Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

This was our August Book Club selection, but I didn't finish it in August.  I've been determined and I finally finished it during the Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-thon.  Julia Roberts starred in the movie and I usually love her.  I had the same problem when I tried to watch it years ago, I just couldn't sit still.  This really isn't unusual for me, though, I'm easily distracted when it's time to sit down and watch a movie.

I wasn't overly impressed with this book.  I liked it well enough and I gave it 3 stars on GoodReads, but I probably won't revisit it in the future.  I purchased it on my Kindle so if you want to borrow it and you know how that sort of thing works, please feel free to contact me.  I'd be happy to lend it and learn how to share my Kindle books.

For the few who aren't familiar with this story, it follows the author's journey to find herself after a messy divorce.  She spends time in Italy, India and Indonesia over the course of a year.  First, she eats her way through Italy, which sounds like a fantastic idea to me,  This was the least interesting section of the book to me and probably why I couldn't get into it.  I felt like she was just whiny for that whole section.  I was ready to call it Whine, Cry, Indulge, but I was determined to finish this book because it was chosen for book club.  Once she moved on to India, things got more interesting and less whiny.  There was one particular character that called her out on her whining and he was great.  I actually started enjoying the book near the end while she was in Indonesia.

This book was a best seller, so many people liked it.  There are lots of reviews out there from people who LOVED it.  It wasn't my cup of tea, but it was a well written book.  The chapters were short and there were several times that I actually laughed out loud.  I would like to give this author another chance.  I think she writes well, I just wasn't interested in this story line.  There is a sequel of sorts called Committed:  A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.  Since I started enjoying the book by the end, maybe I would like the follow-up.  Do you have a copy of this book I can borrow?      Have you read anything else by Elizabeth Gilbert?  As always, I'd love to hear from you!

2015 Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon

I just found out about a 24 hour Read-a-Thon!  I didn't know such a thing existed!  This sounds like the best 24 hours of the year, right?  Thing is, they do it TWICE a year!  Prizes, challenges, cheerleaders, and a huge community of readers! Join me on this post this Saturday, October 17 for updates on how I'm doing and what I have read.  Check it out for yourself and join me!

I've been reading some of the veteran's blog posts and they suggest reading shorter books rather than trying to tackle something large.  What are your favorite quick reads?  I'd love to hear from you!

How would you prepare for a Read-a-Thon?

October 18, 2015

2:00 pm:  I'm awake, It's time to get back to the real world.  Somewhere between my update at hour 20 and when I was going to update at hour 22, blogger seems to have lost ALL my updates except fot the very beginning.  At 5:00 am when I first saw this, I didn't have the brain capacity to think about it and I went to bed.  Now that it's morning (well, afternoon) and I've had some rest, I'm pretty upset about this.  I have no idea how to reset this back to a previous time or recover my updates, but let me summarize.

Books I finished:  Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; How to Be  Grown-up by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; and a Sesame Street book that I read to the Macnado before he went to bed.

My final book of the night/early morning

 Got a visit from this little bookworm

 Macnado bedtime stories

I finished more ebooks than paper so I didn't make much of a dent in this pile

This was my entry for my #diversityshelfie challenge

I'll probably stay pretty upset that blogger erased most of my entries from the day, but there isn't much I can do about it.  I'm so glad that I was able to participate in this event and I look forward to the next one.  A big thank you to the staff at www.24hourreadathon.com for putting this together and to all the cheerleaders and volunteers who help make it happen.  I've added some new blogs to my blog roll and I look forward to making new friends with so many of you!

October 17, 2015

7:00 am:  Good morning ladies and gents!  It's that time!  Today is the day!  It's hour 1!  My family doesn't believe I'm going to even start this because it starts so early on a Saturday.  I gotta say, I'm glad it's something I can do in my nice warm bed with a cup of joe.  This Curl is running a 10k this morning.    I'm cold in my bedroom with the windows open, I sure don't want to go outside before the sun wakes up!  I think I'll finish Alice in Wonderland first this morning.  It's one of my faves and I'm about 2/3s of the way through it.

I wasn't up early enough for a pre-party, but this is from the site:


1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?  Oklahoma, USA
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?  Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion or maybe a classic I've had on my list for years
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Peeled a ton of pomegranate last night, healthy, yummy snack. 
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!  Read the rest of the posts from my blog, you'll see how random I can be.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?  First one and I'm looking forward to finishing books that I have had on my list for a while.

Link up and go cheer someone on!

