Teaser Tuesday: January 31st

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.

• Let the book fall open to a random page.

• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

This weeks teasers is from That Deadman Dance:

There had always been a particular rhythm to their visits, and now this new pulse, at first feeble, began it accompaniment. More sails were noted, and more things detected: a cairn of stones, for instance, and within it - once the stones were dismantled - some markings on thin bark inside a container of glass.  -  page 65

 



I am almost finished with this one.  Review should be coming sometime this week.

Don't forget to share a link to your teaser.

Mailbox Monday: January 30th

In January Mailbox Monday is being hosted by At Home With Books.

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

I found five new books to fill up my Nook this week.

Free from Barnes and Nobles (now $9.99)

When her comatose husband died in the ICU while on life support, the whispers about Dr. Allison Williams began. Another death during her training puts her under suspicion. When the pattern is repeated in the hospital where she is attempting to start over, the whispers turn into a shout: “mercy killing.” What is the dark secret that keeps Allison’s lips sealed when she should be defending herself?
Despite her move to a new city, the midnight phone calls that started after her husband’s death follow Allison. Who is the woman who sobs out, “I know what you did?” What does she mean by “You’ll pay?” And what can Allison do to prevent it?

Two physicians, widowers themselves, offer support, telling Allison they know what she is going through after the death of her husband. But do they? And is it safe to trust either of them with her secret?

Free from Barnes and Nobles (now $9.99)

When nurse Hanne Abrahamsen impulsively shields Steffen Petersen from a nosy Gestapo agent, she's convinced the Lutheran pastor is involved in the Danish Underground. Nothing could be further from the truth. But truth is hard to come by in the fall of 1943, when Copenhagen is placed under Martial Law and Denmark's Jews-including Hanne-suddenly face deportation to the Nazi prison camp at Terezin, Czechoslovakia. Days darken and danger mounts. Steffen's faith deepens as he takes greater risks to protect Hanne. But are either of them willing to pay the ultimate price for their love?

Free from Barnes and Nobles

Set in Western Australia in the first decades of the nineteenth century, That Deadman Dance is a vast, gorgeous novel about the first contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the new European settlers. 

India Butler, single and about to turn forty, travels to LA in an attempt to reinvent her life. In a world rarely illuminated by the flashbulbs of the paparazzi, she discovers the true meaning of “having it all.

 Free from Barnes and Nobles

Alois is The Chicken Thief, an intelligent young man struggling to find his way in a southern African country wracked by political unrest and a crumbling economy. A chance encounter gives Alois the opportunity to make some fast money, and hopefully improve his future. However, his assignment goes horribly wrong, and he unexpectedly finds himself in the midst of a complicated and perilous struggle to rescue a war hero and transform the political landscape. Though something of an unlikely hero, Alois ultimately learns that both dreams and justice are within his grasp.
The Chicken Thief reads at a cracking pace, is dramatic and colourful, and will appeal to lovers of quality fiction. In essence a political thriller, it is particularly topical and poignant in light of recent events in North Africa and the Middle East. Australian author, Fiona Leonard, has travelled a fascinating road to arrive in her current home in West Africa. Her life experience has contributed to the creation of this deeply evocative novel, and the rich construction of its realistic characters, and detailed, depiction of both the environs and the political atmosphere. The Chicken Thief is a highly engaging novel, with a gripping plot and huge appeal on an international level.

$0.99 at Barnes and Nobles

Daughters of Iraq is the compelling story of three women from the same family. It is the story of emigration from Iraq to Israel as experienced by two sisters: Violet, whom we learn about through a diary she kept after being diagnosed with a critical illness, and Farida, whose personality unfolds through her relationship with her surroundings, and with herself. The third character is Noa, Violet’s daughter and a student, a young woman in her twenties who is searching for meaning. Noa embarks on a spiritual quest to the past, so that she can learn how to build her life in the present and the future.

What came into your mailbox this week?

Friday Finds: 01/27/2012

Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading ask:

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

There were so many interesting books that I found will reading book blogs this week.  I was able
contain myself this time and narrow it down to only four books.

(Clicking on the image will take you to the books GoodReads page)

Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon Update 1

It's Day 2 of the Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon hosted by The True Book Addict.

So, how am I doing?

I think that so far it is going good.  I didn't have any set concert daily goals when I started the Read-a-Thon. Just a list of books that I would like to start and complete.

Since I am an one book at a time kind of time gal.  I have already started The Deadman Dance by Kim Scott.  I am a little on the fence about this one.  It's not bad at all, the writing is good.  Yet, it is not quite what I was expecting.  I am reading this much faster than I thought that I would and should be finish by no later than Wednesday night (hopefully).

