Tag Archives: eBook

Now is Not the Time To Panic

No Pie Mentioned, Rooster!, , , , ,

Thoughts by Kevin Wilson, Harper Collins Publishers 2022, 248 pages

Challenge: #ReadICT category time

Genre/Theme: Adult Literature / Childhood friendship, Coming of Age

Type/Source: eBook / Libby

What It’s About: Frankie is 16 and never been kissed. She doesn’t have any friends but unlike what you might expect, she is not a sniveling feelin’-sorry-for-herself, annoying wretch. She is just perplexed. She meets a new kid at the pool during the first week of summer vacation and they hit it off. This also, is rather perplexing. Is he a boyfriend? What do they “DO” exactly? Well, it turns out they secretly spawn mayhem and world confusion! It’s called ART, people! Of course, most don’t get it. And they are not about to attempt to explain.

Also, subnote, Frankie has a half-sister that was given her name. Yep, her dad had an affair, left her mother, spawned a child, a girl, and gave her the SAME NAME as his already born living now-abandoned daughter. I find this perplexing and F%&#-up.

And when Junie burst into the room, holding a half-full box of Milk Duds, absolutely zooted on sugar and instantly explaining the plot of the movie they just saw, I thought, Oh, thank god.

Thoughts: I adore Kevin Wilson. He is an excellent story builder; with lovable smart characters. He adds some delicious comedy but keeps it real. Loved this.

Rating: I think I first-impulse gave this 4 stars in goodreads, but as I write this, I think I just might have to give it a big ol’ FIVE. Hey, it has Oatmeal Creme Pie snacks, so why the hell not?

“I decided I wanted some of those Little Debbie snack cakes, and my mom brought over two boxes, Star Crunch and Oatmeal Creme Pies, and I ate two of each very quickly, and for some reason this made my mom smile.”

Copyright © 2007-2023. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

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Greenwich Park

Challenge, Debut Novel, Library, Mystery, Pie, Wian2023, , , , , , ,

Thoughts by Katherine Faulkner,  Gallery Books 2022, 378 pages

Challenge: for Book Club and #ReadICT: Color category (perhaps also Villain category?)

Genre/Theme: Mystery/Thriller

Type/Source: eBook / Libby

What It’s About: Synopsis from the top result of googling:

GREENWICH PARK centers around two women, Helen and Rachel, who find their lives entangled when they meet at a prenatal class. Helen, our protagonist, is an instantly-sympathetic and relatable character: when we meet her, we immediately feel a sense of protectiveness towards her.

Thoughts: No, we didn’t. We did not feel any sense of protectiveness and not immediately. Um… The very first page had me confused and annoyed at adjectives and word choice. Then I saw that Laila didn’t like the main character and then my mother (also in my book club) said it failed to capture her interest in the first few pages. I started to read other 1 and 2 star reviews on goodreads — the kiss of death of whether or not I will like a book!

Someone called the protag “gormless”, other reviews said it was dry. Some praised the writing but I wasn’t impressed.

Back to the ebook (after searching for the word “pie”…), I decided to skip around and jump pages, and then read the ending. Blech. I have no desire to catch up what I might have missed. I really am not a good reader of mystery/thrillers. If they are mostly literary, I might like it but usually, I just can’t get interested!

Rating: Two slices of pie. Apricot tart means pie!

“There are no lines, so I take my time choosing serrano ham, hard cheeses, a glistening apricot tart.”

5%

Copyright © 2007-2023. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

Challenge, Library, Pie, Rooster!, , , , , ,

Thoughts by Alison Espach, Henry Holt & Company 2022, 340 pages

Challenge: for TOB and for #ReadICT: Grief category

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; grief, sister relationships

Type/Source: Hardcover / Library

What It’s About: A sister talks to her dead sister, the few years prior, the immediate aftermath, and the years following.

Thoughts: I loved it. Sally was such a devoted little sister, adoring her older sibling. How she grieves and attempts to understand and work through her parents grief, as well as be totally besotted with her sister’s boyfriend. Her outlook on life, attempting to throw humor at everything, only makes her feel odd and empty; it was just heartbreaking and felt very real to me.