8:30 am - I really don't plan to update hourly, but I did want to fill you in on my reading so far.  I've finished Alice in Wonderland.  I hadn't read this book in YEARS, but it's still one of my favorites.  I think Wonderland is as silly as my own brain is sometimes.  I love so many of the characters that Carroll created.  Through the Looking Glass is on my TBR list for later today.  I want to finish most of the books that I have started today so I'm going to work on Eat, Pray, Love next.  This was the book club selection for August and I'm still not finished.  It's an okay book, but I don't love it so it's taking me much longer to finish than it should.  I'm determined, and I'm almost finished, so I'll see you here when it's done!

In the Beginning

I have  tried to read Genesis a handful of times over the years and always manage to get distracted with all the so-in-so begat so-in-sos. I finally finished the entire book recently and once you can get past the genealogy, it's full of great stories!

Today I want to talk Adam and Eve. First God makes the Heaven and Earth and fills it with creatures and plants and all the  good things. Then he creates Adam and puts him smack dab in the middle of the most beautiful place and gives him authority over everything. He tells Adam, don't eat from that one tree over in the middle, it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and if you eat it, you will die.  He tells Adam he can eat from ANY of the other trees, including the tree of life that's planted right next to the tree of knowledge.  Then He presents all the animals to  Adam.  Adam checked them all out, gave them all names, but didn't really find one he wanted to hang out with all the time. God put Adam to sleep, took a rib and created woman. He gave her to Adam and this made him happy.  

Life. Was. Good.

It's summertime and the livin's easy. ...oh, sorry, I'll spare you my singing!

Adam and Eve are naked, frolicking in the most beautiful garden that God had made for them. They get to walk and talk with God when He comes down to hang out and check on things in the cool of the day. How stinkin' cool would this life be?

Then it happens.  The Fall.

Eve is just chillin' in the garden and the slithery serpent comes along.  He says "Hey girl!  Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees?"

Eve:  "No silly.  We can eat from any of the trees except this one.  If we touch it, we'll die."

Now, did that little lie come up like a game of telephone?  Say it enough times and eventually the story gets bigger?  I guess we don't really know, but the serpent gets in there and plants his doubt.

Serpent:  "Noooo. You won't die.  God just doesn't want you to know all the things He knows so He doesn't want you to eat that fruit."

What'd she do?  She ate the dang fruit and then fed it to her husband.  Ol' Adam didn't fight her on it either.  The tree of life and the tree of well, death essentially, were right next to each other and Eve went for the serpents tricks and chose death.

You know the rest.  They get kicked out of Eden, it hurts for us ladies to have babies and we have to work for our food.  We can blame Eve all we want, but really, would you have been any stronger?  She probably didn't actually believe that anything bad would happen, after all nothing bad had ever happened at that point.  God gave us all free will and from the beginning He made sure we had the ability to express it.  This is what makes us human.  Besides, if Adam and Eve hadn't have got kicked out of Eden, the bible would be a much shorter and maybe less interesting book and we know how much I like books!

It's not too late, I just got started!  Read along with me and chime in.  I'd love to hear from you.

Before I go:

Ha! Sorry guys, couldn't help myself!  

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

If a book is suggested by a friend or other reliable source, do you read the cover before you decide whether or not to read it or do you take your friend's word on it?  Do you judge a book by the cover or do you read a few pages before you commit?  I ask these things, because I don't always read the information on the book before I dive in.  I end up with interesting things I NEVER would have read.  If I had read the reviews for the Sasquatch book, I probably wouldn't have read it.  If I hadn't have taken my librarian's word on Leaving Time, I probably wouldn't have listened to it.  There are many other books I've read over time that I wouldn't have chose for myself.  I'm glad that I've read those books, though, even if I didn't love all of them.

This is one of those books I probably wouldn't have picked for myself.  This book is full of heartbreak, family issues, and mystery.  There were times I almost wanted to cry for goodness sake!  I don't read fiction that makes people want to cry!  I read fiction about zombies and vampires, but this book was on the Summer Reading Challenge, I had to cross it off the list.  I gotta say, I'm glad I read this one, too!  I downloaded the audio for this book from my library's site for FREE!  We all love free books, after all.

This story is about a biracial family in the 1970's who is faced with the tragic loss of a teenage daughter.  Her mother, father, sister and brother are all trying to figure out what happened to her and why it happened.  They are all trying to cope with this disaster and learn to live without Lydia.  This will either destroy this family or bring them closer together as they reflect on the events that lead up to the day she disappeared.  There were a couple times I wondered if we would ever figure out exactly what happened, but thankfully, this book ended with adequate closure.  That's all the spoiler you will get out of me.

I thought this was really well read and really well written.  I'm not usually in tune enough to realize when a writer is using imagery and figurative language to build a story and get a point across, but I noticed with this book.  I'm not organized enough to take notes to give you specific examples, I'll work on that, but I really liked the prose used by this writer.  I would read more by Celeste Ng and have started following her on GoodReads.

