Friday Blog Hop: New Books

In the spirit of the Twitter Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Crazy-For-Books is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word! This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs to read!

This week's question is:

“Highlight one book you have received this week (for review, from the library, purchased at the store, etc.) that you can’t wait to dig into!”

Well, I haven't gotten any new books in over a week. The last book I received was Wither by Lauren DeStefano which I already dug into and finished yesterday. However, thanks to Swagbucks, I have an Amazon giftcard heading my direction and I hope to remedy this soon. Plus, you never know what the mail may hold! Maybe I'll go check it now. 

Thanks for hopping by!

Theme Thursday- Action

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event hosted by Reading Between the Pages that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
  

This week’s theme is

ANY ACTION (go, walk, close, clap etc)

 This week my snippet comes from Wither by Lauren DeStefano (pg 160)

"There's a bug," he says, nodding toward my head. I look and see some little winged thing jump and crawl along my blond hair. I blow gently, and it's gone.

Review: You Know When The Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls... You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.

There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches.

When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.-Summary from Goodreads

I picked up this book around one morning and had devoured it by the time the sun went down. I probably could have knocked it out in a few hours but, alas, my kids expect me to feed them. You Know When the Men Are Gone is filled with several short stories about military families in several stages of deployment and I was completely sucked in by these little cross sections of military life. 


There are stories of women left behind and trying to get through each day without their husbands. Each family has their own issues but you see how the deployment affects each in different ways. You only get a small slice of each story, just enough to get the point across but still more than enough. When I finished one, I was ready to move right on to the next. 

It was a quick, easy read and though these stories are fictional, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a peek into the lives of those who protect out freedom and the hardships that they face in doing so. I think it helps us to remember that it's not just the ones who come home in a box that have sacrificed for us. Each and every soldier and their families are sacrificing their wants and needs everyday. It's books like this that help us to remember that.

Review: Iron House by John Hart

An old man is dying.

When the old man is dead they will come for him.

And they will come for her, to make him hurt.




HE WOULD GO TO HELL
At the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, there was nothing but time. Time to burn and time to kill, time for two young orphans to learn that life isn’t won without a fight. Julian survives only because his older brother, Michael, is fearless and fiercely protective. When tensions boil over and a boy is brutally killed, there is only one sacrifice left for Michael to make: He flees the orphanage and takes the blame with him.

TO KEEP HER SAFE
For two decades, Michael has been an enforcer in New York’s world of organized crime, a prince of the streets so widely feared he rarely has to kill anymore. But the life he’s fought to build unravels when he meets Elena, a beautiful innocent who teaches him the meaning and power of love. He wants a fresh start with her, the chance to start a family like the one he and Julian never had. But someone else is holding the strings. And escape is not that easy. . . .

GO TO HELL, AND COME BACK BURNING
The mob boss who gave Michael his blessing to begin anew is dying, and his son is intent on making Michael pay for his betrayal. Determined to protect the ones he loves, Michael spirits Elena—who knows nothing of his past crimes, or the peril he’s laid at her door— back to North Carolina, to the place he was born and the brother he lost so long ago. There, he will encounter a whole new level of danger, a thicket of deceit and violence that leads inexorably to the one place he’s been running from his whole life: Iron House.- Synopsis from Goodreads

This book was like a great roller-coaster, but we didn't start at the bottom and go up the ramp. No, this one started right at the top and pulled you down for the ride quickly.
 
I'll admit, this is not my usual type of book but when I was offered a copy I said, 'Sure, why not?' Thrillers like this one are, for me, like scary movies. I enjoy them occasionally but I have to be in the mood. I must have been in the mood because I was immediately drawn in to this story. 

Image via Wikipedia

Hart is able to make Michael a sympathetic character despite his profession as a ruthless mob hit-man. It was quite similar to my feelings for Dexter. I should despise the character based on who he is and what he does and yet, I find myself loving, worrying about and rooting for these killers. 


 I tend to keep the books I'm reading close at hand and this one was no exception. It sat on my coffee table and even as I watched my favorite shows on TV, I found myself grabbing it and trying to squeeze in a chapter or two during the commercials. I has halfway through when I went to bed and planned to only read for twenty minutes. I ended up staying up way late and finishing the entire thing because I couldn't find a suitable place to stop. Each time I finished a chapter, I had to continue on to see what was going to happen. It was a total page-turner.

I'd recommend to anyone looking for a great thrill ride. It didn't disappoint. As a word of caution, there is a some colorful language and quite a bit of graphic violence (It is about the mob, people!). So, just be aware of that if you are sensitive to that stuff.

*Disclaimer- I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  

Friday Blog Hop: Genres

In the spirit of the Twitter Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Crazy-For-Books is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word! This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs to read!

This week's question is:

What’s the ONE GENRE that you wish you could get into, but just can’t?

I have a hard time with science fiction and a lot of fantasy. There is a handful that I've read that are ok but for the most part it's just not my thing. I've tried, oh believe me I've tried, because my mom and brother always had that sci-fi bond and it would have been nice to join in but I just can't get into it.

Thanks for hopping by! Please leave a link so I can return your visit.