Rating: Five slices of pie. Apple pie mentions.

“Then it was over and all the people came to our house and ate apple pie and swirled around our mother at the kitchen table, who was catatonic in her chair.”

Page 97

Copyright © 2007-2023. Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The Patron Saint of Liars

Library, Pie, Rooster!, , , , , , , , , , ,

Thoughts by Ann Patchett, Mariner Books (first pub’ 1992), 402 pages

Challenge: for #WiaN2023, category 7 Deadly Sins

Genre/Theme: Adult Fiction; mother-daughter relationships

Type/Source: eBook Libby

What It’s About: Rose accepts her sign from God to marry, but she prefers to drive.

Rose marries a fine man. She loves her mother. But she just cannot live the life as presented to her and she flees to a far corner and accepts where she lands. She is pregnant and accepts those terms, SORT OF. She finds a place for her in the midst of this somehow and . . .

SPOILER ahead –> just highlight to read it:

when the old life encroaches on the newly established, she drives off again. She leaves a daughter distraught with questions and confusions as to what comes next.

Heartbreaking!

Thoughts: Patchett knows “people”, knows the ache of longing and frustration against the pull of responsibility. I love her.

Rating: Four slices of pie. LOTS of pie mentions! Lots of whipped cream.

“”In the hospital,” Rose said, pinching in the edges of a pie crust, or maybe it was a tart. Nothing was a plain old pie with her anymore.”

many other pie mentions, including apple…

 

 

Lucky Boy

Rooster!, , , , , ,

Thoughts  by Shanthi Skaran, GP Putnam’s Sons 2017, 472 pages

Challenge: Tournament of Books 2018
Genre: Hmmmmm…. I guess that catchall “contemporary lit”
Type/Source: eBook / Borrowed from library, read on my Kindle
 Why I read this now: Available from the library

MOTIVATION for READING: TOB. Today is actually the decision day for this book. It is going against The End of Eddy which I listened to. I’m hurrying to post this before the judgment is announced.

He asked for her story, he wanted to know how she’d arrived on his shores, and what had happened to her on the journey. Soli, without papers and pregnant, and hanging by a thread to this happy, healthy place, considered telling the truth. With a sharp slap to her inner chismosa, she slowed down and shut her mouth.

WHAT’s it ABOUT: Two sides of a story. One, a young illegal immigrant from Mexico who is ‘bio-mom’ of the lucky boy named Ignatio, and the other, a second-generation in America couple (heritage India) who want to adopt the lucky boy whom they call Iggy. Bio-mom Solimar is fierce in her love and dedication to her son and she is trying to survive and adjust to the promises of a life in the U.S. But then she is caught; she is undocumented. Kavya and Rishi have their own expectations of how their lives should be and when they can’t get pregnant, they move to adopt a baby, starting with fostering Ignatio who is now a ‘ward of the state’ while Soli languishes in ‘custody’. Worlds collide. Sort of.

WHAT’s GOOD: Well-researched scenarios and portrayals of true American stories and the immigration policies and systems in place – and are in flux and in the news even more now. Lucky Boy explores parental rights, wealth and poverty, immigration, the courts.

I highlighted a few wonderful sentences, but I never got swept up into any of it.

She’d never had to truly give up on herself before, having always had a trust fund of potential—untapped, hidden, wasted—to fall back on.

What’s NOT so good: I didn’t feel it. Something was off. I didn’t care for Kavya and her petty jealousies. It just didn’t carry the spark it needed.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This book is going to get skewered in the commentary today; I do feel that. I wish I could articulate the unsettling I feel about how the story was constructed and how the plot unfolded. I found it predictable, almost boring. “The U.S. Immigration Policy is bad.” The checks and balances of the systems for handling immigrants is in failure mode. Yep, I get it. How do we fix it?

I read (rēēd) the wonderful insightful pro and con thoughts on all these books and I nod my head, yes! I can see that, or Really?! no, I didn’t get that… but I can’t find those words of my own to reason through my thoughts and feelings. But I do so love the TOB. It’s been a wild ride so far (and I’m actually glad I haven’t found my darling.)

