What I have been reading...

Hello,

I haven't done a book review in a while so I need to catch up!  I've haven't ready anything great, but I found a new fun series.

First up...

"The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat" by Edward Kelsey Moore



The synopsis of from Goodreads.com: "Meet Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. . . Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is home away from home for this inseparable Plainview, Indiana, trio. Dubbed “the Supremes” by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they weather life’s storms together for the next four decades. Now, during their most challenging year yet, dutiful, proud, and talented Clarice must struggle to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband’s humiliating infidelities. Beautiful, fragile Barbara Jean is rocked by the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair. And fearless Odette engages in the most terrifying battle of her life while contending with the idea that she has inherited more than her broad frame from her notorious pot-smoking mother, Dora."

My thoughts:  Usually I feel like there's something a little "off" when a book about about women's lives is written by a man, but this left me happily surprised.  This book isn't super deep, or life changing, but it's a good story and I always love books set in the Midwest.  This would be a good summer read.

Next...

"Keep Sweet" by Michele Dominguez Greene

The synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Alva Jane has never questioned her parents, never questioned her faith, never questioned her future. She is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-eight siblings. This is the only world Alva has ever known, and she has never thought to challenge it. 

But everything changes when Alva is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss. Beaten, scorned, and now facing a forced marriage to a violent, fifty-year old man, Alva suddenly realizes how much she has to lose--and how impossible it will be to escape"

My thoughts: Now this book is about serious, terrible stuff.  Usually I am all about freedom of religion, but this is not ok.  But I like to read literature about new things so I can understand them.  This didn't really help me understand, and in the end the main character resolved her problems so fast for someone so brain washed I was just like NO.

And finally...

"Some Girls Bite"  by Chloe Neill

The synopsis from Goodreads.com: "I was a grad student until Chicago vampires announced their existence to the world, and a rogue vampire attacked me, scared by the master of Cadogan House. To save me, Ethan Sullivan converted me. The Lord of the Hyde Park manor is tall, green-eyed, full of four centuries worth of charm. Suddenly I am handy with serious weaponry, and pursued by an unknown enemy."

My thoughts: This series (the Chicagoland Vampires) is my new guilty pleasure - they are in Chicago, there's mystery, and ridiculously cool vampires.  And the characters are a bit over the top, but for the most part they deal with things normally - like Merit is actually upset that she was turned into a vampire against her will, she appreciates her friends etc... and most of all she is not a Bella Swan.  Although the cover art doesn't quite match the description of the main character.  There's also witches and water Nymphs and who knows what else and it's a fun easy read.   

What are you reading?  Suggestions are always welcome!

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club

Hello,

I have been so bad about doing book Reviews!  I'd like to do my own Book Club Link up if any of you are interested...

This past week I read "On the Come Up" by Hannah Weyer

Here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Based on a true story, an impassioned and propulsive debut novel about a headstrong girl from Far Rockaway, Queens, who is trying to find her place in the world Written in an urban vernacular that's electrifying and intimate, On the Come Up introduces a heroine who is irrepressible, dynamic, and unstintingly honest. Thirteen-year-old AnnMarie Walker dreams of a world beyond Far Rockaway, where the sway of the neighborhood keeps her tied to old ideas about success. While attending a school for pregnant teens, AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Astonishingly, improbably, and four months before she's due to give birth?she lands a lead role. For a time, AnnMarie soars?acting for the camera, flying to the Sundance Film Festival, seeing her face on-screen. But when the film fades from view and the realities of her life set in, AnnMarie's grit and determination are the only tools left to keep her moving forward. Told with remarkable compassion and based on the real-life story of Anna Simpson, whom the author met during the filming of the award-winning Our Song, Hannah Weyer's debut novel is an incredible act of literary ventriloquism that powerfully illuminates the lives of the urban unseen."

My thoughts:  I wanted to really like this book.  But it needed to be about 300 pages longer.  Or only focus on a few years of her life.  It was spread so thin that I just felt like it was filled with flat stories in a way... and this could be a very, very powerful story if told right.  It doesn't do the real life "AnnMarie" justice.

