Teaser Tuesday 3.15.2011

Well, it is pretty sad when you become so lazy that the only time you blog is when it is time to do another Teaser.

In order to make up for this I'm going to challenge myself to write and post a new review every day for the next week!

Wow, even just typing that I got chills! I hope I don't let you down. I don't have enough balls to pinky promise on it or anything. But you can consider it challenge accepted!

But since it is Tuesday and I do love doing my Teaser Tuesday I'm going to go ahead and post one.

Today I received two books I ordered off Amazon. One of which was a hard back edition of The Silver Chair which is the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia and my favorite book ever since I was kid.

I also received A Question of Attraction by David Nicholls. I'm very excited to read this one since I LOVED One Day! (to read my review on One Day, co-authored with Midnight Book Girl click HERE)

So since, I just got it in the mail I figured I would use A Question of Attraction for my Teaser.





Now this is from page 240 which is a little further into the book then I usually go for a Teaser, but we are going to just roll with it today.


I turn, and walk quickly away without looking back, and I'm sure, I'm convinced, that I should feel good, and defiant, and strong about having finally stood up to him for once, but for some reason I don't. I just feel hot and hollow and stupid and sad, and I have no idea where to go.


And for a little more, here is the description on the back of the book:

The year is 1985. Brian Jackson, a working-class kid on full scholarship, has started his first term at university. He has a dark secret - a long-held, burning ambition to appear on the wildly popular British TV quiz show University Challenge - and now, finally, it seems the dream is about to become a reality. He's made the school team, and they've completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their first televised match. (And, what's more, he's fallen head over heels for one of his teammates, the beautiful, brainy, and intimidatingly posh Alice Harbinson.) Life seems perfect and triumph inevitable -- but as his worl opens up, Brian learns that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday and I will see you tomorrow!

Abducted by Tuesday Teaser 3.8.2011

Oh man, I am the worst!

Okay here is what has been going on with me...

About two weeks ago I was offered a transfer at my job to a different location. It isn't technically a promotion but the new store makes more money then my original store (aka I would make more money at the new store) and the new store is the biggest store my company has in my area, so it comes with way more responsibility so it is a good thing that they wanted me for it! Not only is it more responsibility and more money, but it is also 10 minutes from my house as compared to the 45 minutes it took me to get to my other store, and with gas prices what they are...of course I took the transfer.

Last week was my last week at my old store, which meant i was really busy getting everything cleaned up for the new manager to come in. It is a really odd situation because usually when you are leaving a job you don't care how far you were in certain projects because once you're gone, you're gone! It's not like they can track you down and yell at you for not completing something. But since I was just transferring, if something wasn't completed it would look really bad.

Anyway, I spent last week cleaning up my old store and then I had a 3 day weekend before starting at my new store today! And you can tell already what a stellar job I'm doing since I've been here for an hour this morning and I'm sitting here working on my blog!

So, why did I start out this blog post by stating that I am the worst!?! Because even with my long weekend, I haven't touched a single book in a WEEK!!! NOT ONE!!! Seriously, if it wasn't for the fact that I've been listening to The Duff and Mansfield Park on audio my entire week would have been waisted!

I always seem to be less productive when I have all my days off together like that. I think it is because I keep thinking that I have so much time to read that I just keep putting things off.

But now, I work for the next four days straight so hopefully I will get some reading done. I have book club this weekend so I HAVE to finish that book. And I have a line of people waiting to borrow Anna and the French Kiss from me so I really need to finish that book as well. Plus, I checked out a Maeve Binchy novel from the library, due back March 23rd, so I have to finish that book too.

And since I left all my other books at home and only happened to have the Maeve Binchy novel still in my car, that is the one I'm going to use for my teaser today...




So here is a teaser from Maeve Binchy's "The Return Journey"

Instead of only doing a few lines, I'm going to use a paragraph from page 96. Now I haven't even started this book yet, it was merely a coincidence I flipped right to a page with a paragraph I can totally relate too...