If you read everything – you’ll know why I post this quote: “She ran until the dogs in her head stopped barking. And then she stopped and turned and found that she was alone.“

TOB:  I will chose The End of Eddy in this round. I listened to TEoE and I didn’t listen well. But it had a punch and a rawness that was evident as art. They are saying we are in Bizarro-World this year so it is possible that Lucky Boy might take it. But I don’t think so…

RATING: Three slices of apple pie.

Silvia picked up tamales and an apple pie and a liter of fancy-looking soda from the expensive supermarket, the one they never went to.

pierating

“Can you smell that apple pie?” Eva Cabral stood and cranked open her window. “They drive me crazy with that apple pie!” She had the spangle-toothed smile of a PTA president.

pierating

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Idaho

Dogs, Library, Pie, Rooster!, Travel, , , , , ,

Thoughts  by Emily Ruskovich, 2017, _pages

Challenge: Tournament of Books 2018
Genre: Contemporary Lit
Type/Source: eBook / Library
 Why I read this now: The only ebook available NOW at the library.

MOTIVATION for READING: TOB!

WHAT’s it ABOUT: We have a mountain man (was his name Wes? I’ve already forgotten!) with his second wife who was a music teacher, from England or Scotland – her dad was in Scotland, I do remember that. We have the guy’s first wife who is in prison but before her story we meet the woman that she will be cellmates with and we learn how that all got set up. We find out that the guy is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. And we get the stories of all sorts of other people:  Wes’ dad’s neighbor? Wes’ kids, and a friend of his eldest daughter’s, a sketch artist, a mountain neighbor.

WHAT’s GOOD: The author can write and she can create a mood, a tension. I wanted to read and not stop! Had to figure it out, what the heck is going on?! 

What’s NOT so good: I didn’t like how it jumped back and forth in time. This doesn’t usually bother me but I didn’t ‘get’ it with this one. I also didn’t get some of the odd perspectives that were thrown in. I had many unresolved questions. Maybe it was me and not the book.

FINAL THOUGHTS: It is a book that catches you and you don’t want to put it down. But it left me frustrated at the end and as time goes on, I like it less and less.  I do think this will be a fun discussion for the Tournament — on that note, I’m very glad to have read this and eager for the conversation.

RATING: Three slices of pie.

 

 

 

pierating

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Stoner

Author Recommendation, Classics, Classics Club, Employment, Family, Life, No Pie Mentioned, , , , , , ,

Thoughts  by John Williams, New York Review Book 2003 (orig 1965), 305 pages

Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.

H

Challenge: Classics Club 50!
Type/Source: eBook/Kindle

MOTIVATION for READING: I had heard very good things about this book; I had expectations that it would be just the kind of book I love. And it was!

WHAT’s it ABOUT: Stoner is a Professor of Literature at the University of Missouri. This book explores his entire life, start to finish.

WHAT’s GOOD: The writing.

What’s NOT so good: I love contemplative character studies. If you don’t, just skip it. It’s OK.              I LOVED this.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I’m so glad to finally conquer this one! Yay me.

RATING: Five slices of pie. No pie mentioned. Although, ‘magpie’ is.

“Outside, in the old elm that crowded the back-yard fence, a large black-and-white bird—a magpie—had started to chatter. He listened to the sound of its calling and watched with remote fascination the open beak as it strained out its lonely cry.”

 

pierating

Copyright © 2007-2018. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

The Red Shoes

Humor, Mystery, No Pie Mentioned, Story Collection, Words, , , , , ,

Thoughts trsbydh The Red Shoes by Dorte Hummelshoj, 2012, publisher date, 33 pages

Challenge:  Read My Own Damn Books and What’s in a Name: CLOTHING
Genre: Mystery
Type/Source: eBook, Amazon
 Why I read this now: ReadMyOwnDamnBooksbutton Well so, I realized that I had forgotten about my Kindle and how many books lay hidden inside this device. I’m good – I have less than ten! Now I have only eight…

MOTIVATION for READING: Length. It was short!

