Everything We Ever Wanted: A Novel by Sara Shepard
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Sylvie Bates-McAllister is a wealthy widow and mother of two grown sons. When she gets a phone call that her younger son Scott may be involved in a hazing scandal at the private school where he coaches wrestling and she is on the board, she and her family are thrown into a panic.
I thought this book moved way too slowly and had a lot of moments that were supposed to be very dramatic that didn’t feel authentic to me. Everyone got worked up about the hazing scandal way too quickly – one phone call and everyone went nuts without knowing any details at all – before any formal investigation or charges were brought. An autopsy on the boy that died hadn’t even been done.
The characters were all very one-dimensional, especially Scott. Sylvie and her late husband adopted Scott when he was a toddler. He is biracial (African-American and white) and Sylvie and the rest of the family are white. Scott’s character is such a stereotype of the urban, angry black man that I was actually angry myself (at the author) as I was reading the book. I think (and hope) that the author’s intent was to show that he was more than that on the inside but that no one gets to know him well enough to figure that out. However, if that was indeed her intent, she did not do a very good job.
The story took a weird turn about three-fourths of the way in and some of the storylines were just dropped with no resolution at all. The way Sylvie’s storyline ended was totally out of left field and left me scratching my head.
Sara Shepard is also the author of the Pretty Little Liars series which I haven’t read but gather must be quite popular since it’s been made into a TV series. Only having read this particular book by Shepard, I can’t see myself reading any of her other books.
This book comes out today. You can buy it at:
Amazon
Powell’s Books
(I received this book courtesy of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.)
October 11th, 2011 in
Books |
2 Comments
Just wanted to let you know that I probably won’t be posting as much in the next couple of weeks because I’ve landed myself in the hospital with some kind of mystery infection. I’ve been here since Thursday and had a chest x-ray, CAT scan, echocardiograph and bone marrow biopsy (which I do NOT recommend unless you have a thing for long needles going into your bones) and they still don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Anyway, the hospital is actually not the best place to get any reading done. I packed quite a few books but it’s hard when someone is coming in every 10 minutes to check vitals or give meds or change my IV bag, etc, etc. So I wouldn’t expect too many reviews to be coming out soon.
I’ll keep you all posted on when I break out of this joint but it’s going to be at least Tuesday before they let me go I think.
September 24th, 2011 in
Family,
Rachel |
2 Comments
Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by Rob Lowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had a huge crush on Rob Lowe when I was in middle school. St. Elmo’s Fire was one of my favorite movies. I watched it over and over and I had the poster of Rob’s character Billy playing the saxophone in my room. When I heard that Rob Lowe had an autobiography coming out, I knew I would have to read it.
The title, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, is very appropriate. The book has a very conversational tone; the reader feels like she is sitting with Rob listening to him tell stories. Rob says he wrote this book without a ghost writer and it’s surprisingly well written and fun to read. Rob is not afraid to name names in his stories and there are A LOT of names to be named. He had several chance encounters with people who are now big celebrities but were virtual unknowns at the time he met them.
My only complaint is that he glosses over some of the more controversial moments in his career. The sex tape scandal at the 1988 Democratic National Convention only gets one paragraph and the words “sex” and “tape” are not even used. He doesn’t mention his former nanny suing him and his countersuit in 2008 at all but that may have happened too late to be included.
Overall, this was a great book. I highly recommend it for any child of the 80s who loved Brat Pack movies and of course anyone who is a fan of Rob Lowe’s today. You will not be disappointed.
By this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
Powell’s Books
September 20th, 2011 in
Books |
1 Comment
An Accidental Athlete: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Middle Age by John “The Penguin” Bingham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
John Bingham is what he describes as an “accidental athlete” or an “adult-onset athlete”. At 43 years old, after years of eating, smoking and drinking too much, he started running. I think I enjoyed this book so much because I could relate to so much of what the author experienced in his life. He was a kid who wanted to play sports and had fun playing sports but wasn’t very good at them. When the day came that he figured out he wasn’t very good, he didn’t want to play anymore.
He had a lucrative career, great house, several motorcycles – all the trappings of success. He thought he has happy. It wasn’t until one day when he decided to move more that he realized life could be better. He started with biking and then decided to try running. When he first started, he ran a 30 minute mile! Even now he is a middle of the pack runner, which I can totally identify with. I really appreciated his philosophies on running; that it’s okay to be slow and the goal really should be to have fun.
The author does get a little repetitive at times, mentioning things in later chapters that he’s already said in previous chapters but it wasn’t enough to get on my nerves. I’m still recovering from surgery so I can’t run right now but after reading his book I really want to get out there again. I’ll probably re-read it when I’m able to actually run again. If you are an accidental or adult-set athlete or even someone who’s been running for most of your life, I think you will really enjoy this book.
By this book at:
Amazon
(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
September 19th, 2011 in
Books |
1 Comment
Cash has been talking to me nonstop for the last hour. He knows I’m a captive audience when I’m cooking. Here’s an example:
Cash: Did Daddy make the post for the mailbox or did we buy it?
Me: We bought it.
Cash: How did he attach the mailbox to the post?
Me: I think it’s screwed in.
Cash: Well, metal is really hard to screw through so did the mailbox come with holes in it?
Me: I don’t know.
Cash: Why don’t we have a wooden mailbox since the post is wooden?
Me: I don’t know.
Cash: What would happen if we had a wooden mailbox?
Me: GO PLAY
*****
West to Cash, “Smell my butt; it doesn’t smell like anything. Then I’ll smell your butt.”
*****
I should not have to say, “Don’t blow your nose into your hand” EVER and yet I say it at least once a day.