What have you been reading?

Jasmine

My Favorites of 2013!

Hello,

I took a bit of a break from the blog during the holidays and I thought a bit about all the things I enjoyed this year. I love to read lists of people's favorites so you are forced to read mine!

Movies:

Django Unchained - I know it came out late 2012- but I didn't see it until 2013!



I am not usually that big of a Quentin Tarantino fan but this movie was so interesting, and an amazing story.

That's pretty much it - I saw Anchorman 2 and it was funny but not a cinematic masterpiece per se.

TV-
"Girls" (again not totally new - but I just started watching it in 2013. 

"Orange is the New Black" - Did you know this was based on real events?  Way to go Netflix for creating excellent TV!

"Derek" - again with Netflix original series - I pretty much love anything Ricky Gervais does anyway, but this is touching, funny and so thoughtful.

Books -

I plan on doing a video on how I rate books - because I think it's a bit different than most people.  So here are a few I really liked this year.

"A Tale for the Time Being"



Really original and unexpected bits.

"The Painted Girls"



I like historical fiction and with this you can look at the art as you read the story and it gives it an interesting perspective.


"How to be a Woman"


I don't agree with everything, but that's what I like - it makes you think!


"Gone Girl"



This was by far my favorite - there's just so much drama between the 2 main characters that define the term "there is a thin line between love and hate". 


Makeup -

Ipsy!


For $10 bucks a month I am ALWAYS pleasantly surprised.  Such a fun treat each month.

Sonia Kashuk Cream Bronzer -



Bronzers for pale girls are hard to find - here's the review Sonia Kashuk Bronzer


Boots No 7 Cleansing Water


$7.49 of pure goodness (available at Target, Ulta, Drugstore.com)


I hope to find more wonderful things in 2014!

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Inner Beaty Friday - Book Club!

Hello.

It is Friday and time for Book Club - I will be linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde

 



This week I read "Dark Places" by Gillian Flynn.  She also wrote "Gone Girl" which I really liked, and both of these books are being made into movies that will come out next year.  These books are the type in a way that I feel lend them well to movies...but we shall see, literally.

 

 

Here's the Synopsis from Goodreads.com - "Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.

The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club… and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer."

 

 My thoughts - Well that synopsis pretty much sums it up.  I will say I liked it I think in part because the main character and I would be the same age, and her descriptions of the 80's "Devil worship" hysteria was so dead on that it made to the story more real to me.  I guess because I grew up in the Midwest too - I could just picture the everything really clearly.  I'm not big on murder mysteries but Gillian Flynn makes them more palatable to me.

 

Do you have a favorite mystery writer?

 

Jasmine

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

Once again it is Friday and time to link up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde. for Book Club!



This week I read two books.  One fiction and one non-fiction, both were quite good!

First I read "Why do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?" by  Ilana Garon (Catchy title - right?)

 Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "According to Ilana Garon, popular books and movies are inundated with the myth of the hero teacher the one who charges headfirst into dysfunctional inner-city schools like a firefighter into an inferno, bringing the student victims to safety through a combination of charisma and innate righteousness. The students are then saved by the teacher s idealism, empathy, and faith. This is not that type of book. Here, Garon reveals the sometimes humorous, oftentimes frustrating, and occasionally horrifying truths that accompany the experience of teaching at a public high school in the Bronx. The overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks, and abundance of mice, cockroaches, and drugs weren't the only challenges Garon faced during her first four years as a teacher. Every day, she d interact with students dealing with addiction, miscarriages, stints in juvie, abusive relationships, and gang violence. These students brought with them big dreams and uncommon insight and challenged everything Garon thought she knew about education. In response, Garon a naïve, suburban girl with a curly ponytail, freckles, and Harry Potter glasses opened her eyes, rolled up her sleeves, and learned to distinguish between mitigated failure and qualified success. In this book, Garon explains how she realized that being a new teacher was about trial by fire, making mistakes, learning from the very students she was teaching, and occasionally admitting that she may not have answers to their thought-provoking (and amusing) questions."

