Cat Thursday (11)

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! Hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

Michelle is doing Christmas in July this week as well...so I thought I'd put up two of my cats in Santa's hat! My other kitty ran away every time so he is not in this one :(

One Line Movie Reviews (10)

1. Side Effects (2013): A great twisty turvy murder mystery!

Rating: B+

2. Kumare (2011): A fake guru finds a following, finds himself and helps others to realize they only need themselves to find happiness and peace.

Rating: A

3. Identity Thief (2013): Melissa McCarthy is gold but even she couldn't lift that bad story and dialogue along...messy.

Rating: C

4. The Heat (2013): Women power from two different sides of the track and soooo hilarious!

Rating: A

5. Sons of Provo (2004): This movie really only makes sense if you have ever been Mormon and/or raised around Utah Mormons, especially, but if you have that background and a love for boy bands, this is comedy gold with a sweet message at the end.

Rating: A- (source)

Cat Thursday (10)

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! Hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

Michelle is doing a Christmas in July kitty them so I thought I'd go with cats in Santa hats!

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Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

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This was a fast-paced book and so entertaining. But I felt it was a bit fluffy on so many issues that it was trying to explore. When it comes to fantasy I want powerful world-building, I want powerful character-building. Sometimes in YA we only get one or none. I really feel like this had the potential to be an epic fantasy, but it just fell a little flat.

The characters and the plot was pretty 2-dimensional. I knew right away who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. There were a lot of dark and light concepts running, and I felt the author tried to throw some grey in there but without much success. 

Oh, love triangles! How I love and hate thee! In theory love triangles should flesh out how nuanced love is, that there are many types of love and that you really can love more than one person at a time for different reasons. So in one way she explores lust and power when it comes to Alina's attraction to the Darkling. But I wouldn't call it a love triangle. Yes, she wants to do him dark and dirty but not necessarily live with him and bear his children! So not truly a love triangle. Which brings me to Mal...he's pretty one note. Of course, he loves Alina he just doesn't realize it until she's gone! So convenient.

Bardugo never explains why we should except the second-rate status of the Grisha...lots of unanswered questions.

She did have an interesting take on psychology, though. I like how she explored Alina's powers. She couldn't tap into them until she faced her demons...her head shrink was her own head! Facing those unconscious ideas and then growing from them and becoming powerful. I loved that.

I also loved that Alina had to make some hard decisions but some of those decisions were backed by power and lots of it. And how she realizes awesome power comes with awesome responsibility (yeah, that is from Spider Man). She grows, she learns to be independent, she learns about love and mercy and the power that comes from having those.

She does touch a bit on tyranny and what that can mean for a country and ultimately the world. But she only touches on it. I'm hoping some of these barely touched grays will come into fuller focus in the next two books.

So while it's not by ideal YA fantasy (that would be Seraphina by Rachel Hartman), it's pretty entertaining and has a lot of potential by Bardugo.

I did read some other reviews about how they didn't appreciate her lack of Russian knowledge and history. If I were a Russian or had some intimate knowledge of Russia and its language and culture, I'd probably be a bit annoyed as well. But I never was throughout the book. I thought adding a distinctive Russian flare to the book enhanced its mystery and fantasy. So I say read with a caveat that if you have Russian knowledge don't read this because you'll be annoyed :)

Camping With Gabe--Mirror Lake

Some friends of ours invited camping for a quick one-niter! We threw together our camping stuff and headed up to the mountains Friday to Saturday. It's been hard getting out camping much with Gabe being so young but each summer he (and thus we) enjoy it more. This year he had friends to play with and a beautiful lake to dip his toes into!

It's always nice to get out into nature and relax by a campfire and eat junk. The only thing not so great is the sleeping...meaning I get none! Yay, to the Earth! So beautiful :)

William Shakespeare's Star Wars by Ian Doescher

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What better way to celebrate William Shakespeare and Star Wars than to combine the two? It's Star Wars but written in iambic pentameter play style complete with chorus, asides, and a snarky and talking R2D2!

It's also pretty hilarious to listen to Darth Vader in your head speaking in rhyme and meter.

The only thing against this is the same thing I have against Shakespeare...sometimes it was hard to understand. My poetic brain never truly turns on. So it helped that I already knew the story and could follow along despite the lingo.

Quirk Books even shot a cheesy but funny trailer for the book:



I thoroughly enjoyed this new take on Star Wars and would love to actually see this as a play someday!

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

One Line Movie Reviews (9)

1. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013): With both good and bad witches this was a real treat!

Rating: B

2. House at the End of the Street (2012): Creepy and jumpy with a surprise twist ending.

Rating: B

3. Oz the Great and Powerful (2013): Cute but a bit overplayed addition to the Wizard of Oz series.

Rating: B-

4. The Croods (2013): Not all cave people are brutes!

Rating: B

5. Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Best of Both Worlds (2013): Best season finale and opener in Star Trek TV history!

Rating: A-

6. Eraserhead (1977): I can never ever gain back that time I spent watching this horrible flick.

Rating: D

7. Beautiful Creatures (2013): Surprisingly good rendition of the book!

Rating: B+

8. Jack the Giant Slayer (2013): I'm not sure what kind of movie it was going for...kid's show light or kid's show dark...I don't think the makers knew either...

Rating: C

9. Warm Bodies (2013): A great zombie romance!

Rating: B+

10. Howl's Moving Castle (2004): Fantastic fantasy romance!

Rating: A

Cat Thursday (9) Independence Day!