Tuesday night I was lucky enough to get to hear Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of Flowers, speak at an event sponsored by Rainy Day Books. It was great – she is so sweet. That’s her family in the picture on the screen behind her.
Here are some of the highlights of her talk:
On September 20th a companion flower dictionary is being released. It’s called A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion
by Mandy Kirkby and Vanessa Diffenbaugh.
The movie rights of The Language of Flowers have just been sold to Fox. I hope they start production soon – I think it would make a great movie!
Vanessa (a foster parent herself) has started a non-profit called the Camellia Network to help foster kids. The meaning of a Camellia flower is “my destiny is in your hands”. Basically she is looking for book clubs, church groups, etc to sponsor kids who have aged out of the foster system and are starting college. It’s like a shower registry where the kids register for things they will need – dishes, a computer, etc. and then your group can choose what they would like to provide the child off of his/her registry. Check out the website for more information. It sounds like a great project; so many kids end up homeless or incarcerated after aging out of the system because they have no support system in place.
Vanessa will have an article in the November issue of Good Housekeeping magazine about her foster son’s graduation.
At the end of the event, everyone got a little rose bush to take home:
It was a very fun evening – a big thank you to Vanessa for coming to Kansas City and to Rainy Day Books for bringing her in!
September 15th, 2011 in
Books |
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The Great Hamster Massacre by Katie Davies
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I don’t review too many children’s books but West picked this off of the Amazon Vine list so I thought I’d go ahead and post my review here too.
Anna is a nine-year old girl with a five-year old little brother named Tom. They both really want a hamster for a pet. Their parents have told them no multiple times but after Anna and Tom’s grandmother dies, they give in and get her two Russian dwarf hamsters. Things are going great until one morning Anna wakes up to find one hamster wounded, one hamster missing and eight dead baby hamsters in the cage. Anna, Tom and their friend Suzanne launch an investigation to find out who massacred the hamsters.
I tried to read this book to West, who is five-years old and Cash, who is seven-years old. It starts out very slow and has a few things that really disturbed my seven-year old – a hamster is cut in half by a sliding glass door and Anna and Tom’s grandmother dies. There is also a discussion of church which mentions that some characters may “go to hell”. My boys abandoned this book at Chapter 10. I went ahead and finished it by myself so I could write my review.
If you have sensitive children like I do, this book could be very disturbing for them. There is also some humor thrown in, I guess for adults reading it, that I found inappropriate. My boys don’t let things go over their heads; they ask questions until they understand it. I don’t want to have to explain why the girls stole a neighbor’s book and read it secretly in the shed (it is implied that the book is an erotic romance book).
I would not recommend this book for most children.
By this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
September 13th, 2011 in
Books |
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Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Tom Violet is a thirty-something husband and father working at a thankless corporate job in Washington DC. He’s just finished writing a book and although he’s too unsure of himself to actually show it to anyone, he dreams of becoming a famous novelist. It just so happens that his father, Curtis, IS a famous novelist and has just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
It’s getting harder for Tom to stomach his life in the corporate world and to make matters worse, he and his wife haven’t been communicating very well lately. Then his father shows up at his door in the middle of the night after having been kicked out by his wife. It’s almost more than Tom can take.
I picked this book because I had been reading so many great things about in around the blogosphere. I was afraid that, as often happens, my expectations would be too high and it wouldn’t live up to the hype. I couldn’t have been more wrong! This was a fabulous book – it’s hard to believe it’s Matthew Norman’s debut novel. The writing is so descriptive and beautiful. It’s also filled with the dry, sarcastic humor that I love. It has shades of Jonathan Tropper and also of the movie Office Space. Tom is obviously flawed but instantly likeable. Actually most of the characters in this book could be described that way. Everyone must read this book – I insist!
By this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
September 12th, 2011 in
Books |
2 Comments
West lost his TV privileges because he peed on Cash. On purpose. In the hallway.
*****
Me, trying to help West hurry up and choose a tie: “This one has guitars on it – that’s pretty cool.
West: “Mommy, I want to look FANCY, not cool!
*****
Cash: How do you spell route like a route in baseball?
Me: I don’t know – what’s a route in baseball?
Cash: You know, when you hit the ball and someone catches it and the umpire yells, “Route!”
*****
West made me a paper throwing star that says, “I love Mommy” on it. He told me I’m to throw it at him whenever he deserves a consequence.
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When Kavita, an impoverished young Indian woman, gives birth to a hazel-eyed baby girl she knows that she will not be able to keep her. Her husband needs a son to help him in the fields and they can’t afford to pay a dowry for a daughter. Kavita makes a difficult journey of many miles with her daughter to an orphanage in Mumbai since the only other option is infanticide, an unfortunate practice in India for some girl babies.
Halfway around the world in California, Somer and her Indian born husband Krishnan have tried everything to have a baby of their own. Finally they decide to travel back to Kris’s homeland to adopt a baby from an Indian orphanage. They come home with a sweet, hazel-eyed baby girl.
The Secret Daughter interweaves the story of the hazel-eyed girl and her two mothers beautifully. The basic struggles of Kavita in India differ greatly from Somer’s problems in America. However, the author shows us that even though they are in vastly different countries some issues are universal, especially for mothers.
I loved the way the author vividly described India; I felt like I learned a lot about Indian culture. She also did a great job of authentically voicing the internal conflict that international adoptees feel as they grow up; at least according to what I’ve learned in my foster/adoptive parent training. I also really appreciated that she included a glossary of foreign terms at the back of the book – I referred to it fairly often.
I highly recommend this book, especially if you have an interest in Indian culture or international adoption.
By this book at:
Amazon
The Kindle Store
Powell’s Books
September 8th, 2011 in
Books |
3 Comments