Again My plans are to finish:

• The Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (27% complete)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

And To Start:

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Why Buy The Cow? Reading Challenge

Isn't the name of this challenge just fabulous?

<---- And the badge to go with it?

How could I not resist this one?

Besides all the cuteness, this challenge is a great idea.  Especially for those people that have a eReader that is load with free books.

I would love to say that my poor Nook is bursting at the seams with free reads that I have collected in the 2+ years that I have had it.  But with all things that involve technology, it still has plenty of space (and a micro SD card just in case).



Why Buy The Cow? Reading Challenge is being hosted by of The Unread Reader.

The basics of the challenge is to read at least 12 legally obtained Free e-books. No eARC, giveaways, or library books.

Head over to the site for more details on this challenge if you are interested.  I have tons of free reads on my e-reader, so I should have no problem selecting books. In fact, this challenge works well with the Self Published Challenge that I signed up for.

I don't have a planned list of books.  So, I'll just update this list as I go:

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. 
   
5. 
   
6. 
   
7. 
   
8. 
   
9. 
   
10. 
    
11. 
    
12. 
    

Teaser Tuesdays: January 24th

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.

• Let the book fall open to a random page.

• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

This weeks teasers is from That Deadman Dance:

Some reckoned their spear throwers had a tooth held in place with red tree gun.  A human tooth, Skelly had heard; others reckoned it was from a kangaroo.    "page" 90

 



I wonder what the spears are really made of.

Don't forget to share a link to your teaser.

Review: Who Is He To You by Monique D. Mensah

Rating: 3 Stars
Pages: eBook
Genre: Fiction (Drama)
Series/Standalone: Book 1 in Malignant Mind Series 
Publication Year: 2010
Source: Purchased


Synopsis (Goodreads):

Simone, a shockingly beautiful teen, is on the downward spiral of destruction as she battles incest and self-hatred; she finds cutting to be the only way to relieve her pain. Jessica lives the upscale lifestyle of a refined society matron. She strives to be the perfect wife, but without her husband, Ross, she would be nothing more than the abused stripper he rescued 16 years ago. Ryan, a fiery thirty-something, is quickly slipping into depression and prescription drug-addiction as her boyfriend, Anthony, artfully dangles the empty promise of marriage. As the shattered lives of three very different women collide, they find that they have one thing in common: they are all in a desperate fight to hang on to love. But when love involves incest, self-mutilation, drug-addiction and murder, will they continue to fight or will they find the strength to escape before it's too late? Experience their emotional journey through to the shocking end where these women will experience injury, imprisonment and even death while crafting new lives from the ashes of their ruination.

Review:

This review contains spoilers.  Read at your own risk.

I was looking for what genre to classify Who Is He To You in, both B&N and Amazon have it listed under drama, which is very fitting.  This is a drama filled book all three of three of the female main characters experience nothing buy drama, rarely is there a normal moment in their lives.

Before I get to the drama and the main characters, let discuss the title.  For me the title Who Is He To You gave away the twist in the book (there is always the fact that I think there should be a question mark).  Combine the title with other clues in the book, I knew the twist before I got to it.  In fact, it frustrated me that Mensah waited so long for the big reveal, when everything fell into place.  Then there were times when I wonder if the author was awry of the fact that the puzzle was so easy to piece together for me the reader and she did it intentionally.  But either way, when the big reveal finally came out, I merely shrugged my shoulders.  Kind of disappointed that she used the method that she did.

I have read plenty of reviews on this book and looked forward to reading it.  I really wanted to get to know each of the characters and about their lives.  Instead, I ended up finding out that all the characters were damaged.  Not just slight imperfections, but truly emotionally, psychologically damaged.  Each and everyone of them (mainly the main characters and most of the secondary characters).  All of them needed counseling and probably a couple of prescriptions.  It made it hard for me to root for any of them.

Simone is 14 years old, beautiful and being molested by her father.   She is the character that the reader is suppose to be the most sympathetic to because of her situation and her age.  At times I felt think shaking her.  There is one chapter where she ignores all the warning signs (even her own misgiving) and walks straight into a dangerous situation. All I could think was that I saw this coming, she saw this coming why did she walk straight into it.  Why is she surprised at the outcome?  Out of all the characters I liked her the most.  Even if I felt that her character was inconstant at times.

Jessica is Simone's mother and completely unaware of what is going on between Simone and her father.  She has issues from her past that affect her self-esteem.  She doesn't feel that she deserves the life that she has been given.  Her relationship with Simone's father, Ross, is so unbalanced and she just wants to keep her family together.

The synopsis doesn't even began to fully explain the crazy mess that is Ryan.  She basically is a mess.  Mensah describes Ryan as a woman with an addiction, to drugs and love.  Really, what seems to be the problem is that she suffers from at most a panic disorder and probably a mood disorder.  I really didn't like how this was glanced or and so easily resolved.  After breaking up with Anthony (aka Ross), she was able to overcome her addiction to pain killers and him in three days.  Not very realistic at all.

