Yesterday I reviewed An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao. Today, I’m pleased to be able to give away one copy of the book – a hardcover if you have a United States address or a Kindle copy if you are outside the US. Just fill out the form below before 11:59pm CST on October 31, 2013. Good luck!
An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Release Date: October 8, 2013
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if it was about half as long and followed more of the traditional romance formula where the couple initially hate each other, then discover they actually love each other, then a conflict breaks them up, and then finally they get back together at the end and live happily ever after. In this book, Shaan and Ruhi are having a conflict and coming back together about every ten pages.It wore me out and got confusing at times. It was often hard for me to understand why Ruhi kept pushing Shaan away when he was telling her he cared for her and she also cared for him. They were already married after all, why not just give it a try?
I have a special place in my heart for India and Indian culture and I think that’s what kept this book from being a two-star book for me. I appreciated the glossary in the back of the book, some of the Hindu and all of the Bengali words were new to me. This was M. Roa’s first novel. She’s a practicing physician so she’s obviously an intelligent person. With a little more practice and better editing, I think she will grow to be a fine author.
Come back tomorrow – I’ll be giving away a copy of An Incurable Insanity to one lucky reader!
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. Check out the other tour stops:
Monday, September 30th: BookNAround
Tuesday, October 1st: Broken Teepee
Wednesday, October 2nd: Fiction Addict
Thursday, October 10th: Must Read Faster
Monday, October 14th: Guiltless Reading
Tuesday, October 15th: Col Reads First Chapter, First Paragraph Intro
Wednesday, October 16th: Storeybook Reviews
Thursday, October 17th: The Best Books Ever
Friday, October 25: Peeking Between the Pages
Monday, October 28th: Book Dilettante
Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked (Junie B. Jones, #23) by Barbara Park
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2004
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Room One is putting on a play. And guess what? It’s about explorers looking for the New World! And there’s ships and sea captains and everything! Plus here’s the bestest news of all—Junie B. Jones thinks she might be the star of the whole entire production! Only, sailing the ocean blue is not as easy as it looks, apparently. ’Cause problems keep on happening. Like the actors keep catching the flu. And bossy May keeps trying to take over the show.
Can this play be saved? Will the ships ever get to land? Or is Room One in for a disaster at sea that they will never forget?
As a parent, I don’t especially like Junie B. Jones. She’s obnoxious, has poor grammar, and uses words like stupid – a bad word in our house. These are all the same reasons my first grader loves her! He’s a bit of a reluctant reader so if Junie B. gets him excited about reading, then I’m willing to tolerate her.
Shipwrecked sneaks in quite a few facts about Christopher Columbus and his voyage to America. Children won’t have any idea that they are actually learning because the story is entertaining and funny. Since this book is for first graders, it doesn’t go into the ethical issues associated with Columbus’s journey, like imperialism and genocide. It actually doesn’t say anything about what happened after Columbus landed – the focus is entirely on the voyage.
If your child is a Junie B. Jones fan, he or she will definitely enjoy this book.
Buy this book at:
Amazon
We went to our favorite pumpkin patch yesterday and had a blast. (I’m starting an informal campaign to get them to replace their disgusting port-a-potties with real bathrooms. I think they can afford it, they serve about 1000 people a day and it’s not a cheap experience. I left them a comment on their Facebook page and you can too if you want.)
We rode the train, watched the pig races – West was picked to be one of the noise makers that encourage the pigs to run – , fed the goats, rode the tricycles around the track, played on the playground equipment, practiced steer roping, and of course took a wagon ride out to the actual patch to pick our pumpkins. Neve picked the smallest pumpkin she could find. We made sure to buy a dozen of their delicious pumpkin doughnuts before we left.
Tuesday night, my dad and I went to see Garrison Keillor read poetry from his new book, O What a Luxury: Versus Lyrical, Pathetic & Profound. The event was sponsored by Rainy Day Books.
Publisher’s Description: O What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound is the first poetry collection written by Garrison Keillor, the celebrated radio host of A Prairie Home Companion. Although he has edited several anthologies of his favorite poems, this volume forges a new path for him, as a poet of light verse. He writes—with his characteristic combination of humor and insight—on love, modernity, nostalgia, politics, religion, and other facets of daily life. Keillor’s verses are charming and playful, locating sublime song within the humdrum of being human.
Most of the poems he read were really funny – I’m sure his delivery made them even more humorous than if you just read them yourself. The one he wrote for his wife when she was in the first trimester of her pregnancy was not only funny, but spot-on. I was a little surprised that a man could empathize so well with what a woman goes through in pregnancy. A few of his poems were quite political, which I didn’t mind at all since we’re on the same side. I wouldn’t call myself a Garrison Keillor fan – I’ve never read any of his books and only listened to him on NPR a few times – but I enjoyed myself quite a bit at this event. My dad and I talked to him afterwards and he was so nice and seemed genuinely interested in what my dad (a Garrison Keillor super-fan) had to say. Here we all are:
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Paperback Release Date: 2008
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Same Kind of Different As Me is the story of Ron Hall, a wealthy white art dealer and Denver Moore, a homeless black man that Ron and his wife Deborah befriend.