Theme Thursday- Smile

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event hosted by Reading Between the Pages that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
  

This week’s theme is

SMILE (Laugh, Grin, Giggle, Guffaw, etc)

This week my snippet comes from Iron House by John Hart (pg 268)

"Her hand moved involuntarily to her stomach. The man was smiling, but his eyes were too cold for the question to be random. He would use her to hurt Michael. It was the only thing that made sense."

Review: The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison

England, 31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unhappy relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes - and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair, with tragic consequences. A story of love, loss and complicated loyalties, combining a sweeping narrative with subtle psychological observation, The Very Thought of You is a haunting and memorable debut- Synopsis from Goodreads

The Very Thought of You is a story about love, but not the happily ever after, unending passion, sunshine and rainbows type of love. There is a taste of first love and all the lovely things that come with it. However, most of the book deals with what comes after and how love survives distance and separation, both physical and emotional. In fact, I found separation to be the major theme of the book. 

Anna is only eight years old when her mother sends her to the country for school in order to get Anna out of London and away from the impending threat of bombings. Her father is away at war, leaving her mother, Roberta, alone in London. 


Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton want nothing more than a child of their own but when that doesn't happen, they convert their large home into a school for the evacuated children. Their marriage is crumbling as both struggle with feelings of inadequacy, Thomas with his disability and Elizabeth with her inability to conceive. During Anna's stay at their house, she finds herself unwittingly involved in the disintegration of their marriage and it had lasting effects on the rest of her life. 


I've read quite a few WWII era novels lately but I found this one to be refreshingly different. The war is there but it's almost in the background, not in the forefront as it usually is. This story is most definitely not about the war, it just happens to take place during the war and I enjoyed the slightly different take on it. I thought it was an enjoyable book, fairly engrossing, but boy, the ending sure was a bit of a downer. Not for those looking for a clear resolution or happy ending but a good story nonetheless.

Review: Specials by Scott Westerfeld

"Special Circumstances":

The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor — frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary.

And now she's been turned into one of them: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.
The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember. Most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more.

Still, it's easy to tune that out — until Tally's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she's programmed to complete. Either way, Tally's world will never be the same.- Summary from Goodreads

I'm not sure I am entirely a fan of Tally as a special. I think I actually dislike her more as a special than I did as an airhead pretty. I suppose that partial the point however, what bothered me the most was that Tally preferred being special. Even after she knew that they had messed with her mind again, Tally still fights against the cure. That bothered me. She became an entirely different person in this book and while I really enjoyed the book as a whole, Tally was bugging me.

Shay was almost completely unlikeable as well. She was ok in Uglies, mildly irritating in Pretties but I just couldn't stand her in this book. She's on a major power trip with a whole bunch of new and annoying slang and a bunch of followers who think cutting is oh so cool.

That's one more thing that bothered me, the glorification of cutting. They made it seem cool, like cutting was a way to free your mind. Awesome, what a fantastic message to place in a YA novel. Even near the end, Tally doesn't feel the need to do it anymore but there are never any consequences to it. I have nieces who have struggled with cutting and I don't feel it's responsible to almost glorify the practice when your audience consists of mostly teenage girls.

So, I've done a bunch of bashing which I'm sure makes it seem as though I hated the book. Oddly enough that's not true. I actually found it to be a satisfying conclusion to the series and I did enjoy it for the most part. I just had more issues with it that I did the first two books. I feel as though Westerfeld started on a really high with Uglies and neither Pretties nor Specials managed to live up to the first book.

I was planning to pick up Extras next and then I found out it's not centered around Tally or any of the characters I've gotten to know over the trilogy and my desire to pick it up waned. I'm sure I'll get around to reading it sooner than later but I'm in no hurry now.

Once Upon a Read-a-Thon: Wrapup

Well, that was fun! I managed to read a little more than I planned. I finished the following.



and I got 284 pages into


So, my total pages read was 1068! Not too bad!


I'll be continuing the read-a-thon on my own today. Hoping to finish up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before taking my kids to the midnight showing. It was a last minute decision yesterday to re-read it so we'll see if I can pull it off! The dishes and laundry can wait till tomorrow right?

Once upon a Read-a-Thon Update: Day Two

Yesterday I didn't read as much as I had hoped. I started The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak and got a little more than halfway through it, about 300 pages read I believe. I'm really loving it and hope to finish today but we'll see since I have to go see my mom later today. I didn't get a chance to participate in any mini-challenges yesterday either. Boo.

Today I'm taking part in the challenge over at Books From Bleh to Basically Amazing. She asks for 2 book recommendations. One of my choosing and my favorite book from the read-a-thon.

First choice: I always recommend Les Miserables by Victor Hugo or The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. They're both classics and both huge but they are two of my favorite books of all time! Worth every page and better in print then they are on screen, (or stage). Les Mis is all about redemption and love and war. Just phenomenal. Monte Cristo is about betrayal and revenge being best served cold. Awesome!

Second choice: Well I only read two books during the read-a-thon but I think my favorite will be The Book Thief even though I'm not quite finished. I'm just been fantastic so far.I love that it's narrated by death and it's got an interesting voice.

Ok then, I'm getting back to my book!