Anthony/Ross is the most disturbed at all.  He justifies his molesting of his daughter because of some Oedipus complex crap he had for his mother.  He justifies his treatment of his wife because she was too willing to please.  And his affair with Ryan was because he was his father's son.

I did like the plot.  I liked how Mensah gave the reader background on Anthony/Ross and how he became the man that became.  She did the same thing with Jessica which later helped justify some of the things that she was willing to do and did.  I only wish that she had done the same thing with Ryan, who felt kind of incomplete.

Even though I didn't like the characters I did like the story overall.  I wanted to see what happened and how it played out. The last 200 "pages" went by quickly, the action really picked up and I was on the edge of my seat to see what happen next.  It didn't quite play out like I thought it would.  And Mensah did end up wrapping everything up with a little bow, but I think the whole mess ended the why that it should have.

One of the biggest issue I had was with formatting.  It was horrible and all over the place.  I think its because I  brought my copy from Barnes and Nobles for my nook and the author used Smashword as her distributor.

Someone contacted me through Goodreads and said that my the settings on my Nook may have been causing my formatting issues.  I checked it out and set it to publishers default and the text size to the smallest.  That solved most of the formatting issues, but it seems to have made the text to small for me to comfortably read (I don't need glasses for reading).  So, if you are having a problem with formatting while reading an e-book it might be your settings.

Pros: Plot, Action, Drama
Cons: Characters

Overall Recommendation:

I would recommend this book.  Monique D. Mensah is a good story teller.  I have a feeling that the next books in the series will be better and I am going to read them.  From what I can gather the next one can be read as a standalone.  I am interested to see what Mensah thinks of next.

Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon

I don't remember the last time I participated in a Read-a-Thon.  It's probably something that I could quickly look up but I am being lazy.  I have a perfectly good excuse too.  I'm on vacation.

And what better way to spend a vacation than to spend it reading.

I am going to keep it simple with the goals.  I would like to finish two books and start a third.

Books I Plan To Finish:

• The Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Book To Start: 

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Mailbox Monday: January 23rd

In January Mailbox Monday is being hosted by At Home With Books.

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Again, it has been a empty week for my physical mailbox.  I will pat myself on the back for that one.  I was tempted to buy a book at the airport.  The cover was calling my name but I reminded strong and was able to resist temptation.

My Nook on the other hand, received three new books.

Free from Barnes and Nobles (now $8.99)

An old love letter found in the glove compartment of a young woman's inherited 1972 Volkswagen propels her to leave her life in Los Angeles and go to the small town of Capitola, California. There her dream of finding the writer of the letter leads her on an unexpected journey that changes her life forever. Claire James, age twenty-three, is ready to make it on her own. When she's fired from her job as a waitress and subsequently kicked out of her sister's home, she sees it as an opportunity to start over. But even before moving, a thirty-five-year-old love letter written to her mother keeps Claire stuck in the past. Michael Thompson, a middle-aged real estate agent, wants to keep the past where it belongs--at least until his grown daughter is married. But, then a young woman comes to town . . .

On Sale at Barnes and Nobles (now $12.99)

A storm is coming . . .
Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life.
But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.
Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.

A NetGalley Review Copy

Set in Western Australia in the first decades of the nineteenth century, That Deadman Dance is a vast, gorgeous novel about the first contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the new European settlers. 

 Bobby Wabalanginy is a young Noongar man, smart, resourceful, and eager to please. He befriends the European arrivals, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family, and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine. But slowly-by design and by hazard-things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is progressing. Livestock mysteriously start to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever-stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind, and Bobby is forced to take sides, inexorably drawn into a series of events that will forever change the future of his country. 

That Deadman Dance is inevitably tragic, as most stories of European and native contact are. But through Bobby's life, Kim Scott exuberantly explores a moment in time when things could have been different, when black and white lived together in amazement rather than fear of the other, and when the world seemed suddenly twice as large and twice as promising. At once celebratory and heartbreaking, this novel is a unique and important contribution to the literature of native experience.

What came into your mailbox this week?

Friday Finds: 01/20/2012

Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading ask:

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

The web is a dangerous place for a reader.  I have been trying to control how many books I add to my virtual tbr list but this week it was just to hard to weed some on new finds out.  I got it down to 10.  Normally, I like to add 5 or less.

Teaser Tuesday: 01/17/2012

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.

• Let the book fall open to a random page.

• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

This weeks teasers is from Who Is He To You by Monique D. Mensah:

She had packed as if they were staying for two weeks with one suitcase with enough clothes for her to change three times a day and another with the shoes to match.  A third bag held her toiletries and hair care items.