WHAT’s it ABOUT: This is a story collection and let me share the warning:

HIGH RISK OF TOXIC HUMOUR AND SEVERED LIMBS!

I couldn’t resist.

WHAT’s GOOD: These are fun. and short. The character names were great. (Like Rhapsody Gershwin.)

What’s NOT so good: I’m not sure how suspenseful I would rate these but they definitely have dark humor.

FINAL THOUGHTS: My favorite was the Green Acres story that was set in a nursing home (and had an adorable dog as foil.)

RATING: Three slices of pie.

Vocabulary:  Grotty – unpleasant and of poor quality. (not in any way meant to describe these stories; only a word IN the stories that I did not know.)

 

pierating

Copyright © 2007-2016. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.

A Survival Guide to Parenting Teens by @JoaniGeltman

Author Recommendation, Book Picked Me, Family, Life, NonFiction, , ,

Thoughts asgtptbyjg A Survival Guide to Parenting Teens: Talking to Your Kids about Sexting, Drinking, Drugs, and Other Things That Freak You Out by Joani Geltman, AMACOM/American Management Association 2014, 288 pages, eBook

I am currently attending Grad School, working on my Certificate in Instructional Technology. This will allow me the opportunity to work with schools to integrate technology into curriculum. One of my classes last semester was Technology Leadership and our group focused on issues for schools to consider in using social media in the classroom. So when I saw that my school district was offering a community workshop about kids and social media, I knew I wanted to attend. The workshop  featured Joani Geltman, Child Development and Parenting Expert. Her talk was all about what parents need to know about what kids are investigating with the internet and social media. I explored her blog (click here:  joanigeltman.blogspot.com) and now follow her on Twitter.

When she offered to send me her new book, I enthusiastically said, “YES!”

The structure of this guide is very easy to use as a reference. It is setup by Problem or Issue and gives terrific examples of teen attitudes and communications struggles and offers explanations of why they behave as they do. Then she offers a Solution. Some of it is Common Sense, some of it is Tough Love and some of the Solutions require what I expect might be new sets of thinking tools with specific language to try.

All of the sections are introduced with “Just Tell Me What to Do About...” and then are grouped by Raising Teens, Keeping Teens Motivated, Negotiating the College Process, and Teen Friendship Traps, etc. Each vignette or issue explores the dynamics of certain situations and provides parenting words to use that will not push the kid away but invite understanding. Such issues, for example, include GETTING YOUR TEEN UP IN THE MORNING and how to handle LIES of OMISSION. The one that I was most impacted by was the one about teens having too much time on their hands and how important it is that a person be busy in order to be motivated.

You can read it all at once or just flip to the specific issue you have to deal with RIGHT NOW. It is super well-organized and covers so many things I didn’t even know some could be a problem!

She offers the tough stuff, too – drugs and drinking, sex, cellphones and smartphones and social media applications. We are putting a lot of power, 24/7, in the hands of kids today who do not have the emotional, physical and intellectual abilities to understand the consequences and we are not monitoring or understanding ourselves what kind of trouble can be encountered.

Ms. Geltman’s style is direct and impactful; she delivers advice with humor and no bullshit. I recommend this guide for any parent, regardless of whether or not you have good relationship or not with your kids – I bet all experience those times when buttons get pushed and have experienced communication challenges. Ms. Geltmen will help you understand why teenagers do what they do and how you can react for a positive experience. Or at least, give you strength to endure it until they finally turn into adults.

Every time I hear a friend tell me that their kid is ‘driving them crazy’, I recommend this guide!

I am not a parent but I substitute teach in the High School. I agree that teens need to have something that excites and engages them and it not be ‘surfing the net’ all the time. I notice that I can tend to talk ‘like an adult’ when I am in front of students and too often banter the word ‘APPROPRIATE’ – a big clue to a teen to just not listen.

“I get it.”

 

RATING:  fourpieFour slices of pie but only because I don’t have a teen at home to practice this on.

Disclosure: I was given this book by the author in exchange for a fair review.

 

HIdeinWhitetoSkipLine

Copyright © 2007-2014. Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care from Care’s Online Book Club.  It should not be reproduced without express written permission.