Saturday, April 10, 2010
Kick off of champions mini-challenge
Yeah! My first mini-challenge for the readathon! It's hosted by Miss Remmers' Review. To start off my first readathon, I've surrounded myself with books (obviously), opened the blinds by my reading chair, grabbed a Diet Mountain Dew, my laptop, my Snuggie (I know they're kind of goofy but every big reader should have one! My arms can be warm and snuggly and I can still read!), and my cats. I just took some pictures, but realized I have no idea where the camera cord is to upload them. Doh! At least getting up to get the camera got the blood moving a bit. I will try to post the pics later even though this challenge will be over. Happy reading everyone!
24-hour readathon update 2
Happy 24-hour readathon day! Here's my second update for the day!
Title of book(s) read since last update:
The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola (I should have already finished this one for my Classics Circuit post today...I'll finish it soon and post by early afternoon!
Number of books read since you started: Parts of 4
Pages read since last update: 104
Running total of pages read since you started: 239
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 54 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 2 hours and 36 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...
Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com
Prize you’ve won: none
24-hour readathon
I woke up a little late this morning and so I launched right into reading and am just getting my first 24-hour readathon update posted. I was about 40 minutes late starting. Boo.
Title of book(s) read since last update:
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Big Boned by Meg Cabot
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Number of books read since you started: 0
Pages read since last update: 135
Running total of pages read since you started: 135
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Mini-challenges completed: none (I'm about to do that though!)
Other participants you’ve visited: none (I'm about to do that though!)
Prize you’ve won: none
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Her Fearful Symmetry
I chose an oddly appropriate book for Easter weekend - Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. It's got quite a bit to do with death and resurrection. I bought this when it first came out because I LOVE The Time Traveler's Wife, but it was not well reviewed and was so criticized that I was afraid of disappointment and put it off for a while. I think putting distance between the reviews and the actual reading paid off, and my still somewhat lowered expectations made me realize this probably wouldn't be as good as as The Time Traveler's Wife.
However, I actually really liked it! It's very weird, which might have something to do with the negative reviews, but really, The Time Traveler's Wife isn't exactly normal either. But, it doesn't focus on a cemetery and death and ghosts like Her Fearful Symmetry does. I don't usually enjoy ghost stories, but this was very well done. I think overall it was extremely well written, with a whole cast of interesting characters who I came to care about, a mystery I wanted to unravel, and a plot I wanted to unwrap like a candy bar - slowly at first, savoring the anticipation, then quickly ripping through the package to get to the end.
Her Fearful Symmetry is a love story, a truly unique love story, and actually several love stories packaged together. Elspeth and Robert. Edie and Jack. Valentina and Julia. Martin and Marijke. All of the characters have their good and bad sides, and they're all intriguing. Martin has an extreme case of OCD and won't even leave his flat. Valentina and Julia are twins who can't quite seem to separate and still dress alike at 20. Elspeth is dead. (That's not a spoiler; it's on the book flap and happens in the first few pages.) Elspeth leaves her flat to Julia and Valentina, and Martin and Robert also have flats in the same building, so all of the characters are intertwined. The condition of the girls inheriting the flat and money is they must live in the flat for a year and their parents, Jack and Edie, cannot enter the flat. Why? Well, you'll just have to read it to find out.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
House Rules
I know some people think Jodi Picoult's books a bit formulaic, but I love them! They always rekindle my love of reading and I tend to go on a reading tear after reading one of her books. There have been a few disappoints, including Change of Heart, so I was very glad that I enjoyed her latest, House Rules
. House Rules is about a family where the older son as Asperger's, a high-functioning form of autism. I have been anticipating this book since I heard she was writing about that topic a while ago. I'm intrigued by autism and since her books are also so carefully researched I knew I would learn more about it through her book. I think my interest in the topic goes back to elementary school when I read Kristy and the Secret of Susan, one of the Baby-Sitters Club books. I think it was the first time I'd really read about someone with a disability, and we had a special elementary school in my district for kids with disabilities, so I had never met someone with one at that point in my life. I found Susan's abilities amazing and wondered how the brain could work that way, and the trade off her being stuck in her own mind.
Jacob, who has Asperger's is able to interact in ways that Susan couldn't, so that he can seem almost "normal" some of the time. This mix of not being clearly autistic but not functioning like a typical person is the crux of the book. A woman is dead, and Jacob is suspecting of her murder. His Asperger's causes him to act guilty, but is he? And if he is, is he reponsible for his actions? I enjoyed the mystery aspect of trying to discover if he did it or not, and even though I guessed early on what happened, since Picoult is known to through in twists I couldn't be sure if I was right until the end. Every time I put the book down, I couldn't wait to get back to it and find out what happened.