My thoughts - Almost the whole way through the book I thought the stories were very interesting but that Garon was treating the serious problems plaguing these kids with a bit too much humor.  I then got to the Epilogue where she rounded up her thoughts a bit and it all became more clear why she told her story the way she did.  And honestly my issues with her story have to do more with the "overly" serious way I see the world than with her writing.  It is a very eye opening look into an inner city education.    

Next up - "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth

 

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves, and herself, while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love."  (shortest synopsis ever?)

 

 

My thoughts: I always like the 2nd book in the series it seems - (Same with Hunger Games and Delerium).  Tris got less serial killer-ish in my mind and more "real".  The only thing that I didn't really like is it seemed like 80% of the book is just a build up to the final book.  There's all these unknown things that no one can tell people, and secrets people are keeping that you know are going to be the basis of the third book - which I get (that's how you sell your next book).  I just wanted a little more meat to this part of the story.  Even the cover is kind of like I feel about the book - there's the broken city but the train is going out of the city on a bridge (this book) to the unknown that is very scary, but why?

Have you read anything great lately?

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

Once again it is Friday and time for Book Club, so I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde.





This week I read "A Tale for the Time Being" by Ruth Ozeki

Here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home."

My thoughts:  I really, really enjoyed this book.  Its one of the few good books I have read in a while.  I like the split story and all the fun Japanese cultural references.  There were about 10 pages towards the end of the story that got into quantum physics and the story was like WHAT?!? for a minute and it almost ruined it for me.  But in the end the whole of the book made up for weirdness.

Have you ever read a book with a little bit twist that was confusing?

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday...Book Club!

Hello,

It's time once again for Inner Beauty Friday Bookclub!  As always I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde





This week I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury-



Here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com "Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires ...

The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden.

Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames ... never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.

Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think ... and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do!

My thoughts: I try to like "Sic Fi", and I try to read some of the classics every now and then to feed my brain.  But I just don't like this kind of literature.  I can see how it's thought provoking and probably was really "cool" at the time but... blah.  I feel like it's so full of metaphors and symbolism and it just feels overworked to me so that I can't even get an enjoyable read out of it.

Am I the only one?

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello,

It's Friday once again and time for Book Club!  I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde.





This week I read "In Need of a Good Wife" by Kelly O'Connor McNees. 

 

 

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com - "Richly detailed, vivid, and unforgettable, this is an extraordinary novel about three women challenging the American West—and unpredictable fate—for a future only the most daring can secure…

For Clara Bixby, brokering mail-order brides is a golden business opportunity—and a desperately needed chance to start again. If she can help New York women find husbands in a far-off Nebraska town, she can build an independent new life away from her own loss and grief.

Clara’s ambitions are shared by two other women, who are also willing to take any risk. Quiet immigrant Elsa hopes to escape her life of servitude and at last shape her own destiny. And Rowena, the willful, impoverished heiress, jumps at the chance to marry a humble stranger and repay a heartbreaking debt. All three struggle to find their true place in the world, leaving behind who they were in order to lay claim to the person they want to be. Along the way, each must face unexpected obstacles and dangerous choices, but they also help to forge a nation unlike any that came before."

 

My thoughts - From that synopsis you would think this would about heroines of the American Frontier and the hardships they faced.  Not so much... this book has personal trials but it's all very nice.  There's just a pretty veneer of goodness put on the whole story.  I liked it but I also wanted to yell "this isn't accurate!  It wouldn't have been so clean and nice!"  But it is a good read.

 

What have you been reading?

 

Jasmine

 





Inner Beauty Friday - Book club

Hello,

I got my act together and I am linking up once again Heather @ Blonde...Undercover Blonde, for Book Club.

This week I read 2 books.  The first was Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline:

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com -
"Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.

Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both."

My thoughts: Although you pretty much knew where this story line was going from the first few pages, the history about the orphan trains really intrigued me.  I want to find out more about the actual orphan trains and hopefully some autobiographies.  I know I have read another books about the trains to Kansas but I can't remember what it was called.  I also can't make up my mind if these trains were a good thing for the children.  On the one hand they got of the streets and got a "home", but then again that home was perhaps worse then what they could have ended up with on the streets.