I read this book because it was a selection for my stay-at-home mom’s book club. It’s definitely not a book I would have picked up on my own, as it has a heavy focus on Evangelical Christian religious doctrine and that’s not really my thing. I even felt kind of duped by this book because the blurb on the book jacket doesn’t mention anything about God or religion; I felt like they were trying to draw in unsuspecting readers who wouldn’t normally read the book. From some of the reviews I read on Goodreads, I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Ron starts out as a snobby, racist and classist jerk of a guy who is convinced to work at a homeless shelter by his selfless and giving wife Deborah. (Why does Deborah put up with this guy? Good question.) Deborah feels that God is telling her that Ron should become friends with Denver, who has a reputation of being the meanest, most stand-offish homeless man at the shelter. Ron loves and trusts his wife so he does what she asks.. At first, it’s clear that Ron thinks he is doing Denver a big favor by even talking to him and that Ron thinks he is inherently better than Denver because he is rich and white. Thankfully, as Ron gets to know Denver, he realizes that he isn’t better than him and that he been judgmental and wrong in his preconceived notions about homeless and black people. We also learn that Denver isn’t really as mean as he seems.
I appreciated how honest Ron was about how he wasn’t the greatest person when he first started working at the mission. I didn’t relate to the heavy-handed religious aspect of the book and found the constant references to prayer monotonous but I did like reading about Denver’s life and the development of his relationship with Ron.
Buy this book at:
Nikki and Deja: Substitute Trouble by Karen English
Publisher: Clarion Books
Release Date: July 9, 2013
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Deja is dismayed to learn that her teacher has had an accident and a substitute will be taking her place. Under the new sub’s care, nothing is the same in Room Ten. A few of the class troublemakers plot to take advantage of the clueless teacher, and soon other students join in. Should Nikki and Deja go along with the rest of the kids in tormenting him? Should they help him out by tattling on their classmates? Or is there another way to handle the situation?
There are several Nikki and Deja books in this series but each one can stand alone. I’ve previously reviewed Nikki and Deja: Wedding Drama. These books are intended for beginning readers, ages 6-9. Even though the two main characters are girls, my nine year old son enjoyed this book.
This book illustrates why it’s important to behave for a substitute teacher and follow the rules at school in general in a fun way. Nikki and Deja are good girls who follow the rules without being tattletales or goody-goodies. I appreciated how the girls figured out how things would be different if the first sub was more sure of himself.
I really like how this series features children of color without race being the central issue to the story. They add a nice bit of diversity to our home library.
(I received this book courtesy of Amazon Vine.)
For more reviews of books for children and teens, check out Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, you can go to her site to leave a comment and your link .
The Barftastic Life of Louie Burger by Jenny Meyerhoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: June 4, 2013
Publisher’s Description:
Fifth grader Louie Burger figures that with a goofy name like his, he must be destined to be a king of comedy like his idol Lou Lafferman. But he’s only ever performed his stand-up act in his closet, where he and his dad created the most exclusive comedy club ever—if by “exclusive” you mean that no one’s ever allowed inside. With the school talent show coming up, Louie’s wondering if now is his moment to kill (that’s comedian talk for “make actual people laugh”). And maybe, if he brings down the house, he’ll win back his former best friend Nick—who seems to be turning into one of those annoying sporty types—and fend off his dad’s home-improvement obsession, which threatens to remodel Louie’s comedy closet into a private bedroom for his older sister. Barftrocious!
This was a funny book that did a good job of incorporating a lesson about facing your fears and not giving up without being heavy handed. Your child probably won’t even realize that this story has a moral! With Barftastic as part of the title, I was worried that this book would be over the top gross but it wasn’t. There is some barfing and some barf talk but it’s used sparingly.
I wouldn’t call this a graphic novel – there is an illustration every few pages or so. The illustrations are a cute addition to the story. I think that fans of Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid will enjoy reading about Louie Burger.
(I received this book courtesy of Amazon Vine.)
For more reviews of books for children and teens, check out Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, you can go to her site to leave a comment and your link .
This past week was slow and boring. Why? Because I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia again! My lungs are so fired. Unlike last time, I remained conscious the entire time so I was able to get some reading and reviewing done. I did hesitate to start reading until my second day in because I was afraid I would end up in a coma and forget everything I read. Of course that would be the worst part about being comatose, right??
I was also able to keep up with all the blogs I follow and leave some comments and everything. That was nice but not nice enough for me to want to go back to the hospital any time soon. You hear that lungs? Straighten up and fly right!
Peyton Place is the 1957 movie based on the novel of the same name written by Grace Metalious about a small fictional New England town. I’ve wanted to see it for a long time just because Peyton Place is so popular it’s become a synonym for a scandal filled small town. I finally decided to bite the bullet and watch it after it was mentioned in the book Necessary Lies. In Necessary Lies, naive social worker Jane, sees it and is shocked by what’s in it. I really wanted to find out what would be so shocking for a movie made in the late 1950s.
Of course nothing in this movie was shocking by today’s standards but I can see why it was when it was first released. The word sex is used several times, which I can imagine took people aback. Also, one teenage girl tells a boy, “It’s about time you learned that girls want to the same things as boys and they have the right to know how.” What?? Girls like sex too? Revolutionary! Seriously, I’m sure that was a revelation for some at that time. Heck, it might still be a revelation for some people today!
This was a good movie but at 2 hours and 37 minutes, it was about 37 minutes too long. There were several long, meandering scenes that I thought could have been edited down without losing anything. The acting was very affected and dramatic but I think that was the accepted style of acting for that time period. The same goes for the overly dramatic, tympanic score. I’m so glad movies of today aren’t scored that way.
In researching the movie, I learned that it is watered down compared to the book. Now I feel like I must read the original novel to get the full scoop. Apparently the novel has quite a back story as well and there are also books written about the real life story of the author and the town she based Peyton Place on. I have opened up quite a can of worms for myself by watching this movie!
I’m a reading, knitting, scrapbooking, running mom of four crazy kids.
Welcome to the chaos!