I don't think it has been very well reviewed, but I really liked it and would recommend it, and especially thought it was stronger than Change of Heart, which is probably one of my least favorites of her books. I also liked that is wasn't depressingly sad like some of her other books. I do think the reviewers are right in that she focused more on research of the legal and medical aspects of the stories, but I actually felt that worked well since Jacob is the focus and he focuses on those things, not the emotional elements. And she still did a good job of creating different perspectives and having the voices sound different, especially Jacob's. So overall, I think it was a great book!
Nanny Returns
Just once I would like to see a character who asks "should I have kids or shouldn't I?" answer with a "no." I think I may have to write my own book to get this ending. Unless anyone has any book suggestions for me?
That is not the main plot point in Nanny Returns
, but it did bug me. It probably bothered me mainly because I was already disappointed with the book. I really enjoyed The Nanny Diaries. I thought it was funny, entertaining, and surprisingly well written for haing two authors. I usually find that even with the editing process, books with two authors have an uneven flow. I felt like that was more noticeable in Nanny Returns. It wasn't clear cut when the changes happened or anything like that, just overall it felt uneven.
Also, in this book the characters all just annoyed me so much I just wanted them all to die. While you're supposed to dislike Mrs. and Mr. X, I also disliked the children and Nan. I know Nan had no backbone until the end of the first book, but in this book it's like she reverts to having no backbone and ends up even worse because I felt like she let her husband talk her into the baby at the end. In the first book, you understood her actions because she wanted to make sure Grayer was taken care of, but this time he's an annoying 16-year-old so it's hard to see why she gets involved. When his parents dump him and his brother, why doesn't she just call the police to track them down? And how can she possibly live in a house as disgusting as the way hers is described? (It's being remodeled.)
So, I'd pass on this one. I did enjoy Dedication by the same authors, so if you want more of their style I'd go with that one instead of Nanny Returns (or Citizen Girl. That was awful.)
That is not the main plot point in Nanny Returns, but it did bug me. It probably bothered me mainly because I was already disappointed with the book. I really enjoyed The Nanny Diaries. I thought it was funny, entertaining, and surprisingly well written for haing two authors. I usually find that even with the editing process, books with two authors have an uneven flow. I felt like that was more noticeable in Nanny Returns. It wasn't clear cut when the changes happened or anything like that, just overall it felt uneven. Also, in this book the characters all just annoyed me so much I just wanted them all to die. While you're supposed to dislike Mrs. and Mr. X, I also disliked the children and Nan. I know Nan had no backbone until the end of the first book, but in this book it's like she reverts to having no backbone and ends up even worse because I felt like she let her husband talk her into the baby at the end. In the first book, you understood her actions because she wanted to make sure Grayer was taken care of, but this time he's an annoying 16-year-old so it's hard to see why she gets involved. When his parents dump him and his brother, why doesn't she just call the police to track them down? And how can she possibly live in a house as disgusting as the way hers is described? (It's being remodeled.)
So, I'd pass on this one. I did enjoy Dedication by the same authors, so if you want more of their style I'd go with that one instead of Nanny Returns (or Citizen Girl. That was awful.)
Friday, April 2, 2010
100 Worst Bosses
So, I have been a wee bit neglectful of this dear old blog lately. This is not due to a lack of wanting to blog, but from an I've been spending way too much time at work lately and the last thing I want to do is get on the computer when I get home kind of thing. Work is going well, and I actually just had two people moved onto my team and had my role expanded, which I'm excited about, but I've been a little stressed as a result.
Also, we have a huge campaign that I'm managing at work right now and I've been frantically trying to answer phone calls and e-mails about it all day while trying to actually do the work of planning and implementing the thing! As part of the campaign, we're having a simulcast that will have over 230 event sites participating throughout the U.S. and Canada on May 5. I'm planning the content and marketing of the event, which could have 14,000 attendees. So I'm going a bit crazy at work right now.
This does have something to do with a book, and I'm getting to that. Last year, best-selling author Jim Stovall contacted my company to partner with him in writing his next book. Jim wrote The Ultimate Gift, which was made into a movie starring James Gardner and Abigail Breslin. He was working on a book called 100 Worst Bosses and wanted to work with my company to gather stories for the book. (Not because we have a lot of bad bosses at my company. :) I work for a staffing company, and we put over 350,000 people to work each year, so we have a lot of people to ask for stories about bad bosses they've had over the years.) So last year I led a campaign to collect those stories, and then we ended up with the book this year. And I got to be the ghostwriter on the foreword of the book for our CEO, which is fun. Jim will be speaking as part of the simulcast, and the whole thing is centered around some of the content of the book.
