Has anyone read this?
I started it last week and just finished 120 pages or so. I'm finding it interesting and easy to read but my brain is not cooperating with me. I think it might be a matter of needed someone to chat about it with me so I'm not slogging through the heavy subject all by myself.
Hubby and I finally made the trip to Hudson to visit The Spotty Dog. We've been talking about visiting for like a year now and yesterday we decided to go on a little adventure.
It was awesome. Crowded though. Okay if you knew exactly what you want (and it helps if you are sort of a hipster in terms of reading) and don't mind squeezing around people or waiting for people to move. And can get over the fear of knocking over someone's beer while browsing.
I had a lot of fun there even while feeling claustrophobic. Unlike most other bars at least I knew I was surrounded by my kind of people...the people who had no issues with sitting at the bar with a brew and a book.
I was a fan of the book selection, they did not have every genre but it was definitely wide enough that most anyone coming in could find something they wanted. A fair mix of classics with more popular modern titles. I ended up picking up three books for myself and two for my husband so I spend quite a bit but the beer was craft beer (mostly from NYS) and reasonable priced ($5 for a mug, $6 for a pint) and there was a ton of other drinks on the menu (wine and non alcoholic) and they have apps and desserts.
It was like two hours from my house so not a place I'll get to go too often but it did make a nice day trip.
I've been trying to blog for two months now at Blogger and I am lonely. Most of the time I feel as though I am talking to myself and I don't like that. I tried read and commenting at other blogs but rarely did anyone do the same to me. I started participating in a weekly meme but again, I felt lost in the shuffle.
So I am coming back here to stay and starting next weekend I'll be bringing my old reviews over and posting new ones.
On Monday I posted about my inability to stop buying new books.
Tuesday I reviewed The Wedding Dress Diaries.
Wednesday Book Run!
Thursday I reviewed The Accidential Billionaires.
Friday was my first try at The Friday 56.
Yet no Gilmore Girls? What a rip off.
Aside from that, I actually like this list.
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Ten years ago, Nan was fired from her job taking care of six year old Grayer. Soon after she packed her bags and followed Harvard Hottie to Europe. Now Nanny is back in New York City, where her path once again crosses the teenage Grayer and his little brother.
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I read this book on Wattpad, and based on most of the other books I've read on there...I didn't have high expectations, and in fact, the first chapter almost turned me off. Unless I'm reading a Stephen King novel I don't do supernatural and Rose just seemed like a sheltered pushover. Not a very interesting character.
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I am not an organized person at all. My organizational skills end with designating a certain shelf for books that I have yet to read. After that, it's a total crap shoot as to where they end up around the apartment.
But I do have some kind of system on my virtual bookshelf on Booklikes. For two years I have recorded just about every book I've read and categorized them in a way for me to keep track of the type of books I read...
I started a new book blog. I missed blogging regularly...and while I love blogging here it is kind of limited as to who can comment and stuff. So my new space is http://nearlyreader.blogspot.com/.
I'm going to be cross posting stuff on here. Maybe not every post...but definitely the book reviews and that sort of thing. So sorry if I fill up your feed as I run to catch up.
From Goodreads: Stolen as a child from her large and loving family, and on the run with her mom for more than ten years, Callie has only the barest idea of what normal life might be like. She's never had a home, never gone to school, and has gotten most of her meals from laundromat vending machines. Her dreams are haunted by memories she’d like to forget completely. But when Callie’s mom is finally arrested for kidnapping her, and Callie’s real dad whisks her back to what would have been her life, in a small town in Florida, Callie must find a way to leave the past behind. She must learn to be part of a family. And she must believe that love--even with someone who seems an improbable choice--is more than just a possibility.
This was my second novel by Trish Doller and I enjoy her books, although I probably will never find myself seeking out her back cataloge and stick to getting her books on a more impulsive level.
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From Goodreads: Major General Mark Graham is a decorated two-star officer whose integrity and patriotism inspired his sons, Jeff and Kevin, to pursue military careers of their own. When Kevin and Jeff die within nine months of one another—Kevin, a student enrolled in the University of Kentucky’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, commits suicide and Jeff, who served in the Army as a second lieutenant, dies as a result of an IED attack in Iraq—Mark and his wife Carol find themselves reeling after the loss of two of their three children. As they begin to gather their bearings and contemplate a life without their sons, they must also come to terms with the terrible stigma that surrounds suicide in the military. This stigma is brought into high relief through the Grahams’ own experience of how their tight-knit military community marked their sons’ very different deaths.
The Grahams commit themselves to fighting the military’s suicide epidemic and making sure that the families of troops who take their own lives receive the dignity and compassion that were the hallmarks of both of their sons’ lives. The Invisible Front is the story of their quest to do so. As Mark ascends the military hierarchy and eventually takes command of Fort Carson, Colorado—a sprawling base with one of the highest suicide rates in the armed forces—the Grahams assume a larger platform from which to work to reduce the stigma that surrounds mental health in the military and to develop new ways of keeping troubled troops from killing themselves. Their efforts put them in direct conflict with an entrenched military bureaucracy that considered mental health problems to be a display of weakness and that refused to acknowledge, until far too late, the severity of its suicide problem. The Grahams refuse to back down, using the pain and grief that their sons’ deaths inspired to fight to change the institution that is the cornerstone of their lives.
Yochi Dreazen, an award-winning journalist who has covered the military since 1999, has been granted remarkable access to the Graham family and, as a result, is able to tell the story of Kevin and Jeff’s legacy in the full context of America’s two long wars. The Invisible Front places the Graham family’s story against the backdrop of the military’s suicide spike, caused in part by the military’s own institutional shortcomings and its resistance to change. With great sympathy and deep understanding, The Invisible Frontexamines America's problematic treatment of its soldiers and offers the Graham family’s work as a new way of understanding how to minimize the risk of suicide, substance abuse and PTSD in the military.
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There is something about busy weekends that make me feel overly ambiguous. The weekend following Christmas was no exception. Despite the fact I had shopping and baking and a family party to attend...I still thought it was a great time to start a 800 page book. A 800 page book in a series and genre I wasn't even sure I wanted to touch with a ten foot pole.
But for the first time ever there wasn't a waiting list to borrow it from Overdrive so I figured that meant I should give it a try. The worst that could happen was I'd spend two weeks struggling my way through it before my loan expired and then I could breath a sigh of relief that I at least tried. The best that could happen is that I'd have a total transformation and fall totally in love and rush to read and watch as much of the series as is currently available.
I somewhere fell in the middle. I made it though without too much trouble. Even has a few days left on my loan. I was impressed by the writing and although I'll never be able to keep all those secondary characters straight...I was able to get a fairly good sense of the main players and form an opinion on them. I even discovered I was a bit of a literary crush on The Imp, Tyrion....probably because he's a fellow book geek.
But I still don't know. I liked the book more than I expected and I don't think that I would mind keeping up to date with the series, though the television show, I just do not know if I want to get invested in a long series that isn't even completed.
I guess the next time I'm browsing Overdrive and I see the next book in the series...I'll see if there's a waiting list.
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I just went though my past books for the last two years and I realized that I have virtually no books by authors of color...so what do you guys recommend?
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