the library is evil

Today I went to the library to pick up one book I had on hold.  My plan was to get in and out since I’ve got 6 books on my Nook I’m reading right now.  When I picked up the book on hold, Where She Went by Gayle Forman I realized I had put the wrong one on hold.  I still need to read the first book If I Stay.  So I wandered around looking to see if maybe it might be there somewhere.

Big mistake.

Sitting on the new books shelf were all the books I’ve been waiting for and three that I didn’t even know were out yet!  Of course I had to pick them up because who knows when I’ll get the chance to check them out again!  Of course, since they’re new books they’re all due back in 7 days and the chances of renewing them are pretty much zilch.

Why do I do this to myself??!??

But really?  Could you resist?

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare is the fourth in the Mortal Instruments series.  I have been dying for this book!  I made the mistake of buying the first three in paperback which meant that I couldn’t buy this one when it came out because it would be in hardback!  Oh bad hindsight!  When I went to put a hold on the book I was #76 or something like that.  Unbelievable.  But when I walked up to the new shelf and saw it I almost had a heart attack!  I can’t WAIT to start reading this one!  If you haven’t read the Mortal Instrument series you MUST.  Go get them now!  City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass and now City of Fallen Angels.

Kelley Armstrong wrote the Darkest Powers trilogy that was great, but ended soooo unsatisfactorily.  Now she’s started a new series beginning with The Gathering.

I didn’t even KNOW Herbie Brennan was writing another book in the Faerie Wars Chronicles.  This one takes place a number of years after Faerie Lord and a whole new generation of troubles with all our favorite people!

The Iron Daughter & The Iron Queen are part of a new series I started by Julie Kagawa.  The first one was interesting enough so now I must continue to read.  They were both there, right next to each other.  I’m screwed.

Carrie Jones’s Entice.  The third in the Pixies series.  I’m lukewarm on this series, but I must know what happens to Nick.  I MUST.

Threads and Flames by Esther Friesner.  I have no idea what this book is about, but I really liked the cover.

Really, I’m obsessed.  I guess on the bright side, I’m not buying these so at least I’m not going crazy there.

*sigh*

scary kari gets scared

I wrote this post about the award that Ixy gave me the other day and I mentioned my fear of clowns.  Ixy was intrigued.  Then only of my other fave bloggers Busy Bee Lauren did a post about things that scare the crap out of her so I thought I would do a little post about scary stuff.

There really isn’t a lot that scares me I think.  Off the top of my head I can think of two books, 3 movie moments and then of course there’s my Coulrophobia.  No, I did not know that word off the top of my head.  I had to google that and just freaked myself out by the lovely pictures that accompanied that. 

I really don’t know when my fear of clowns started.  I feel like I’ve always hated them.  I do know that I read It by Stephen King at a REALLY young age so that must be where it comes from, however I don’t really remember being scared by that book.  I mostly remember being confused because he kept flip flopping from past to present and the events were so similar I kept getting lost.  Anyhoo…that is my only explanation for this.  And I can read about them.  It doesn’t really scare me to read about clowns or hear the word ‘clown’, but seeing them….well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

There is something terribly wrong about a man covering up their face with makeup, creating a whole new expression on their face to hang around with children.  There is something off putting to me about anyone covering their face for any reason.  Generally, if I can see them coming I can brace myself and deal with it.  My family is really good at helping me.  My brother and I watch a lot of the same TV shows.  If there’s a clown on a show he would warn me beforehand.  My parents once gave me a cookbook by these two guys who dressed up as clowns.  My dad went through the book and covered up all the clown pictures.  Ray will avert my attention whenever we come across some clown picture of actual clown person.  It actually happens a lot more than you’d think.

Now when I’m taken by surprise mostly bad things happen.  I was at Blockbuster once scanning the movies and my eyes glanced right over a cover of a documentary on John Wayne Gacy.  I was going to post a picture of the cover here, but I couldn’t do it.  So you can see it here if you like.  So I glanced at it and moved on, but for some reason my eyes drifted back before I could grasp what I was seeing.  Then everything kind of went black and there was a guy next to me trying to help me up off the floor asking me if I was okay.  It’s a really freaky cover people.