The second book I read was Divergent by Veronica Roth:

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, 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 alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating 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 unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, Tris also learns that her secret might help her save the ones she loves . . . or it might destroy her"

My thoughts: Well first of all I like this book because it takes in dystopian Chicago and the author went to Northwestern.  It also has the kind of hook that "Hunger Games" had - mild girl turns tough and faces all sorts of obstacles.  The whole five factions is interesting as well.  But as I read this book I was shocked at how violent it was - and violence without remorse or any kind of real emotional distress.  The main character Tris was sad for like 5 seconds and then like "this is who I am, I guess I don't care." I feel like that is serial killer mentality - I definitely want to read the second one to see if I feel the same.

Now I am on to a book about the civil war...

Until next week!

Jasmine

Inner Beauty - Book Review

Hello,

I'm a bit late doing my book review again this week, I have been busy with "real" life!  We had houseguests, a very busy week at work and Friday I drove 2 hours each way in HORRIBLE Chicago traffic to see my family for 3 hours.  I hope this week is calmer.

Anywhoo...

This week I read Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

 

 

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com:

 

"Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard."

 

My thoughts - Plot aside, this was a really interesting look into Icelandic culture in the 1800's.  You can kind of guess how the "Story" is going to go but...then again it is not really a story but a fictionalization of actual events.  This is cool because you can Google images of the sites in the book and get a real image of life. 

 

I think this is a good winter read because this book is full of cold winter scenes!

 

Jasmine


Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

I'm back!

Time for book club so I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde.

This week I read "Twin Study: Stories" by Stacey Richter.

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com - "Cavemen Roam The Suburbs, Morality is questionable, teens are angsting, and alcoholics abound. This is the world as Stacey Richter sees it. In spite of--or perhaps because of--this alarming cast of characters, Richter's stories are infused with wit, humor, and keen observations of what makes humans tick. There is no sentimental hand-wringing about alcoholic or absentee parents, lost loves, or the most terrible suburban neighborhood Christmas displays. Richter's characters live, exist, play, and often drink too much because that is simply what they do. Carrying on is the only option. Richter writes with volatile energy, hurtling through her stories while coasting seamlessly between the regular and mundane. She sees the repercussions of bad parenting, forgotten kids, and while she may scoff, her caustic observations never demean her characters. By turns heartbreaking, mirthful, sardonic, and wise, her stories occasionally take a turn into the bizarre. Still, Richter's flights of fancy are not about whimsy or science fiction. They are one imaginative woman's clever and naked view of the absurdities teeming around her."

My thoughts: There are some wack-a-doodle stories up in here.  Each time you start a new story you have no idea where it is going to go.  If you are stuck in a reading rut, or don't have much time to read this collection of short stories will give you something new with a few page turns.  I really likes some of the stories and some not as much but in all it is a good collection.


Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello,

It is Friday again and time for Book Club!  I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde. 

This week I read Requiem by Lauren Oliver, which is the third and final book in the Delirium series.

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com:They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past.  But we are still here.  And there are more of us every day.  Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight.
After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.  Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings.  Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it.  But we have chosen a different road.  And in the end, that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.
We are even free to choose the wrong thing.
Requiem is told from both Lena’s and Hana’s points of view. The two girls live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge

My thoughts - I liked Delirium, and Pandemonium was ok too, but the series really lost it's luster with this final book.  First of all the way the book starts off, if you haven't just left of reading Pandemonium you'll be like "wait, what??"  And then you just  kind of read along and nothing really shocking happens and then it just ends on a note of "sometimes love is good and sometimes it hurts".  Not the most profound novel ever.  I think the Hunger Games ruined YA Fiction for me - nothing is quite as good.

Anything good I should read?

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello,

It's Friday once again and time for Book Club!  So I will be linking up with Heather at Blonde...Undercover Blonde. 