You can check out our website for the campaign at MyLeadershipInstinct.com. There are some really funny videos we created as part of the campaign that you can view on the site, and a quiz to determine your leadership instinct. Two of the videos will air on Fox News, CNN, CBC News (in Canada), Comedy Central (during the Daily Show), and Fox (during Fox News Sunday)! It's kind of crazy that I came up with an idea that's going to end up airing on national television.
So you can see why I'm a bit behind on my blogging. And why I'm not quite on track with my reading goals for the year. I'm hoping to catch up on blogging this weekend since I have finished several good books recently and to catch up on my reading during the 24-hour readathon, although I don't plan on reading the full 24 hours. I get real grumpy if I don't get enough sleep.
As for the 100 Worst Bosses, even if business books aren't your thing, it's a really great book. The stories are horrifying! You will be thankful for your boss after reading it. Unless your boss has ever thrown a stapler at you or pulled a gun on you. Or is completely wasted by noon every day. Then you might just get a little motivation to leave already! And if you've ever had a bad co-worker or employee, you can submit your story to WorstEmployees.com and get a chance to see your story in his next book and win an autographed book! And if you want more of an actual book review of the 100 Worst Bosses, you can check out the blog post on my company's leadership blog.
Oh, and for any Office fans out there, we got Andy Buckley, who plays David Wallace, Michael's ex-boss, to emcee our event! I have his cell phone number! And no you cannot have it. :) Isn't that crazy? I'm going to have to actually buck up and watch the show before the event since I'll meet him.
Also, we have a huge campaign that I'm managing at work right now and I've been frantically trying to answer phone calls and e-mails about it all day while trying to actually do the work of planning and implementing the thing! As part of the campaign, we're having a simulcast that will have over 230 event sites participating throughout the U.S. and Canada on May 5. I'm planning the content and marketing of the event, which could have 14,000 attendees. So I'm going a bit crazy at work right now.
This does have something to do with a book, and I'm getting to that. Last year, best-selling author Jim Stovall contacted my company to partner with him in writing his next book. Jim wrote The Ultimate Gift, which was made into a movie starring James Gardner and Abigail Breslin. He was working on a book called 100 Worst Bosses and wanted to work with my company to gather stories for the book. (Not because we have a lot of bad bosses at my company. :) I work for a staffing company, and we put over 350,000 people to work each year, so we have a lot of people to ask for stories about bad bosses they've had over the years.) So last year I led a campaign to collect those stories, and then we ended up with the book this year. And I got to be the ghostwriter on the foreword of the book for our CEO, which is fun. Jim will be speaking as part of the simulcast, and the whole thing is centered around some of the content of the book.
You can check out our website for the campaign at MyLeadershipInstinct.com. There are some really funny videos we created as part of the campaign that you can view on the site, and a quiz to determine your leadership instinct. Two of the videos will air on Fox News, CNN, CBC News (in Canada), Comedy Central (during the Daily Show), and Fox (during Fox News Sunday)! It's kind of crazy that I came up with an idea that's going to end up airing on national television.
So you can see why I'm a bit behind on my blogging. And why I'm not quite on track with my reading goals for the year. I'm hoping to catch up on blogging this weekend since I have finished several good books recently and to catch up on my reading during the 24-hour readathon, although I don't plan on reading the full 24 hours. I get real grumpy if I don't get enough sleep.
As for the 100 Worst Bosses, even if business books aren't your thing, it's a really great book. The stories are horrifying! You will be thankful for your boss after reading it. Unless your boss has ever thrown a stapler at you or pulled a gun on you. Or is completely wasted by noon every day. Then you might just get a little motivation to leave already! And if you've ever had a bad co-worker or employee, you can submit your story to WorstEmployees.com and get a chance to see your story in his next book and win an autographed book! And if you want more of an actual book review of the 100 Worst Bosses, you can check out the blog post on my company's leadership blog.
Oh, and for any Office fans out there, we got Andy Buckley, who plays David Wallace, Michael's ex-boss, to emcee our event! I have his cell phone number! And no you cannot have it. :) Isn't that crazy? I'm going to have to actually buck up and watch the show before the event since I'll meet him.
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