I recommend you pick this one up.  I listened to the audio, but I think the written would have been just as good.  As always, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Divine By Mistake by PC Cast

Have you heard of P.C. Cast?  Well, you should!  P.C. Cast writes about Oklahoma girls!  While I have only read this one book so far, I know she has a couple other series where the protagonist is a woman from Oklahoma caught up in mystical circumstances.  There is a series about vampires in Oklahoma, (you know I wanna read those!) and a series about Oklahoma girls that end up as goddesses.

In this book, Broken Arrow high school English teacher, Shannon Parker, gets swept away to an alternate world where she finds out that she is the Goddess Incarnate and Beloved of the warrior goddess Epona.  She lives in a temple and is surrounded by hot guards and pretty hand maidens and is betrothed to a handsome centaur.  

This story is a non-stop adventure for Shannon, known as Rhea to the Partholonians.  It turns out Rhea is a much more gracious and kind leader than the real Rhiannon who forced her into this world. Is she strong enough to lead a whole country?  Will she ever make it home?  Does she actually want to go home?  Read it and find out!  

I borrowed this title from the library's digital downloads. Before I finished the last chapter I had already downloaded the second book!  If you are a fan of fantasy fiction, this is a must read.

Finished two books in two days?!?  My house must be a mess!  

What do you think?  Have you read any P.C. Cast?  Comment!

Esther (A Dangerous Beauty Novel Book #1): Royal Beauty by Angela Hunt

I am a fan of biblical fiction.  Especially the stories about the women of the bible.  I loved Red Tent.  I loved Sarah.  Now I love Esther. 

This book was written from two perspectives, the  obvious perspective of Esther, a middle class girl who ends up the queen of Persia when Persia pretty much ran the world, and the perspective of the king's chief attendant.  I thought this was genius!  The king's attendant gives us insight into what the king is thinking and is doing but without being arrogant like I would expect the king to be.  There may have been too great a contrast if the story was told from the haughty point of view of the king compared to the simple Jewish girl's point of view.

Coincidentally, there has been a series of sermons on the radio recently about the book of Esther.  I've listened to bits and pieces and this book followed pretty stinkin' close.  I REALLY love biblical fiction when it follows the Bible pretty closely.  I listened to the audio version of this book and I really enjoyed it, but I think I would have enjoyed reading it as well.  Give this one a try!

I wanna hear what you think!  Comment!  Email me!  Let's chat!  

When God speaks

I set out recently to read the bible like a great novel. Really read the stories for what they are and enjoy the Good Book. When I finished Genesis and planned to move on to Exodus, because that is how a book works.  The reading plan in the app I was using guided me to Mark instead. That threw a wrench in my plan, so I ditched the app and set out on my own.

If you have experienced God working in your own life, you will know that doing things on our own without His guidance is usually a bad idea. I did pray over this dilemma, then cracked open the second book. I couldn't get more than a few verses in and I just couldn't read it! I'd get distracted by nothing and everything and I just couldn't get into it like I did with Genesis. I loved reading Genesis! There are so many good stories in those 50 chapters! I was so excited to see what happened to the children of Isreal next, but I just couldn't move on!

I prayed, "Okay, God, was I supposed to follow where the plan in the app lead? Was I supposed to skip to Mark? I'll try it that way if that is what You want me to do."  So I did. I opened the app, skipped all the rest of the stories in the Old Testament (much to my own sadness) and started to read Mark.

Know what happened? The same thing! I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't get into that book either!  What is going on here?!?  I put my Bible away for a while and focused on prayer. I asked God to guide me and show me clearly where I should start reading next. I got a very clear answer and it went something like this:

"April, you aren't finished with Genesis. You can't move on yet."

"But God, I finished all 50 chapters of Genesis, when I turn the page, I should be in Exodus."

"Yes, you read all the chapters, but did you really understand? Did you get any of My lessons while you were reading or were you just reading it to say that you had read it?"

Ooh, I guess He got me there.

Sometimes I feel like maybe God is leading me one way or another, but I don't feel 100% convinced it's God and not my brain doing it's own thing. This time I am hearing God's voice loud and clear. 

Since that conversation, another Bible study app I have, First 5, has started a study in Genesis and several of the radio shows I listen to have touched on different parts of Genesis. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm going to go back through Genesis and keep studying until God leads me to another book. I hope to tell you all lots of interesting things that I'm learning along the way. I doubt I'll find anything completely revolutionary and new, but maybe we will all gain some insight on God's plan for our lives. Stay tuned!

When is the last time you clearly heard from God?