This week I read "The Facts of Life" by Graham Joyce.

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "The Facts Of Life tells the story of an extraordinary family of seven sisters living in Coventry during the Second World War. Presided over by an indomitable matriarch, the sisters live out a tangled and fraught life that takes them through the Blitz, war work and on into the hopeful postwar years, and a bizarre interlude for one of them in a commune. And through it all wanders the young son of one of the sisters, passed from sister to sister, the innocent witness to a life that edges over into the magical."

My thoughts: First, I don't understand the title at all, and two, there were some explicit sexual language throughout the book (and I am NO prude) but I was instantly reminded this was written by a man. I thought this was going to be a historical fiction novel about seven sisters all helping to rebuild England after the war.  Well, it is about 7 sisters, one in particular who is, well more than psychic, and her son.  All the sister help raise the son a bit, but you don't get to know about them.  It's more of a weird romp thru the 1950' in Coventry, England if you were psychic and your family just let you do whatever, but your mom knew when you were going to get into trouble because she's psychic too.  I didn't dislike the book - I just didn't quite get it.  It was interesting, but random and boring a bit at times.  This is one you either love or are like "meh", I'm on the "meh" side.

Until next week!

Jasmine


 

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

It's Friday and time for Book Club!  Once again I am linking up with Heather at Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club.




This week I read "Me Before You " by Jojo Moyes

Here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.
Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.
What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time."

What I thought:  This was a really nice story, and one I felt was actually realistic.  I mean Will being a Quadriplegic isn't nice, and OF COURSE he has money, but other than that I felt it was really great story about complex friendships and family connections.  This is a good story a bit of a sad ending, but in the end it's a lot like life. 

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club

Goodness it's Friday once again! 
Time for linking up with Heather @ Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club!  Yay!




This week I read "the House Girl" by Tara Conklin-



Here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the “perfect plaintiff” to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.
It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her?
Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice."

My thoughts:  Describing this book as "searing and suspenseful" is totally confusing to me.  Gone Girl was "Searing and Suspenseful", this is thought provoking and well painted with words.  The synopsis pretty much covers the plot, but I like Tara Conklin's writing and would definitely read more by her.  If you want a relatively easy read with some American history this is a great choice.

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday! Book Club!

Hello,

Happy Friday - and I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club!




This week I read 2 books, both had a hint of the paranormal. 

First was "Sisterland" by Curtis Sittenfeld:


Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.

Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny."

My thoughts:  I loved her earlier book "Prep", it was so descriptive and just spot on.  Sisterland felt a little disconnected.  Maybe it's because I don't really like a "whiny" main character - maybe I wasn't supposed to like her.   It was an ok story, but not a knock out like her previous work!

I know, I'm so hard to please!  But I don't want to say a book was great unless it really was. 


Next up :"The Mystery of Grace" by Charles de Lint

 

The synopsis from Goodreads.com: "On the Day of the Dead, the Solona Music Hall is jumping.  That's where Altagracia Quintero meets John Burns, just two weeks too late.
Altagracia – her friends call her Grace – has a tattoo of Nuestra Señora de Altagracia on her shoulder, she's got a Ford Motor Company tattoo running down her leg, and she has grease worked so deep into her hands that it'll never wash out.  Grace works at Sanchez Motorworks, customizing hot rods.  Finding the line in a classic car is her calling.
Now Grace has to find the line in her own life.  A few blocks around the Alverson Arms is all her world -- from the little grocery store where she buys beans, tamales, and cigarettes (“cigarettes can kill you,” they tell her, but she smokes them anyway) to the record shop, to the library where Henry, a black man confined to a wheelchair, researches the mystery of life in death – but she’s got unfinished business keeping her close to home."

My thoughts:  Now this book wasn't the most "intellectual" but it was a good story.  If your looking for something light, but a little different and a touch of the "underworld" - you will like this.  It was a fast read, with nice characters and I look forward to reading more books by him.

Until next week!

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello:

It's Friday and I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club!




This week I read 2 books.

