other book reviews that I've just read to refresh my memory.)

Just to clear the air, the Red Tent was used back in the olden days by ladies when they were having their time of the month and where they went to have babies. So there was lots of lady time going on in that tent.

Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen

I almost didn't read this book because for whatever reason, the premise didn't especially sing to me. But I'm so glad I did!! It's  a chick-lit style book, but it has a lot more depth than I expected. I think this is a story that people can actually relate to...I know that I found myself thinking about the story a lot long after I put the book down.

Quick summary: Julia is a 30-something successful event planner in D.C. and is married to her high-school sweetheart, Michael. Michael enjoyed rapid success with his start-up company and now the two are living the life of the rich and famous. One night Michael has a heart attack and is dead for 4 minutes. When he wakes up, he realizes he was living his life all the wrong way and wants to give away everything that he has built and re-build his relationship with his wife (which deteriorated as he devoted so much time to work). But Julia isn't sure she's up to re-building that relationship and is pissed that her husband wants to give away everything that he has worked for (and she has sacrificed for). And so our story begins...

If You Were Here by Jennifer Lancaster

I've never watched a book trailer before (and didn't really know they existed), but I just watched this one for Jennifer Lancasters new book that came out yesterday. I've written about this author before and reviewed her memoirs and her hilarious blog...but this is her first foray into fiction. And it looks really cute!!


TIDBIT: Since I've posted about her blog I've had a renewed interest in what she's writing and have actually "liked" her on Facebook and really get tickled over her status updates. It's a nice break from reading about the size of people's babies, political point of views, etc.


Now is the big debate of do I Kindle purchase, real book purchase, or library book it....

A Visit from the Goon Squad...again.

A lot has happened for this book since I finished it!

It recently won a Pulitzer Prize....which by the way, I'm so proud of myself for having read a Pulitzer winning novel. It makes me feel super smart and with the times. ESPECIALLY since I recommended this book out to a few people before it won the Pulitzer (granted it had one several other literary prizes by the time I read it). Usually books that win awards are not my style of books, so I'm happy that I was able to enjoy such a well-respected novel.

But the bigger news (at least to me) is that I just read in my Entertainment Weekly that this is being adapted into a HBO series! The way that the characters in the book are written seems like a recipe for a really fun series. Especially the way the book jumps from years past to present. That could lead to some really interesting filmmaking. The article also noted that the author will serve as a consultant for the show, but will leave the adaptation part of it to the producers. That makes me a little nervous because then the integrity of the book is at risk - but it's also HBO and I haven't seen a series on that network that I haven't enjoyed yet (ahem...The Wire).

Go read the book. You'll feel smart for reading such a well-respected book AND it's a really fun book to read.

TUESDAY TOP THREE: YA Dystopia

Ever since the Hunger Games came out, there has been a flood of  novels centered around a similar formula. A young person (typically a girl) is in some futuristic society where the rulers dictate everything that happens to its people. This young person finds out that there's a better way to live, usually is juggling between 2 guys, and attempts a rebellion.

Because I enjoyed the Hunger Games so much, I tried to stay away from any similar novels - but there are a couple that have caught my eye...

Game of Thrones

I'm going to break down and do it. I heard about this series a while back, but likened it to Lord of the Rings and figured that the books were going to be too thick and more fantasy-minded than I like - so I turned my nose up at it.

But then I saw the first episode on HBO a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed the show...so of course I had to check the book out further and ended up downloading the first chapter free on my Kindle. HOLY COW it was really good. From the first chapter I've read it seems a bit like Outlander and Lord of the Rings. Or the perfect amount of romance, adventure, and fantasy.

It's a little daunting to think about launching into this series (which is actually called A Song of Fire and Ice series) because the first book is pretty hefty...and there's 4 books in the series with another book coming out in July and 2 more planned after that. The books range from 800-1100 pages long, so to call this an epic series is the perfect description.

Getting into a series like this can be intimidating. I've heard that there's a lot of characters and stories swirling around in the books and that sometimes the author will leave a cliffhanger for a long time (the length of a book...that may make me crazy!) - but I think if I know that going into it, then maybe I can handle it.

I also have to be in a certain frame of mind to start a book like this...it doesn't seem like a novel that you can drag out for a while and that you really have to really sit down and immerse yourself in it in order to understand the story. I have a couple of library books to get through and then I think I'm going to hunker down with this and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted on progress...