She sound pretty high maintenance to me.

Don't forget to share a link to your teaser.

Mailbox Monday: January 16th

In January Mailbox Monday is being hosted by At Home With Books.

Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

This week my mailbox has been empty.  But I did manage to find three books to download into my Nook.  All three were free at the time.

Leah Thornton’s life, like her Southern Living home, has great curb appeal. But a paralyzing encounter with a can of frozen apple juice in the supermarket shatters the façade, forcing her to admit that all is not as it appears. When her best friend gets in Leah’s face about her refusal to deal with her life, Leah is forced to make an agonizing decision. Can she sacrifice what she wants to get what she needs? Joy, sadness, and pain converge, testing Leah’s commitment to her marriage, her motherhood, and her faith.

If he had only answered that last phone call from the World Trade Center . . . Minutes before two jumbo jets changed U.S. history, New York police officer Austin Finley ignored the call from his brother, who’d been bugging him for days. Trying to live with his one regret causes hatred and bitterness to consume Austin, and when counselor Mercy Samara recommends desk duty, Austin resigns. Haunted by her own memories of 9/11, Mercy takes a job as a school counselor in Baltimore. When Austin, now an EMT, responds to an emergency at Mercy’s school, both are stunned and wary. Finally their common—and painful—memories turn suspicion into friendship, then romance. But hard questions linger: Can they truly move beyond their past harsh judgments and harsh words? Will their past finally bring them closer or—as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 draws near—drive them farther apart?

This powerful new novel by O. H. Bennett tells the story of a makeshift family struggling to stay together as life wears away at their bonds of blood and love. At the center of the family is Gail Neighbors, the hardworking single mother of two sons, Mason and Tyler. Mason, the older, grew up without knowing his father, a feckless gambler and womanizer. Tyler, the younger, sings in the church choir and enjoys a close relationship with his father, Dan, who left Gail a few years before still spends plenty of time at the house. To make ends meet, Gail has taken in two boarders: Annie, an elderly woman with a diminishing grip on reality, and Jackie, the 20-year-old single mother of baby Cole, who can't fully accept her overwhelming new responsibilities. Creatures Here Below renders with tremendous richness and care the realities of a black teenaged male whose life is taking a turn toward the worse.

TSS: 01/15/2012

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

It has been a while since I have participated in The Sunday Salon.  I don't even know where to start.

Nothing much happen this week for me reading wise.  It has been very slow.  After taking a long break from reading and blogging I am trying to find my footing.  It's still a work in progress.

Book Club

At the end of last year I started a book club on Meetup.  There aren't to many book clubs in the Miami area.  If there are I haven't been able to find them.  I have only seen two active ones and both of them are outside my traveling distant.  The one that I could go to and try to a attend every few months, meets up on a Wednesday night.  Which is hard for me because of work, distance and the bus ride.

That being said.  I started my own, near to my house that meets once a month on Saturday.  This month was our first official meeting and we talked about Wench (review).  It was a lively meeting and I really enjoyed myself.  If you haven't tried a book club I highly suggest that you do.  It was a great way to spend an Saturday.

One of the things that I learned from the book club is to write my reviews before the meeting. After I got back I tried to write the review for Wench and I didn't go so well.  My thoughts were scattered because there were so many talking points brought up.  My review suffered because of it.

Challenges

This year I aim to read fifty books.  The good thing about GoodReads is that there is a little widget that will track how many books you have read.  So, far I am on track.  Hopefully, I can keep it up.

I signed up for The Unread Book Challenge 2012.  Basically it is a challenge to that encourages the reading of books that are already owned.  In my initial post, I claimed that I own 57 books but that doesn't include my digit collection.  Only books in which I own a physical hard copy.

That got me thinking, I really should include my whole collection both digital and physical. If I do (and I will) that  means I have currently a total 518 books. Which stuns me, most of the books on my Nook where free and a good number of them are classics.  But oh my word.  I have some reading to do.

Blog Appearance

I got tried of the old blog template so I tried to change it.  But couldn't find one that I liked.  So, I went back to basics until something catches my eye.

Anyone know a good website for free blogger templates.

That's it for me now.

See you next Sunday,
MoniqueReads

Free Classic e-Books

This morning I was browsing Barnes and Noble for classics.  I don't know why but it may have something to do with book buying being an addiction.  Now that I own a Nook, I seem to have an urge to see fill it up with books.  Even though I know that it will be almost impossible for me to read all of them.

During my search I found that Barnes and Noble is offering ten of Barnes and Noble Classic NookBooks for free.  I already own all of them but thought that I should pass the news on to others.  Clicking on the pictures should take you to the appreciate B&N book page.


I don't know how long these books are going to be free. So get them ASAP.