The first was "The Silver Star" by Jeanette Walls-

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com - "The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls has written a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world—a triumph of imagination and storytelling.It is 1970 in a small town in California. “Bean” Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who “found something wrong with every place she ever lived,” takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that’s been in Charlotte’s family for generations." 

My thoughts:  I love Jeannette Walls' non-fiction - The Glass Castle is Ah-mazing.  I believe this is her first stab at fiction and it's a good read, it's just that I am measuring it against her non-fiction, and you know how the say truth is crazier than fiction.  It's a good light read.

I also read "Honored Guest" by Joy Williams -

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com : With her singular brand of gorgeous dark humor, Joy Williams explores the various ways–comic, tragic, and unnerving—we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss. A masseuse breaks her rich client's wrist bone, a friend visits at the hospital long after she is welcome, and a woman surrenders her husband to a creepily adoring student. From one of our most acclaimed writers, Honored Guest is a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.

My thoughts:  I have been racking my brain for 3 days trying to come up with the words to describe this book.  It's a collection of short stories that I personally wouldn't call dark humor - but rather "disturbing".  I mean disturbing in the sense that it's not the norm and all the stories are a little odd, and it will disturb you a bit - you will be like "ooookkkkk".  I didn't love it - but it was a good read for something different.

If your looking for more inner beauty inspiration check out Ember's post @ Budget, Splurge Beauty

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

Once again it's Friday and I am linking up with Heather from Blonde...Undercover Blonde for Book Club!





This week I read Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner.





Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com:
"In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, a young Orthodox Jewish woman in the holy city of Jerusalem is expected to marry and produce many sons to help hasten the Messiah's arrival. While the feisty Esther Kaminsky understands her obligations, her artistic talent inspires her to secretly explore worlds outside her religion, to dream of studying in Paris —and to believe that God has a special destiny for her. When tragedy strikes her family, Esther views it as a warning from an angry God and suppresses her desires in order to become an obedient "Jerusalem maiden."
But when a surprising opportunity forces itself on to her preordained path, Esther finds her beliefs clashing dangerously with the passions she has staved off her entire life —forcing her to confront the most difficult and damning question of all: To whom must she be true, God or herself?"

My thoughts:  If you don't know a lot about Judaism this is going to be a crash course and bring a Yiddish dictionary.  Luckily I went to a college that required theological studies so I had a good basis.  The devotion these people have to their religion is truly amazing.  And this is a very interesting story...for about 3/4's of it.  Then it just becomes of "why God, why?!?" But you can't be all "why God, why" when you made the decisions.  And then of course it has a cutesy little ending.   uggg this story really shouldn't have cutesy ending.  But overall it's a pretty good read.

What have you read lately?

Also be sure to check out Budget Splurge Beauty's Inner Beauty post as well - and if you know how to navigate the student loan world - give her some advice :) 

Jasmine

Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club

Hello,

Today I am once again linking up for book club! 



This week I read 2 books, both of them pretty good and historically interesting!

First up - The Light Between Oceans by M.L.Stedman


Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them."

My thoughts: I liked the book but you pretty much get the whole plot from the synopsis.  I also just couldn't like the wife either.  The information about the lighthouse industry in Australia was really interesting.  A lot of people are just raving about this book and giving it 5 stars - I mean its a good piece of fiction but is it super original - not really. 


Next up The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan


Synopsis from Amazon.com: "1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. There she meets a wealthy male patron of the ballet, but might the assistance he offers come with strings attached? Meanwhile Antoinette, derailed by her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde. "\

My thoughts:  I really liked how you could look up the paintings referenced in the book on Cathy Marie Buchanan's website.  Also I had no idea about the "petit-rats", I assumed ballerina's came from the middle class.  But then again there was hardly a middle class in Paris in the 1800's.  And life was rough for these poor girls!  If you like historical fiction, art and ballet - you'll love this!


If you want more Inner Beauty readings check out Ember @ BudgetSplurgeBeauty! 
We're both committed to getting an Inner Beauty Blog Hop going!!  If you want to join let me know - we will link up on Fridays!


Until Next week!

Jasmine