Sunday in Bed With...5.27

"Sundays in bed with..." is a weekly meme hosted by my dear friend Kate over at Midnightbookgirl.com! It is a great way for us all to share what books we are spending our weekends with or which books we wish we were spending our weekends with. 

Today, I am spending my Sunday in bed with Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club and The Solitude of Prime Numbers. 

I am currently in two book clubs and it just so happens that this month they are both meeting on the same weekend! And that weekend is only two weeks away!

My friend Holly is hosting our book club for Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club on Saturday and then I am hosting for my other book club on that Sunday.

I bought the Solitude of Prime Numbers from Hastings because after the title caught my eye I became completely obsessed with it for some reason.

The book is supposed to be about how people can see themselves as a "prime number". A prime number is a lonely thing because it is only divided by itself and one, so it doesn't really have a match or a counter part or something to be paired with.

After I picked up the book I turned it over a caught sight of the authors photo on the back...

HELLO!!!

So, who are you spending Sunday in bed with?

Abducted by Sundays in bed with...5.20.12

I actually didn't get to spend Sunday in bed with a book this weekend. I have just joined the choir at my church and they sing in the 9 am mass so I had to be up extra early! Hopefully, in the weekends to come, I'll be able to get up, go to church, and then come home and get back into bed with a book, just not today.


If I had been able to spend the morning in bed with a book I would have been reading the first book in the Final Friends series by Christopher Pike!

My friend Kate ( aka our Sundays In Bed With hostess ) gave me this series for Christmas and I thought it might be fun to read them this week since it is the week Kate is celebrating her birthday!

HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY KATE!!!!!!!!!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I hope you get to spend some time in bed with your favorite series today!

Abducted by The Sugar Queen

Well, you guys, Sarah Addison Allen does it again!!!

I cannot tell you guys how much I loved this book! I think it is going to be up there on my list of favorite books of all time! I listened to the audio version, but I can't wait to buy the paperback! I'm going to underline the crap out of it!!! Also, I'm not usually one for dog-earing pages but I will totally find a way to mark my favorite sections so that I can have the book on my nightstand and reread the best parts until I can recite them in my sleep!

The Sugar Queen is about a 27 year old woman, Josey, who is living at home and taking care of her mother. Josey had a rough childhood, she wasn't the most well behaved kid, and therefore she carries a lot of quilt around with her. Then a friend of hers, Della Lee, comes to stay for a bit and she is the catalyst to force Josey to decide if she is ready to start living her life. And as Josey starts to live her life, it begins to affect other people in the town.

When the narrator was first describing the main character of Josey she had a line that I absolutely loved;

She was happy in an awkward sleepy kind of way. 

After I heard that line I had to rewind the track and hear it again. I could totally relate to that! And I think that is why I loved this book so much, I could relate so strongly to Josey. I loved her!

First of all her power color is red! I love red! And then you add on the fact that she struggled with unrequited love and she had insecurities about her looks and her weight, I mean we are practically the same person!

So many of the characters in the story were feeling trapped. They were too afraid of change or of moving forward. But then all these things started to shift in these tiny little ways and before you knew it there were freaking catalysts going off all over the place! I LOVE catalysts!

And Adam! Oh, my God, Adam!!!

I will admit that I didn't feel too attached to the characters in the beginning but when I got about half way through, Adam had my stomach flipping like crazy!

Adam was feeling trapped by an injury and the emotional after math of the accident that caused it. There is one scene when this drunk guy at a bar calls Josey a "fat bitch" and Adam just punches him! I LOVED that scene! And after I finished the book I kept rewinding it to certain conversations, certain dates, certain kissing scenes between those two that were, just so perfect! I was melting!

And there were times when I didn't think that Josey's mother was that bad, but then there was one scene in particular that my mouth dropped and hung open for like 5 minutes! I just couldn't believe how awful she was!

The added bonus was the character of Chloe that had this peculiar ability where books followed her around. Whenever she really needed something, the right book would just appear beside her. But by the end the narrator describe it as if the books were watching over Chloe, and I really liked that.

I can't wait to reread this one! I loved it so much! I have to give it an abduction rating of...

If I could give it a 10! I totally would!

Abducted by Sundays in bed with...5.13.12

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Kate over at Midnightbookgirl hosts this meme every Sunday! It is a great chance to share how we are going to spend the day and what books we are hoping to make time for! 