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! Hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

Happy birthday, America!

Countdown City by Ben Winters

Another great edition to the Last Policeman series as we countdown to asteroidal extermination.

Hank Palace has been dismissed from his duties as a detective, has inherited a drug dealer's dog and his childhood babysitter comes knocking...Beautiful Martha Milano needs him to find her run-off husband Brett. Why has he left? Another bucket-lister before the end or another reason? Hank has to keep on plugging away at the litte things and uses this new case as a way to distract himself from in the inevitable.

Along the way we see how society is slowly breaking down and anarchy sets in. Everyone has guns, food storage and no qualms about getting more from others more weak.

He tracks Brett through various "utopian" societies trying keep a semblance of order as well as conspiracy theories about governments looking forward to ultimate destruction.

Winters really doesn't pull any punches. What would society really do if we learned the end was near and there was nothing to be done? Hold onto humanity or every man, woman, and child for him or herself? I think he's got it about right. Whole systems break down and people turn tribal and protect their own. Us versus them becomes smaller, less us's and more thems.

I'm looking forward to the last installment! Are the conspiracy nuts right? Can the save the day? Only one more book to find out!

A big thanks to Quirk Books for providing me an advanced copy for a fair and honest review!

Cat Thursday (8)

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! Hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

I'm doing an evil cat meme today! Enjoy! I'm pretty sure this is really what goes through their minds :)

One Line Movie Reviews (8)

1. Bruce Almighty (2003): Silly and a bit ridiculous but still on the heart-warming side.

Rating: B-

2. Jack Reacher (2012): Only a so-so plot but I really liked Jack.

Rating: B

3. Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985): Brings me back to my childhood!

Rating: B-

4. Django Unchained (2012): Great revenge story with tons of blood and guts.

Rating: B+

5. Cloud Atlas (2012): I'm still confused about everything...but definitely interesting.

Rating: C

Chime by Franny Billingsley

This was a thoroughly bewitching book. I really liked it. It is definitely not what I expected. There are some twists and turns and gotcha moments that really kept the story moving along.

Briony Larkin is the protagonist and narrator of her story. She believes she is a witch and we open with her pleading her guilt before the court. But then she tells us her story from the beginning and it begins with a boy-man named Eldric.



The prose is beautiful and lyrical, which is really funny since Briony doesn't like poetry and thinks she's terrible at it. We gain glimpses into her past and her family. She loves her stepmother and has nothing but praise for her but we as the audience know or at least feel differently. All is not what it seems. Why does she feel she's a witch? And what time period is she living in? It took me almost til the middle of the book before I was able to pin it down, but that's one of the beauties of this book. It's a totally surreal setting. She almost takes us in and out of time, even though there's no time travel. Supernatural beings exist alongside science, progress, and technology. The author was able to combine all very flawlessly.

But Briony was hard to listen to. She droned on and on about how horrible she was and why she deserved to be punished and unloved, on and on about her guilt. Though we never understand until the very end what's going on. So her voice became a bit tedious by the end, especially since we knew all was not what it seemed in her own head. I'm sure that was part of the point, though, to make us feel like her friends and family and not being able to get through to her until the end.

It's also not your typical boy saves damsel in distress. They saved each other and I loved that!

I only have one other complaint...the whole premise of the book/its world is that witches are inherently evil. This is a fantasy book and I get that but so many people were killed during the inquisition and witch trials throughout history that I get my hackles raised when these stories surface about witches. These stories play down that nasty part of history when they say witches actually existed and they were, of course, evil and thus deserved to die...

I will end on a happy note with one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it's not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scarpbooks and tell stories. That that's how we humans find our way to immortality...That's how we find our way toward meaning. Meaning. If you're going to die, you want to find meaning in your life. You want to connect the dots." (p. 351)

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

I read this one for my women's book club. I'd heard of Cheryl Strayed from her book Wild. But I didn't know she wrote for an advice column. That's where this book comes from. This book contains letters from people asking her advice and her responses. She also throws in a lot of life stories, so I'd almost call it a mini memoir.

It's pretty fabulous. I only have a couple of gripes that I'll throw out quickly. Her advice never really takes into account mental illness, but she does make it clear that she is not a psychologist/therapist and that her advice is opinion only in the introduction. I also realize that the people she gives her advice to wrote into her asking for her advice...But still. There's quite a bit of "have some will power and get off your lazy duff and if I can do it so can you" rhetoric. Some was needed and others? Well.....and the If I can do it, you can too is a bit much towards the end...

But really and truly most of her advice is pretty fabulous. She really talks about making the most of your life no matter what you've been through. That's powerful and much needed.

I'm just going to post a few of my favorite quotes throughout the book for the rest of my review :)

A woman who lost her baby six months into her pregnancy writes in about how to get through her grief, how to get unstuck.

(p. 22) "This is how you get unstuck...you reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved but so you can live the life that is yours--the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her."

Advice in love: (p. 18) "...Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word 'love' to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will."

"Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will." (p. 133)

"When it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next you fail." (p. 348)

This is definitely my favorite of 2013 so far.

Cat Thursday (7)

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! Hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict.

This week is all about Kittens!



My friend went away for the weekend to Vegas and she returned home to kittens! Her cat was pregnant and she didn't even know it. She's a very proud grandma. Gabe was very excited to hold such young kittens!