I hate clowns.

Even just writing about it now is bothering me.  And like I said, it doesn’t even have to be the standard clown.  I so badly wanted to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland that I spent the year before the movie came out desensitizing myself to Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter and even then there were some iffy parts.

The funny thing is scary movies don’t scare me.  Horror genre books bore me.  So when I say I am scared of clowns, believe me that to me there is nothing scarier than a clown.

Stupid clowns.

thanks ixy!

 

My fancy bloggy friend Ixy over at Illusion gave me an award!  Isn’t she the nicest?

So the deal is that I tell you 7 things about myself and pass the award along to 15 other bloggers.  It’s really like a chain letter in blog form, but way more fun. 

1.  I hate clowns.  Who doesn’t, really?  I believe my hate-relationship began with Stephen King’s lovely bundle of joy, Pennywise from It.  Then the more I thought about it the more I found them creepy until my fear went beyond clowns and into the realm of ‘anyone wearing excessive amounts of facepaint or a mask’.  I do much better now, as I was once known to have fainted at the sight of a clown.  I don’t do that anymore, but I do freak out.

2.  Things that are meant to be creepy I generally find to be awesome.  And sometimes cute.

3.  I love ketchup on my mac & cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches.  I don’t think it’s that strange to put ketchup on my grilled cheese sandwiches because people always eat them with tomato soup so it’s not really that different, but I have yet to find anyone who likes it on their mac & cheese.  *sigh*

4. When I was in elementary school I was one of the last two kids in the Spelling Bee.  Until I spell ‘knee’ as ‘nee’.  To this day whenever I spell knee I think of my crushing defeat.

5.  I dress like a bum most of the time.  I’m constantly afraid that one day I’ll answer the door and it’ll be Oprah’s crew coming to show people how horribly I dress.

6.  I could go to Disneyland once a month if I could.  Ray would probably go insane, but I loooooooove it. 

7. I really dislike that while pregnant I can’t eat sushi.  I wonder if women in Japan abstain from eating sushi while they’re pregnant.  I think not.

I’m not listing 15 bloggers because I know a lot that I read have just been awarded so I’m doing 5 that I haven’t done before.  You should definitely check out their blogs!

1. Sewing Chic
2. Diary of a SnuggleSlut
3. Our Happily Ever After
4. Sonia’s Wonder World
5. The Minute Man’s Wife

debugging tori redding

Last month I was lucky enough to get a copy of Jason Ancona’s CYA: Covert Youth Agency: The Case of Tangled Love to read and review.  I loved it.  So much so that I got online and purchased Jason’s other book Debugging Tori Redding.  I started reading it right away and have lagged on my book reviews so I’m finally getting around to writing about this one!

Tori Redding is different from the rest of the kids in her class and she knows it.  The daughter of a widowed police detective and the younger sister of the basketball team’s star player she knows that everything that’s wrong with the world today can be blamed on one thing: kids growing up too fast.  She and her best friend decide to start a new club at school aimed at encouraging their fellow high school students to slow down and enjoy being a kid.  Their first goal is to get attention.  By getting their fellow classmates arrested at a party with underage drinking.

Tori is not your average heroine.  She’s opinionated, mouthy, bratty and abrasive.  I had a really hard time rooting for her cause or even liking her.  I understood her, no doubt, but it was so hard to sit back and read about her misguided attempts at helping her classmates.  It reminded me of the ultra religious kids at school who are so judgmental and annoying.  But Tori’s prickly nature hides the pain she carries around with her and feels she can’t express to anyone, not even her best friend.  Things start to spiral out of control for her and she starts to realize that maybe she’s not always right.