Since the only child I have is my dog Riley, before giving him his breakfast this morning I made him come with me to Starbucks to get mine!

And on our way we listened to the audio version of Daughter of Smoke and Bones.

I am about 30% through with it but I've been hooked since about .02%!





And now that I am back home I am watching Friends season 2 while working on my blog and other things on my computer, before I get back into bed and curl up with the last hour of Fifty Shades of Grey!

Abducted by some blog hopping

TGIF is a meme hosted by Ginger at GReads and this week the question is...

"Supporting Characters: We tend to gush over those main characters the most, but what about those supporting roles? Who are some of your favorites?"

My absolute favorite supporting character is Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter! Whether you are talking about adorable young Neville...

Or yummy all grown up Neville! I will take either and More Please!





But I can also tell you that John Green writes terrific supporting characters, as does David Levithan and Dean Koontz and Sarah Addison Allen. Great supporting characters from all of them!


Feature and Follow is a meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison can Read. It is great because it asks a question but every week they also feature a specific book blogger (that is where the feature part of the title comes into play)! And I was absolutely delighted this week to see that the feature blogger was my own friend Fake Steph!

Congratulations Steph! I'm so excited for you and I loved your answers to all the questions they asked you!

Now here is the question they asked the rest of us...

"This Sunday, in the US, is Mother's Day, in celebration what are some of your favorite books with strong mother/child relationships?"

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest is a book that I read for my book club way back in September. It was the first real steampunk kind of novel that I read and I loved it! I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads!
The story is all about this mother, Briar, and her son, Zeke. The two become separated and now Zeke's life is in real danger. The book is told from each of their perspectives and is all about Zeke trying to stay alive and Briar doing absolutely every thing she can to find her son and bring him back safe and sound.
These days it is getting kind of hard to find books that have strong mother/child relationships that are featured as the main plot in the story, but this one is a good one!




I also want to make sure everyone is aware that Steph over at TheFakeSteph is having a giveaway which ends in one hour so go check it out fast!!!

And Kim over at OntheWingsofBooks is hosting a giveaway that ends on the 19th so check that one out as well!

Abducted by Zombicorns

Yesterday, I finally finished Zombicorns by John Green!

I got the short novella months and months ago, and it is only like 38 pages long, so I really should have read it a long before now! In the end, it took me two sittings to read it but there was about a week and a half in between them.

The story introduces us to a young girl named Mia. Mia was forced to kill her father when he became infected with a virus called d131y. Her sister has now become infected as well, Mia is still doing everything she can to provide for her...from a safe distance that is.

When we meet her, Mia is alone with her dog (Mr. President) and is reminicing about her recent friend, a girl named Caroline. At this point corn has taken over the world and infected humans with the virus that turns them into...okay, basically it turns them into something like "zombies". But don't call them "zombies" because Mia doesn't like that! Her definition is that the people are still people, they are just infected, but of course that is where the whole discussion of; what happens to a person's soul? comes into play.

A John Green story (novella, novel, or otherwise) wouldn't be a John Green story without having the characters contemplate what it means to be human, what it means to feel, and struggles with defining a person's soul.

"Being a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people." 

Then again, it also wouldn't be a John Green story if it wasn't infused with moments of self reflection that seem absurd and yet 100% accurate at the same time, and also that make you laugh. For me it was a small rant that Mia goes on about the love between a person and their chair;

"...say a guy who works for the Social Security Administration or something...he spends all day in the same chair that he's been sitting in for twelve and a half years or whatever, all day every day in this very same chair, and the guy sometimes thinks...about how this chair is technically his most intimate acquaintance, about how he and the chair have shaped each other. There's an indention forever in the chair where the guy's wallet is and the guy long ago changed his posture to meet the needs of the chair. He and the chair, they are these two symbiotic creatures locked in a decade-long love affair..." 

Absurd right? However, maybe, somewhat accurate? I don't know why, but when I read that part about how "he and the chair have shaped each other", I'm not even kidding it kind of gave me chills.I just really liked the idea of that.

The novella does begin with a message that warns readers that the novella they are about to read is not a finished or polished piece. I think that was one of the things that most intrigued me to read it. John Green is always saying that if we nerdfighters ever got a hold of one of his original copies of Looking For Alaska or Paper Towns that we would probably vomit all over the place. I was very interested to see just how bad his writing was before it's polishing.

