Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a Happy Successful New Year!

 I am eager to set some goals and start some new years resolutions. One of them is to lose weight and get fit. I think I'm going to get back on the Sparks site. If your looking for motivation and great people to chat with, SparkPeople is an awesome place.

Well I better get started , that means getting off the internet and get moving!

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!!

vote it up!

Sunday Salon

My first Sunday Salon post.


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....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. See below for how to join the Salon.

This week has been busy and i'm still  reading The Postmistress by Sarah Blake . I'm about halfway through and its turning out to be a pretty good read.   At first I was confused by the quick shift in character but after reading Sarah Blakes explanation of her writing, I could picture it clearly in my mind and I can understand now why she wrote it the way she did. 

I'm also working on Hard Way Home by 

Dennis Wesley Clark. Although I haven't read much of it this week but my goal is to finish it by the end of the week.

My goal is also  to finish The Postmistress by the end of the week. Hmmm, I  guess that means staying off of the computer.

So heres my to be read pile

 

My next read are the two books I won from the Early Reader at the Library Thing. 

The first is a book called The Book of Samuel by Erik Raschke .  After reading the reviews on Library Thing, I hope I can read it!

After that is Double Cross by James David Jordan.Sounded mysterious and suspensful . From Amazon:  

 Raised by a father who was a former Special Forces officer, Taylor is beautiful and brilliant and knows how to take care of herself. But she is haunted by her past and the sacrifice her father made to save her from a brutal rape when she was seventeen. After a controversial stint in the Secret Service, she has become the most prominent private security specialist in America. When she discovers the body of a former client’s top assistant, all the evidence points to embezzlement and suicide. But Taylor has no way of knowing that her mother, who ran out when Taylor was nine, is about to reappear and lead her down a twisting path of danger and deceit. It’s a road that won’t end until they reach the spot where Taylor’s father died—where Taylor learns some sacrifices can never be earned. 

 Other news - my husband will be laid off next week. Construction must be slowing down. I just hope there will be some work to carry through to Christmas. Its to depressing to be broke during the holidays. I just want my son to have a nice birthday and Christmas. 

My  husband and son are really into Star Trek. Not the original but The Next Generation and they've seen all of those videos and now they're into Deep Space Nine. Soooo Christmas and Birthday gifts should be prettty eaassyyy.

I took some pictures of Tobey in his favorite climbing tree today. This is one of them.  I took about 10 and had a hard time picking my fav. I think this one is my fav.

He'll be 9 in December! Wish I had a recent picture of my daughter, she'll be 23 in December.  Wow , why does time go by so fast. 

There are a LOT of awesome giveaways and I'm on my laptop or I'd list the sites. As soon as I get on my other computer I'll add the sites. I really want to read Nine Dragons my Michael Connelly and Cindy Woodsmalls newest book The Sound of Sleigh Bells . So i've entered some giveaways for those. I've noticed there are quite a few giveaways for romance type books and I'm just not into those types of books.

I hope you all have a wonderful, successfull reading week!!

Monday Musings

So many books have been coming in the mail. Hopefully i can get thru them quickly since so many more are coming. Not much time for the internet!








Sworn to Silence is a librarything Early Reviewer book. I'm looking forward to reading it.


The Devlin Diary is a book i won from Pick of the Literate .


Under This Unbroken Sky is a book club book on the Barnes and Nobles First Look Club. The discussion starts August 2nd and i've already read half. Its hard for me to put it down, i want to keep reading!


A Lucky Child was also a book won from True Crime Book Reviews .


Jillian Michaels Master you Metabolism was a Twitter quickie win from Randoms House Read it Forward.



The last one is a review copy from Bostwick Communication.


I would also like to thank Tea from Summer Travel and Reading Fun for the Heartfelt Award!
I'll have to pass it on tomorrow.

Well thats all for now! Have a great week.




Best regards,

Its Friday Musings................

Finally its Friday. Its been a long week.

My mailbox was busy this week. I received two books:

Elemental Shaman : One Mans Journey into the Heart of Humanity, Spirituality and Ecology.

The back of the book:
This fascinating true story chronicles one man's journey into the mysteries of spiritual consciousness and the indegenous healing practices of four shamanistic traditions: Toltec, Cherokee, Maya and Buddhist. In his travels around the globe, Rosales witnesses the powerful channeled spirit Nino Fidencio, recieves messages and healing from a Toltec shaman, and experiences a dramatic soul retrieval from a Cherokee spiritwalker. Rosales travesls to Guatemal, where he meets a mayan high priestess and the secret brotherhoods called cofradias, whose mission is to guard Maximon, the last living Mayan god. Rosales's last journey is to Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon, where he spends time with a holy lama.


A Lucky Child by Thomas Beurgenthal.

From Amazon:
From Publishers Weekly
Not many children who entered Auschwitz lived to tell the tale. The American judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Czechoslovakia-born Buergenthal, is one of the few. A 10-year-old inmate in August 1944 at Birkenau, Buergenthal was one of the death camp's youngest prisoners. He miraculously survived, thanks, among others, to a friendly kapo who made him an errand boy. Buergenthal's authentic, moving tale reveals that his lifelong commitment to human rights sprang from the ashes of Auschwitz. 16 b&w photos, 1 map. (Apr. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


I'm still reading The Anatomy of Wings By Karen Foxlee.

From Amazon starred reviewer:
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Set in a small Australian town in the early 1980s, this shining debut novel charts a young girl’s grief after the death of her older sister. Months before Beth’s fatal fall, 10-year-old Jennifer’s beautiful singing voice disappears. When and why it “got stuck” forms a central mystery that unifies Jennifer’s narrative, which loops fluidly between past and present. Each clue leads back to events from the tumultuous year before Beth died, and Jennifer’s search for her voice becomes a larger search for how her beloved sister was lost and what it means to leave childhood behind. In this sensitive, original story, Foxlee explores familiar elements: the warmth and suffocation of living in “Nowheresville”; the chasm of misunderstanding between parents and adolescent children. Jennifer loves the comfort and solidity of facts, and she collects information like currency, but her observations are also poetic and washed with magic realism. Not all the plot’s tangents are well integrated, but the story works as memory does, with skips, gaps, and sudden, piercing moments that are as illogical and illuminating as a dream. With heart-stopping accuracy and sly symbolism, Foxlee captures the small ways that humans reveal themselves, the mysterious intensity of female adolescence, and the surreal quiet of a grieving house, which slowly and with astonishing resilience fills again with sound and music. Grades 8-12. --Gillian Engberg

I'm enjoying my reading this week.

I also came across the New York Times article about Yann Martels new book coming out in sometime next year . One of my favorite books of all time was Life of Pi so i'm looking forward to reading his new book.

Park-Avenue Princess is doing a contest for this bracelet.
Its so cool, i had to enter!

Well thats all for now. May post more later.

One more thing, Dina of Just Another New Blog - just sent me a winning email! I won The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly!

Have a great week and happy reading!




**** Just note that i won a "quickie" contest put on by Beth from Beths Book Review - "My Forbidden Desire" -- Ooohhh sounds hot !!LOL! Thanks so much Beth!


Best regards,