It takes awhile to root for Tori, but you find yourself coming around in the end.  Jason once again has an uncanny ability to capture all of high school so eloquently.  The characters are full of life and so close to people you’re sure you’ve met before.  Though this book wasn’t full of the sweetness and laughs that C.Y.A. had it definitely had me flipping through it to see what happened next.

project 365, week 14

Another so-so week.  I’m really losing steam here on this project!  We’ve been so busy too that I really haven’t thought about taking pictures too much either.  I’ve got to change my ways!

4.4.11 – This was my TBR pile for this week.  So far this was the best book week!  I wrote a review on These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf and Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.

4.5.11 – Ninja Batty Shogun.  Name says it all.

4.6.11 – Happy Birthday to my nephew Isaak!

4.7.11 – Emma started writing her own music.

4.8.11 – Even though it turned out a little blurry I loved the way the sunset looked through the trees in the backyard.

4.9.11 – Look at how not thrilled Emma looks to be roller skating.  She seems to have some sort of love-hate relationship with skating.  She really wants to skate, but just wishes she already could.

4.10.11 – I like the way the dream pop flash in Hipstamatic made my bath water look like Jell-o.

i reserve the right to leave love notes in the lunchbox

First of all I’d like to say that I know I’m not the greatest parent in the world.  Sometimes we run out to eat a Happy Meal instead of cooking something for dinner.  Sometimes I let her have a cookie instead of encouraging her to have carrots or celery for a snack.  But I’m trying to do better.

However, just because I don’t make the best food decisions for my child does not mean that someone else should make them for me.  I read this article today about a school in Chicago that has banned homemade lunches.  Students are now required to either pay for a school lunch or go hungry.  School lunches at this particular school cost $2.25 a day.  To some that’s not a lot of money, around $45 a month, but to others that’s about twice what they pay to make a healthy lunch for their kids and they can’t afford that extra expense a month.  Then of course, the way it always seems to work, they make too much money to qualify for the free or reduced cost lunch program.

My parents always made our lunches.  Getting to buy a school lunch was a special treat.  My mom & dad made sure they took the time every morning to pack something that was both good for our bodies and our hearts.  I went to school every day carrying a piece of my parent's’ love with me.  I always got a note on my napkin encouraging me to have a good day and reminding me how much I am loved.

I will do that for Emma when she starts school.  If someone tries to take that right away from me you can be sure I will fight that tooth and nail.

i haven't even finished yet

I never do this, but I can hardly stay in my own skin right now!

I'm on page 280 of 340.  Not even finished with the book, but I must talk about it!  It's a debut novel by Chevy Stevens and it is brilliant so far.  I'm not even kidding you.  Brilliant.

Oh yeah, it's called Still Missing.

Annie O'Sullivan is a thirty-something year old realtor on Vancouver Island.  One day at the end of an open house she's hosting a man abducts her and holds her captive for over a year.  The book is told in sessions instead of chapters.  Each chapter is a session Annie is having with her psychiatrist.  Some days she will talk about what happened to her in that desolate cabin and other times she deals with adjusting to life back at home. 

The story is literally unfolding tiny bits at a time.  Feeling that she can never be safe even after escaping you believe that Annie is just going through what anyone who has been through that unbelievable hell would go through.  Bits of paranoia and terror, but it's more than that.  Suddenly, what has been a slowly revealing story it becomes a heart pounding thriller. 

As I lay here reading it I can feel my heartbeat speeding up and I feel like I can't get enough oxygen!  It's insane!  It's as if Chevy Stevens has lulled you into this sense of calmness only to yank you out and throw you on a busy highway.

But I will stop now.  I'm going to finish the book and then finish my review and post it, but I had to get that out now.  We'll see if the last 60 pages live up to the first 280.

*********Here's where there's some profanity.  Just warning you.*********

Holy shit that book was fucked.  I don't even know what to say except that this was by far the best book I've read this year, maybe even in the last two years.  SO GOOD.  SO GOOD.

I can tell you no more about it because I'm afraid if I keep writing I will tell you everything and then you won't need to read the book and you NEED to read this book.  So I'm signing off now. 

Go get this book.

Now.