And I'm sure this wont come as a huge surprise, but really, it wasn't too bad at all. I probably struggled more with this story then I have with his previous works, but I was still able to follow it okay and as you saw above, I could still recognize his style of writing. The phrasing and the structure of the sentences was a little rough, the words didn't flow as lyrically as they have in his other work, but that was the only thing that I noticed. Oh, and there were parts where words were repeated (one paragraph started out with the word "but" three times) but that just made me smile. It wasn't like any of these obstacles took me out of the story or made it difficult to process.

I would give Zombicorns by John Green an abduction rating of...

Abducted by my favorite couples

A little over two months ago, as you may remember, a lot of us book bloggers were making up questions for each other and then tagging our friends to see what their answers would be.

I made it a point to answer the questions provided by certain friends of mine, however their was one friend that I didn't respond to. And that friend was....Stephanie over at The Fake Steph.com.

Sorry Steph! But the reason why I never answered your questions was because you stumped me!

The very first question on Steph's list was...

1. What are your three favorite literary couples?

I had no idea how to answer that! I mean, because if you stop and think about it, sure there are a lot of books that involve characters in relationships that I like. But every single one that I could think of, I found myself liking one person in the couple more then the other.

For example: In Outlander I love Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall as a couple, but I love Jamie way more then I love Claire. 

Why did that matter so much to me? Because the seventh question on her list was...

7. You have to permanently break up one of the couples from question one.  Who do you choose?

I know Steph is probably going to say that I was putting waaaay too much thought into this, but I felt like it wouldn't be fair if I put a couple down as my answer if I knew that it wouldn't hurt me when I was forced to break them up later. 

But luckily, I have finally read some additional books with couples in them that I love! And I am ready to answer your questions Steph! 

1. What are your three favorite literary couples?
Anne and Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables; Cable and Janie from the Wake series; and Adam and Josey from The Sugar Queen! And I'm going to go ahead and throw in Lola and Cricket for good measure!

2. Pick two authors you'd love to see team up to write a book together.

Two of my favorite authors are Nick Hornby and John Green and I think they could be great together!

3. What is the most memorable conversation you've had with a stranger about a book? 

I'm going to have to say none, because if I have to think this hard to come up with one it must not have been that memorable!

4. Why did you start book blogging?

Kate (aka MidnightBookGirl) held a gun to my head and made me!

5. Who has the best coffee...Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin Donuts, or WaWa?

Well, I don't know what WaWa or Caribou Coffee are but ever since readathon I have been obsessed with Gevalia's vanilla blend! It smells AMAZING!!!

6. What is your least favorite book and why?

Wither.

7. You have to permanently break up one of the couples from question one. Who do you choose? 

Okay, well, this may come as a surprise to some people, but I'm going to break up Anne and Gilbert! To be honest, I have only read the first book in the Anne of Green Gables series. But I have seen all of the movies. And I personally was not to fond of Anne's growing relationship with Jack Garrison in Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story. Sure they were just friends and maybe we are supposed to believe that their affection for each other didn't go beyond mutual respect, but still. If I have to permanently break up one of my treasured literary couples, then I have to say them. Although, as I type this I am remembering that scene at the end with Anne is on stage and sees Gilbert in the audience, I could cry right now! Damn, I have to move on before I change my mind!

8. Recommend a book for me.

I don't want to play the "you owe me one card" (although after reading Percy Jackson and the Curse Workers and Georgia Nicolson you do...kind of...maybe...well...you know...) but since you included it on your very own question list I would say; Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz!

9. What is something from a futuristic novel that you are hopeful will one day exist in real life?

In the book Cinder, the girls play a game like chess but the game pieces were figurines styled after the players favorite celebrities. I remember when I read that all I could think was; Why did my sisters and I not think to do that when we were playing Guess Who all through out our childhoods??? I would love to have something like that, it would be so fun!

10. Kill, Marry, Makeout: Ranger Morelli, Deisel (did I spell his name right? guess you know where he is on my list).

Well, I have never read the Stephanie Plum series so I don't really have strong feelings for any of these people and I don't even know who Deisel is! But I would say...Kill Deisel, make out with Morellie, and marry Ranger!