"According to Maggie, Lena was not in love. She was suffering from an obsession, an infatuation. It wasn't healthy for someone who was twenty-six to develop this kind of crush on a man who didn't return it and wasn't even aware of it. And however unwise it might have been to have allowed a temporary fascination to take over, it was positively dangerous to let it continue the way Lena had. She stopped being twenty-six and became twenty-seven, and twenty-eight and twenty-nine. Soon she would be thirty years of age, and what had she to show for it?"

Thanks for joining me this Tuesday, I hope you are feeling teased right now! Have a great day, and I better get back to work!

Abducted by a Blog Hop 3.4.2011

Today is Friday and it is time to start Hopping!!!



Today's question was:

"Who's your all-time favorite book villain?"

For me that is a really tough question. I don't read a lot of books with true "villains" in them.


My gut instinct answer was the main bad guy in the book Relentless by Dean Koontz. Shearman something? any way that guy was crazy! The scene when the couple is sleeping and he cuts the power and then waits in a chair in their room for them to wake up. Then when they do and they are all disorientated from the dark he uses a taser gun on them!!! So scary!!!

I think I liked him because he really was scary and creepy, yet in a fun roller coaster kind of way!

President Snow from the Hunger Games is a really good villain too, but I didn't enjoy him at all, so it is hard for me to make him my "favorite". I think having a favorite villain implies that one some level you love to hate them. I didn't really feel that way with President Snow but I did with Shearman.

Happy Hopping to all those participating and to everyone else; have a great weekend!

Abducted by Teaser Tuesday

Well, here we are, another Tuesday!

Today is also March 1st! Which means that Maeve Binchy's new novel Minding Frankie comes out today! I pre-ordered it from Amazon back in December so I should be receiving it in the mail tomorrow! I plan on spending the week finishing Anna and the French Kiss followed by Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness) which is my book for book club, then on Saturday morning I'm going to take Minding Frankie to brunch at La Baguette! I'm very excited about this :o) I love making brunch dates with my books!

However, because I haven't received Minding Frankie yet and I don't have Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness) with me at work, I'm going to be forced to use Anna and the French Kiss as my book for my Teaser Tuesday.

Don't forget that Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading (I can't make that a link because my work computer has it blocked for some reason :( sorry MizB)

So here is my Teaser for Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

now I'm only on page 61 but I'm going to use a teaser from page 192



The room is silent. After a moment, I roll back over. I slowly, slowly stretch out my leg until my foot brushes his ankle. His intake of breath is sharp. And then I smile, because I know he can't see my expression through the darkness.



Oooh steamy!!!

Well, I better get back to work now so I hope everyone has a great Tuesday!

Abducted by David and Rachel

Originally the plan, upon the completion of Dash and Lily's Book of Dares was to read a solo book by David Levithan, a solo book by Rachel Cohn and then finish off the week by reading the 2nd book that they wrote together, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. However, this just simply did not happen. I read David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy and enjoyed it just fine, then I read You Know Where To Find Me by Rachel Cohn...let's just say my reaction wasn't pretty.

I'm going to save my honest and thoughtful review on Rachel Cohn's novel for goodreads. I'd hate to bore my blog readers with it. I simply found this novel to be unsettling. So much so that I couldn't bring myself to read Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. I had such a bad taste in my mouth towards Cohn upon finishing YKWTFM that I feared it would taint my enjoyment of Naomi and Ely, so I will put that book off for now.

I was also going to include my review of all these books in one post but as I started to write this out, I'm noticing it is getting kind of long. So I'm going to save Dash and Lily and write that one on Wednesday or Thursday. Below, you will find my brief explanation for You Know Where To Find Me followed by my review for Boy Meets Boy.




All I will say about YKWTFM is that it is a book about a young girl, not yet 18, named Miles. Miles has a close relationship with her cousin, Laura, and is sent on a downward spiral after Laura commits suicide. Although the actual writing of the book is not completely lacking of skill. The character development is amateurish leaving the main character hard to relate to and frankly unlikable. Add that with the constant drug use and lectures on D.C. politics and you have a book that is boring as much as it is infuriating.




Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan was far more enjoyable in comparison. There really wasn't much to the story in Boy Meets Boy, the title pretty much sums it up. Boy meets boy, boy looses boy, boy must go through a period of self-awareness and self-discovery in order to get boy back. The magic of this book does not come from the plot but from the landscape. The town that our main character, Paul, lives in is idealistic. A place where all citizens are welcomed and accepted. All forms of self-expression are not only allowed but encouraged. Levithan does a wonderful job of showing that even in a society where people are simply accepted for who they are, loving someone is still hard.

The town itself it made up by a wonderfully colorful group of supporting characters. My favorites in the town were the guy who runs the video store, refusing to stock anything but VHS and who chooses to organize the movies based on his own preference and offers no assistance to customers looking for something specific. I also loved the "I Scream Parlor", which is the ice cream parlor that shows scary movies while you wait for your dessert. I hate scary movies, but that idea is adorable!

The thing I liked best about how Levithan presented this town, was that he did not choose to makes this book about a complete world. It wasn't like everyone across the country, every big city and small town, accepted people for who they were. It was just this one town. But the people of this town did not go every day feeling like they were the ones moving forward, instead they just saw it as the rest of the world was moving backwards. They weren't the ones being revolutionary, they were just being who they were, everyone else, for reasons unknown, is just living in denial.

Every now and then the reader is given a glimpse of the rest of the world through Paul's best friend Tony. Tony lives with the knowledge that his family and his friends at school (a different school then the one Paul attends) do not support who he is. And the hope that resonates at the end of the story is not found with the main character Paul, but with the strength and courage displayed in Tony.

In conclusion, David Levithan and I will carry on, I look forward to reading more from him in the future, Will Grayson Will Grayson in-particular. However, I feel it is time for Rachel Cohn and I to go our separate ways. I will read Naomi and Ely (because I already bought it) but other then that...I mean Rachel what can I say...It's not you, it's me...I'm going through a selfish phase right now where I need more "me" time, and I would rather spend my "me" time with books I enjoy...as far as remaining friends...well, i just don't think that is best...for either of us.

Abducted by kindness

When in doubt the answer is...






YES! It is ALWAYS nice to get flowers!






And trust me, my crappy phone and the bad lighting of my office, really doesn't do them justice!

Abducted by Blog Hop 2.25.11

I can't believe that it is Friday and I totally forgot to do the blog hop this morning!!!

My excuse...

I had an eye doctor appointment yesterday and I got my first pair of contacts!!! I'm really excited but still getting used to them. This was my first morning to try to put them on before heading off to work and it took me 45 minutes (aka two episodes of How I Met Your Mother from season 3 because that was the dvd that was in my dvd player this morning!) just to get them in.

Needless to say by the time I got them in I had to rush out the door to get to work, then with in 10 minutes of getting here my boss showed up to do my audit (phew) so I've been very distracted this morning.

But I really liked the question for this weeks blog hop so I would still like to participate even though I'm coming in late.

As you all know the blog hop is hosted by CRAZY FOR BOOKS and this weeks question was...

"Do you ever wish you would have named your blog something different?"

No, I don't. My friend Kate created my blog for me and I think she did an awesome job. According to her there were 3 reasons why she wanted to create the blog for me. One being that we used to run an online book club together and when that ended she really missed getting to read my reviews on books. Two, she already had a book blog and really liked being a part of the book blogging community and thought I would like it to. But the most important reason of all was that she had come up with the PERFECT name for a book blog and she really wanted me to use it. She said that she looked every where to see if it was being used and was shocked to find that it was still available, so she gave it to me.

I love the title of my blog because Kate gave it to me and it also makes me laugh when I remember the message she left on my phone telling me that she was going to give me a blog. (laughing is a pretty normal reaction to many of Kate's voicemails!)

Also I think the title just fits me. I love books because they are an escape and they take you on journey's you'd never get to go on by yourself. Not to mention the number of times I'm late getting somewhere or I forget to do my laundry or I don't have time to clean or I stay up way too late all because I've been "abducted" by yet another book.

So no, I love my blog and really LOVE my blog title! Thanks Kate!!!